Speaker 1: This is part two of a two part episode. If
Speaker 1: you haven't yet, you can go back and listen to
Speaker 1: the COVID conspiracy pipeline. Hi, I'm Ruby Jones and you're
Speaker 1: listening to seven Am. It's easy to dismiss conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: as fringe or imported, but conspiratorial ideas are gaining traction
Speaker 1: with everyday Australians. About one in three endorse at least
Speaker 1: one conspiracy belief. They're also being echoed by people in
Speaker 1: power and have spilled into real world violence Today. Conspiracy
Speaker 1: Nation authors Cam Wilson and Ariel Bogel on how conspiracies
Speaker 1: lead from the fringe to the mainstream, including all the
Speaker 1: way to Parliament House. It's Thursday, August fourteenth. We've spoken
Speaker 1: about the Freedom Rally in Sydney in May of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, and there were these posters and placards at
Speaker 1: that rally expose the twenty eight, punished the twenty eight.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me a bit more about that conspiracy
Speaker 1: and where it came from.
Speaker 2: So in the book, like we were trying to understand
Speaker 2: Australian conspiracy theory culture, the kind of strongest threads that
Speaker 2: come through all the Facebook groups and telegram channels and
Speaker 2: in person rallies and protests that we have experienced, and
Speaker 2: there are a few we looked at conspiracy theories around
Speaker 2: Port Arthur. That's kind of one of the original conspiracy
Speaker 2: theories that's spread on the internet in Australia. But this
Speaker 2: idea of exposed that twenty eight is another.
Speaker 3: Over to you, thank you, mister Chairman, mister Attorney General.
Speaker 2: So back in twenty fifteen, Senator Bill Heffernan and Liberal
Speaker 2: Party senator stood up in Senate Estimates and said that
Speaker 2: he had a list.
Speaker 3: It includes disturbingly documents that name in one document twenty
Speaker 3: eight people as alleged pedophiles.
Speaker 2: This was the time of their Royal Commission inter Institutional Abuse,
Speaker 2: so Australia was kind of grappling with genuine cover ups
Speaker 2: of child abuse.
Speaker 3: At the highest of levels. There's a former Prime Minister
Speaker 3: on this list and it is a police document.
Speaker 2: But in terms of this document, there was not much
Speaker 2: to it. People that claim to have seen it say
Speaker 2: it's not signed, it's just conjecture. But for many of
Speaker 2: these groups, it's become like one of the original sins
Speaker 2: of Australia. So when you go to protests against renewal
Speaker 2: but energy. When you go to protests that I went
Speaker 2: to in late twenty twenty three against the Indigenous voys
Speaker 2: to Parliament, you always see t shirts posters say expose
Speaker 2: the twenty eight and it's become a kind of shibalith
Speaker 2: I guess in Australian conspiracy theory culture.
Speaker 1: Right, And so to what extent are we seeing politicians
Speaker 1: take these theories from various forums, fringe theories and capitalizing
Speaker 1: on them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, certainly during the pandemic you did see some
Speaker 2: politicians doubling in this space because there was a potential
Speaker 2: political constituency there that they thought might be beneficial. So
Speaker 2: we did see some nods and some kind of like
Speaker 2: foot see I guess, between politicians and some of these groups.
Speaker 2: But broadly we look at in the book the way
Speaker 2: that these conspiratorial tropes are kind of politically useful because
Speaker 2: they asked kind of so simple, us good guys fighting
Speaker 2: against them, bad guys over there conspiring against us all.
Speaker 2: And so we do see politicians use these frameworks. And
Speaker 2: one thing we look at is the public discussion of
Speaker 2: the Safe Schools program, which was an anti bullying program
Speaker 2: began a Victoria was being rolled out federally in the
Speaker 2: mid twenty tens.
Speaker 4: Welcome turnbull is facing a new crisis in coalition ranks.
Speaker 4: Government MP's are deeply divibe about and bullying program is
Speaker 4: supposed to promote peace and harmony in the nation's schools.
Speaker 2: And we did see some politicians using the term cultural Marxism,
Speaker 2: that is.
Speaker 5: This program is about marx societeology, about sexual liberation of
Speaker 5: young people. I don't want it to be about sexual
Speaker 5: liberation young people.
Speaker 2: So these are the ways that these kind of tropes
Speaker 2: can creep into our discourse, and we see this increasingly
Speaker 2: because again, yeah, it is just such a useful way
Speaker 2: to create a simple political narrative for people that want
Speaker 2: to get clicks, get attention. Unfortunately, we do see them
Speaker 2: kind of get folded in themselves because some of those
Speaker 2: politicians that dabbled in anti lockdown kind of conspiracy theories
Speaker 2: themselves became the target of conspiracy theories when people kind
Speaker 2: of turned on them and accuse them of being part
Speaker 2: of the plot, the part of the kommal themselves. So
Speaker 2: these things do come full circle as well.
Speaker 1: And what impact does it have having politicians who are
Speaker 1: very much part of the esta plishment lean into these
Speaker 1: kind of anti institutional ideas.
Speaker 2: I think it's really dangerous. Anna Merliner, journalist in the
Speaker 2: United States who has looked at conspiratorial culture in the
Speaker 2: United States, you know, she talks about how dangerous conspiracy
Speaker 2: theories be as a way of framing the enemy. It
Speaker 2: can lead to hatred so quickly. That's why I think
Speaker 2: it is a very dangerous sort of framework for politicians
Speaker 2: to be using. In the book as well, we do
Speaker 2: look at the sort of threads of white replacement in Australia.
Speaker 2: This is the conspiracy theory that white people are being
Speaker 2: eliminated in Western countries.
Speaker 5: Today, proof that the Abezi government is destroying.
Speaker 6: Australia, whether it be through immigration, destroying.
Speaker 5: It almost literally, it's crazy immigration intake. Now, this is
Speaker 5: not a conspiracy theory, you know, the great replacement.
Speaker 2: Through birth rate, through other means.
Speaker 5: Our latest fertility figures show Australian women have never had
Speaker 5: fewer babies purpose not in the history of modern Australia.
Speaker 5: Just one point five babies now per woman.
Speaker 2: And that means and of course in Australia, this has
Speaker 2: ties to one of the worst acts of terrorism committed
Speaker 2: by an Australian they're shooting two mosques in Christchurch.
Speaker 6: In twenty nineteen, Brenton Terrant, a twenty eight year old Australian,
Speaker 6: he posted a seventy four page manifesto calling himself an
Speaker 6: avowed racist and citing his inspiration both the white supremacist
Speaker 6: who killed seventy seven people in Norway in twenty eleven
Speaker 6: and the white supremacist who murdered nine black parishioners at
Speaker 6: a Charleston, South Carolina church in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2: And so those sort of threads of a plot of
Speaker 2: invasion in Australia, you can see that coming time and
Speaker 2: again throughout Australian history, appearing in our media. Scholar Cassanjaj's
Speaker 2: looked at some of these issues, you know.
Speaker 6: He argues that mainstream media.
Speaker 2: And politicians have normalized white nationalist frameworks like this by
Speaker 2: treating them as representing legitimate concerns. So you can see
Speaker 2: the danger there, particularly when you look at christ Church
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: Coming up, how Australia hasn't fully reconciled with conspiracy fueled violence.
Speaker 1: Cam I'd like to talk more about the real world
Speaker 1: implications of these kinds of beliefs. We've talked about the
Speaker 1: christ shooter, but there are other cases too, aren't there.
Speaker 7: Yeah, there's definitely been other acts of violence linked to
Speaker 7: conspiracy theories in Australia. Probably the one that comes to
Speaker 7: mind for many people most is the wind Biller shooting,
Speaker 7: which happened in late twenty twenty two when three people
Speaker 7: ambushed and killed two police officers, injured some more and
Speaker 7: also killed a neighbor as well. And they had this
Speaker 7: wide spectrum of beliefs.
Speaker 8: The Trained Family members subscribe to what we will call
Speaker 8: a broad Christian fundamentalist belief system known as pre millennialism.
Speaker 8: It's a belief system that comes from Christian theology.
Speaker 7: Anti government. They're also anti vaccine.
Speaker 8: A range of different things help contribute to their belief
Speaker 8: in this system, so the COVID pandemic, climate change, global conflicts,
Speaker 8: social disparity.
Speaker 7: There is also a sense of some pseudo war and
Speaker 7: sovereign citizen ideology.
Speaker 8: Now, early speculation around the motivation of the Trained Family
Speaker 8: members was that it's centered on sovereign citizen sovereign citizen ideology.
Speaker 7: And it's an example of how these beliefs can lead
Speaker 7: you to extreme acts because they are extreme beliefs. When
Speaker 7: you say that you were on the side of good
Speaker 7: and other people are on the side of evil, and
Speaker 7: you see that they're doing terrible things and maybe not
Speaker 7: just threatening yourself, but perhaps threatening and actually harming lots
Speaker 7: of other people, that kind of mindset leads you very
Speaker 7: quickly to deciding that you want to take an extreme
Speaker 7: response yourself. And if you spend any time in these
Speaker 7: communities online or even in person, they are ones where
Speaker 7: talk of violence is pretty common. Thankfully, it doesn't often
Speaker 7: become real acts, but it does enough for it to
Speaker 7: be a serious threat.
Speaker 1: Can we talk a little more about this sort of
Speaker 1: the antique government sovereign citizen ideologies, because there seems to
Speaker 1: be a uniquely Australian kind of version of it.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, I think what people might be familiar with these
Speaker 2: videos that spread online where people are having these bizarre
Speaker 2: confrontations with cops.
Speaker 6: I'm not in your juris sorry, I'm not in your jurisdic.
Speaker 2: Gives can you tell the police they have no authority?
Speaker 1: Can you can you bring can you bring the most
Speaker 1: you don't have any authority?
Speaker 5: What is the karan that's been committed?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: Maybe they say I'm traveling, not driving, so you don't
Speaker 2: have authority or something like this.
Speaker 1: We are not driving, we are traveling, traveling.
Speaker 7: You guys don't even know what use are on about.
Speaker 3: I made your most seniors.
Speaker 2: These I would class under this broad umbrella of pseudo law.
Speaker 2: So the term sovereign citizen is more common, but that's
Speaker 2: quartistically American. Pseudo law is broadly this idea that Australian
Speaker 2: laws are somehow illegitimate and don't affect the individual that
Speaker 2: is trying to use them. So when we've spoken to
Speaker 2: people that believe in these ideas or who once did
Speaker 2: and no longer do, people have often turned to them
Speaker 2: in a kind of moment of confrontation with power in
Speaker 2: some way. You know, they've had something go very wrong
Speaker 2: in their life, whether it be a kind of financial issue,
Speaker 2: maybe they've run out of money and you know, haven't
Speaker 2: been able to pay the mortgage on their house, and
Speaker 2: in the confrontation with the bank, they turn to these
Speaker 2: ideas that are kind of out of a desperation. I
Speaker 2: think you often see people turn to these ideas and
Speaker 2: kind of in a somewhat logical way because the banking system,
Speaker 2: the legal system, like they are extremely complex, almost as
Speaker 2: complex as sudo law itself. But there was a historian,
Speaker 2: Market Cabbage I spoke to, who's a historian of these
Speaker 2: movements in the United States, and he agreed about this complexity.
Speaker 2: People do kind of come up with these ideas in
Speaker 2: the face of immense complexity. But it's also just like
Speaker 2: a great get out of jail free card, like you've
Speaker 2: got to find just say you don't believe in the government,
Speaker 2: like you've got a mortgage you can't page, you don't
Speaker 2: believe in the government, like the council's told you not
Speaker 2: do something. He's easy way out. And that's where I
Speaker 2: think it might tind this kind of complex relationship Australia
Speaker 2: has as a kind of post colonial nation. We do
Speaker 2: have a sort of uneasy place here on stolen land,
Speaker 2: and so sometimes I think at heart it's about that
Speaker 2: really uneasy relationship we have with what we as non
Speaker 2: indigenous people are doing here.
Speaker 1: And let's talk a little more about how we as
Speaker 1: a country responding. We talked briefly about the christ Church attack.
Speaker 1: It obviously took place in New Zealand, but it was
Speaker 1: carried out by an Australian. Do you think the Australian
Speaker 1: government has reconciled with how dangerous these ideologies can be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in the book, we didn't want to just leave
Speaker 2: all these ideas on the table and not discuss at
Speaker 2: all how to address them, so we did look at
Speaker 2: how people are addressing them on a personal level, on
Speaker 2: a community level, and we did again look at the
Speaker 2: failure of Australian government to deal with some of the
Speaker 2: worst acts of violence that have been attached to these ideas,
Speaker 2: and I think Christ Church is probably the most prominent
Speaker 2: example of this.
Speaker 10: Last week, on the eighteenth of March, Kebnet agreed to
Speaker 10: establish an inquiry into the Christ Church Mosque's terror attack. Today,
Speaker 10: Kebnet agreed the inquiry will be a Royal commission.
Speaker 2: There was this Royal commission in New Zealand after the attack,
Speaker 2: and I've spoken to people from the Muslim community there
Speaker 2: who have very genuine concerns about how that process played
Speaker 2: out and the role that they were able to have
Speaker 2: in the process. But they point out to me that
Speaker 2: Australia did not even do that. So at least in public,
Speaker 2: we've had so little reckoning with the Australian roots of
Speaker 2: the man who committed this act, you know what kind
Speaker 2: of culture he was marinating in.
Speaker 7: Here.
Speaker 2: There has been reporting about his ties to far right
Speaker 2: groups in Australia which is very well documented. He was
Speaker 2: a par dissipant in our white supremacist scene on Facebook,
Speaker 2: on other platforms, he was a donor to white supremacist causes.
Speaker 2: But in terms of whether we could have spotted him
Speaker 2: before he traveled there, any of these questions remain unanswered
Speaker 2: in Australia because we haven't had any public process to
Speaker 2: question our role in growing this person.
Speaker 1: And when you look at us politics, conspiracy theories no
Speaker 1: longer fringe. They've made it all the way to the
Speaker 1: White House. Your book is called Conspiracy Nations, So tell
Speaker 1: me how worried you are that Australia could have done
Speaker 1: that same path.
Speaker 7: Look to compare different cultures in different countries, but the
Speaker 7: effect on individuals varies widely. Like saying that you believe
Speaker 7: that howld Holt was kidnapped by the Chinese and a submarine,
Speaker 7: very different to saying that you think that you know
Speaker 7: vaccines are filled with microchips, and so you won't let
Speaker 7: your children or anyone else in your life get vaccinated.
Speaker 7: I'm not sure if I had to say, I'm not
Speaker 7: sure we're quite where the US is. But the thing
Speaker 7: is with Australia is that we have seen these conspiracy
Speaker 7: theories used by powerful people in public life, and ultimately
Speaker 7: this is something that needs to be resisted because we
Speaker 7: think that conspiracy theories are part of human nature. They're
Speaker 7: a way of understanding a world that is complex and
Speaker 7: often has conditions that feel unfair to us. But that
Speaker 7: doesn't mean that we should be resigned to accepting people
Speaker 7: using them. We shouldn't accept them. We should be empathetic
Speaker 7: towards the people who are kind of falling under their spell,
Speaker 7: but to the people who are using them for their
Speaker 7: own game, which we coin them out because ultimately we
Speaker 7: really need that shared commitment to to a reality if
Speaker 7: we actually are to solve the problems.
Speaker 9: That are facing all of us.
Speaker 1: Ariel and Cam thank you so much for your time today.
Speaker 6: Thanks Ruby.
Speaker 9: Thanks.
Speaker 1: Also in the news today, Australia has joined two dozen countries,
Speaker 1: including the UK, Canada and European allies calling for a
Speaker 1: flood of aid into Gaza. It comes as Israel has
Speaker 1: intensified its bombardments of Gaza City ahead of its planned
Speaker 1: occupation of the area, and a blacklisted childcare worker in
Speaker 1: Victoria was allowed to keep his working with children zech
Speaker 1: for years. Afterwards, the male educator was sacked for sexual
Speaker 1: misconduct in twenty twenty after an internal investigation found he
Speaker 1: was grooming topdlers. The Victorian government says it's moving to
Speaker 1: cancel the man's working with children check. The case comes
Speaker 1: after allegations last month that another childcare worker, Joshua Dale Brown,
Speaker 1: abused eight children at a center in Melbourne's southwest. I'm
Speaker 1: Ruby Jones. This is seven AM.
Speaker 9: Thanks listening