Cronulla riots, 20 years on: the legacy of violence lingers in brazen silence

In beachside Cronulla, a weatherworn sticker bearing the insignia of the far-right extremist National Socialist Network clings to a street pole – edges curled, colours faded. It’s been there for weeks. Unremoved. Uncontested.

In Redfern, Newtown or Enmore, it would be unlikely to last a day. There, such stickers are quickly painted over, scratched off or overwritten with counter-expression. The contrast is telling. It is not just an absence of resistance in Cronulla, but a quiet tolerance for what is allowed to remain.

Two decades after the Cronulla riots, there are no official memorials or public commemorations, yet the legacy of that violence lingers in the absences, silences and visual politics that shape our public spaces.

On December 11, 2005, the suburb became a flashpoint of racial violence, a week after an alleged assault on two volunteer surf lifesavers by men from Middle Eastern backgrounds escalated into an eruption of xenophobic hate, fuelled by mass texts such as: “This Sunday every f---ing Aussie in the Shire, get down to North Cronulla to help support Leb and wog bashing day ... Bring your mates down and let’s show them this is our beach and they’re never welcome back.”

Earlier this year, playwright Sarah Doyle, a recent Cronulla local, tried to prompt reflection on the 20th anniversary through community theatre and public art. Nearly 500 posters asking, “It’s been 20 years – Time to Talk?” went up twice over several weeks but were interfered with almost immediately. Some were torn down; others were left partially intact, with the QR code or central message ripped away. “I was told that the surf community doesn’t want to talk about it,” she said.

Many locals welcomed Doyle’s efforts – and would abhor the incursions of racists – but recent poster activity in Cronulla follows the same pattern. Several “March for Australia” posters on street poles near the high street have been torn, yet their central demand – “no foreign flags” – is still clearly visible. Even damaged, these exclusionary messages linger.

The silence is not passive or neutral. Some locals actively police what appears on the streets – removing uncomfortable reminders of 2005. What is allowed to endure in Cronulla reveals as much as what is rapidly erased in Newtown. Stickers and posters claim territory, shape local identity and test the boundaries of tolerance.

In Sydney’s inner west and south, especially Redfern, Enmore and Newtown, extremist insignias are peeled off, rainbow flags slapped over, solidarity slogans inked in. Street poles become palimpsests of material protest. Resistance hums beneath the everyday.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the work of LGBTQ+ communities, which wield humour, defiance and bold design to assert belonging. “Queers Bash Back – Anti-racist Action” doesn’t just reject far-right messaging – it reclaims urban space. Meeting violent rhetoric with threats of an eye for an eye might be a questionable strategy, but such interventions make clear that these neighbourhoods are not just places to live; they are canvases of refusal.

These insights emerge from a research collaboration between the University of Sydney and Heidelberg University, “Beyond Collective Nostalgia: Local Extremisms of Neo-Nationalist Heritage and the Power of Counter-Narratives in Germany and Australia”. Our team has been documenting the grassroots activities of far-right groups and how they weaponise selective and revisionist histories to fuel racism and division. We also track how counter-fascist groups respond, resist and reclaim public space.

In Sydney and north-east Germany alike, everyday markings at the street level provide a surprisingly reliable barometer of cultural mood, anxiety and tension. These dynamics sit within a broader national context. Far-right extremism is rising globally, and Australia is not immune.

In April, the ABC’s Verify unit revealed that federal election candidates from the United Australia Party, One Nation, Trumpet of Patriots, Family First and the Libertarian Party – including a sitting senator – had amplified content from The Noticer, a pseudo-news platform linked to neo-Nazi ideology and vocal support for the Nationalist Socialist Network. The site has openly praised the group and helped sanitise neo-Nazi discourse under the guise of “anti-woke” journalism.

Recent reporting in this masthead has shown how deliberate that strategy is. NSN organisers now blend management jargon with Hitler-worship, talking about “onboarding” and “culture” while outlining plans to deport migrants and Jews and rebrand themselves as a political party. Security agencies and extremism researchers warn that even when such groups stay just inside the law, they normalise racist ideas by offering disaffected young people a ready-made social world and a sense of belonging.

A recent trip to Germany for the research project showed similar patterns. In parts of the country where far-right sentiment runs deep, the Alternative for Germany party (AfD) now dominates electoral districts. In Vorpommern-Greifswald, for example, it secured more than 45 per cent of first votes and 43 per cent of second votes, dwarfing all other parties. Around Greifswald, stickers on street signs were plentiful, mostly football-related. But pro-diversity stickers, such as those reading “REFUGEES WELCOME”, had been repeatedly defaced. In Hamburg, as in Newtown, such stickers not only survive but shape the streetscape.

In both countries, street stickers show us what lingers, what fades and who refuses to stay silent. Urban space is never neutral. In these fragments of grassroots politics, we glimpse the ideologies that seek to define our streets and the communities that refuse to let them.

In Sydney, the proliferation of antifascist and pro-diversity stickers signals more than cultural dissent; it reflects the strength of activism.

One of the most poignant details from Sarah Doyle’s project is the man helping her put up the posters – hired through Airtasker, without anyone knowing his background. He turned out to be Lebanese Australian, born and raised in Sydney. He supported the project wholeheartedly and, despite seeing the posters interfered with, was eager to share his family’s experiences of the riots and their long aftermath.

And he wasn’t alone. Many Cronulla residents were open and generous when they encountered the project, saying it felt like a positive and overdue way to work through lingering community trauma. The project will continue because the desire for dialogue is there, even if the public space for it is not.

The “Put Australia First” rallies last weekend were much smaller than previous March for Australia events – and some marchers insisted they wanted distance from neo-Nazism. We cannot ignore that a defining common feature of the NSN and these movements more broadly is their weaponisation of history and heritage: the Australian flag, the Eureka flag, the Anzac legend, Australian diggers, Ned Kelly, Waltzing Matilda, all mobilised to construct selective narratives of the past that fuel hate, fear and division. National pride can become a cultural mechanism through which extremist ideologies spread, intensify, gain legitimacy and become normalised.

To prevent far-right extremism becoming mainstream, we need inclusive spaces for open dialogue, difficult conversations and deep listening at the local level – spaces that address the loneliness, grievances and alienation fuelling its appeal. The 20-year anniversary of the Cronulla riots is a reminder that memory is powerful and never neutral. What we choose to remember, and what we choose to forget, shapes our public life.

As Cronulla local Sarah Doyle put it – Australia, it’s time to talk.

Charlotte Feakins is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Sydney, specialising in heritage studies, contemporary archaeology and mental health. Carsten Wergin is an anthropologist at the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies, Ruprecht-Karls-Universitat Heidelberg.