The Pauline Hanson/One Nation Supporters and Discussion Forum is a peculiar corner of the internet. It’s a melting pot of xenophobia, anti-Islamic bigotry and conspiracy theories.
There are the people saying we should burn down mosques in response to terror attacks, calls for police to be given better guns (and “let’s hope they get to use them”) and articles “proving” a link between Waleed Aly and Islamic State.
But there are also the more obscure, such as complaints palliative care staff are over-medicating patients deliberately and petitions for Whoopi Goldberg to be sacked from The View. If you want to know what Senator Pauline Hanson’s base is thinking, this is where to start.
The closed Facebook group has 50,000 members, many of whom are extremely active. During busy times of the day dozens of new comments are posted almost every minute. It’s hard to imagine any other Australian political party’s base being this consistently active and engaged online.
Moderators do a quick background check before allowing a new member to join (when I tried to enter the forum in March with my real Facebook account I was blocked). The forum is also heavily moderated and posts directly calling for the killing or attacking of Muslims are mostly quickly taken down. The pinned introduction post to the forum by an admin calls for caution from members:
“We need some form of cohesion here. Whilst not attempting to stifle any freedom of expression. We have seen just a few troubling posts and comments that could be considered detrimental to Pauline Hanson and One Nation’s cause.”
Then in all caps:
“WE NEED MEMBERS TO SUPPORT THE WORK OF THE FORUM AND NOT AGAINST IT! SWEARING ON THE FORUM. HATE PREACHING AND INCITING VIOLENCE AGAINST MUSLIMS ACHIEVES ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!”
The forum is a space for people with similar views, but for a “Pauline Hanson forum” there are surprisingly few posts about One Nation or any of its senators. Many of the posts that do directly reference One Nation are posted by a select few admins of the group, who seem keen to keep the discussion focused on Australian politics and the party.
The forum has the occasional complaints about foreign multinationals like Adani and general anti-political-elite posts, like calls for John Howard to be stripped of his parliamentary pension — but the overarching obsession of the group’s members is Islam. In the three months I kept an eye on the forum, I saw a huge surge in activity following terror attacks anywhere in the world. Constantly scrolling down, I could hardly keep up with the hundreds of new comments calling for the expulsion or internment of Muslims.
[Who killed the liberal dream? (Spoiler: it wasn’t ‘fake news’)]
There were also some incredibly honest confessionals of people’s fears; one woman writing she had been unable to watch a movie in the cinema because there was a “middle-eastern man” sitting a few rows behind her and she couldn’t stop thinking that he was going to attack her daughter. Other commenters responded.
“I get very nervous around foreigners now and watch them like a hawk,” one person said. Another wrote that she hadn’t done her Christmas shopping last year because the mall was “prefect for an attack”.
Logging on during and directly after the Four Corners report on Hanson in April was a surprise. The Four Corners report focused on Hanson’s alleged failure to properly report a plane that had been donated to the party, among other serious allegations against the Senator and her top aide, James Ashby. Expecting to find a barrage of defenders of Hanson and posts calling the ABC “fake news”, instead there was silence. It was clear Hanson’s base weren’t interpreting things differently to those in the Twitter echo-chamber; they just weren’t watching.
The barrage of posts came the following morning came in response to the commercial TV and tabloid media’s reporting of the Four Corners investigation. Of the hundreds of posts defending her, almost none made any reference to the actual accusation against Hanson and Ashby, instead focusing on the dishonesty of the ABC and alleging a government conspiracy to remove Hanson.
Only one or two lone voices raised any concerns about the claims. The Facebook group’s creator claims “We have people connected to the offices of One Nation in this forum and receive consistent feedback.” The creator also claims to have assisted One Nation with a membership drive in the lead-up to the Western Australian election earlier this year.
[What happened when Guy Rundle scored an interview with Pauline Hanson]
The “About” section of the forum says the group has “One Nation Senators, their Aides and many candidates and person that hold key positions within One Nation as members of this forum”and encourages people to “make their voices heard”. But the actual level of that connection is unclear.
Searching the 50,000 members for the names of One Nation senators comes back with nothing. There is, however, a young Sunshine Coast man on the forum by the name of “James Ashby”. (When Crikey messaged this James Ashby to confirm if he was the “James Ashby of One Nation”, the message was “seen” but not responded to.)
Crikey sent questions to One Nation about the relationship between the group and party officials and was told “There is no relationship between the official One Nation page/party and the supporters & discussion forum”. And messages sent to the forum creator and another admin garnered no reply.
Brave of you Jarni. You must feel like you need a good shower to wash off the ridiculous vitriol these people churned out. The level of discussion of the Facebook PHON group is both as paranoid and ill-informed as I would expect.
Interesting read. Thanks! Facebook groups can be a great place to start when you don’t understand another person’s point of view. They can also make you want to poke your eyes out with a fork.
I’m not into S&M myself.
Good old-fashioned journalism! Interested to know if you posted moderate views and was the backlash vitriol or ‘reasoned’ argument?
Dear Jarni, it is not a secret group, it is a closed group.
There is a major difference(look it up on Facebook).
I post regularly on Pauline’s supporters page and encourage the swearers, those talking violence and in general spouting misinformation or fake news to desist because people like you, Jarni have a field day with it and label us bogans et al.
I thoroughly check news before posting to make sure it’s factual and will debate with someone who thinks what they read is true when it’s not and to check for themselves before sharing it.
There are sometimes interested people from the other ‘camps’ who ask politely what we believe in and to give evidence to back what we say.
I am happy to do this and have won many arguments ( they are debates really) by treating them with respect.
I do this because the other camps are also misinformed taking what the mainstream media and detractors( such as yourself) say as gospel.
It’s clearly not.
These people do no research either and just rinse and repeat the party line like robots, making fools of themselves.
Many of us reply asking for more information from them but they don’t come back because they have nothing constructive to say.
We do not tolerate trolls or idiots who have an axe to grind offering nothing but abuse.
That doesn’t win anything for anyone.
These people are promptly banned and rightly so.
What I pick up from this group is the major frustration and feeling we are powerless to keep Australia the way it is.
Thus they swear and carry on like ‘pork chops’!
I have suggested many times for these people to take constructive action instead of venting such as become a ON candidate, volunteer, become a member and so on.
You mention all you read is about Islam but there are many threads about the government, its bad decisions and how they waste our money.
Islam is a problem whether you agree or not.
Patriot groups such as Pauline’s and many others have plenty of facts, videos and pictures to support our arguments.
We still have free speech in this country although it is being slowly eroded away as in Blair Cottrell’s case whose patriot page ‘United Patriots Front’ was shut down on Facebook and he is facing jail for doing something that muslims do in protests in this country or in their communities but nothing happens to them.
Why would that be, do you think?
And then there is Antifa who incite violence, perform violence disturbing the peace regularly but don’t get arrested.
I was at a Reclaim Australia rally a couple of years ago in Martin Place and these Antifa people were primed up to cause trouble (looking very demented, I must say) but the police cut them off.
The police had to close off Elizabeth and Market Streets as they took over these streets yelling, shouting, being threatening and scaring normal shoppers.
I noticed a few of them were completely off their faces skipping down the streets waving their arms around wildly singing incoherently from either drugs or euphoric-inducing brain-washing.
They looked like they should have been removed by men in white coats.
The police got me to stand behind them so I wouldn’t be attacked from these crazies as they had seen my large sign ‘God Bless Australia’ and were heading towards me looking for trouble.
The media reported Reclaim Australia started the violence but there was none from us.
We just listened to the speakers with quite a few ‘Aussie aussie aussie oi oi oi’s’.
I recorded many videos to show Antifa and the other brain-dead people were causing the trouble.
Can you explain that?
We don’t like the double standards in this country.