First Monday

Fascist cross-pollination of Australian conspiracist Telegram channels by Gerard Gill



Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about trauma and uncertainty for vast swathes of the world population, including in Australia. One effect of this has been the growth of COVID-19 conspiracy theories, and general conspiracism. This article explores efforts by fascists and neo-Nazis to exploit the rise in conspiratorial thinking for recruitment and dissemination of their ideas. Five Australian conspiracist Telegram channels are studied for signs of fascist cross-pollination, and it is found that users with fascist sympathies attempt to influence the channels’ discourse through appeals to purported ideological and situational commonalities.

Contents

Introduction
Cross-pollination and hate activism
Methods
Themes
Discussion
Conclusion

 


 

Introduction

On 16 February 2021, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) contributed a six-page submission to the parliamentary Inquiry into Extremist Movements and Radicalism in Australia. The submission notes that

The COVID-19 pandemic has been used by Islamic and right-wing extremists, and issue-motivated groups to promote their views. They are seeking to exploit social and economic dislocation; and their extremist ideology has been spreading more quickly and widely as Australians spend more time online engaging with like-minded individuals.

The authors continue to argue that the pandemic is seen by many extremists as a sign of the collapse of democracy and the beginning of a long-awaited acceleration into societal collapse [1]. A further submission by the Centre for Resilient and Inclusive Societies observes a highly motivated trend of merging ‘more conventional hateful rhetoric with conspiracy theories’, capitalising on social and psychological drivers such as the need for a sense of control and community [2]. Online, neo-Nazis and fascists have taken to adapting their approach to fit in with a growing community of more general conspiracy theorists, where they can then plant the seeds of their ideology. As cohorts such as QAnon adherents and COVID-19 conspiracists are pushed from mainstream platforms to places such as Telegram, they are straying into the natural environment of the extreme right-wing (Miller, 2021).

The overlap between fascists and neo-Nazis, and the world of conspiracy theories, is hardly new. However, this phenomenon in its current form, supercharged by the Internet and the current social climate, warrants specific focus and academic research on it is relatively nascent. This article examines five Australian Telegram channels, identifies fascist and neo-Nazi attempts at influencing the channel discourse, and discusses these findings in terms of themes, tactics, and rhetorical appeals. The neo-Nazi and fascist accounts identified use a desire for alternative information sources to direct users to extremist content, portray society as corrupt and deviant, indulge and fuel COVID-19 speculation and paranoia, and attempt to forge a common cause with conspiracists through examples of ostensible state repression.

 

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Cross-pollination and hate activism

In thinking about fascist groups and conspiracists, it is useful to consider the idea of counter-publics and anti-publics. Counter-publics are imagined as a challenge to the dominant terms of public inclusion, typically by marginalised groups in the name of progressive ideals. Conversely, anti-publics are hostile to democracy and seek not change but the destruction of existing community [3]. Fascists and neo-Nazis are exemplary anti-publics, while conspiracists, being diverse in opinions and desires, can be seen as somewhere in between — arguably destructive in effect, but not opposed to open and free society in any definite terms. This position leaves conspiracist spaces vulnerable to influence from the extreme right, who seek to exploit real or imagined commonalities to bring conspiracists more definitively into the anti-public realm.

Recent research has identified an ‘activism of hate’, afforded by social media, in which favourable circumstances (such as a pandemic) are exploited by extremists with a spike in online activity designed to provoke and otherwise influence (Zelenkauskaite, et al., 2021). This article employs the term ‘cross-pollination’ to describe the influence activities seen in the instances studied. Cross-pollination refers to the dynamic intentional or accidental meeting of ideas, which are left changed by this process. Corrigan describes how collaborations between the Black Panthers and Cuban revolutionaries resulted in a hybrid ideology of socialism, violence and symbolic action [4]. In an example salient to the current research, significant cross-pollination has occurred online between neo-reactionaries and the alt-right. Beauchamp (2019) explains that these two ideological camps, inevitably encountering each other in shared spaces on the Internet, adopted the others’ terms and ideas, introducing reactionaries to Nazism. This article shows the risk of similar dynamics within online conspiracist communities.

Right-wing extremists were early adopters of the Internet for political purposes, using it to intimidate targets and groom potential recruits [5]. A study of Telegram statements by far-right groups during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic found six common frames that were employed — the role of globalisation and multiculturalism in the spread of the virus, bad governance, curtailing of personal freedoms, role of far-right groups in creating resilience, and conspiracy theories [6]. While research on the interplay between conspiracism and extremism is limited, there is evidence that extremist groups can incorporate conspiracy theories into their belief systems to serve a number of purposes. They can help define and demonise the enemy or out-group; they can be used to delegitimise dissenting or moderating voices; and, they can aid in the turn towards violent action [7].

The instant-messaging application Telegram holds a privileged status among the media used by extremists. It is secure and users are untraceable, meaning they are relatively free to speak openly [8]. These and related features caused it to be adopted by and known as a key communication tool for groups such as the Islamic State. Very limited content moderation has also made it an important platform for the far-right [9]. Recent research has indicated that Telegram is also the primary platform for conspiracists [10]. As such, Telegram is a space where it can be expected that these groups may interact.

 

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Methods

For the research I exported the entire chat history since 7 July 2021 of five Australian conspiracist Telegram channels to an archive. While membership in Australian conspiracist groups may be relatively small, there are a number of organisations that are prominent and well-known, and therefore likely to attract the attention of fascists and neo-Nazis looking to recruit or influence. Project Phoenix and the Australian Peacemakers have made headlines due to anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown actions. QAnon is infamous worldwide, and the Australian Telegram channel was the largest of those studied. Two other groups, that serve as forums for general conspiracist discussion, were identified through the numerous posts recirculated in the aforementioned channels.

Within the exported chat histories I identified explicitly fascist (as opposed to Right-wing or conservative) comments, posts, and overtures by searching the chat histories using a list of keywords. These keywords and the rationales behind them are presented in Table 1. General media coverage and material from antifascist researchers such as Andy Fleming [11] were used to identify keywords specific to the Australian context, which were combined with more general fascist and neo-Nazi terms.

 

Table 1: Chat histories: Keywords and rationales.
KeywordRationale
SewellThomas Sewell, leader of Australian neo-Nazi group the National Socialist Network [12]
National socialistFormal term for Nazi, also used to identify posts attributed to the National Socialist Network
Proud boyTrans-national neo-fascist organisation with some presence in Australia [13]
Converging arrowsConverging Arrows Network is a pseudonym used by the National Socialist Network in some circumstances to avoid censorship
NationalistSelf-descriptive term used by some Australian fascists such as Blair Cottrell
ZealandiaIn reference to New Zealand fascist group Action Zealandia
CottrellBlair Cottrell, prominent Australian fascist [14]
SearbyJarrad Searby, former Australian Proud Boy, now an avowed neo-Nazi, with ties to both the National Socialist Network and anti-vaccination causes [15]
JewJews are a focus of neo-Nazis and discussion around Jews and Judaism is a useful indicator of attempts to seed Nazi or anti-Semitic talking points
European AustralianEuropean Australian Movement is a pseudonym used by the National Socialist Network in some circumstances to avoid censorship
HersantJacob Hersant, former leader of Antipodean Resistance and current spokesman of the National Socialist Network [16]
AntipodeanAntipodean Resistance, now-defunct Australian neo-Nazi youth organisation

 

Five popular conspiracist Telegram channels were studied, including general conspiracy-theory channels and some specifically concerned with ideas around the COVID-19 pandemic.

Project Phoenix Community (84 members)

Project Phoenix is a conspiracist group focused on theories around the COVID-19 pandemic, referred to as the ‘plandemic’ or ‘Covid scam’. The pandemic is seen by the group as being orchestrated by a cabal of globalists who are running a global campaign of ‘propaganda and lies’ in service of a vaguely sketched-out Communist agenda. Project Phoenix members portray themselves as not ‘career activists’ (distinguishing themselves from the reviled left-wing) but citizens unwilling to sit back and watch human freedoms being curtailed. They take part in physical demonstrations and the dissemination of ‘counter-propaganda’ (Project Phoenix, 2021). The group has two Telegram channels, a ‘main’ channel for official communications, and a ‘community’ channel used for more informal discussion between members. The latter channel was studied in the current research, as while it is smaller than the official channel it contains more open and frank speech between members.

Australian Peacemakers (700 members)

The Australian Peacemakers self-identify as a ‘unified community movement against world-wide government corruption.’ Like Project Phoenix, their primary focus is the COVID-19 pandemic, and the group states an intention to reach its goals through the application of law and legal principles (Australian Peacemakers, 2021). A strong Christian influence is apparent in the group, who speak of the ‘God given rights of people’, and whose original Web site address was http://john8.net (the URL can be seen on some campaign material — ‘john8’ being a reference to the eighth chapter in the Gospel of John, New Testament of the Christian Bible, containing the famous verse “the truth shall set you free”, actually John 8:32). In a protest against a lockdown in Melbourne, the Peacemakers played Christian music, and a pastor was arrested from holding a church service, in violation of social distancing rules (Lackey, 2021).

WAKE UP AUSTRALIA (3403 members)

WAKE UP AUSTRALIA is a popular and prolific general conspiracist channel. Users post on a wide range of topics and theories, including the purported effects and purpose of 5G technology, COVID-19 conspiracy theories, cloud seeding and weather control usually linked to the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), and chemtrails.

Australian Freedom Fighters (160 members)

Another general conspiracist channel, though with a strong focus on the COVID-19 pandemic and related government actions. The pinned message for the channel relates to the emotional toll of lockdowns and encourages participation in a Melbourne demonstration. Other issues and topics featured include Jeffrey Epstein and his private island, coverage and speculation about protests in South Africa and Cuba, claims that Joe Biden is a hologram, that the 1969 lunar landing was fake, and that Bill Gates is involved in a plot utilizing nanotechnology.

QAnon Aus/NZ (334 members)

QAnon came into existence as a conspiracy theory claiming Donald Trump and his allies were fighting an international paedophile ring operated by the Clintons and the ‘deep state’, or some variation of this basic narrative. It has since expanded to include a wide range of other theories such as those surrounding 5G technology or Bill Gates. In Australia, there are a number of local claims that QAnon adherents gravitate to along with the more ubiquitous ones. These include Senator Malcolm Roberts’ (Australian politician representing Queensland) claim that the U.N.’s 1992 “Agenda 21” plan for sustainable development is a tool to rob nations of their sovereignty, an unsuccessful bid by Senator Bill Heffernan (Australian politician representing New South Wales) to allege 28 prominent Australians were secret paedophiles during a royal commission, and local theories about COVID-19 (Ross, 2020).

Having obtained a sample of fascist and neo-Nazi posts from the above channels, I conducted thematic analysis using the method outlined by Braun and Clarke (2006). This six-step method involves becoming familiar with the collected data, coding the data, searching for themes within the coded data and reviewing these in relation to the extracts, defining the themes and producing a report [17]. The results from this process are presented in the next section.

 

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Themes

“Do your own research”

Umberto Eco, in his authoritative essay ‘Ur-fascism’, notes that syncretism, the assimilation and combination of different forms of belief and practice, is a hallmark trait of fascism, which strives for some always-existing primeval truth over new ideas [18]. Similarly, Maret (2016) identifies ‘a certain level of syncretism’ as being typical of conspiracy theories, which borrow from politics, philosophy and current events in their explanations. The high degree of syncretism within both conspiracist movements and fascism lends itself to fascist texts being offered up as simply more alternative sources for consumption by seekers of esoteric truth.

As an example of this tactic, on both the Wake Up Australia and QAnon channels, a user named Dominic D posts a list of “Australian Freedom Telegram Channels”, which are an eclectic mix of COVID-19 and generalist conspiracy channels along with fascist and fascist-adjacent sources such as the Proud Boys and True Blue Crew (an Australian extremist gang). It has previously been revealed that Dominic D is a 24-year-old programmer called Harrison McLean, who has been forthright in some forums about his plans to introduce his online following to anti-Semitic and extremist views (McGowan, 2021b).

Likewise, in the Project Phoenix Community channel, a user who refers to Hitler negatively is told to “Stop listening to enemy propaganda and watch ‘The Greatest Story Never Told’.” This recommendation refers to a documentary painting Adolf Hitler as an unfairly maligned historical hero [19]. In the QAnon channel, a poster opines that “The power of the mainstream media is waning ... People are instead finding alternative media sources ... Real people, not algorithms, are sharing documentaries like Europa: The Last Battle, Arcitects [sic] Of Decline, Hellstorm and Web streams like Hard Knocks With Jaz Searby ...”. These information sources are respectively an anti-Semitic revisionist history of WWII [20], claims of a socialist plot against the West [21], depictions of Allied atrocities against Nazi Germany [22], and the Web stream of an Australian Proud Boy-turned-neo-Nazi [23]. On the Freedom Fighters Australia channel, subtlety is abandoned as a user presents “White Alexandria’s Library” — links to 79 mostly Nazi texts including Mein Kampf, The Turner Diaries, Siege, and writings from Dylan Roof and Brenton Tarrant.

Corrupt society

Eco observes that though fascists worship technology as a means to an end, fundamentally the ideology rejects the modern world as stemming from The Enlightenment, which is ‘seen as the beginning of modern depravity’ [24]. Stanley similarly explains how typical fascist rhetoric tells of a glorious (though mythical) past lost to the humiliations of globalism, liberal cosmopolitanism, and enlightenment values such as equality. The resulting backlash to this is anti-democratic, anti-immigrant, and sexually conservative [25]. Aspects of this narrative can be used to appeal to conspiracists, depending on the specifics of their own ideology.

For instance, appealing to the religious bent of the Australian Peacemakers, a user opines that “Hadrian killed more Jews than hitler [sic] ... Hadrian made Hitler look like a fucking joke ... 1000 villages, completely destroyed, all their inhabitants killed, this is how god judges nations”. Combining a religious and conservative scorn for the modern world with an intimation that Jews are a source of depravity, to be judged by God, the user tests the waters for further fascist talking points. In the Project Phoenix Community channel, a post by Australian fascist Blair Cottrell is shared arguing that “... there are a lot of similarities between post-covid society and prison ...” Quotes from Cottrell about the degeneration of society are popular across the studied channels. In Wake Up Australia, a post is shared summing up 2020 Australia, painting a picture of a society with rampant health problems “Soft drink is cheaper than bottled water ...”, depression and suicide, corruption from institutions such as charities, the sexualisation of children, and sexual degeneracy in the form of homosexual parents corrupting their children.

In the QAnon channel, quotes are shared from Cottrell explicitly reaffirming their worldview, claiming that the last real election in the U.S. was in 2016, and concluding that “It’s time to get ready to fight or at the very least, get ready to defend yourself because even if you aren’t interested in those bureaucrats at Capitol Hill, they are very interested in you.” Also shared in the QAnon channel, neo-Nazi Thomas Sewell likewise claims that the U.S. election of Joe Biden was fraudulent, but rather than alluding to a forecast necessity of self-defense, Sewell refers to the ‘sword of justice’ being brought down on ‘our enemies’. More shared quotes from Sewell equate the white supremacist Great Replacement theory (claiming ‘White genocide’ through demographic shifts [Goetze, 2021]) with the broader “Great Reset” — a conspiracy theory claiming that a global elite are using pandemic lockdowns to introduce a socialist world government (BBC Monitoring and BBC Reality Check, 2021). In Sewell’s version of the narrative, a further goal of the elite is to destroy White culture, and ‘make us and our children infertile, brown and gay.’

COVID-19 as a conspiracy

Related to the theme of a corrupt, depraved society, but prominent enough to warrant separate mention, is the theme of COVID-19 as an elite conspiracy and tool of social control. A post in the Australian Peacemakers channel claims that hydroxychloroquine was discredited as a treatment for COVID-19 due to the “jew media [sic]”. As seen previously, a claim likely to be disputed by few in the channel — that hydroxychloroquine treatment has been supressed — with an anti-Semitic addition. In the Project Phoenix Community channel, a quote is shared from Cottrell about the “bizarre times” in which “fear-propaganda” is used to “to try hoodwinking you into getting injected with something which could possibly kill you.” In the QAnon channel, ideas are posited by Cottrell via a sympathetic user about cash-free transactions being pushed for a profit motive for the CEOs. Such comments do not explicitly contain outright fascist messaging, but introduce channel users to Cottrell and his ideas in a manner that is likely to appeal.

Finally, a conspiracy theory originating with Sewell is posted in the QAnon channel suggesting that the COVID-19 vaccine is in actuality a biological weapon designed to make White people infertile. A vague roadmap for the purported conspiracy is offered with little elaboration — ‘Great Replacement > Covid > Shutdown > Transfer of Wealth and power out of the White middle class > Mass censorship > Imprisonment of Pro-Whites and anyone against the Jewish system > Great Reset.’ Sewell continues to offer a course of action the audience is pre-primed for, while inserting some slight Nazi embellishments:

Do not follow any of these Covid regulations.
Mass civil disobedience is the first step to destroying the
Judeo-Globalist Regime that rules over the West.
Hail Victory

State persecution

An important element of fascist politics, and arguably all extremism, is a victimhood narrative wherein the fascist group provokes a reaction from wider society then repositions themselves as the victim of political repression, using the language of freedom and democracy against the democratic system they wish to destroy [26]. This dynamic is exemplified in the actions of the National Socialist Network. A leaked internal document outlines the group’s strategy of courting media controversy for recruitment (Wilson, 2021), however the group also subsequently expressed outrage at having attracted the attention of the Australian security apparatus. Stanley notes that fascist rhetoric draws an explicit distinction between those deviant elements in society who are meant to be policed, and those who are lawful by nature and meant to be left alone [27]. This victimhood narrative offers a source of tenuous kinship with, for instance, lockdown protestors who have also had confrontations with police.

The arrest and charging of Thomas Sewell (McGowan, 2021a) on a number of violent offenses including armed robbery, coinciding with confrontations and arrests related to conspiracist groups, has offered a useful narrative that has been exploited. In the Australian Peacemakers channel parallels are drawn between the arrest of their leader Nick Patterson, and legal actions and surveillance against Nazis, who are portrayed as peaceful activists being persecuted for their beliefs, as well as canaries in the coal mine for state repression of other groups such as the Peacemakers. Patterson, a former professional cage fighter, was arrested on over 20 violent charges at a protest (Paynter, 2021).

This association between Patterson’s and Sewell’s arrests is endorsed forcefully in the Peacemakers Telegram channel by a supporter of Sewell:

I don’t think you guys understand the gravity of your situation. You need to study what has been happening to Australian National Socialists who were peacefully exercising their rights to political speech. You have gone against the agenda. You have threatened the system and their position. They will come down hard on someone to set an example and to attempt to demoralise the rest of your group. You have been demonised on national television and are at the same level of contempt in the eyes of the public as the “literal nazis”. The courts have free reign over how hard they want to destroy you and no one in the public is going to bat an eye. In fact, they’ll cheer for it.

In the QAnon channel, donations towards Sewell’s legal fund are solicited, and vague links are drawn between the arrest of Sewell to the state of emergency declared in Victoria at the time in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. A long statement from the National Socialist Network is posted verbatim, addressing the government review into extremism. Claims include that multiculturalism and non-White immigration are the root causes of terrorism, and that the government is willing to sacrifice the freedoms and safety of White people for a multicultural society. The group warns users that the government is preparing for a ‘full-scale assault on political dissidents under the guise of “counterterrorism”.’

Similar sentiments are shared across the channels. In the Project Phoenix Community channel, a poster shares a post from Jarrad Searby claiming harassment from the police over possible attendance at a protest. In the QAnon channel, an account is shared from Blair Cottrell about arrests by police over support for anti-lockdown protests. Various other musings by Cottrell are shared in the QAnon channel promoting a narrative of persecution of the right-wing by politician and the media, in league with Black Lives Matter and Antifa. In the Wake Up Australia channel, a post pivots from the Online Safety Bill and ostensible risks to free speech, to claim that it represents a failure of multiculturalism and democracy, destined to be “used by communists, Jews and other assorted crybullies to silence dissent and bully Australians into not speaking out against them.” The post ends with the hashtag #VotingWillNotRemoveThem.

 

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Discussion

Hate speech propaganda typically contains three essential components — a claim of victimhood, a redemption scenario (with the extremist group as the redeemer), and appeal to the target’s desire for significance — the chance to be a hero for the cause [28]. Elements of these can be seen in the interactions described in this article. Fascist and neo-Nazi users claim common victimhood with the members of the conspiracist groups, painting both parties as oppressed by the state for their beliefs. The idea that members are somehow uniquely enlightened and heroic is evident in all of groups’ rhetoric. The redemption scenario manifests as the fascist’s attempts to insert far-right talking points and ideology into broader discussions, pointing to their particular solution being the answer to the questions of the conspiracist.

Conspiracy theories, misinformation, and disinformation are not at all new. People rely on a network of friends and strangers to convey information to them about topics on which they lack their own access — this is a simple truism. However, there is something to be said about how this phenomenon plays out online — information sources are unprecedented in volume, and discriminating between those that are reliable and those that are problematic is increasingly onerous [29]. The COVID-19 pandemic has proven itself an exemplar of this state of affairs, with the Director-General of the World Health Organization commenting on an “infodemic” of misinformation [30]. Such a situation is dangerous in itself as hampers efforts to combat the disease, but it has also been seen that it creates an opportunity for motivated actors to insert their own ‘facts’ into the worlds of conspiracists, for whom established knowledge is suspect and alternative views inherently superior.

While many of the comments and discussions highlighted in this article simply show fascists trying to influence other users in an ideological sense, a potentially more dangerous element exists in the presence of a developing victimhood narrative. Groups such as the National Socialist Network have taken a particular line with regards to violence, insisting that they are peaceful while also intimating that if they are not allowed to pursue their activities unhindered, they may see no choice but to reassess that position. In this light, playing up a narrative of common victimhood and oppression with others they seek to influence could be seen as having sinister undertones to say the least.

 

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Conclusion

Further research on this emerging topic has at its disposal a number of theoretical jumping-off points. For instance, within the interdisciplinary field of social movement studies, work on the mechanism of brokerage is of potential utility. Through this mechanism, previously unconnected or weakly connected groups and networks congeal into a discrete movement, with broader norms and frames adapted to local contexts [31]. Such a process has been seen in the introduction of fascist talking points into conspiracist channels, using language and themes designed to appeal to the target group. Another concept of clear relevance is the political strategy of entryism, wherein subcultural and political milieus are infiltrated in order to spread an ideology. As noted by Ross and Bevensee (2020), fascist groups have form in this tactic, having used it to spread fascism within environmentalist and animal rights groups.

Continued exploration of this issue is prudent, as the current situation and its psychological and social effects are unlikely to suddenly end. Many of same drivers that draw people to conspiracism can also draw them to fascism and extremism. Marone (2021) notes that the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in trauma, disruption, isolation, distress and uncertainty for many people, and the longer term macro-effects of the pandemic could serve to reinforce these vulnerabilities. Such a situation is amenable to a growth in extremism (Marone, 2021). In a comparable manner, the sense of uncertainty induced by COVID-19 is a powerful predictor of conspiracism. Fact-checks and debunking can only do so much to alleviate this state, equally or more important is providing the resources and information people need to be resilient and confident of the future [32]. Failing this, people will not only remain vulnerable to the harms of conspiracism, but also the overtures of fascists and extremists. End of article

 

About the author

Gerard Gill, Ph.D., is an independent researcher who received his doctorate from Curtin University’s School for Human Rights Education, where he studied the influence of information and communication technologies on social movements. He has since worked in countering violent extremism and has an interest in disinformation, conspiracism, extremism, cults and social movements.
E-mail: gerard_gill [at] hotmail [dot] com

 

Notes

1. Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, 2021, p. 4.

2. Centre for Resilient and Inclusive Societies, 2021, p. 8.

3. Davis, 2019, pp. 129–131.

4. Corrigan, 2014, p. 456.

5. Conway, et al., 2019, p. 2.

6. McNeil-Willson, 2020, p. 11.

7. Rios, 2020, p. 4.

8. McNeil-Willson, 2020, p. 5.

9. Guhl and Davey, 2020, p. 1.

10. Hohlfeld, et al., 2021, p. 1.

11. Fleming is a prominent and influential Australian antifascist researcher. See https://slackbastard.anarchobase.com/.

12. For some background on Sewell, see https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-14/neo-nazi-thomas-sewell-arrested-melbourne/100140902.

13. See, for example, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/30/proud-boys-who-are-far-right-group-that-backs-donald-trump.

14. On Cottrell, see https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-06/sky-news-apologises-for-airing-interview-with-blair-cottrell/10076074.

15. On Searby, see https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/from-proud-boy-to-nazi-in-two-months,15063.

16. On Hersant, see https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jan/16/how-australias-anti-terror-regime-has-failed-to-rein-in-far-right-extremists.

17. Braun and Clarke, 2006, p. 87.

18. Eco, 1995, p. 6.

19. See https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3526810/.

20. See https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7528992/.

21. See https://www.bitchute.com/video/7YjsahgvmaFj/.

22. See https://www.bitchute.com/video/7YjsahgvmaFj/.

23. See https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4661358/.

24. Eco, 1995, p. 6.

25. Stanley, 2018, pp. 4–8.

26. Cammaerts, 2020, p. 12.

27. Stanley, 2018, p. 110.

28. Rafael and Ritzmann, 2019, p. 13.

29. Alfano and Klein, 2019, p. 2.

30. Evanega, et al., 2020, p. 1.

31. McAdam, et al., 2009, p. 274.

32. Miller, 2020, pp. 332–334.

 

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Editorial history

Received 26 July 2021; revised 13 August 2021; accepted 13 October 2021.


Creative Commons License
This paper is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Fascist cross-pollination of Australian conspiracist Telegram channels
by Gerard Gill.
First Monday, Volume 26, Number 12 - 6 December 2021
https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/download/11830/10544
doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.5210/fm.v26i12.11830