By Paul Sakkal
Australian neo-Nazis are thriving on Elon Musk’s X, the federal opposition has warned, as the nation’s online safety watchdog raises the alarm on the “perfect storm” of extremism brewing under X’s free speech abolitionist policies.
White supremacists and leaders of Australia’s National Socialist Network (NSN) were previously banned or censored on X before returning in the past year or so, spurring the case for a new duty of care the Albanese government is preparing to place on social platforms as part of an online safety review to be released in weeks.
Sixteen members of the National Socialist Network were arrested in Adelaide when they marched on Australia Day.Credit: Tracey Nearmy/Getty Images
X has cut online global moderation, removed all staff in Australia and reinstated thousands of banned accounts, according to the eSafety commissioner, ushering in a chaotic era for social media driven by a growing sense, particularly among those on the right, that content moderation stifled free expression.
Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg has announced similar moves on fact-checking at the same time as Labor has ploughed on with its wide agenda of new clamps on social media including banning teens under 16 using certain sites.
Australia’s most prominent neo-Nazis, including Thomas Sewell, Joel Davis and Blair Cottrell, have gained tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of views on posts on X lately. Those posts have in some cases related to actions of the NSN, such as the Adelaide march on Australia Day in which 16 of its black-clad members were arrested, and in other cases contained vile remarks about the LGBTQ community and immigrants.
In a December video with 170,000 views, Davis is filmed on the steps of Victoria’s parliament in front of a “Jews hate freedom” banner, declaring: “This country should not belong to the Jews. It should belong to white Australian people that built it”.
Coalition home affairs spokesman James Paterson, whose posts on X are sometimes swamped with far-right sentiment on immigration and antisemitic comments, said new laws against inciting violence towards minorities were needed now.
Senator James Paterson.Credit: Joe Armao
“Neo-Nazis are clearly emboldened in Australia right now in real life and online. There has been a noticeable uptick in their activity, especially on X in recent months,” Paterson said.
“They might drape themselves in the Australian flags and call themselves patriots but there’s nothing patriotic about worshipping a failed foreign regime led by one of history’s greatest losers. The real patriots fought and died defeating Nazism.”
eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant said it was inevitable that a platform would become “toxic and less safe” if the company cut staff in charge of social responsibility.
“You’re really creating a perfect storm,” she said. “If you let the worst offenders back on while at the same time significantly reducing trust and safety personnel whose job it is to protect users from harm, there are clear concerns about the implications for the safety of users.”
Inman Grant abandoned a case against X last year in which eSafety tried to force Musk’s platform to remove all videos of the Wakeley church stabbing, prompting Musk to label the Australian government anti-free speech “fascists”.
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Right-wing populist sentiment has been growing on X, and its owner, Musk, has thrown his support behind US President Donald Trump and right-wing causes in the United Kingdom and Germany, raising concern about Musk’s interference in the domestic politics of sovereign nations.
Musk was chastised by the chairman of the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre this week after he told a far-right German party gathering that the country needed to “move beyond” the “guilt” of the past.
There has been unprecedented growth in Australia’s previously censored right-wing community since Musk’s takeover of X, according to former Liberal staffer John Macgowan, who follows the movement closely.
The network includes anti-immigration influencers such as Jordan Knight and a popular news service called The Noticer that often covers crimes committed by immigrants and reports on the actions of the NSN. Some of the far-right figures have been clashing with more mainstream right-wingers including Rukshan Fernando, a prominent anti-COVID lockdown influencer who has spoken out against white supremacist views.
“The reason Davis, Cottrell and Sewell are doing such big numbers is they offer young men becoming politically engaged for the first time in their lives what they’re not getting from mainstream right-wing politics: authenticity, sincerity and, importantly, action,” Macgowan said.
“Eighteen-year-old guys who’ve been engaging with content from the US these last few years don’t want to join the Liberal Party and eat scones while being regaled with tales of John Howard’s glory days.”
Deakin University extremism expert Josh Roose.Credit: 60 Minutes
“The politicians, the academics and the media think these guys are bugs to be squashed but they’re actually your competition. If you don’t compete with them for the audience, in 10 years, maybe less, some of them will be in parliament, and the Australian establishment will have the same kind of meltdown the American one did over MAGA.”
Academic Josh Roose, a Deakin University associate professor who studies political violence, said there was a spike of extremist activity on X and argued much of it was illegal under federal laws banning racial discrimination and displaying hate symbols such as swastikas.
South Australia Police deleted a post about the neo-Nazi Australia Day march after it was swamped with posts praising Hitler and Nazism, and vilifying migrants, prompting the force to issue a statement defending its decision to seize on the march and criticising racist remarks on its page.
Roose said some Australian politicians on the fringe of the right had been engaging with elements of the new nationalist right online movement.
“What these actors are seeking to do is widen the Overton window, to shape political discourse through extreme acts, to normalise their presence, to attract and recruit young men,” Roose said.
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.