One Nation’s byelection win at Secret Harbour on the weekend can be dismissed as the result of the politics of anger and exclusion, but if we are serious about understanding the surge in support for Pauline Hanson’s party, we should also recognise a nostalgia for belonging and shared identity. At a time when people are feeling more distant from their leaders and each other, the party’s name seems to offer a patriotic resistance to the status quo.

Like other populist movements around the globe, One Nation is rising at a time of social atomisation and isolation. This week’s Guardian Essential report shows this plainly: fewer people are joining things. One-third of those surveyed have never joined anything, ever.

The last time we asked this question was a decade ago in the shock and fug after Trump’s first election win; at the time, I noted that the shift away from membership was undermining our faith in an increasingly remote political system.

These trends have only been accelerated by technology: the growth of the gig economy, algorithms that reduce citizens to universes of one, and now emerging applications of AI such as personal agents and intimate companions.

One Nation is dismissed as divisive, discriminatory and dangerous, but there is an alternate narrative running through their disarmingly effective “Please Explain” propaganda cartoons: progressives are the ones dividing the nation into warring identities and turning people against each other. One Nation is here to unite the common people against the........

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