Romper Stomper: The Ridiculous Nature of Fascism

Romper Stomper is one of the best Australian films ever and a fantastic repudiation of fascism and it's rhetoric. With today’s political undertones globally, I believe the film remains relevant, and it helped establish one of the greatest Australian actors of all time to boot. Russell Crowe plays a Neo-Nazi leader named Hando, however he is not the protagonist, despite being the starring role. That role goes to Daniel Pollock, playing questioning Nazi, Davey, Hando's right-hand man. Both performances are great, with Crowe stealing the show with a brutal, muscular weight to his actions, while also getting to the heart of fascism by playing him as an overgrown child constantly throwing tantrums. Sadly Pollack died before the movie's release, but his performance is nuanced and sympathetic, as he questions the extreme violence the gang wreak upon the streets of Melbourne. The first line spoken is by Hando: “This is not your country”, spoken to a young man from Vietnam. He then begins beating him viciously, leaving him a bruised and bloodied mess. We see this act of violence from the perspective of the victim, thus feeling like Hando is attacking the audience. By framing this initial act of violence in this way, Romper Stomper places the fascist ideology as an issue the audience should care about in everyday life.

For those unfamiliar with Australian politics, the choice of Asian migrants as victims was no accident. Let me introduce you to Australian politician Pauline Hanson. She campaigned on a rhetoric of anti-immigrant sentiment, specifically against Asian immigrants during her first election. In 1996 she was elected to the senate, stating in her maiden speech that Australia is being “swamped by Asians.” Charming to the core. She’s since branched out into hating Muslims, donning a Burka on the floor of the senate in 2017. Not a typo, that happened, here's the video. The fact that someone like Hanson can have a multi-decade political career speaks to Romper Stomper’s prescience and cultural importance. Racism has always existed in Australia, from the First Fleet and subsequent massacre of Indigenous people to the stolen generations, to white Australia, the informal name for an immigration policy essentially banning non-white immigration until... 1970. That's not a typo either. Nowadays it’s more subtle and insidious, but you still get your “stop the boats” style rhetoric. Our current election has been framed around the issue of national security, leading to a xenophobic bent from some aspects of the media. The issue of race in Australia is one that is defined by fear of the other, be that the indigenous people of this land we massacred, the Asian migrants "swamping" us and stealing our jobs, the Muslim migrant who no doubt is planning a terrorist attack, or the "boat people" aka refugees fleeing their war-torn nations before being jailed in a detention center for years at a time. The fact of the matter is that racism and xenophobia have rich histories in Australia, and it is this history Romper Stomper seeks to lay bare, taking it to it's logical conclusion through ultraviolent Nazis.

Romper Stomper has garnered controversy for it’s extreme violence, with famed Australian critic David Stratton refusing to award it a star rating due to this. I personally believe the violence is necessary, to properly outline just how vicious real life Nazis are. That said, that does lead to an embrace of the film by neo-Nazis, much like American History X has a similar misplaced fanbase. I’d wager these films would be accepted by the Neo-Nazi’s regardless of their violent content. What the movie does well is portray how seriously these people take themselves, with no reflection on how goofy their behaviour is. A party scene shows them just breaking out into a fight while Russell Crowe bangs a junkie. The self-seriousness Neo-Nazis portray themselves with is full on display here. The party scene is followed by Hando threatening someone into a Nazi salute. There’s a brawl with some more Asian migrants, where a Nazi begins spinning nunchucks, screaming come on, and immediately gets beat down. It’s a joy to see after the preceding half hour of violence going the wrong way. Hando spends most of the movie complaining truth be told. He throws a tantrum when served veggies and pasta sauce, proclaiming it to be “Bloody wog crap” after throwing the plate at a wall. He’s cosplaying a badass in his little Nazi coat, but his actions through the film prove he’s a psychotic, petulant sad sack. No scene better illustrates this than the trashing of Gabe’s father’s house. Gabe's father certainly deserves it, as he ritualistically sexually abuses his own daughter. But after rhetoric of getting vengeance on the immigrants who beat his gang, he decides to go trash a car for no real reason, as opposed to stealing his stuff, the thing they were there to do. Their inability to provide Gabe’s father with his comeuppance, and actually do a morally better act of violence comes down to their childish worldview, leading them to act in a childish way. While they escape the gun-toting father, they do it in the very car they trashed and wrote “Jap Crap” on. I believe this is the best microcosm in the film of how fascists beliefs crumble when necessity dictates. They might not like “Jap Crap”, but they’ll sure as hell use it to save their lives. Afterwards, Hando once again throws a tantrum about Gabe’s singing and braiding of her hair, slapping her when she deems him a loser. It’s worth noting that there is a literal child in the gang’s ranks, further nailing down the general lameness of fascism as babbies first ideological framework. 

After the home invasion, we get some catharsis, with a police raid where a Nazi gets a couple of hits to the balls. Emasculation is a theme in Romper Stomper, with Gabe calling Hando a loser and receiving a slap from him just before the police raid. This slap is indeed a very loserly thing to do. Gabe is then kicked out of the group, proving how emasculated Hando felt. She retaliates by fucking his best friend, fellow Nazi Davey, emasculating Hando further. He responds normally at first, offering to make amends with the duo. He finally takes out his frustration during a robbery by the trio, by murdering a non-white convenience store owner in cold blood. On the run, the trio find themselves split after Gabe has a second seizure. In a fascist framework, a medical issue is inherently a liability. Fascists are pure-blooded and powerful, medical problems are inherent weaknesses. As Hando says, "We've got to get rid of her". This culminates in a final confrontation between the three, with Gabe revealing she called the cops, Hando attempting to murder her, before Davey kills him to save her, stabbing him with his Hitler Youth knife. The viewers of the aftermath are a group of Japanese tourists, ironically wishing the group of Neo-Nazi's are all okay. The film ends with Davey holding Gabe, as Hando's corpse stares at the beach. 

There is no resolution here, just desolation and death. This is what Romper Stomper says the fascist ideology leads to, broken hearts and broken lives. The film's refusal to outright condemn the ideology of nationalism and xenophobia through the text means that it's in the finer details we see this thought process rejected. From Hando's various tantrums, to the gang's failure to condemn actual evil in Gabe's father, to the Japanese tourists wishing the neo-Nazis well as they tear each other apart. Fascism may be appealing to the disenfranchised, with clean shaved domes and longcoats covered in military patches. But at the end of the day, it inevitably leads to disaster for all involved. Romper Stomper uses the tool of ultraviolence on screen as a cudgel to beat into the audience's head that these people and those who sympathise are indeed dangerous. Yet through the tantrums, the beatdowns, and the hits to the nuts, we can see that they are not mythical monsters, unassailable. They are not the pure race they claim, they are deeply flawed people who find it easier to place blame at the feet of those they fear for no good reason, than to examine the deeply entrenched issues of class and wealth disparity that plague our societies within the capitalist economic system. Romper Stomper stops short of doing this, because it's main characters aren't interested. They want to punish those they deem impure, nothing more. Hell, fuck my socialist rhetoric, they are unwilling to confront themselves and their own issues of racism and xenophobia, finding it easier to find solidarity through violence. At the end of the day, Romper Stomper binds Gabe and Davey forever through an act of violence. That's how this ideology ends, because violence is all it has. The cruelty is the point, as people smarter than I have said. 

Not the point of Romper Stomper though. In my opinion, the point of Romper Stomper is to showcase the inherent weakness of fascist and nationalist thought, it's capacity to destroy and it's dangers, but also it's ability to self-destruct and just be totally dumb. It does so expertly, both at a thematic level, and when considering the plot. Thank you for reading, and watch Romper Stomper, one of the greatest Australian films of all time.