Speaker 1: I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven AM. Almost
Speaker 1: a month after two police officers were shot and killed
Speaker 1: in regional Victoria, the accused gunman, Desi Freeman, is still
Speaker 1: at large. Police were going to arrest Freeman on historic
Speaker 1: sex offenses at the time. Victoria police have deployed thousands
Speaker 1: of officers, searched more than one hundred properties, and offered
Speaker 1: the biggest reward in Victorian history, with no results so far.
Speaker 1: Police have also been combing Freeman's Facebook history, which what's
Speaker 1: the journey of a nature lover sharing photos of landscapes
Speaker 1: and family updates to someone posting violent fantasies, calling police
Speaker 1: Gestapo cowards who deserve a second Nuremberg Today. Associate editor
Speaker 1: of Kriichi, Cam Wilson on what Desi Freeman's years of
Speaker 1: posts reveal about how he was radicalized and whether there's
Speaker 1: a pattern we can recognize before it boils over into violence.
Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, September twenty four, So, Cam Desi Freeman, the
Speaker 1: so called sovereign citizen who is still at large after
Speaker 1: allegedly killing two police officers almost a month ago. You've
Speaker 1: been looking at the trail of posts that he left
Speaker 1: on social media. So as you've been doing that, what
Speaker 1: were the first signs that he was becoming more interested
Speaker 1: in fringe or conspiracy ideas.
Speaker 2: When you look at his early stuff, it's very normal
Speaker 2: for a middle aged man who's interested in nature. There's
Speaker 2: photos of rural Victoria, the photos of his family. It's
Speaker 2: a very normal Facebook account. And there was a sprinkling
Speaker 2: always of conspiratorial narratives and kind of reactionary ideas, even
Speaker 2: from early on. So I have this trove spanning, you know,
Speaker 2: close to a decade of his posts, and he always
Speaker 2: had a bit of a b inw his bonnet about
Speaker 2: the legal system.
Speaker 3: But for the most part, if you just looked.
Speaker 2: At his early Facebook posts from twenty eighteen, you wouldn't
Speaker 2: think that there was anything out of the ordinary.
Speaker 4: On Friday, Victoria Police conducted the largest ever tactical policing
Speaker 4: operation in Australia's history as part of our mission to
Speaker 4: find Freeman. This with incredibly rugged areas. They were crawling
Speaker 4: through caves, they were traversing rivers and falls, they were
Speaker 4: searching plantations and gorgeous in an effort to find Freeman.
Speaker 1: The fact that Freeman still has not been caught is
Speaker 1: pretty extraordinary at this point. So looking through his history,
Speaker 1: what did you find out about his capacity as opposed
Speaker 1: to evade authorities for this long?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean, just look at his Facebook feed. You only
Speaker 2: get one view of him, but you know, he's always
Speaker 2: been interested in nature. He's clearly someone who was very
Speaker 2: comfortable traversing Victoria's wilderness, and he had for a long
Speaker 2: time and interest in doomsday prepper communities. For those who
Speaker 2: are not familiar, there is and has been communities online
Speaker 2: offline of people who believe that, for one reason or another,
Speaker 2: that civilization will break down, or at.
Speaker 3: The very least that they will decide to.
Speaker 2: Weave it themselves and so figure out ways to become
Speaker 2: self reliant and to be able to survive outside of civilization.
Speaker 1: Does there tend to be, in your experience, much overlap
Speaker 1: between doomsday preppers and sovereign citizens.
Speaker 3: Yeah, loo's a good question. I don't have a whole
Speaker 3: lot of data.
Speaker 2: You can imagine that those kinds of world views align.
Speaker 2: If you ask someone who believes that the law is illegitimate,
Speaker 2: you might, you know, naturally, think about what alternatives that
Speaker 2: you have.
Speaker 3: But very often, I can say from my.
Speaker 2: Experiences of the doomsday prepper communities. You know, that ultimately
Speaker 2: fatalistic view of society, This idea that eventually something's going
Speaker 2: to happen and it's all going to fall apart, comes
Speaker 2: hand in hand with I guess, pretty negative view of
Speaker 2: society that you often see with sovereign citizens.
Speaker 1: All right, well, tell me more about Freeman's I suppose
Speaker 1: anti authority journey online. You mentioned that quite early on
Speaker 1: he was posting about the legal system, So tell me
Speaker 1: a bit more about what he was actually putting out
Speaker 1: there and how that progressed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, when you look through his Facebook feed, it
Speaker 2: was actually remarkable the way that there was just this
Speaker 2: clear journey. He was sharing well known MRAs like men
Speaker 2: rights activists.
Speaker 3: Or figures who are popular with them.
Speaker 2: So you know, for example, he shared stuff from Sidney Watson,
Speaker 2: a well known YouTuber who was talking about women pedling lies,
Speaker 2: trying to abuse the family call process to get custody
Speaker 2: of children.
Speaker 5: If we all actually cared about the welfare of children,
Speaker 5: like so many feminists and other allowed screeny people like
Speaker 5: to see they do, then all sides of this would
Speaker 5: be calling to rectify a justice system that destroys the
Speaker 5: lives of fathers.
Speaker 3: A Betina Aren't.
Speaker 2: Also an Australian who was quite well known, Desi Freeman
Speaker 2: was sharing her.
Speaker 6: Content saying there's an epidemic of domestic violence in this
Speaker 6: country is a gross deception and that utter insult to
Speaker 6: the bulk of decent, safe Australian men.
Speaker 2: We shared this post of Pauline Hanson talking about how
Speaker 2: the family court system was inherently unfair to men and fathers.
Speaker 7: We've heard about domestic violence orders brought against you know, partners.
Speaker 7: That is untrue. There's lies being told. You know, people
Speaker 7: have their own self interests, but it really at the
Speaker 7: end of the day, is it right on the other parent?
Speaker 7: Is it right for the children?
Speaker 2: He also showed a kind of interesting I would say
Speaker 2: conservative Christian figures. He posted about Israel Flal's conflict with
Speaker 2: Robby Australia when he was sacked over his homophobic posts.
Speaker 8: When you say, because I'm so inclusive, I can't include you,
Speaker 8: because we're so about unity, we're going to disunite from you,
Speaker 8: because we're all about tolerance, We're not going to tolerate you,
Speaker 8: it doesn't.
Speaker 3: Make a gram of sense.
Speaker 8: What this really is about, the truth about this is
Speaker 8: that they hate what he believes and they intend to
Speaker 8: punish him for it.
Speaker 2: And so you know, from early on he equally had
Speaker 2: these politics, but it wasn't kind of all consuming. And
Speaker 2: I really noticed that ramping up in the lead into
Speaker 2: that summer of twenty nineteen twenty twenty, where it kind
Speaker 2: of feels like that was a change for everyone. It
Speaker 2: was a pretty terrible bushfire season. Desi Freeman was obviously,
Speaker 2: you know, very interesting the environment and had a lot
Speaker 2: of attention to it. You know, he had a lot
Speaker 2: of photographs and posts about fires, but he kind of
Speaker 2: picked up on some of that climate denihilism, where he
Speaker 2: would blame, for example, not man made climate change, but
Speaker 2: instead he would talk about, you know, the need for
Speaker 2: more backburning and why that hadn't been done. And then
Speaker 2: when it came to COVID nineteen into early twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: you know, that really marked a big change for him.
Speaker 1: Okay, tell me a bit more about how much COVID
Speaker 1: ramped up his beliefs, and I suppose I was soo
Speaker 1: his actions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So there's this moment in early twenty twenty where
Speaker 2: his profile, which was varied up to that point, becomes
Speaker 2: obsessive about one thing, which was COVID nineteen restrictions, and
Speaker 2: you could see that there's just a moment in March
Speaker 2: twenty twenty where suddenly he posts about it for the
Speaker 2: first time. I think, if Ericle correctly, it's a meme
Speaker 2: like that's like COVID nineteen no actually like COVID nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty four, a reference to the dystopic novel. And from there,
Speaker 2: you know, not only is he posting intensely about it,
Speaker 2: you know, his rhetoric, his language orly steps up, but
Speaker 2: also he's just posting a lot about it. He's posting,
Speaker 2: you know, many times a day and you know, every day.
Speaker 3: Of the week. And from that point you see him
Speaker 3: immediately cast.
Speaker 2: COVID nineteen and the public health response to it as
Speaker 2: a conspiracy about government control. That's when he starts to
Speaker 2: then post about former Victorian Premier Dan Andrews. And then ultimately,
Speaker 2: as has been and you know, while we reported, you know,
Speaker 2: he would go on to file documents that would attempt
Speaker 2: to try Dan Andrews for treason.
Speaker 3: Ultimately that was rejected, but he immediately.
Speaker 2: Showed that he had a disdain for this kind of
Speaker 2: government control over his life. And then those sovereign citizen
Speaker 2: or pseudo or ideas, this way of like, not only
Speaker 2: do I disagree with the public health restrictions, but actually,
Speaker 2: like I actually think that he's done something inherently legally wrong.
Speaker 2: That was his way of almost enacting those beliefs.
Speaker 1: So he showed these strong anti government beliefs. But what
Speaker 1: about the police specifically, when does he start to direct
Speaker 1: anger towards them and in what way?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, police, more than anything else over that seven
Speaker 2: year period was really the people who got the focus
Speaker 2: of his eye. And you know, looking back is almost
Speaker 2: chilling in the way that it was so obvious, you know,
Speaker 2: the early posts, even before things really took a turn
Speaker 2: around COVID, he would accuse them of being you know,
Speaker 2: corrupt or not good to their jobs.
Speaker 3: In the lead up to twenty.
Speaker 2: Twenty, he would share stories, for example, out police misconduct
Speaker 2: that we're in the media and attached his own commentary
Speaker 2: to it.
Speaker 3: But that really took on a.
Speaker 2: New level when they were responsible for, you know, enforcing
Speaker 2: lockdowns and mask mandates and that kind of things. You
Speaker 2: must produce your ID card before exercising a power. You're
Speaker 2: exercising a power right by questioning, you're.
Speaker 1: Going to provide your name and address, taste hel he'd
Speaker 1: be humanizing them, he would be calling for ultimately violence
Speaker 1: against them.
Speaker 3: He shared some images.
Speaker 2: Once of someone else and then once he purported of
Speaker 2: his wife sustaining injuries of bruising from an interaction with police.
Speaker 2: I believe that that was to do with something to
Speaker 2: do with like a clash because of COVID nineteen restrictions,
Speaker 2: you are unhormal and he would ultimately, you know, call
Speaker 2: for the Nuremberg I against them, soference to those Nazi
Speaker 2: era public trials and ultimately executions of the German officers
Speaker 2: who were responsible for carrying out everything that happened in
Speaker 2: Nazi Germany. You know, he was directing all of that
Speaker 2: at police in a pretty extreme way.
Speaker 1: Coming up what we can learn from tracking Desi Freeman's
Speaker 1: online journey cam Desi Freeman is not the first person
Speaker 1: with this type of belief system to be accused of
Speaker 1: murdering police officers in Australia. So how much overlap is
Speaker 1: there between the things that he was posting and what
Speaker 1: we know about the trains so Nathaniel Stacey and Gareth
Speaker 1: and the types of things they believed in before they
Speaker 1: murdered two police officers and their neighbor in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I said, ultimately as philosophically not that different in
Speaker 2: some ways, but kind of almost from a different end.
Speaker 2: I went the Wienbiller in quest. I covered the shooting
Speaker 2: after it happened. Gareth Train, based on his online posts
Speaker 2: his YouTube account that I discovered he was kind of
Speaker 2: more again obsessed with these powerful forces.
Speaker 9: A forensic psychiatrist, after analyzing diary entries, letters and text messages,
Speaker 9: told the coroner of the Trains were in the grip
Speaker 9: of a shared psychotic disorder.
Speaker 2: He believed that he was being surveiled by the government.
Speaker 2: He believed that the helicopters flying over his property at
Speaker 2: times trying to spy on him.
Speaker 9: The court herd Gareth Train was the dominant force. He
Speaker 9: was paranoid, obsessed with guns and spooked conspiracy theories.
Speaker 2: The Trains and Gareth specifically cast these polices almost like
Speaker 2: a more powerful force, whereas DESI just saw them as
Speaker 2: you know, the foot soldiers of a deeply unfair thing,
Speaker 2: you know. He viewed the more as I guess you
Speaker 2: would call it, like fascists and unfair and not like
Speaker 2: a secret pot.
Speaker 1: And cam to what extent should we consider people like
Speaker 1: Freeman as loan actors versus part of a coherent group,
Speaker 1: because police in Victoria seem to believe that he is
Speaker 1: being harbored by other people right now, which seems to
Speaker 1: suggest that, you know, he knows people, He has loyalty
Speaker 1: from people who presumably have the same kind of belief
Speaker 1: system as him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's hard to know again without more
Speaker 2: details about his life. Freeman was obviously on a property
Speaker 2: with several other people, you know, like he was part
Speaker 2: of a local community. He wasn't a significant figure in
Speaker 2: pseudo or movements. While he did, you know, his stories
Speaker 2: did gain some notoriety and he did have some connection
Speaker 2: to them, it wasn't like he built up a significant following.
Speaker 3: He was just one guy in it who had.
Speaker 2: Clearly acted on some of it and then had that
Speaker 2: interaction with police when they tried to act out that
Speaker 2: warrant in late August. So to what we can tell
Speaker 2: from based on what's been made public, While he may
Speaker 2: have people who are helping him, this was not like,
Speaker 2: you know, the coordinated activity.
Speaker 3: Of a group. This is not a movement, the pseudo
Speaker 3: wall movement.
Speaker 2: That's deeply organized and working together. They are a kind
Speaker 2: of broad like constellation of people who you know, have
Speaker 2: some interactions, may listen to similar information sources, but are
Speaker 2: ultimately on their own. These are people who, because of
Speaker 2: their own individual circumstances and because of their own belief system,
Speaker 2: ultimately decide to do something like this. And that's largely
Speaker 2: a very least like a kind of personal decision, and
Speaker 2: that makes it so difficult to track because who knows
Speaker 2: when that boils over for them?
Speaker 3: And unfortunately, you know this is the kind of consequence
Speaker 3: what it does.
Speaker 1: And all of this material that you've been going through online,
Speaker 1: they show how Freeman's obsessions they kind of fested over time,
Speaker 1: and how he started to kind of make threats I suppose,
Speaker 1: and he was posting sort of fantasies of violence. So
Speaker 1: what should we take from looking back over someone's radicalization
Speaker 1: like this.
Speaker 2: It's such a vexed problem because as someone who's paid
Speaker 2: a lot of attention to these communities, there is a
Speaker 2: lot of violent rhetoric that freaks me out, as you
Speaker 2: freak everyone out.
Speaker 3: But I also know.
Speaker 2: That the vast majority of those people never escalate to
Speaker 2: a point of violence like Freeman, did you know, like
Speaker 2: the trains did, it's a very difficult from the outside
Speaker 2: to know who is going to do it, while at
Speaker 2: the same time, when you look back at these you're like,
Speaker 2: I'm not at all surprised that someone who was saying
Speaker 2: these things ended up doing it.
Speaker 3: So I'm recently authored a book. Well, one of the
Speaker 3: things that we.
Speaker 2: Kind of understood is that you know, there are these
Speaker 2: material influences on why people believe extreme and things or
Speaker 2: conspiracy beliefs, and ultimately, I think you know, if you're
Speaker 2: looking at this group of people and you don't know
Speaker 2: which one's about to boil over, perhaps the best thing
Speaker 2: to be doing is thinking about, well, how can we
Speaker 2: overall decrease the group of people who feel that way?
Speaker 2: What are we doing to make sure these people don't
Speaker 2: get to the point where they believe that's the only
Speaker 2: way out. Zie Freeman did is it's inexcusable, no matter
Speaker 2: what circumstances he was under like, there is no excuse
Speaker 2: for what he had done.
Speaker 3: But it's also.
Speaker 2: Worth understanding that there are circumstances that we do know
Speaker 2: that broadly lead people to these things, and so whatever
Speaker 2: we can do to reduce those I think will ultimately
Speaker 2: have some kind of beneficial effect. A man like this
Speaker 2: tries to live his life off the grid, and that's
Speaker 2: going to make tracking and understanding him difficult. I do,
Speaker 2: unfortunately think that there is just a randomness to this
Speaker 2: and that's a very uncomfortable thing to have to sit with.
Speaker 2: We can't track and know what's going on in everyone's mind.
Speaker 2: I think that there are definitely ideas about how to
Speaker 2: bring people back into society, but I would just say
Speaker 2: just generally, like the temperature for everyone is so high,
Speaker 2: and no doubt that's how a contribution.
Speaker 1: To this well, Ken, thank you so much for your
Speaker 1: time my persure, I thank you. You can read cam
Speaker 1: Wilson's reporting on DESI Rhaman at krikey dot com dot
Speaker 1: a U. Also in the news today, Australian health experts,
Speaker 1: including the Peak Body for Obstetricians and Gynecologists have condemned
Speaker 1: comments from US President Donald Trump warning of paracetamol use
Speaker 1: during pregnancy. President Trump has made unfounded claims that pregnant
Speaker 1: women should limit their use of paracetamol, which he says
Speaker 1: heightens the chance of autism in a child. Australia's Medicines
Speaker 1: regulator the Therapeutic Goods Administration reconfirmed that the drug is
Speaker 1: safe for use in pregnancy, and the Trump administration's claims
Speaker 1: have been broadly condemned as baseless and causing unnecessary fear.
Speaker 1: And A New South Wales police officer has been charged
Speaker 1: with assault over the arrest of former Green's candidate Hannah
Speaker 1: Thomas during a protest in southwest Sydney in June of
Speaker 1: this year. Thomas alleges she was punched by a male officer,
Speaker 1: causing a serious injury to her eye, as police tried
Speaker 1: to arrest her for failing to comply with a move
Speaker 1: on direction during a protest outside a Sydney firm reportedly
Speaker 1: linked to the manufacture of components for United States fighter
Speaker 1: jets used by the Israeli Defense Forces. A thirty three
Speaker 1: year old senior constable has been issued a court attendance
Speaker 1: for assault occasioning actual bodily hump. I'm Ruby Jones. This
Speaker 1: is seven am. See you tomorrow.