Who Won the Reclaim Australia Rally in Brisbane?

As we all know, over the Easter long weekend anti-islamic protestors gathered around the country to Reclaim Australia from the threat of Sharia law, halal food, and hijabs. The rallies also attracted anti-racist counter protesters who in some cities clashed with the Reclaim Australianites. While the Rally in Melbourne turned violent, here in Brisbane there was a lot of posturing and shouting but no arrests on either side.

A noteworthy thing that Brisbane did have was a special guest appearance from Pauline Hanson, who delivered an impassioned I-am-not-a-racist-but speech to the crowd.

"I'm not a racist," she began, in her often-imitated tuckshop lady oratory style. "Criticism is not racism. I am a proud Australian fighting for our democracy, culture, and way of life. This rally being held across our nation today was called out of sheer frustration from ordinary Australians who fear for the future of our nation and the mindset of our politicians who don't appear to be listening."

That was the basic gist of it. But apart from keeping police, journos, and Twitter trolls busy, was there any point to the rallies and counter-rallies? And do either sides consider the weekend's action a success?

VICE spoke to members of Antifascist Action Brisbane, the group behind the counter protest, before the rally. They said their aim was to "hopefully stop their rally from even happening. If not, then we will confront them and let them know that fascism isn't acceptable".

When I asked why they do things like yell at anti-islamic protestors at 11am on a Saturday morning, they said they do it because it's important and the rest of us can't be bothered. "Countering oppression is a duty which has a higher precedence than watching a game of cricket, or hanging out with friends," One protester said. "Australian culture fosters an extremely apathetic she'll be right, mate attitude, especially with regards to politics".

The action group, who spoke to VICE collectively via an anonymous spokesperson, believe Reclaim Australia is a wakeup call for the community. "It's only a matter of time before racist violence increases on our streets and in our communities as a result of these racist rallies succeeding", they said.

Former soldier Scott Morland is a supporter of Reclaim Australia. He said that before the rallies the point was to protest "political correctness, and especially in regards to calling a spade a spade with the evil teaching of Islam".

After the rally Scott told VICE that he considered the rally a success. "In terms of the numbers we got exactly what we thought we were going to get", he said. "We had permits for that rally but the counter-grubs they didn't have the permits but they were still allowed to show up. All they wanted to do was drown us out. They were not interested in what we had to say they just want to silence free speech because they are friggin idiots".

Scott also said that if an Australian flag had been burned, which is something that occurred in Melbourne, violence would have ensued—despite the composure of his group.

"Nobody got arrested on our side", he said. "All of the bad press has come from the Melbourne Rally and that is due to the counter rally grubs burning our flag, flicking horse manure at the police, and assaulting a 71-year old lady. The Brisbane Valley had between 1000 and 1200 people and the counter-rally had roughly 300 to 500 people. We had at least 50 to 80 ex-servicemen on our side so if they'd burned the flag up here, it would have turned violent".

Shermon Burgess, an organiser of the Reclaim Australia rallies, later posted on Facebook saying future rallies will be held with "10x the numbers" and claimed their cause had now "gone mainstream".

Follow Lauren on Twitter: @theljg

Images by Marek Meyer-Gawith