Australian League of Rights

The Australian League of Rights is a far-right[1] and antisemitic political organisation in Australia.

[2] The League describes itself as upholding the virtues of freedom, with stated values of "loyalty to God, Queen and Country".

The League formed offshoots in the white dominions: namely, Canada, New Zealand and Britain.

[3] It was also linked with far right groups in the United States such as the John Birch Society.

The League has been described as neo-Nazi in various sources[6][7] although at least one writer differentiated it from neo-Nazi groups saying that unlike such groups, the League "under the leadership of Eric Butler, sought to maintain a veneer of respectability..." while using its publications to promote "the crudest forms of anti-Semitism... Butler's The International Jew presented the argument that "Hitler's policy was a Jewish policy".

[8] The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) released a report on October 5, 2022, in which it classified the Australian League of Rights as a "conspiracy," "antisemitism," and "white nationalist" group.

[15] The historian Andrew Markus wrote that "In the 1990s league publications were still promoting The Protocols, describing the Holocaust as a 'hoax', the invention of Zionist propagandists, identifying prominent Jews in public life and declaring that modern Christianity was 'little more than a form of Liberal Judaism'.

C. H. Douglas regarded the party system as a "criminal absurdity" and argued for the end of the secret ballot.

Then treasurer Peter Costello, in 1998, stated that One Nation's policy of a state bank which would issue low-interest loans was directly taken from the League, and that "the League of Rights is driving its policy in relation to banking and money".

Franca Arena raised a question in the New South Wales Legislative Council in 1994 about the links between the AAFI and the "notorious and dangerous League of Rights, which has been described as the most influential, effective, best organised and most substantially financed racist organisation in Australia".

In 1998, the Australian branch of the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission issued a press release that "The Co-founder of Australians Against Further Immigration (AAFI), and One Nation's Victorian leader Robyn Spencer has addressed numerous League of Rights meetings as well as delivered a speech with League of Rights, Advisory National Director Eric Butler.