by Jeff Sparrow
The internet allowed Australian fascists to link up with their domestic supporters in a geographically huge but sparsely populated country. Through Facebook, Shermon Burgess could initiate a national organisation from a regional town in southern New South Wales — and Person X could participate in that movement from Grafton, 1,000 kilometres away.
In late 2015, internal tensions erupted in the UPF, with Cottrell deposing Burgess from the leadership. Erikson sided with Burgess (releasing videos exposing the Nazi past of various UPF figures), before eventually reuniting with Cottrell.22
Person X followed the schism closely, intervening on Facebook to denounce Erikson and Burgess as ‘useful idiots’.
‘Leave the nationalist leadership to Blair … or be named obvious plants and traitors,’ Person X warned.
He repeatedly posted endorsements of Cottrell, a man he hailed as his ‘Emperor’. When Cottrell appeared on television, Person X could barely contain his glee.
‘Never believed we would have a true leader of the nationalist movement in Australia,’ he wrote, ‘and especially not so early in the game. Would gladly stand behind you.’23
Person X’s enthusiasm for Cottrell makes sense given that they shared the view that ‘enemies’ should be executed. In his manifesto, Person X threatens anti-fascists directly, saying, ‘I want your neck under my boot.’24
On a comment on the UPF Facebook page, he made the same point.
‘Communists will get what communists get,’ he wrote. ‘I would love to be there holding one end of the rope when you get yours traitor.’25
He repeated the sentiment in a Facebook Messenger conversation with an interlocutor, where he defended the UPF as ‘the leading ethno-nationalist group within Australia’.
The conversation ended with Person X noting that the critic had been marked. ‘[I]f you are a Marxist,’ he said, ‘I hope you one day meet the rope.’
Though the police were warned, they did nothing, advising the complainant to use the block facility.
To the authorities, Person X’s interventions probably seemed unexceptional because the UPF Facebook page was flooded with similar comments: calls for the bashings of leftists, the execution of journalists, the drowning of refugees, and so on.
‘[T]here is,’ wrote The Saturday Paper’s Martin McKenzie-Murray, ‘a fondness in the patriot movement for the language of epidemiology — filth, disease, contamination. The popular metaphor is of a healthy body threatened by foreign bacteria. It is the language of battle. Extinction.’26
In some ways, the UPF resembled the Traditionalist Worker Party, in that, throughout 2015 and 2016, it organised real-world rallies and events, promising to (in Cottrell’s words) unleash ‘force and terror’ against its opponents.27
Yet, like their overseas equivalents, the Australian fascists always reached many more people on social media than they did at demonstrations. At its peak, the UPF page gathered more than 120,000 likes, with individual Facebook posts generating hundreds of comments. The organisation — and its leaders — produced a stream of popular YouTube videos.
The vast majority of people who interacted with the Australian ‘patriot movement’ thus did so — like Person X — online. Yet leading activists repeatedly signalled that their ideas should be applied to the real world, particularly through real-world confrontations with those identified as enemies.
Neil Erikson, an inveterate attention-seeker, infamously confronted and racially abused then-Labor senator Sam Dastyari at a Melbourne pub, brought a coffin into a Moreland council meeting, and interrupted services at a Gosford church.28
In November 2015, Erikson, Cottrell, and two other UPF members made uninvited visits to the Melbourne Anarchist Club in Northcote and the left-wing community radio station 3CR. They entered both buildings and filmed those inside, with the footage later appearing online.29
The visits were clearly intimidatory, signalling to the UPF’s enemies that their location was known. That intimidation was exacerbated by Cottrell’s own history of criminal stalking. He had been jailed in 2013 for arson, burglary, and damaging property belonging to a romantic rival. In a prison video, he discussed how he’d waited outside the man’s house with knives stashed in his jacket.30
Even more alarmingly, on the MAC visit, Cottrell had been accompanied by a UPF activist called Chris Shortis. The Age later revealed Shortis’s social media history, including clips in which he declared himself a ‘Biblical crusader’ and a ‘gun lover’, and images in which he posed bare-chested clutching high-powered rifles and pistols. Shortis denounced Islam as ‘demonic’, and claimed the UN intended to install the Pope to head up a new world order. He insisted that, eventually, ‘patriots’ would find it necessary to take up arms against both Muslims and the Australian government.
‘We’ll end up fighting [Muslims] one way or another …’ he said in one video, ‘we should be doing it with absolute brutality.’
The University of South Australia academic Chloe Patton made the obvious comparison: ‘Here we have an individual who is clearly radicalised, who is brandishing firearms while preaching holy war. The intricate conspiracy theories and crusader symbolism immediately brings to mind Anders Breivik.’31
If the strategy of the UPF mirrored that of the American fascists, so too did its eventual fate.
In August and October 2015, the UPF attended two anti-Muslim protests in the regional city of Bendigo that attracted hundreds of supporters. Thereafter, it found itself consistently outnumbered by anti-racist activists and police, so much so that its events became increasingly unviable.
In early 2016, Cottrell announced the launch of a parliamentary party under the unlikely name ‘Fortitude’, but proved unable to gather the necessary signatures for its registration. As the UPF members bickered and threatened each other, Cottrell, Shortis, and Erikson were found guilty of inciting contempt against Muslims with a video showing a fake beheading.32 Shortis was then stripped of his gun licence.33
At one point, Cottrell had explained to journalists the centrality of Facebook to UPF. ‘It’s … indispensable to the development of our organisation,’ he said. ‘Without it, we would probably be a separatist cult where no one would be able to relate to us because no one would be able to actually hear us directly …’34
So it proved. In mid-2017, the page was deleted (perhaps after an intervention by security agencies)35 in a final blow to the already disintegrating organisation.36
Thereafter, key UPF members went through a reassessment process reminiscent of the American ‘Optics War’. Cottrell, Sewell, and others abandoned their attempt to build an overtly political organisation. They established, with the help of James Buckle (a former president of Firearm Owners United), The Lads Society: a project based around martial-arts and bodybuilding gyms.37
Like Anglin, they didn’t believe they were ready for further confrontations. Where Anglin wanted to build cadres online, the TLS wanted to recruit in their gymnasiums, rather than at marches at which they were outnumbered and harassed.
‘We tried many things in the past, but this project is different,’ said Sewell. ‘We want to provide a space for people like us.’38
That was the context in which he, on behalf of the TLS, contacted Person X via Facebook and invited him to join. According to Sewell, Person X refused, partly because he was about to leave for New Zealand — but also because he no longer cared about optics.
The activists associated with the UPF/TLS thus parted company with Person X. They played no part in his terror attack, which they subsequently condemned.
But they hadn’t shed their own fascist ideas. Indeed, the personnel of The Lads Society overlapped with that of Antipodean Resistance, an openly Nazi organisation.39 As Sewell made clear in a discussion with The Age, the TLS members still wanted to build a white ethno-state, and they were still prepared to fight against those who opposed them.
The statement, so redolent of the UPF’s approach, highlighted the opportunities that even the small Australian scene presented for Person X’s strategy.
One of the ‘names and addresses’ identified by the UPF during its brief lifespan belonged, as we have seen, to the Melbourne Anarchist Club. In 2016, police charged Phil Galea, a heavyset, wild-bearded man from Braybook, with plotting to blow up the MAC.41
During Galea’s committal hearing on charges of planning to commit a terrorist act and collecting material in connection with a terrorist act, the prosecution referred to phone taps. These intercepts allegedly showed Galea deciding to bomb the Trades Hall in Carlton and a building belonging to the socialist group Resistance. He was also said to be targeting the same Melbourne Anarchist Club that Cottrell, Erikson, and Shortis had blamed for housing their enemies.42
Had the bombings gone ahead, the results would have been catastrophic, as Galea seemed to understand.
One witness said that Galea considered the bystanders who would have been killed by his attacks as ‘casualties of war’. Galea was said to have been assembling a manual (something he called the ‘Patriots Cook Book’) to train right-wingers in techniques of violence.
‘One of the things he had [in his purported manual],’ the witness explained, ‘was how much battery acid to inject into a leftie. He thought it was important to show the right wing how to hurt the left.’43
Another witness said Galea discussed ‘torture techniques’ and ‘chopping people up’.44
Galea did not seem to have been in contact with Person X. He had, however, been connected to Reclaim Australia. Even though some of his associates described him as ‘nuts’, he had served as an administrator for some of RA’s social media. He’d also been a supporter of the True Blue Crew, another tiny fascist group — and one that Person X had explicitly praised.45
After Galea’s arrest, the TBC leader, Kane Miller, angrily rejected any association with his plans. ‘Anyone to think an act of terrorism,’ he said, ‘or to hurt innocent people is the right way to go about either fixing things or creating awareness is an absolute idiot.’
Miller played no role in Galea’s bomb-making schemes, just as he played no role in Person X’s massacre. Yet Miller — like Galea, the UPF, and Person X — saw physical violence as key to defeating the enemies of fascists.
‘How do we fucking do it, TBC?’ Kane had screamed to his supporters during one rally.
‘Smash cunts!’ came the reply.46
The tiny fascist scene in Australia has always attracted criminals, including a number of murderers. As recently as 2016, three members of the Perth Nazi group Aryan Nations bashed to death a fourth person in an attempt to secure an insurance payout.47
But, as Person X understood, such criminality became particularly dangerous because of its association with ideology. The commitment to redemptive violence against perceived enemies, combined with the dissociative effects of the internet, created an environment in which atrocities could be normalised, especially for young men who were already mentally troubled.
Obviously, ‘smashing cunts’ was not the same as setting off bombs (or shooting up a mosque). But the exterminism that ran through the ‘patriot movement’ meant that the difference could seem to be one of tactics rather than of principles.
In a political culture in which leading figures repeatedly praised the execution or murder of opponents, individuals planning horrific acts could find solace and encouragement.
Again, the prominent members of the organised fascist groups in Australia rejected Person X’s strategy, both before his murders and after them. But Person X was not reliant on prominent figures within organisations. His approach was calculated to appeal to the marginal and the unstable, who, via the internet, could easily latch onto fascism and the violence it encouraged.
In 2017, a neo-Nazi called Michael James Holt was sent to jail in New South Wales for the possession of child pornography and a huge arsenal of real and replica weapons.48 Holt had previously told a school counsellor that he regarded Adolf Hitler as ‘the greatest person to live’, and said that he often fantasised about committing mass homicides. When they raided his house, police found eight firearms hidden in cupboards, as well as a huge stash of fascist literature. The judge mused that Holt had the potential to be ‘the next Martin Bryant’ (a reference to the man who murdered 35 people in Port Arthur, Tasmania, in 1996).49
Holt seems to have been aligned with the Christian Separatist Church, an American far-right organisation, rather than any of the local grouplets. Yet he knew at least some of the UPF leaders online.
In a series of posts on Facebook, Holt had documented his deteriorating mental health, writing ‘I am going crazy at a rapidly increasing rate’ and ‘what tha [sic] fuck’s going on get back to me somebody, need to stomp some skulls’. He added, ‘Need to shed some fuckin’ commie blood, if there isn’t a rumble today we should fuckin start one’, and then wrote, ‘mudbloods are committing a crime just by encroaching the upon [sic] personal space of those of Noble Blood, the punishment for which should be death!’
Those last two messages — explicit calls for political violence by a clearly disturbed young man — were both ‘liked’ by Neil Erikson.50
Every political movement attracts fringe elements. But the nature of fascism meant that truly dangerous people were not deterred but encouraged. It is difficult, after all, to think of another milieu in which a leading activist might express public approval for a post about racial murder.
The Australian fascist scene in which Person X intervened in 2015 and 2016 was noisy but not particularly large by historical or international standards. Much bigger movements existed in many countries.
In any case, the repercussions of Christchurch were felt globally, as Person X knew they would be. There were young men like Michael Holt all over the world. They didn’t need to go to fascist meetings to stumble upon Person X’s manifesto and video. Once they found them, they would be presented both with a cause and a method of serving that cause.
Imitators might come from anywhere.
CONCLUSION
HOPE AGAINST HATE
The atrocities committed by Person X will not lead to the establishment of a fascist dictatorship in New Zealand or anywhere else. In that specific sense — in his conviction that he will be freed like Nelson Mandela by the victory of ‘his people’ — Person X might be described as delusional. But there was nothing delusional in his belief that he would encourage imitative crimes.
In the immediate aftermath of the killings, rival far-right leaders (including Blair Cottrell) worried that the violence would hurt their cause.1 But others — particularly those attuned to the online environment — were more enthusiastic.
‘Even though it is bad behavior, it definitely feels really fucking good to watch,’ wrote Andrew ‘weev’ Auernheimer on The Daily Stormer.
His co-thinker, Andrew Anglin, agreed.
‘Of the mass shootings I have seen, this is by far the funniest one of them all.’ While claiming not to support the massacre, he added, significantly, ‘it sure as hell wasn’t bad optics.’2
Identifying himself as a veteran of the ‘Optics War’, the far-right commentator Travis LeBlanc expressed astonishment at the response to Person X’s actions.
‘There’s something … different about this. Like something has changed, like a corner has been turned … This Christchurch massacre has done something that other public relations catastrophes such as Dylann Roof and Charlottesville did not do: it has actually sparked a dialogue favorable to our cause.’3
On fascist-inflected sites like Gab or 8chan, Person X’s a
bility to read his audience has become apparent, with many commentators using his name or image as an avatar. Others spoke admiringly of what The Daily Stormer called the ‘mosque prank’.
Anons might praise the massacre, or decry it as a false-flag operation carried out by Jews (sometimes both at the same time), but they remain fascinated by it. As one anon exclaimed, Person X produced ‘possibly the most powerful meme we have ever had: the shooting video’.4
The memification of Christchurch might best be illustrated by the reports published in multiple media outlets in June 2019 about a first-person shooter game that allowed users to play as Person X, whom it described as a man ‘who turned his back on a life of eternal shitposting and decided to become an Epic Gamer’.5
The overwhelming tenor of the coverage was, quite properly, horror and disgust at the trivialisation of mass murder. Yet condemnation by the mainstream media wasn’t perceived by the fascists as a setback. They had, in fact, deliberately set out to attract it, with an 8chan user boasting about making the game — and urging fellow anons to report it.
‘Identify yourself as a concerned parent and Navy Seal,’ he said, ‘and say you found it on reddit.’
He knew — as did his readers — that normie disapproval would delight the intended audience of the prank: the young 8channers for whom public outrage was as amusing as the game itself. Some of them, he hoped, might start brooding on what imitating Person X might be like.
The incident, trivial in itself, illustrated some of the difficulties in responding to the Christchurch massacre and the new fascism more generally.
Immediately after the mosque shooting, considerable attention focused on the media and its responsibilities in covering such attacks. Many progressive journalists and critics argued for the adoption of protocols similar to those developed by No Notoriety, an advocacy group formed by Tom and Caren Teves after the murder of their son Alex during a rage massacre in Colorado.6 New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern advocated a plan dubbed the ‘Christchurch Call’, intended to create a framework for the media to report on massacres and other atrocities without boosting them.7