“If you are a conservative,anti-vaxx,freedom lover,protester,common law,conspiracy talker,alternative news,independent critical thinker,truther,Christian,patriot etc etc expect a visit from these hammers,” he said in one post,referring to the Queensland Special Emergency Response Team.
Police constables Rachel McCrow and Matthew Arnold were gunned down by a man who held extremist views.Credit:Queensland Police
Queensland Police are investigating what role,if any,Train’s extremist views played in the killings. At this stage,the federal government does not believe the killings constitute a terrorist attack.
But the tragic events in Wieambilla offer a chilling reminder that far-right extremism remains a serious threat in Australia,even as the angst over lockdowns and other COVID-19 restrictions fade from public attention.
Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil acknowledged as much on Thursday,when she told parliament that “conspiracy theories,disinformation and misinformation problems as old as time are being turbocharged by technology into terrible acts of violence.”
“They’re presenting a new kind of threat to national security.”
When he released ASIO’s annual threat assessment in February,Burgess warned that some “angry and alienated Australians” could turn to violence after becoming trapped in an echo chamber of misinformation and conspiratorial thinking during their pandemic isolation.
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Lydia Khalil,one of the nation’s leading experts on far-right extremism,notes that while some COVID freedom warriors have moved on,the pandemic experience has had a long-term radicalising effect on others. “For some,it increased the sense of crisis and urgency to act – the sense that ‘we can’t take this anymore’,” she says.
As Khalil notes,it’s too early to definitively say what motivated the Wieambilla killings. But it’s clear innovative strategies are needed to help de-radicalise Australians who fall deep down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole.
In a democracy people are allowed to hold unusual,even whacky,views but when they drift towards violence lives are at stake. The energy and money Australia poured into combating the threat of radical Islam after September 11 needs to be summoned for the emerging threats of today.
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news,views and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley.Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter here.