Shocking new report reveals nine major groups operating in state
Far right extremist groups are surging and becoming more violent in Victoria — and two major events are to blame.
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Far right extremist groups have “exploded” in Victoria with nine major organisations now based in the state, the Saturday Herald Sun can reveal.
Researchers believe the world’s longest lockdown in Melbourne combined with rising cost of living pressures had resulted in “a perfect storm for recruitment and radicalisation” to surge in the past three years.
“Due to the pandemic but particularly the extensive lockdowns there, people were looking for answers,” Wendy Via, President of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), who profiled the Australian groups, said.
“They’re angry, they’re afraid, it’s economic reasons and it’s young people. They’re looking for answers and in the pandemic world it was very difficult to find them. The pandemic was a big driver of participation in this kind of activity.”
Ms Via said the leaders of these groups, like Victorian man Thomas Sewell who heads up the European Australia Movement, started the neo-Nazi National Socialist Network and associates with Proud Boys Australia, strategically latched on to “culture wars” to get more recruits.
“Sewell’s outfits were able to glom on to other issues so if there was a mask mandate protest, then these guys would show up. And they are out there recruiting by making it one of their key central issues, associating with them saying ‘we think this, and you think this, so we have something in common and here we are out in the streets together.’
“It was a perfect storm for recruitment and radicalisation. And now the Australian far-right has exploded with new white supremacist organisations and movements, many connected online to activists in other countries.”
Another Victorian, Blair Cottrell – who started the now defunct United Patriots Front and Lads Society – has launched an anti-vaccine campaign online while supporting other far-right groups.
The extremist groups often appeal to males in their late teens to late 20s “who have heroes they want to emulate.”
Ms Via said New South Wales white supremacist Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 people across two mosques in New Zealand in 2019, had been an influential figure worldwide.
In the United States, 18-year-old Payton Gendron killed 10 black people at a Buffalo supermarket in May this year. A manifesto he posted online said his motive was to stop “the elimination of the white race.” His family said he had “bought into the fear of Covid” and became radicalised online during pandemic lockdowns.
In August, a Victorian state government committee report into far-right extremism said there were groups in the state “who consider violence a legitimate way to achieve ideological goals.”
The inquiry was sparked after a neo-Nazi rally in the Grampians in January last year, hikers being attacked by alleged neo-Nazis in the Cathedral Ranges in May last year and the erection of gallows outside parliament as MPs debated pandemic legislation last November.
Ms Via said the groups lived online and had thousands of members “who just want to talk and spread their vitriol” but also members who really want to “get out there, make a statement, and in their eyes, make a difference.”
“So you are starting to see clubhouses, fight clubs, boxing clubs and trips to the Grampians and Cathedral Ranges – additional activities they charge for to make money on top of membership fees,” Ms Via said.
This month, a dozen neo-Nazis believed to be from the National Socialist Network stormed a family-friendly youth festival in Moonee Ponds where they performed Hitler salutes and Football Australia is investigating after Hitler salutes were made, racist songs sung and showed off far-right symbols at the Australia Cup soccer final in Sydney.
“The groups are becoming much more brazen,” Ms Via said.
“You have more incidents of violence, not wide scale violence, but person on person violence like what came out of the Cathedral Ranges.”
She added: “At the same time, they are trying to clean themselves up, be clean cut, wear polo shirts, that type of thing.
“It’s a deliberate move. A lot of them at street level wear T-shirts, balaclavas and wear the symbols and emblems, but the people who give speeches are trying to present themselves in a more appealing way.
Ms Via said the internet was the most effective way to recruit new people to these far right groups and named YouTube as the worst.
“It makes it very difficult for people who are looking at some of this information to not get deeper and deeper into this information. As opposed to it being ‘hey, I read an article today’ or ‘I saw this group’ well, if you look at that group did it recommend three more? So it’s very difficult for folks to get out of it.”
She added: “And YouTube is the worst now. The enforcement of the policies that each of the major platforms have is dismal, but YouTube, in my experience, and from my research is one of the worst in that their algorithms are very aggressive in promoting hateful or harmful content and they refuse to enforce their rules.
“And you don’t have to go anywhere to see it – you can watch it on your phone, it’s on your computer.”
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