From the end of the war in 1945, communists and industrial militants were once again the main government targets (Horner 2014; Cain 2008; McKnight 1994; Ball and Horner 1998; Blaxland 2015; Blaxland and Crawley 2016; 2016). This continued for over forty years, until the collapse of the Soviet system in 1991 finally shattered the international and local cohesion of the communist parties. The unfamiliar objectives of Islamism required a complete reorientation of ASIO's often basic skills and practices (Blaxland 2015). However the ‘five hands’ (or ‘eyes’)’ collaboration among ASIO, the CIA, MI6 and the New Zealand and Canadian Security Intelligence Services, gave Australia access to a wealth of contacts and information (Richelson and Ball 1985; Ball and Horner 1998). One great asset, if highly secret, was ownership of the ‘Venona’ decoded Russian messages which, among many other items, revealed details of a Soviet spy circle within the Australian Department of External Affairs (West 1999; Haynes and Klehr 1999). US influence, from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), ensured a major obsession with communism, which was not always justified in the Australian context. The FBI leadership of J. Edgar Hoover sustained this dedicated hostility for almost fifty years into the 1970s (Weiner 2012).

Unlike Australia and New Zealand, Canada, Britain and the United States have extensive experience of terrorism, as well as wide-ranging networks of informants. Australia's pre-war dependence on British intelligence was diminished by the discovery in 1963 that a leading officer of MI6 (the Secret Intelligence Service), Kim Philby, had been a Soviet agent for many years (B. Macintyre 2014). He eventually retired to Moscow, where he received a medal from the Soviet government and lived out the rest of his life. Like Philby, the most effective spies were not publicly revealed communists.

Dissident political movements in democracies are normally distinguished as being either Right or Left. In Australia this implies a relative closeness either to the Liberals and conservatives or to the Labor and socialist political positions. Many activists have moved between Left and Right loyalties. A few have even moved back again. Nor can anti-Semitism be taken as a benchmark for ‘rightism’. Radical Labor leaders like Jack Lang were also anti-Semitic. Some Labor politicians were xenophobic towards all foreigners, which reflected the views of many of their supporters.