Last weekend, the astroturf body Advance Australia held its first national conference in Darling Harbour. Contrary to its theme, “evolve”, what leaked recordings of the speeches reveal is that Advance wants to return Australians to a mythical past.

At a time when Australian politicians and certain members of the commentariat are lecturing us about “social cohesion”, Advance’s messaging was a reminder that our definition of hate speech often depends a lot on who does the speaking.

Throughout the different talks came a consistent and clear message: the west is in a moment of crisis and only Advance can offer the solution. The conference itself provided a series of strategic sessions on messaging and communications guidance.

The other main thrust was agenda setting. The Victorian state Liberal MP Moira Deeming argued the family must be central to an “evolved” Australia. Tony Abbott called for an end to mass immigration in the west.

It was that last theme that underpinned a speech by one of the international guests, Benjamin Harnwell, Steve Bannon’s “international editor” at the War Room media project. The platform is one of the key radicalising forces around Trump and Harnwell concluded his speech with a recommendation of Maga platforms where the Advance audience could plug themselves into Bannon’s mission to build a “revolutionary right” around the west.

_{Sign up: AU Breaking News email}

Harnwell cited historian Arnold Toynbee’s line that “Civilisations die by suicide and not by murder”. He claimed that the “sociopathic overlords” of our mainstream governments are the ones who hate us and want to destroy us, in part, through taxes. The main crime, though, was their cruelty “towards actual, real people they see struggling every day”, who they treat with zero compassion, while millions of foreigners “flood the country”.

His demonisation of immigrants, particularly Muslims, continued: “There is something about Islam, in the character of Islam itself, that is oil and water when it comes to western values.” He went on to claim Angela Merkel did more damage to Germany than Hitler by allowing immigrants to come.

Harnwell was to run Steve Bannon’s “gladiator school” in a monastery near Rome, where Bannon’s curriculum would arm “nationalists” to fight to overthrow the system as far-right politicians and influencers. Harnwell clearly believes that plan is not dead, but part of an ongoing international project.

If Harnwell’s remarks weren’t troubling enough, attenders were then treated to another international guest, Bradley Thayer. Thayer was there on behalf of the American Freedom Alliance, which is labelled an Islamophobic hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and has decades of bringing together speakers who are noted for their demonisation of Muslims and Islam.

Last month, the AFA co-hosted an event with Bannon’s War Room that platformed Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders. Slogans from the event included “Islam is a demographic and immigration timebomb” and a quote from Wilders saying “the United States are next on the menu of the crocodile. Islam has already arrived on your shores.”

To have a strategy event for Advance include a representative of AFA was certainly a choice, and one that we should not ignore. Once again we heard about a crisis gripping the west and threatening civilisation – this time from the Chinese Communist party. For Thayer, Covid was a weapon of the CCP and “we” must seize Chinese assets as compensation. He says one of the first steps must be to implement “re-migration”, a far-right term used to describe mass deportations.

When questioned why a visa had been issued to a representative of an organisation labelled as a hate group, the Department of Home Affairs said that it couldn’t comment on individual cases.

There can be no social cohesion while messaging operations like Advance choose to beat up hysteria about certain groups of Australians.

Social cohesion demands that we protect our community when divisive actors aim to smear hate among us. Vitriol drummed up around the voice to parliament might have helped forge the grievance that led to the failed shrapnel bomb attack in Perth.

We need our government to take all hate speech seriously. No bigotry is safely fostered.

Lucy Hamilton is a doctoral researcher at the University of Technology Sydney