Introduction

While far-right groups have been active in Australia for many decades, the mid-2010s have seen a significant expansion of radical and extreme right-wing movements in the country.¹ Fuelled by divisive messages from political leaders and other public figures and excessive, often sensationalist media reporting on Islam and jihadist terrorism, the public discourse was rife with moral panic about Muslim communities in Australia. In this context, various anti-Islam groups emerged, some of them holding nationally coordinated rallies across the country in 2015 and 2016. At the same time, a local anti-mosque conflict in the regional town of Bendigo (Victoria) escalated into a highly politicised show of force by external far-right groups that co-opted local grievances for their ideological ethno-nationalistic causes.² The Bendigo anti-mosque protests ‘became a crucial crystallisation and mobilisation point for far-right groups [and] ultimately marked the breakthrough for new far-right movements’.³  

The journalist Kevin Child (2015) described the anti-Islam protests in Bendigo as ‘possibly the ugliest racist outbreak in Australia since the Cronulla riots 10 years ago’, referring to the 2005 Cronulla race riots, where thousands of mostly young white Sydneysiders attacked Australians of Middle Eastern background.⁴ Although the 2005 Cronulla riots resonated within Australian white supremacy milieus where it contributed to a shift towards a ‘stronger anti-Muslim agenda’⁵, they were not commonly associated with a rise of the far right – racist, yes, but not far-right.   

The 2015 Bendigo anti-Islam protests and the 2005 Cronulla riots were characterised by similar ideological drivers: claims of cultural or racial superiority, racism (anti-Muslim racism in Bendigo) and exclusionary nationalism that rejects the basic liberal democratic principle of egalitarianism and targets an unwelcome ‘out-group’. These sentiments align with key ideological markers of right-wing extremism, according to the established scholarship.⁶ Why then were the Cronulla riots not also discussed as a far-right escalation?

I argue in this paper that far-right ideological attitudes are often rooted in the societal mainstream and commonly articulated in the broader public discourse. They are, therefore, insufficient to demarcate the far right as they would cast the net too wide (‘Not every racist patriot is a far-right extremist’). If we want to understand the rise and continuous appeal of the far right in Australia, we need to revisit our approach to define far-right milieus. But we also need to acknowledge that these milieus may be situated at the political fringes but they operate in the midst of our society, complexly linked to mainstream attitudes and discourses.

Established definition of the far right: ideological markers

There may not be one unanimously agreed definition of right-wing extremism, but most conceptualisations have shown ‘actually a high degree of consensus’.⁷ Cas Mudde’s seminal analysis of 26 definitions found that five ideological markers were particularly common: ‘nationalism, racism, xenophobia, anti-democracy and the strong state.’⁸ In 2018, Elisabeth Carter identified six key features of right-wing extremism, which dovetail with Mudde’s list: ‘strong state or authoritarianism, nationalism, racism, xenophobia, anti-democracy, and populism or anti-establishment rhetoric.’⁹ Not all these ideological markers need to be present to classify a group as far-right¹⁰, although most far-right groups advocate some form of exclusionary nationalism and anti-egalitarianism, ‘valorizing of inequality and hierarchy’.¹¹

Several scholars propose a differentiation between right-wing extremism and radicalism.¹² While the former fundamentally rejects democracy and core democratic principles, the latter ‘does not include an explicitly anti-democratic agenda’¹³, but opposes key tenets of liberal democracy, most obviously the principle of equal human dignity and egalitarianism. The term far right is used as an umbrella to capture both right-wing extremism and radicalism.

Fragmented and increasingly extreme: an overview on the contemporary far right in Australia 

Far-right extremism and radicalism have a long history in Australia, reaching back to the interwar period¹⁴, but they have been less visible compared to North America and many European countries. Fleming and Mondon argue that, while Australia may have appeared less susceptible to the appeal of far-right movements, ‘rather than immunity, the absence of extreme right politics can be explained by the ability and willingness of mainstream politics to readily, openly, and socially absorb such values’¹⁵ – an assessment closely aligned with the key argument in this paper.

In the mid-2010s, the heightened moral panic in Australian society around Islam and Muslim communities ‘created fertile ground for the emergence of new far-right groups.’¹⁶ Aggressive anti-Islam narratives, which resonated with a significant proportion of the population, were central to the initial mobilisation success of these groups. Mainstream social media platform Facebook was their main rallying platform, but some also had a physical presence and engaged in relatively large street protests across Australia. Based on an online analysis in 2017-18, one of the first empirical studies of the contemporary far-right in Australia, found that these anti-Islam groups constitute one of three main types of far-right milieu, next to cultural and racial superiority groups.¹⁷

1. Anti-Islam groups such as Reclaim Australia or Stop the Mosque were particularly prolific, online and offline, and attracted large numbers of followers and supporters. Some of them counted well over 100,000 individual users on their Facebook pages (i.e. users who interacted with their page), frequently sharing highly Islamophobic content and claiming that Islam and/or Muslims pose a physical and cultural threat to Australia and the western world.  
2. Cultural superiority groups such as Soldiers of Odin or True Blue Crew pushed a more nationalistic-focused agenda based on cultural supremacy claims and what Fozdar and Low described as ‘ethnonationalism masquerading as civic nationalism’.¹⁸ Most of these groups were organised locally, bringing together ideologically dedicated members who publicly demonstrated their group membership through specific logos and clothing and were actively involved in various public rallies. Their Facebook pages attracted usually smaller numbers of individual users compared to the anti-Islam groups, although one of them, led by a prominent far-right figure with previous neo-Nazi connections, counted over 163,000 users on his Facebook page.
3. Racial superiority groups pursued an agenda characterised by blatant antisemitism, white supremacy and rejection of democracy. They were small groups organised in physical spaces and had significantly fewer online followers. This type encompasses far-right extremist groups such as Combat 18, Southern Cross Hammerskins or Nationalist Alternative Australia, which have been in existence prior to the mid-2010s, as well as new groups such as Antipodean Resistance (now defunct but morphed into a different group).

While this three-fold typology is conceptually still useful, far-right milieus have changed significantly since this study was conducted. Not long after the re-emergence of the ‘new’ far right¹⁹ under a predominately anti-Islam banner in the mid-2010s, the public hysteria around ISIS and jihadist terrorism had reached its peak and started to diminish. Anti-Islam street protests became less frequent and ultimately ceased; online anti-Islam groups became less prolific. Islamophobic content has remained widespread on social media, but these narratives have lost some of their initial traction as a core mobilisation theme within the far right.

Simultaneously, the messaging in far-right spaces shifted towards a more racialized agenda with expressions of aggressive ultra-nationalism, white supremacy and claims of an alleged ‘white genocide’. The abovementioned 2018 study found evidence for an ‘increasingly radical or extreme rhetoric, including statements that openly reject parliamentary democracy as a legitimate form of government, expressions of authoritarian attitudes, and the endorsement of violence.’²⁰ This ideological radicalisation process gained further momentum in the aftermaths of the March 2019 Christchurch terror attacks. Notwithstanding ongoing internal ideological differences and fragmentation, a racialised white supremacy agenda was no longer limited to neo-Nazi extremist groups but has swept across Australia’s far-right milieus. Both a symptom of, and a catalyst for, this radicalisation trend is the rising popularity of alt-tech social media platforms among the far right, especially in response to account takedowns on Facebook and Twitter after the Christchurch terror attacks. Many leading far-right figures, who had built up large online communities on Facebook through their anti-Islam agitation, moved their social media activities to other platforms with very limited content moderation such as Gab and Telegram – and tens of thousands of Australians followed them into these ideologically more radicalised online environments. The sub-group ‘Australia’ on Gab, for example, a platform described as a ‘right-leaning echo-chamber’²¹ where antisemitism and ‘white identity’ narratives are omnipresent²², has gained enormous popularity with membership numbers skyrocketing from 4,700 in mid-March 2019 to currently almost 74,000. This is not to say that Twitter and Facebook have been abandoned by the far right²³, but they do not play the same central role in far-right mobilisation as in the mid-2010s.

With this proliferation of far-right ecosystems on alt-tech social media, organisational structures have diminished. While between 2015 and 2018, far-right groups such as Reclaim Australia, United Patriots Front, Soldiers of Odin or the True Blue Crew dominated the far-right scene and their online and offline mobilisation, all these groups have become defunct by the end of the decade. Australian far-right milieus today are characterised by markedly low organisational levels with limited leadership capacities. It comprises mostly of ideologically likeminded individuals loosely connected on social media, forming online communities, and a number of small groups across the country who meet offline. The only significant exception currently is one particular hierarchical structured neo-Nazi organisation that has established itself as the leading and most prominent organisational actor within Australia’s far-right (extremist) milieu.

A public climate rife with Islamophobia facilitated the re-emergence and initial proliferation of the far right, but its subsequent ideological radicalisation with rising prevalence of extremist, white supremacist agendas led to a contraction of far-right spaces, instead of a quantitative expansion, in the late 2010s. This, however, changed in the 2020s when new crises provided unprecedented opportunities for the far right to attract new sympathisers. The COVID-19 pandemic and respective public health responses created political discontent and grievances among many Australians. A significant proportion of them ­expressed anti-government and anti-establishment conspiratorial views similar to those that had emerged as dominant narratives in far-right milieus. According to an Essential Poll²⁴ in May 2020, one in five Australians believed the ‘number of Covid-19 deaths have been exaggerated by the media and governments to scare the population’; 13% believed that ‘Bill Gates played a role in the creation and spread of Covid-19’ and that ‘the virus is ’not dangerous and is being used to force people to get vaccines’. Far-right milieus extensively fuelled these conspiratorial sentiments through prolific posting of misinformation and racist, anti-government messaging, whilst offering a new home for those who opposed lockdowns and vaccinations and felt silenced and abandoned by the government. As studies have shown, Covid-19 was the key mobilisation theme in far-right online environments in the early 2020s, both on mainstream platforms such as Facebook²⁵ and Twitter²⁶ as well as alt-tech sites such as Gab – ²⁷ with significant effects: Tens of thousands of people have joined these far-right online ecosystems (see Figure 1), where they have been encountered broader far-right ideological messaging and become part of a parallel ‘anti-public’²⁸ community defined by its hostility towards minorities and fundamental opposition to government, established institutions and democratic conventions. 

Far-right ideologies and mainstream attitudes and discourses

These brief elaborations illustrate that we cannot understand the Australian far right without paying attention to the social context within which it has (re)emerged and evolved. Exclusivist, anti-egalitarian and anti-establishment sentiments – key ideological markers of the far right – are not limited to the societal fringes but substantially shape the public discourse and, in doing so, influence the rise and appeal of the far right.

Racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia are not limited to far-right milieus but have been, and continue to be, widespread in Australian society. A large survey in the mid-2010s found that almost one third of respondents expressed negative attitudes towards Australian Muslims, and one in five had negative feelings towards refugees.²⁹ According to the annual Scanlon Mapping Social Cohesion survey³⁰, anti-Muslim attitudes have been even more prevalent (41 % in 2017; 32% in 2021). Lead researcher of these annual surveys, Andrew Markus, concluded that ‘the level of negative sentiment towards those of the Muslim faith, and by extension to immigrants from Muslim countries, is a factor of significance in contemporary Australian society.’³¹ More specifically, and particularly relevant to the Bendigo mosque conflict, Riaz Hassan found in his representative survey that almost one in four respondents (23.9%) expressed support for any policy that would stop building new mosques.³²

The vast majority of Australians are proud of their country. It is, of course, entirely unproblematic that over 85% of Australians express a ‘sense of pride in the Australian way of life and culture’.³³ However, when national pride is combined with anti-immigration, anti-egalitarian and cultural superiority attitudes, we are entering the far-right ideological territory of exclusionary nationalism. According to the Australian Election Study, around one in three Australians has negative views on immigration and immigrants: In the 2019 survey, 36% stated immigration increases the crime rate, 31% said immigrants take jobs away from Australians, and 32% were of the view that ‘equal opportunities for immigrants have gone too far’.³⁴ Such findings have led some academics to the conclusion that ‘Nativism is mainstream in Australia’.³⁵    

A majority of Australians want ethnic, cultural or religious minorities to ‘behave more like mainstream Australians’³⁶ and think that ‘too many immigrants are not adopting Australian values’.³³ Such assimilation claims reflect a widespread sense of cultural superiority and protective pride in ‘our culture’; but they are also an ideological trademark of the far right. A group of anti-Islam protesters with ties to prominent far-right leaders expressed similar views during an interview, stressing that immigrants need to assimilate into the ‘Australian culture’. They accepted that Australian society is ‘multi-ethnic’ but rejected ‘multiculturalism’, which they alleged is part of a nefarious secretive plot to ‘break’ Australian society by creating ‘a series of tribes.’³⁸

Cultural superiority attitudes are frequently articulated not only in the far right, but also – and in rhetorically very similar ways – in broader public discourses. Resonating with Huntington’s ‘clash of civilization’ hypothesis, as the argument often goes, Western culture and civilization are under threat from outside, for example by non-European immigration, and from inside by the progressive (‘woke’) agenda of the political left or elites. Such claims are common in far-right online ecosystems²⁷, but they also appear in mainstream media⁴⁰, right-wing intellectual magazines such as The Spectator or The Quadrant⁴¹, in books (including some by established academics⁴²) available on platforms like Amazon, and even on Google Scholar or academic databases. There is limited representative data in Australia on the salience of such cultural threat attitudes. However, the soon-to-be-published findings from an explorative survey among 335 Australian men, conducted in 2021 by the author and colleagues as part of a larger Australian Research Council (ARC) project, show that over half of all respondents agreed with the statement that ‘Western civilisation is under attack’, with less than 29% disagreeing.

In parts of the far right such threat narratives are framed in an explicitly racialised way, claiming that not only is ‘our’ way of life, culture or civilisation under threat but so is ‘white identity’.⁴³ Such ideological beliefs are closely aligned with prominent white supremacy conspiracy theories of ‘White genocide’ or ‘Great Replacement’, which have played an important role in driving far-right extremists to commit violent terrorist attacks, including Australian terrorist Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 Muslims in Christchurch in 2019. The Great Replacement is the title of Tarrant’s manifesto, inspired by a 2011 book with the same title by the French far-right intellectual Renaud Camus, who claims that the French (and European) population is being demographically and culturally replaced as a result of non-European immigration. It is worth noting that Camus’s book You Will Not Replace Us!, described as an ‘attempt at summing up in a short book, for the English-speaking (sic) and international public, such works as Le Grand Remplacement (The Great Replacement)’, is available for purchase on Amazon.

Such ethno-racialized notions of white victimhood also manifest in allegations of anti-white racism. This has become a very common narrative within far-right spaces, but it is not limited to extremist political fringes. In October 2018, the right-wing populist One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson put forward her infamous ‘it’s okay to be white’ motion in the Australian Senate making claims of a ‘deplorable rise of anti-white racism and attacks on Western civilisation’. The motion was only narrowly defeated by 31 to 29 votes in the Senate.⁴⁴ More recently, an opinion piece in a popular mainstream tabloid referred to ‘toxic new anti-white racism’ in its headline⁴⁵, and several studies have found evidence that a not insignificant proportion of Australians believe that anti-white racism is a problem.⁴⁶ Findings from the aforementioned 2021 ARC survey among Australian men show that one in three respondents agreed with the statement that ‘White people are the victims these days’, although “only” a bit more than 5% agreed with the blatantly white supremacy statement that ‘white people are superior to others’ (although a further 9% did not disagree with that statement).

Explicit white supremacist attitudes may be held – or openly expressed – by only a small minority. However, a look at Australia’s history leaves little doubt that white supremacy was at the core of its colonial project, nation-building and the early formation of its national identity.⁴⁷ The invasion and settlement by the British were based on the doctrine of ‘terra nullius’, nobody’s land, to be settled by white British men where Indigenous peoples were seen as ‘of such a lower order of culture and civilisation that there was no need to recognise their laws, their land and other possessions’⁴⁸ In 1901, the first piece of legislation passed by the newly founded Federation was the Immigration Restriction Act, which institutionalised racism through its White Australia Policy for over half a century. At the time, the Attorney-General Alfred Deakin described the aim of this policy as ‘securing a white Australia’⁴⁹, and the first Prime Minister Edmund Barton captured widely held views⁵⁰ when he declared during the parliamentary debate of the bill: ‘I do not think … that the doctrine of the equality of man was really ever intended to include racial equality. There is no racial equality. There is that basic inequality. These races are, in comparison with white races—I think no one wants convincing of this fact—unequal and inferior.’⁵¹

These policies were gradually abolished in the 1950s and ‘60s and subsequently replaced by anti-discrimination legislation and multicultural policies since the 1970s. But the institutionalisation of racism and white supremacy, which reflected and shaped the collective national psyche for decades, offers the contemporary far right in Australia a rhetorical bridge to what Paul Taggart called ‘heartland’, an ideological place ‘constructed retrospectively from the past’, which ‘unlike utopias, … has already been lived and so shown to be feasible’⁵². It is frequently being used in far-right milieus as a nostalgic, but historically accurate reference point through which a white supremacy ideological agenda is sought to be justified, legitimated and normalized. A recent study of far-right online messaging around the ANZAC legend, for example, illustrated how the ANZACs’ military actions in World War I can be co-opted and re-interpreted as a struggle for a white Australia – in the words of a far-right user on Facebook: ‘Lest we forget those proud Australian diggers that gave their lives for their country and for a White Australia …The ANZACs would be rolling in their graves if they knew the multicultural/multiracial abomination their beloved nation has become’.⁵³ Anti-democratic, authoritarianand anti-establishment views are regarded as core ideological markers of the far right, but they, too, are relatively widespread in Australian society. According to the annual Lowy Institute poll⁵⁴, three of four Australians regard democracy as ‘preferable to any other kind of government’. But that leaves one quarter who disagree, and 18% stated that ‘in some circumstances, a non-democratic government can be preferable’. According to the Australian Values Survey in 2018⁵⁵, more than one in ten thought that ‘having a democratic political system’ was fairly bad (8%) or very bad (3%), and even one third expressed authoritarian attitudes stating that ‘having a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections’ would be fairly good (24%) or very good (9%). Anti-establishment attitudes, especially towards governments, political leaders and the media, are even shared by a majority of Australians. The latest Edelmann trust Barometer survey⁵⁶ found that a majority thought that journalists (65%), business leaders (61%) and government leaders (61%) ‘are purposively trying to mislead the people’. According to the 2021 Scanlon study³³, almost four in ten believed the system of government in Australia needs ‘major changes’ or should be ‘replaced’ all together, and only a minority stated the ‘government in Canberra can be trusted to do the right thing for the Australian people.’

Conspiratorial meta-narrative, action and ‘anti-public’ identity: Demarcation of the far right

How suitable are established sets of ideological characteristics for defining the far right if ‘authoritarianism, nationalism, racism, xenophobia, anti-democracy, and … anti-establishment rhetoric’⁵⁸ are so widespread across society? Arguing that they are important but in themselves insufficient elements to demarcate the far right, I propose an alternative approach that rests on three interrelated factors: (1) construction of a conspiratorial meta-narrative, (2) ideologically driven political actions, and (3) individuals’ identification with an ’anti-public’ community. In elaborating on these factors, I will also apply them to answer the question posed in the introduction as to why the 2005 Cronulla race riots were not a manifestation of far-right extremism or radicalism – despite their alignment with far-right ideologies.

Ideologies: A conspiracy-based meta-narrative

What characterises the far right is not so much what people think, but how they think. Someone may hold racist or anti-establishments views but what makes these attitudes an indicator for far-right allegiance is how these attitudes shape and cement an overarching meta-narrative. This grand narrative is typically centered on the conspiratorial conviction – or allegation – that secretive forces deliberately seek to destroy ‘us’, Western civilisation or the ‘white race’. These alleged forces are often described as a powerful global cabal – often in openly antisemitic terms, as a Jewish conspiracy – which controls supra-national institutions like the UN or WHO, governments, mainstream media, social media platforms like Facebook and other influential actors. Racism, anti-establishment, anti-democratic and other far-right attitudes become functionally embedded into this large conspiracy narrative.⁵⁹

According to this ‘logic’, for example, non-white immigrants may be dehumanized and targeted as an inferior outgroup, but the real enemy for the far right are those who facilitate immigration and promote multiculturalism with the alleged intention to destroy “our” society, as a prominent far-right figurehead stated in his speech at a rally in Melbourne in early 2019. Similarly, far-right messaging on Gab frequently expressed hostility toward Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists and anti-fascist movements, but these groups are often only secondary targets – ‘useful idiots’ controlled by alleged global Jewish elites. ‘Antifa and BLM are just Jewish created golems’ as one Gab user posted. Another Gab user described black BLM activists and Antifa as ‘useful idiots, who can be dealt with once we have won back our liberty and self-determination. The true enemy is the globalist Jewish ruling class, the corporate media they own, and the politicians they buy’.⁶⁰

This conspiracy narrative constitutes an unquestionable truth in far-right milieus, obvious to all those (‘red-pilled’) who claim they have managed to look behind the smokescreen set up by the allegedly nefarious elites to mislead and control ‘the people’. Such a meta-narrative not only binds various ideological attitudes together in what seem to be an internally coherent belief system. It also creates a sense of urgency, epistemic superiority and moral righteousness, strengthens the collective identity of the in-group, and legitimises (potentially also violent) actions against those who are considered to represent this alleged hostile Goliathan system.   

Such conspiratorial meta-narratives were expressed in sections of the far-right anti-mosque movement in Bendigo in 2015 and they have been articulated at many other far-right demonstrations and in online spaces, but they were absent during the 2005 riots in Cronulla, which were driven by blatant racism and nativism.

Behaviour: Ideologically driven activism

Jérôme Jamin highlights that right-wing extremism refers to ‘a “total” way of acting to give shape to the nationalist project in support of the acknowledgement of inequality.’⁶¹ Holding certain ideological views may not justify the far-right label unless the person also takes certain actions to promote or advocate their ideological-political cause. I interviewed people who shared exclusionary, conspiratorial views. But while some of them had no desire to make their views public and did not consider themselves ‘activists’, others proudly claimed the badge of political activism and considered it their mission to ‘educate’ others.⁶² Ideologically oriented actions may manifest in various ways from attempts to spread these ideological messages and ‘red-pill’ others to attending a far-right rally, joining a far-right group or even committing an act of violence.

The young rioters in Cronulla certainly acted aggressively, and many of them have engaged in what may amount to racist hate speech and hate crimes. What constitutes a political mission and the boundaries between hate-driven behaviour and politically motivated actions is notoriously hard to determine ⁶³, but the racist actions in Cronulla did not appear to pursue a broader political agenda. Instead they were driven by racism and the goal to assert an Anglo-white dominance in a social space.

Collective identity: belonging to a parallel ‘anti-public’ community

The third factor that helps demark the far right is related to an individual’s personal identification with an ideologically shaped parallel community that rejects the basic rules of public and democratic engagement or what Chantal Mouffe called the ‘ethico-political principles of liberal democracy’.⁶⁴ Mark Davis uses the term ‘anti-publics’ to refer to such spaces, characterised by a disregard for ‘principles of argumentation, evidence, truthfulness, mutuality, reciprocity, good faith and inclusiveness’ and ‘a level of hostility to democratic conventions … that in general exceeds … even the most permissive notion of an “agonistic” public sphere.’⁶⁵ Developing a collective identity, a sense of belonging and connection to such an anti-public community, shaped by far-right ideologies, may well be the strongest indicator that a person has become part of the far-right milieu. Within such anti-public communities (online and/or offline), affirmative interaction with ideologically likeminded others, using insider memes, coded language and symbols, can further strengthen in-group identification and consolidate and amplify far-right ideological beliefs systems shared with a community they trust and feel respected and heard.        

The aggressors in Cronulla did not seem to identify with an anti-public counter-hegemonic fringe community. To the contrary, they acted, in their views, as ordinary white ‘Aussies’ seeking to ‘reclaim the beach’. Thus, the 2005 Cronulla riots do not constitute a far-right escalation; instead they were a violent manifestation of widespread racism, perpetrated by young people from the midst of Australian society, fuelled by tabloid media and facilitated by the broader public discourse of anti-Arab moral panic.⁶⁶ In this paper, I argue for an alternative approach to defining the far right based on a more holistic assessment that moves beyond a checklist of ideological markers. Established sets of ideological characteristics are important elements but insufficient to demarcate the far right due the prevalence of these ideological attitudes across significant segments of mainstream society. How can we develop effective intervention strategies to address far-right extremism if we struggle to differentiate it from social ills such as racism, nativism or homophobia or issues such as growing government mistrust or anti-establishment sentiments? At the same time, however, tackling the appeal of the far-right is also destined to remain ineffective if we ignore how profoundly connected these political fringe milieus are with mainstream Australia and how salient far-right narratives appear in the public realm.