A key associate of former Donald Trump strategist Steve Bannon has told a gathering of Australian conservatives that Angela Merkel, the former German chancellor, did more damage to the fabric of Germany than the Nazis and Adolf Hitler.<\/p>\n
Benjamin Harnwell<\/a>, a British political operative, made the inflammatory comments at a two-day conference<\/a> organised by the right-wing lobby group Advance.<\/p>\n The conference took place on Friday and Saturday in Darling Harbour, Sydney.<\/p>\n The realignment of the Liberal Party<\/a><\/p>\n Angus Taylor says he will unite the Liberal Party, but a deeper rift is forming between those who want to overhaul the party’s direction and those who believe doing so would mean political death.<\/p>\n Guest speakers at the event included former Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott, former ABC chair Maurice Newman, Liberal senators Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Alex Antic, Victorian Liberal MP Moira Deeming, and members of The Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) think tank.<\/p>\n Mr Harnwell was billed as the “international editor” of Mr Bannon’s War Room podcast<\/a>, and was one of the first speakers at the event.<\/p>\n The topic of his speech was ‘The Gladiator School: Fighting to Defend the West’. In the Q&A portion of his speech, he was asked what message he had for the Liberal and National parties in Australia.<\/p>\n According to a recording of the conference, which was leaked to the ABC, Mr Harnwell said centre-right political parties had been “betraying us for decades”.<\/p>\n “The immigration, the invasion in continental Europe, hasn’t primarily taken place under the left. It’s primarily taken place under the centre-right,” he told the audience.<\/p>\n “Angela Merkel in Germany has almost single-handedly done more, you know, can I say this? She did more damage to the fabric of her country than the Nazis did, than Hitler did, 80 years ago.<\/p>\n “She has really damaged the long-term viability of her country with what she did. She’s centre-right. She’s Christian Democrat. That is what I mean when I say betrayal.”<\/p>\n Mr Harnwell was referring to Ms Merkel’s handling of Europe’s refugee crisis in 2015<\/a> and its aftermath<\/a>, where over a million refugees entered Europe in a single year as they fled war and bombing campaigns in the Middle East and Africa.<\/p>\n He said it led to a surge in public support for Germany’s far-right and ethno-nationalist Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland (AfD)<\/a> political party.<\/p>\n “We had the 10-year anniversary of that, like a month or two ago, no word of apology, no word of regret. It’s astonishing. And that’s why the AfD is on 25 per cent in Germany,” he said.<\/p>\n Separately, other speakers at the Advance conference issued warnings about communist plots, “cultural replacement”, and “civilisational identity”.<\/p>\n Far-right narratives about “cultural replacement” in Western countries have increasingly become an organising force of right-wing populism across Europe, North America and Australia in recent years.<\/p>\n Abbott delivers speech on migration<\/p>\n Mr Abbott delivered a speech with the title ‘Mass migration across the Anglosphere must cease’.<\/p>\n He was billed as a visiting fellow of the IPA and the Danube Institute<\/a>, and a board director at Fox Corporation.<\/p>\n In his speech, he criticised Australia’s migration system.<\/p>\n Has high immigration fallen out of favour in Australia?<\/a><\/p>\n Some of the harshest criticism of high immigration is coming from people who work for the exact organisations that have supported high immigration for decades.<\/p>\n “Net overseas migration \u2026 is not being run by the elected and accountable government,” he said.<\/p>\n “It’s largely determined by language schools and universities selling work rights and residency rather than education, and by businesses that prefer foreign workers to paying and training locals for the jobs Australians won’t do.”<\/p>\n He said many workers on temporary visas were making a valuable contribution to Australia as nurses, waiters, cleaners and drivers, but he wondered if it was the best thing for the country since they had made no long-term commitment to Australia.<\/p>\n In the 2000s and 2010s, the IPA, for which Mr Abbott is a visiting fellow, was one of the biggest supporters<\/a> of Australia’s contemporary demand-driven temporary visa system and high levels of immigration.<\/p>\n A roundtable discussion on Friday, dubbed ‘Australia at a crossroads’, was facilitated by the IPA’s Daniel Wild and included Mr Newman, former executive director of the IPA John Roskam, and businessman Steve Baxter, of Shark Tank Australia.<\/p>\n Mr Wild said the Liberal Party no longer had a monopoly on debate on the centre-right.<\/p>\n Loading…What is Advance?<\/p>\n The lobby group Advance was created in 2018. It is registered as a significant third party with the Australian Electoral Commission.<\/p>\n Its early advisory council included Mr Newman, Sam Kennard and David Adler.<\/p>\n Advance campaigned successfully against the Voice to Parliament in 2023. It is now campaigning to ban “mass immigration” to Australia, to stop welcome to country ceremonies, and to ban Indigenous flags being flown on government buildings.<\/p>\n The Liberals’ politics behind ‘shutting the door’<\/a><\/p>\n The more pointed question for the Liberal Party is whether tightening migration is a governing strategy \u2014 or a political one.<\/p>\n In 2024-25, Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting donated $895,000 to Advance<\/a>.<\/p>\n In 2023-24, the Cormack Foundation, a multi-million-dollar investment group created by the Liberal Party of Victoria, donated $500,000 to Advance. That same year, Advance received $50,000 from the Henroth Discretionary Trust<\/a>, the family trust of Jillian Segal (Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism<\/a>) and her husband John Roth. Ms Segal has denied any personal involvement in that donation.<\/p>\n The ABC asked Advance if it agreed with, or supported, Mr Harnwell’s comment that Ms Merkel did more damage to the fabric of Germany than the Nazis and Hitler.<\/p>\n Advance was also asked if it considered those comments to be a form of holocaust denial or holocaust minimisation.<\/p>\n “Advance does not agree with Mr Harnwell’s opinion, which was expressed in the context of mass immigration,” a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n “It may come as a surprise to the ABC that we didn’t vet every comment or opinion expressed at the conference, but we encouraged the free flow of ideas, even those which you might find challenging or which we may disagree with,” they said.<\/p>\n Project Eureka: Advance’s continuous campaign strategy<\/p>\n Advance campaign director Stephen Doyle talked about Advance’s long-term campaign and political strategy.<\/p>\n