Parliamentarians have spent a heck of a lot of time this year hearing from intelligence agencies and law enforcement bodies about the increasing visibility of extremist groups.
Back in April, ASIO chief Mike Burgess said about 40% of the intelligence body’s work is related to ideologically inspired extremists. Six months later, Burgess had upped the number to 50%. Islamist groups and their individual adherents make up the balance.
There’s a smorgasbord of extremist characters believing in all manner of wacky, weird and not so wonderful things that have emerged from the shadows at protests or online. The questions are, is the government doing enough to combat them, and if not, what else could it do?
Here’s a list of what MPs should consider as they reflect on what to do to minimise the influence of extremist groups and their propagandists.
Proscription of groups
Proscription of groups as terrorist groups under Australian law takes place now. It is necessary in order to make it harder for those that are adherents to ideologies that advocate extreme violence as a solution to problems.
One area that merits further consideration is for the Australian government to move in lockstep with Five Eyes allies and proscribe organisations as and when they are proscribed by countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and New Zealand.
Australia currently has more Islamist groups on its list of proscribed organisations that it does far-right groups. There are only two far-right groups listed. This is understandable given the focus on Islamic State and al-Qaeda following the September 11 attacks, but there is a need to ensure that similar steps are taken for groups that are dedicated to violent extremism in the pursuit of ideologies other than global jihadism.
Proscription of individuals
Both Canada and New Zealand have in recent times proscribed individuals. New Zealand proscribed the Christchurch shooter, and Canada’s legal eagles proscribed James Mason, the author of a range of articles that form the basis of essential doctrine for far-right extremists. Australia should also have the same capacity to proscribe an individual, but the process must have appropriate judicial oversight so proscription is subject to stringent legal review.
Initiatives to remove extremist content
Owners of platforms that supply the channels through which violent extremists communicate need to be encouraged or incentivised to remove accounts that relate to ideologically motivated violent extremism. Encrypted messaging platform Telegram publishes daily updates on the number of jihadist and child abuse channels that they remove. These updates demonstrate platforms are able to intervene and remove accounts that are aimed at planning and coordinating violent extremist activity.
Increase digital literacy
Studies from groups such as the RAND Corporation, the Soufan Center and the Oxford Internet Institute have consistently pointed to the willingness of extremist groups as well as state-based actors to use social media to seek to promote narratives that are intended to create or capitalise on existing social disquiet.
An important part of minimising the influence of extremists and their networks and state-based bad actors is to promote greater digital literacy. It is important that there is an understanding of how the various platforms are used to publish propaganda intended to misinform. Journalists such as Crikey’s own Cam Wilson and others lift the veil on practices designed to prey on the vulnerable, but a broad-based educational campaign funded by governments to promote the notion of people being sceptical when they read online content is essential.
Curriculum in schools
US musician and race reconciler Daryl Davis told Crikey earlier this year that much of what goes on in society where prejudice is concerned stems from ignorance. Davis assisted America’s former top Nazi, Jeff Schoep, to start the process of disengaging with the ideology when he interviewed him for his 2016 documentary Accidental Courtesy. The story of Davis and Schoep is one of discourse and dialogue that causes people to have their thinking challenged. It is also a reminder that racism and hatred is learned — and can be unlearned.
For some people, that unlearning can come with great personal pain and contrition. Former Nazi Fred Cook discovered he was related to Jews when he decided to undertake further research into his own background after leaving the white supremacist movement. Cook set himself on the pathway of converting to Judaism once he discovered that the very people he had been vilifying were in fact his own people.
There must be a commitment from governments to ensure curriculums across Australia are developed so schools teach comparative philosophy and comparative belief systems. People understand that the world is seen in different ways by people who are from different parts of the world. The only way to build understanding is to expose people to different concepts and ideas, and the education system provides a foundation for developing a broader worldview.
Australia has a government who actively encourages right-wing extremists to gather.
Over the years (generally around election time) Peter Dutton (allegedly) has railed against illegal immigrants (what I refer to as desperate refugees seeking safety) Muslims, African gangs (when there was no need to), China, you get my drift.
We wonder why right-wing extremists have grabbed the opportunity to terrorise whoever or whatever their target is this week. It’s because they’ve been given a green light.
Exactly, it’s about time good journalists, political leaders, civil society and influencers called out Australia’s ‘relaxed and casual racism’ via the proxy white Australia agitprop since Howard’s time, to garner more votes from ageing socially conservative Anglo-Celtic heritage citizens (crowded in the upper median age vote).
This includes an obsessive focus upon and dog whistling of refugees, Muslims, Chinese, ‘immigrants’, NOM and ‘population growth’ as pseudo scientific support for the extremists’ ‘great replacement theory’, informed by the contemporary eugenics movement, and reinforced by legacy media, in the Anglosphere.
Short memories, remember that many Australians post WWII did not want either Catholic or Jewish immigration….. but the same are now honorary WASPs.
We’ve forgotten the last time we allowed far-right extremists to raise their heads without being quickly put back in the ‘unacceptable box’. Our parents and grandparents had to fight them – physically – for years to extinguish the warped madness that accompanied their rise. We need to now act with the same resolve and determination. They were unacceptable then, they are unacceptable now, the ‘box’ awaits.
Need also to revive the study of Asian languages and cultures and possibly also those of other parts of the world, given we have settlers from South America, Africa and the Middle East.
A number of us who did Asian Studies at uni many years ago were reflecting recently that one of the really valuable lessons from those studies (language, culture and history) was to understand that others can view the world quite differently to us and that their way of seeing the world is just as valid.
Fewer law and business degrees, more languages and humanities.
Agree I studied Mandarin and Japanese back in the 1970s..I had also lived in Singapore before and during the birth of Malaysia..when it was a much more Asian city.
Through my eyes and mind in both situations I became much more aware of how there are completely different ways of regarding the world and its properties.
“This is understandable given the focus on Islamic State and al-Qaeda following the September 11 attacks”
Not really. The world’s changed quite a bit in the last 20 years. Time our leaders changed with it, especially the ones in intelligence.
The world has changed a lot since 11.09.1973.Extremists of all ‘wings’ are dangerous.
Esp the nuts that hold the wings together.
What was ignored then and continues to be now is the part played by the House of Saud and the KSA in the attacks of 11 September…and KSA is still the largest supporter of Islamist terrorism around the world.
A date on which the Chile Coup was launched aided and abetted by the US/CIA , with as revealed in declassified document the assistance of ASIS, as directed by Big Ears McMahon, with the LNP of the day ever eager to kowtow to the US.
I don’t have any issue with any of the suggestions made in this article.
However one other possible approach in dealing with terrorist organizations might be to take a leaf out of the old Soviet Union playbook and set up a version of Operation Trust which, as I understand it, was quite successful in monitoring anti-Soviet terrorists and facilitating their arrest when necessary.
Operation Trust was a counterintelligence operation originally established by the Cheka under its director Felix Dzerzhinsky. It was later operated by the State Political Directorate (GPU). The Trust was a fake anti-Bolshevik resistance organization used to attract those who wished to bring the Communist Revolution down.
Thanks for that, I knew that the Dzershinsky aka Iron Felix, was devious, but that brings some more out from
the shadows,
Not aware of that specific op. but fly-paper is an old, tried & true strategy.
I have read that Fidel Castro was a serious practitioner of this technique. Helps explain how the Castro family held Cuba for so long.
Mao’s version, late 1956-early 1957, was “Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend”.
Very handy for identifying future crime, people outing themselves, making it easy for them to be picked up and re-educated (if lucky) when, in July 1957, he did an about face and launched the Anti-Rightist, the fore-runner of the Cultural Revolution.
The weak-as Public Information Disclosure Act foisted on us by Dreyfus seems to have been modelled on this (sleeper Tort/Fabian entryists?) fly-paper aspect.