A US fascism expert warns: Australia is not immune and undoing the damage is ‘very, very hard’

A US professor who studies fascism says Australia’s history of the White Australia policy, Indigenous displacement and treatment of asylum seekers makes it vulnerable to fascism. Photograph: Tracey Nearmy/Getty Images

It’s a warm autumn evening and Jason Stanley is walking through downtown Toronto, his home of a fortnight, discussing his view that America is sliding into fascism, and its global and historical parallels.

“But the far right is everywhere,” he tells the Guardian. “There is a chill of fear everywhere.”