Who won? Who lost? The fallout from Kellie-Jay Keen’s tour downunder

We are a group of radical feminists campaigning on women’s issues from a leftist and anti-racist perspective.

Our previous article provoked considerable debate amongst feminist groups about alignment with the right and about Kellie-Jay Keen’s tactics, highlighting divisions over strategy and political approaches. This article reflects on KJK’s Australian and NZ tour and the resulting consequences for gender critical feminists in Australia. We argue that the fallout from the tour has been disastrous, and consequently, this is a conversation that we need to continue. This article is an attempt to continue that conversation from a radical feminist, anti-racist and left perspective.

First, although we disagree with KJK’s ideology and methods, we condemn the scenes of misogyny against the Let Women Speak (LWS) events in every location they were held, but which escalated significantly after the Melbourne event.

The tour

The purpose of KJK’s events is to let any woman who wants to speak against trans ideology the opportunity to do so. The majority of the women attending LWS events in Australia were feminists who wanted to speak about the need for women only spaces and the invasion of trans ideology into our organisations and institutions. However, KJK’s policy of letting anyone speak in support of her cause, no matter what their political persuasion, can prove problematic. The presence of women who oppose women’s reproductive rights and/or support right wing parties that are racist cannot be in the overall interests of women, especially  women of colour and working class women.

KJK’s tour was partially financed by CPAC, a right wing organisation with groups in the US and Australia, who paid KJK’s airfares and insurance. It is questionable whether insurance is mandatory for rallies in Australia and the presence of burly security guards escorting KJK at every event immediately established an atmosphere of impending violence.

In our analysis, we will focus on what we see as the major events of the tour.

Melbourne

On Saturday 18 March, KJK held her event in Melbourne on the steps of the Victorian Parliament, a common location for rallies. A small group of anti-vaxxers was meeting next to the LWS rally. Two groups, each consisting of several hundred counter-protesters, were kept separated from the LWS rally and held at some distance by the police. Early on, a group of neo-Nazis dressed in black, most of them masked and carrying a large banner reading “destroy paedo freaks”, arrived. The police allowed them to stand at one end of the exclusion zone, performing Nazi salutes and shouting insults at the counter-protesters. The Nazis later set themselves up on the steps of Parliament House, next to the LWS rally, to take photos and perform more Nazi salutes. There were some interactions between the Nazis and the anti-vaxxers, who may already have known each other, but there were few if any interactions between the attendees of the LWS rally and the Nazis. After more than an hour, the Nazis were accompanied by the police out of the designated LWS protest zone. This allowed them to parade in formation and do more Nazi salutes in front of the counter-protesters.

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The Nazis were from the National Socialist Network (NSN), a neo-Nazi group based in Melbourne and led by neo-Nazi Thomas Sewell. They are openly white supremacist, racist, anti-semitic, homophobic and transphobic. 

The Nazis’ main focus was on the leftist and transactivist counter-protesters, rather than on interacting with the LWS event. Their obsession with trans and queer people is not new, as neo-Nazis have been increasingly targeting these groups and individuals over the past few years (both in Australia and internationally). It is important for Feminists to condemn the neo-Nazis for their racism, anti-semitism, homophobia and sexism as well as all Nazi actions including their violent acts towards LGB and trans people.

No one present at the LWS event (KJK, the organisers, or the participants) denounced the presence of the Nazis, or distanced themselves from them. The event simply continued, and KJK later described it as successful. That evening, KJK posted a video of her sipping champagne with Moira Deeming (a Victorian Liberal Party MP), Kath Deves (a failed Federal Liberal Party MP) and Angie Jones (host of TERFtalk Down Under). In the video, they repeatedly mentioned “masked men” but did not call them Nazis, apart from Angie who said the word twice, apparently by mistake (It is notable that this trend has continued – for example, in this video from 1 April KJK refers to the Nazis as “men who like to wave their hands in the air”). At one point, they insinuated that the “masked men” might have been police officers or transactivists in disguise. KJK did not distance herself from the Nazis until forced to do so to allow her to enter Aotearoa/New Zealand – and by then the damage had been done.

It does not seem likely that KJK invited the neo-Nazis or knew about their presence in advance. Nonetheless, they came to the event because they agreed with the general aim of the rally opposing transgenderism. They felt that they had the right to be there because KJK has repeatedly stated that everyone is welcome at her events and the participation of extreme right groups and individuals in previous LWS events gave the impression that they would be welcome. Further, the conservative and racist positions taken by KJK makes her a potential ally of the extreme right. Finally, the Nazis wanted to lay claim on public space and recruit: they knew that there would be significant publicity in the media, and that this would permit them to attract young white men to their cause.

However, although KJK probably did not know that the NSN would attend the Melbourne rally and did not invite them, there are many actions she could have taken to prevent their appearing and to respond to their presence. To summarise these:

• Throughout her “career”, she could have distanced herself from the extreme right, refused to appear on right-wing media, expressed left-wing ideas, etc.

• There are credible claims from Australian GC feminists that they tried to warn KJK and her Australian co-organisers that right-wing groups would attend her events. KJK could have heeded these warnings and put measures in place to prevent problems – e.g. assigning marshals at rallies specifically to watch for extreme right individuals and groups and defining an action plan in advance in case of this.

• During the event, she could have reacted to the presence of the Nazis by denouncing them and clearly differentiating the LWS rally from them.

• After the event, she could have issued a clear statement denouncing the Nazis and distancing LWS and the women attending from them.

Why did she not do any of these things? What was the benefit to her?

The presence of the neo-Nazis at the Melbourne LWS event marked a turning point in the tour, with significantly increased media attention and counter-protester presence at subsequent events.

Canberra

Like many of the LWS events, counter-protesters engaged in significant verbal violence and sexual harassment towards the women attending LWS, and there was little protection for women attendees from the police. 

However, two incidents make Canberra stand out: firstly, the first woman to speak was Pauline Hanson (founder and leader of the right-wing populist One Nation party). This infamous far-right senator is best known for saying, in her maiden speech to Parliament in 1996, that Australia was at risk of being “swamped by Asians”. She also holds deeply racist views about Indigenous people and opposes the Indigenous Voice to Parliament from a racist perspective. In recent years Hanson has focused on condemning Islam and Muslims, including calling for a royal commission into Islam and proposing a ban on Muslim immigration. Consistent with right-wing ideology, she is also misogynist, claiming for example that women victims of domestic violence are lying in family court. 

After Hanson’s speech, KJK thanked her and she later met with Hanson and Malcolm Roberts, another One Nation senator. Pictures appeared on the internet of KJK posing, smiling, with her arms around the two senators. Some have tried to defend KJK by saying that she must not have known who Hanson was. Whether she did or not, however, is not very relevant; as we have previously argued, there is a long history of KJK meeting with right-wing figures, of right-wing figures attending her events, and of her posing, smiling, in photos with them. If KJK really wanted to avoid once again “accidentally” appearing in a photo with a right-wing figure, she would have done her homework before coming to Australia. This meeting should be seen just as just one more instance in a consisent pattern of KJK interacting with the right.

The second notable event in Canberra occurred when Indigenous senator Lidia Thorpe approached the speakers’ stage carrying the Indigenous flag, saying “You are not welcome here”. Before reaching the stage, she was pushed to the ground by police and security guards. Footage circulated widely of Thorpe struggling with the officers before crawling away from them to join the counter-protesters.

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KJK was not involved in the scuffle, but directly after the event she tweeted the breathtakingly insulting and colonial response “You didn’t have to kneel, I’m not royalty”.

Many people – including feminists – shared racist memes or racist interpretations of Thorpe’s actions, often including heavy critique of her clothing and appearance with strong racist overtones. It is hard to imagine that a white woman – or a white man – would have been subject to the same level of scrutiny in a similar situation.

It is perhaps most useful to take a broad view of this incident. Australia is a former British colony in which British colonists committed genocide against the Aboriginal people, a genocide which continues today. The Canberra rally took place just days after the neo-Nazi NSN joined the Melbourne event. Any far-right group in a colony such as Australia has a colonial agenda: in Australia, the NSN calls for the establishment of a White ethno-state, which would clearly require the eradication of Indigenous people. Consequently, KJK’s repeated interactions with far-right and white supremacists and her failure to distance the Melbourne LWS event from the Nazi interlopers make her a clear enemy of Australian Indigenous people, and her tweet following the Canberra event simply reinforces this. As feminists and anti-racists, we should support Thorpe, as a sovereign Indigenous woman, when she tells KJK that she is not welcome on Aboriginal land.

Overall, these incidents at the Canberra event made the racist, colonial and right-wing nature of KJK’s tour exceptionally clear.

Auckland

Before KJK entered Aotearoa/New Zealand, the immigration department reviewed whether KJK should be allowed to enter the country. They found that there was no legislation to prevent her from entering, despite at least one petition demanding that she be barred from entry. KJK employed six security guards for her Aotearoa trip at a cost of $10 000.

At the LWS event, before KJK began to speak, a counter-protester poured tomato soup on her. The image of her covered in tomato soup with her arm defiantly held aloft propelled her into martyrdom. Later, hundreds of counter-protesters invaded the space assigned to the LWS rally, and KJK had to be evacuated by her security guards and the event marshals. The women participants in the rally were left alone. Women were physically intimidated and attacked, including a 70-year old woman who was repeatedly punched in the face.  This situation – being invaded by hundreds of people in opposition to the rally, without protection and with the momentum of a large crowd – must have been terrifying for women attending the event. This violence was sanctioned by politicians and ignored by police in the name of free speech. Rather than speaking, women were silenced.

Update (17/4/23): We have been informed that the Auckland event was co-organised by Mana Wāhine Kōrero, a group of gender-critical Maori women whose recounting of the event can be found here. This fact makes the police failure to protect the LWS rally from the counter-protesters even more significant, as it adds an element of colonial violence to their actions.

Source

In addition to the LWS event and its counter-protesters, a number of right-wing groups and individuals attended in support of the LWS rally. Some of the right-wing figures that attended included: 

• an emerging NZ neo-Nazi group called Traditionalist Catholics 

• Warren Knott, an Islamophobic propagandist 

• members of the far right New Conservative Party and Voices of Freedom

A biker from this second demonstration hit the co-leader of the Greens party and Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence, Marama Davidson, who is a Maori woman and who was attending as part of the counter-protest. Soon afterwards, while leaving the scene, she was approached by far-right journalists. Among other things, she said to them “I am the [violence prevention] minister – and I know who causes violence in the world – it is white cis men. That is white cis men who cause violence in the world.” She was later attacked for this statement.

The Auckland event marked the premature end of KJK’s tour, as she cancelled her final event in Wellington due to security concerns. 

We note a number of times in which KJK interacted with right-wing figures throughout or after the tour: 

    – Kirralie Smith from Christian anti-marriage equality and anti-trans organisation Binary joined KJK in Sydney. 

    – Following the Melbourne event, she gave an interview to well-known Australian far-right commentator Avi Yemini from Rebel News. Yemini claims to be a “Jewish Nazi” and has pled guilty for assaulting his ex-wife.

    – After the tour she appeared (for the third time) on the podcast of Sebastian Gorka, a far-right, Islamophobic former Trump adviser with connections to Hungary’s far-right leader Viktor Orbán.

Consequences of the tour

Australian feminists have been organising against gender ideology for years, but KJK’s visit has set our struggle back substantially.

First, gender critical feminism in Australia is now associated with Nazism. 

After the violence of the Auckland event, KJK fled back to the UK, leaving Australian and NZ feminists to deal with the consequences of her actions. 

Thanks to the Melbourne event, LWS – and gender critical feminists more generally – are now associated with Nazism. This association is qualitatively different to the regular accusation that radical feminists are Nazis, or “feminazis”, which has been used to insult and discredit us for many years. This accusation emerged because feminists are understood to be denying human rights to trans people, to be obsessed with biology, and wanting to make transgenderism disappear. This is not true: we can oppose an ideology because it is (neo)liberal, patriarchal and imperialist, without attacking individuals who believe in this ideology, or their human rights. 

The difference now is that the attendance of Nazis at the Melbourne event can be held up as if it is concrete proof of this association. This is unfair to Australian radical feminists, many of whom are left-wing. It is not, however, unfair to KJK, who is not a feminist, has consistently welcomed attention from the extreme right and has consistently refused to distance herself from them. It is quite simple: if KJK did not take a single-issue approach to her activism, focusing solely on transgenderism rather than on women’s rights as a whole, and had not spent the past few years cosying up to the extreme right, the NSN would not have come to the rally. 

KJK thus bears much of the responsibility for the association of gender-critical feminism with Nazism in Australia due to her failure to distance herself from the NSN. If there has been any reduction in the media’s associating of the women attending LWS in Melbourne with Nazism, it is not thanks to KJK but to Australian feminists who have been working hard to hold the media to account.

To be clear, we oppose Nazism and all manifestations of the extreme right. However, the association between gender critical ideas and Nazis is not only false but harmful to feminism and the struggle for women’s rights.

We are already seeing evidence of a ramping up of opposition to gender critical ideas in the name of opposing Nazism. Very soon after the tour, the Western Australian Greens released a new LGBTQIA+ policy which specifically opposes TERFs and gender critical feminism. This point appears several times in the document; for example, in the aims, they state that they seek “an end to the dehumanising influence of trans-exclusionary ideologies including ‘trans-exclusionary radical feminism’ (TERF) and ‘gender critical’ theory on culture, education and legislation”. Although Greens policies have never been friendly to gender-critical feminism, this formulation represents a significant escalation in their rhetoric.

Victorian and Tasmanian governments have also announced the strengthening of anti-vilification laws for LGBTQ+ people and the banning of Nazi symbols including the Nazi salute. Banning Nazi symbols is probably a good thing, though it may have little effect in practice on stopping Nazis recruiting and violence. However, since the Melbourne event, there is now a clear link being made between Nazi symbols and gender critical ideas. For example, in a Guardian article, legal director of Equality Australia Ghassan Kassisieh stated “Without offences in Victoria that deal with serious vilification, the police have no powers to deal with Nazi salutes or hate speech directed at trans people”. The link between Nazi salutes and “hate speech directed at trans people”, obviously referring to the LWS rally, is clear. We are concerned that due to the association of gender-critical feminism with Nazism, politicians are not only seeking to limit freedom to express Nazi ideas (which, again, would be a good thing), but also gender critical ideas.

Second, Australian feminists are now more vulnerable than ever to TRA violence.

Others have written about KJK’s failure to take seriously the threat of violence to women expressing gender critical ideas in public. In Australia, the association of gender critical feminists with Nazis adds an extra dimension to this problem. For at least part of the population, Nazis are understood to be the ultimate evil. The atrocities committed by the Nazis during World War II were extreme, and are consistently presented as being among the worst deeds in modern history. The fact that Nazism is understood as the ultimate evil means that violence against Nazis is understood as permissible in a way that violence against other groups is not. A larger proportion of society understands violence against Nazis to be righteous, or an act of self-defence, in a way that they do not even for other extreme-right groups. Consequently, the fact that GC feminists are now associated with Nazis effectively legitimises violence against us. While GC feminists have been subject to violence from TRAs for years, left-wing and queer activists are even more likely to feel entitled to physically attack women when they are understood to be Nazis. Unlike KJK, most women and feminists do not have the money or connections to hire private security for their events, so our ability to physically protest and occupy public space in favour of this issue has been further curtailed.

It is worth remembering, too, that the presence of neo-Nazis in Melbourne had specific and very personal resonance for many. Notably, Melbourne is the city in the world with the highest concentration of survivors of the Holocaust outside of Israel, and many others have family who were affected by this genocide. In Aotearoa/New Zealand, the events of the Christchurch massacre in 2018, perpetrated by an Australian neo-Nazi, are still fresh, a fact which may have contributed to the high turnout of counter-protesters.

The extreme right works against women’s interests as well as the interests of the working class, Indigenous people and other people of colour, people with disabilities, and lesbians and gays. KJK’s single-issue approach neglects all other issues that affect women and prevents us from working in solidarity with other oppressed groups. If we ally with the right they will betray us – sooner rather than later. Kellie-Jay Keen has already done so. 

* * *

KJK could have taken steps to mitigate the negative consequences of her actions on gender critical feminism in Australia. However, she did not take any of these steps. This was a choice: she chose to follow her own interests rather than those of gender critical feminism in Australia. We hope that feminists (in Australia and elsewhere) will start to ask questions about why KJK made this choice, which has been so disastrous for us.

Australian GC feminism has been hugely negatively affected by KJK’s tour, but KJK herself has emerged victorious. She has been able to use the events in Auckland to paint herself as a martyr and is now launching a political career. At the same time, women who have critiqued her actions from a left-wing perspective are being attacked and – nonsensically – accused of causing the violence, thus effectively shifting attention away from KJK’s own actions and their destructive effects on feminism in Australia and worldwide. KJK famously claims “I never lose”, and this remains (sadly) true: KJK has not lost. It is us who have lost: Australian feminists and Australian women.

In response to these setbacks there are already signs that radical feminists are regrouping and organising against trans ideology, but we are now up against increased media and political propaganda ranged against us. We hope that this will be an opportunity for radical feminists to build a feminist movement aligned with leftist principles, rejecting all alliances with the right.

In solidarity with feminists in Aotearoa

Further reading: 

– Is Kellie-Jay Keen of #Standing For Women anti-abortion and racist, or ‘always quoted out of context’?

– Schisms to the left of us, advantages to the right ….

– Women’s Liberation Aotearoa statement on Let Women Speak events, March 2023

– Hyperbole waives the rules

– WPUK statement in solidarity with Australian women

– Political violence and a new way forward

– The violence in Auckland last week was appalling – & entirely predictable

– Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory