As white nationalists try to reclaim Australia Day, Invasion Day remains the real counter-rally in the face ofracism.Tom Tanukireports.

AT MELBOURNE'S FIRST March for Australia (MFA) on 31 August last year, organisers saw their next steps reflected in the size of the crowds. One speaker and organiser took to the mic during speeches to call for a follow-up event to "take back" Australia Day.

Though that was months away at the time, they sensed an opportunity. Those organisers were all white nationalists, if not self-avowed neo-Nazis; they all feel that their national day of patriotism has been robbed from them by paradigm shifts in the Australian sociopolitical landscape.

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In a call for endorsements for 2026 Invasion Day, Gadigal organising group theBlak Caucuswrote the following:

What March for Australia (MFA) organisers hope to do on 26 January is to "take back" and "reclaim" Australia Day, specifically, from change. Not to re-introduce flag-waving as a national pastime.

I asked Dr Kaz Ross, an independent researcher into the Australian far-right, about their motivations:

What they are attempting is a counter-rally, whether in direct confrontation or not, against the agent of much of that recent change: the groundswell movement around Invasion Day events.

Tarneen Onus-Williamsjoined Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance (WAR) as a young organiser in 2015, at first helping put small Invasion Day rallies together in Melbourne and Portland. They watched the rallies grow and grow, first numbering in the thousands and then well into the tens of thousands. Then institutions began to respond accordingly.

Tarneen has observed that the nature of Invasion Day events has developed over that time.

Theres a two-pronged threat to these events, and the greater one comes from the state. State and federal governments are quickly dismantling our legal right to protest around the country. In NSW,Chris Minnssaid that Invasion Day is exempted from his deeply anti-democratic moves to quash freedom of assembly, but protesters are right to be worried about how NSW Police will respond on the day.

In Victoria, the police have declared a large zone around the entire CBD a "designated area" for an entire six months, allowing police to search people, force them to remove their face coverings and so on.

All the more reason, Tarneen observed, to continue to show up:

Many anti-fascists are asking if there are counter-actions happening to the MFA nationalist rallies happening on that day.

Theyre right to ask, of course. But we need to remember that the big, beautiful activist movement created by the energy and will of many generations of Indigenous activists and organisers on 26 January is the real threat to nationalism here. Its that threat theyre trying to parasitise.

DrKaz Rossremarked:

It is the neo-Nazis who are the counter-ralliers here; the nationalists are the parasites. Anti-fascists as with all anti-racists, and supporters of Indigenous sovereignty and rights have something truly worth rallying around to protect on that day.

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Speaking of the impact and future of Invasion Days, Tarneen put it best:

Tom Tanukiis an IA columnist, writer, satirist and anti-fascist activist whose weekly videos commenting on the Australian political fringe appear onYouTube. You can follow him/X@tom_tanuki.

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