Angus Taylor’s One Nationfication of the Liberal Party is Australia’s MAGA moment

Friday 13 February is a fitting date for Angus Taylor to roll Sussan Ley as Liberal Party leader because Taylor represents a Trumpist MAGA horror show result for Australia’s social cohesion and democratic health.

Taylor is the Liberal Party giving in to their worst instincts. It is the One Nationfication of the Liberal Party, caused by the exact same base instincts that drove the Republican Party to the MAGA nightmare that America – and, in turn, the world – is now suffering from.

The Liberal Party’s relationship with Pauline Hanson’s One Nation is the central question of the latest Libspill. With One Nation rising past the Coalition in the polls, the issue is not that One Nation is realistically going to form government. The issue is that the Liberals and Nationals have made clear by ditching Ley and electing Taylor that they are using the MAGA playbook to try to reassert their political dominance. And this is terrible news for Australia.

Let’s just remind ourselves how Donald Trump came to power (twice) and what this has meant for American society, just to make sure we know what is at stake here. Trump – like One Nation – is often incorrectly framed as a “populist” who has successfully tapped into economic anxieties as a working-class saviour, promising to “make America great again” by restoring economic pride amongst working people. This argument is a load of bollocks.

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The truth is that Trump rose to power because of racism. Study after study after study says so. But of course, since racism is not allowed to be talked about, because of, errr, racism, then America has never really had a proper conversation about what the driving forces are behind Trump’s catastrophic decade-long assault on the American people, including his ongoing destruction of American democracy.

Let me put it simply. Trump has successfully used White people’s grievances about wealth inequality – structural inequality which is caused by billionaires, what a coincidence – to opportunistically turn hatred towards non-White people, including Black Americans and migrants.

Let me put that a different way in case it’s not clear. Trump’s supporters are White people who believe Trump when he says non-White people are to blame for all their problems and they’re voting accordingly — for the guy who is violently deporting non-White people and banning non-White immigration because this makes White people feel good.

If that’s not clear, try this. MAGA is the use of hatred, bigotry, racism and discrimination as a political strategy. It is utilising fragile White anxiety at a perceived loss of cultural power and privilege to accumulate political power. It is White supremacy. And it will tear Australia apart if we do not accept what is going on here.

The argument that Trump has tapped into a “populist-anti-establishment-vibe”, ignoring the obvious role of racism, falls apart on some basic facts. Let’s not forget as well that this crap argument is also used to bash the Left with allegations that Trump rose because the Left weren’t serving working-class interests.

Total crap. If that was true, why is it that working-class Black people do not vote for Trump? Do their economic concerns not count?

Indeed, as I’ve demonstrated through analysis of exit polls, White working class voters in their majority vote Democrat — unless they are Pentecostals. So, Trump’s support is clearly not about economic equality. It’s about White, Christian nationalists destroying American democracy to maintain their existing White-religious-dominance.

If you didn’t want to see the problem of racism right in front of your eyes, I guess you might believe Trump, like Hanson, when he says he cares about his supporters’ economic privilege. But that would seem to take some mental gymnastics since it is blatantly obvious that this is not Trump’s concern, and nor is it One Nation’s, and nor is the Liberal Party’s — the party literally created to destroy working-class power.

Pauline's ON in polls but can't PHON a friend... at the AEC

Pauline Hanson's One Nation (PHON) claimed it would drop the PH part of its name last October. A lot has happened to the party since, but not that. Investigations editor Ross Jones reports.

Why else is Trump handing over government to billionaires like Elon Musk, allowing him to take a chainsaw to services? Why did he use his big, beautiful bill to give billionaires massive tax cuts? Trump is the billionaire’s President and he was given this power by White people’s hatred of non-White people.

This point is made searingly well by Roland Smith in his book titled: White Fear: How the Browning of America Is Making White Folks Lose Their Minds.

Smith argues that:

‘For two centuries, the deep-seated fear that many White people feel – of losing power, of losing economic standing, of losing a particular “way of life” – has been the driving force behind American politics and culture.’

Couldn’t agree more. And this is also the driving force behind One Nation’s surging poll numbers and will be Taylor and his backers’ – including News Corp’s – political strategy to win back government.

The biggest threat from One Nation is not that it will win seats. It is that it has, for the past 30 years, been the devil on the Liberal Party’s shoulder, daring it to start a race-war to win power. And the Liberal Party has just accepted this dare.

Former Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s No campaign destroyed Indigenous reconciliation but was too MAGA in the 2025 Election. Learning nothing from this, Taylor will ride the One-Nation-anti-immigration train to its depressingly predictable hate-filled, socially-divisive, morally-reprehensible outcome.

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When Ley took power, I said the Liberal Party was in denial about the true reason for its electoral woes.

I said:

‘The Liberal Party exists to mount fear campaigns and wage culture wars against progress on behalf of the interests of the rich and powerful... if the Liberal Party was not waging this war, what would be the point of the Liberal Party?’

As it turned out, Sussan Ley was not quite the face of the race war the Liberals wanted. She gave it a red hot go after the Bondi terror attack and sat on the fence over March for Australia. But she was perhaps not quite as Barnaby Joyce-esque as she needed to be, looking more like a deer in the headlights, reading someone else’s script but never quite landing the lines.

When Senator James Paterson declared the Liberals have to change or die, what he really meant is they need to change into One Nation or they’d never win. This was not about policy (what’s policy?), not about serving the public (as if), not about the best interests of the country (yeah, right). Taylor’s ascension to power is the Liberal Party giving into the worst of themselves.

This result is an absolute tragedy for Australia.