Spectator Australia has repeatedly published far-right white supremacists who are using the popular conservative publication to mainstream and normalise their extreme beliefs.
Spectator Australia is the local arm of the storied UK-based news magazine and has become a home for conservative writing in Australia. Edited by Sky News Australia host Rowan Dean, it has published prominent Australian right-wing figures like Tony Abbott, Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt.
The publication’s online-only vertical “Flat White” publishes a wide range of conservative writers on Australian current affairs. Crikey can reveal that Spectator Australia has published at least three writers who have schemed with neo-Nazis, are enmeshed in far-right online communities and, in at least one case, have worked with known neo-Nazis to try to disrupt their political enemies. The trio’s online presence shows a history of extreme political views, which they have sanitised and repackaged for publication in the mainstream political outlet.
Rowan Dean, Spectator Australia and The Spectator in the UK did not respond to emailed requests for comment.
In the lead-up to the 2019 election, Spectator Australia published an article attacking then prime minister Scott Morrison for having an identical immigration policy to Labor.
“Morrison is on the record as fully backing a large migrant intake in order to bolster GDP numbers and also genuflects before the same altar of misplaced multicultural pieties as Turnbull when it comes to the vast and rapid demographic changes that have rocked our society over the past few decades,” it said, dog-whistling the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory.
The article was written by “Lucas Rosas”, ending with a disclosure that it was republished from Unshackled, a far-right Australian “pseudo-news” website. Rosas appears to be the pseudonym for Luke Hollowood, a Townsville-based former member of the Australian Defence Force (ADF). A title search shows that his address is leased to Defence Housing Australia. Defence did not respond to a request for comment.
Across websites like mainstream conservative publication Quadrant as well as far-right blogs XYZ and Unshackled, Hollowood has written obsessively under a pen name on left-wing activists and politicians, with articles like “Who is more extreme? [Neo-nazi] Blair Cottrell or the Greens?” and “EXPOSED: We name and shame the Antifa Arxists Avi Yemini humiliated”.
His obsession with the left extends to Twitter where he used now-suspended accounts @berginls (a reference to his mother’s maiden name, Bergin) and @Elvatodelasud, which he used to repeatedly harass Sydney activist Paddy Gibson after his house was attacked by a group of neo-Nazis.
Hollowood regularly interacts with Australian neo-Nazis online and, in one case, even planned how they could disrupt left-wing activists. In March this year, he used his pseudonymous Telegram account to encourage National Socialist Network members Michael Edwards and Jack Bell — the latter of whom was charged after stickering a Melbourne suburb with Nazi swastika symbols the day after Victoria’s ban went into effect — to infiltrate a Socialist Alternative rally organising meeting.
“These people do have a weak point vulnerable to (entirely lawful and peaceful) protest,” Hollowood messaged in a private Telegram channel.
Edwards replied, claiming that he’d already attended: “went to one. wont say which [sic].”
Hollowood also claims that he has financially contributed to the running of the Proud Boys, the Australian offshoot of the US-founded, all-male far-right group. In a message sent on Telegram, Hollowood gave advice on designing a “White Lives Matter” banner before messaging: “Just donated myself. Hope you make the news”.
Hollowood did not respond to messages on Instagram or LinkedIn. However, his Telegram account was deleted after Crikey’s messages.
Hollowood’s partner’s LinkedIn profile noted that she is employed as a producer at SBS. In the past, Hollowood has posted claims to have inside knowledge about SBS. After a 2021 Indigenous death in custody, Hollowood posted on Telegram “SBS journalists across all platforms and languages have been told to make the story their number 1 priority.”
Hollowood’s partner not respond to Crikey’s Facebook or LinkedIn messages.
Another Spectator Australia writer is self-described “essayist” and academic Ryan Julian Anderson. He has written 15 articles for the outlet this year with titles like “No, Albo. We don’t need more women at work”, and has also been published in other conservative publications like Quillete and Quadrant.
When Anderson published an article in February titled “Latino Australia? A radical leftist populism may be lying in wait” (which includes the line that “Ethno-culturally, things are similarly fraught” in Latina America and Australia), it was shared by Twitter account @rjhenderso1, which was evidently run by Anderson.
“In which I shamelessly apply [ex-writer for Tucker Carlson-founded online news network The Daily Caller] Scott Greer’s American Chavism,” he tweeted. A month earlier he also shared another of Anderson’s articles.
When not sharing the articles, the account spews white supremacist, anti-Semitic and anti-LGBTQIA+ rhetoric, as well as engaging with other bigoted accounts. It retweeted baseless George Soros-esque conspiracies about support for the Voice to Parliament campaign, and posted photographs of people praying to Mecca in public parks, attacking them.
Sharing a photograph of a sign for last year’s Melbourne International Film Festival, the account tweeted praise of Adolf Hitler: “Hitl0r publicly venerated his nation and foreign conquest; we publicly venerate foreign homosexuals.”
Another time, Anderson tweeted that Jewish YouTuber Abby Shapiro, sister to US conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, will feed her son “moronic zogslop”, a reference to the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory Zionists Occupational Government.
Anderson did not respond to Crikey’s email. However, his Twitter account was deleted after the request for comment.
They join David Hilton as another former Spectator Australia writer exposed for anti-Semitic views. In 2018, the Southern Poverty Law Centre revealed that Hilton published under the nom de plume Moses Apostaticus in The Spectator along with the Daily Caller. The investigation also laid out his history of pro-Nazi comments, such as a Facebook post sharing an article about IBM’s involvement in the Holocaust with the caption “IBM did nothing wrong”. (That same investigation also drew attention to Scott Greer, the then-Daily Caller editor referenced by Anderson, and his links to white nationalists).
Hilton had also recently penned pieces for Christian conservative publication Caldron Pool, but the articles have been deleted and his author page had been scrubbed in the past month. An email received from Caldron Pool said that it had removed the articles when “it was brought to their attention”.
Hilton has shown a preoccupation with education and fears Australian schools are “turning the kids communist”, according to videos and writing published online under his name. He’s previously said he worked as a Queensland high school teacher. A 2020 document from a Christian schools network, Australian Christian College, said Hilton worked as a curriculum content creator. A spokesperson for the schools said Hilton was an independent contractor and has not worked for the school for 12 months.
An email address associated with Hilton responded to a Crikey request for comment but did not answer questions.
University of Sydney far-right politics and populism researcher Dr Kurt Sengul said efforts to sanitise extreme ideas are key parts of the far right’s ongoing project to mainstream and normalise their beliefs. And he believes this is working.
“Ideas that were once considered fringe and taboo are increasingly finding a home in mainstream publications,” he told Crikey.
He said the far right also uses euphemisms, coded language and humour to make their views more palatable while giving them plausible deniability if discovered. Sengul pointed towards the example of the leaked style guide of infamous white supremacist publication The Daily Stormer, which encouraged writers to use different strategies and tactics to downplay their extreme ideas.
“It seems that the far right are acutely aware that the opportunities to disseminate and normalise their white supremacist ideas have never been greater, so they’re grabbing this opportunity with both hands,” he said.
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