(Image: Zennie McLoughlin)

A Daily Mail journalist who secretly ran a popular white-nationalist Twitter account is still working for the company and was promoted after he was the subject of a complaint about racist tweets in the past. 

Last month, a Crikey investigation uncovered that Daily Mail Australia’s Sam Duncan was behind @patrickbasedmn, an influential account that tweeted anti-Semitic, racist and anti-vaccine content to its 32,000 followers. He joined a number of other far-right Australians revealed by Crikey who had been writing in conservative mainstream publications like Spectator Australia.

Duncan’s extreme beliefs appeared to influence his writing at Daily Mail Australia, where his byline appeared hundreds of times between 2017 and 2018, and a handful of times since. In at least one instance, Duncan appeared to turn a conspiratorial @patrickbasedmn tweet thread about electric vehicles being a ploy to control the world’s population into an opinion article for the news outlet.

Crikey can reveal that Duncan remains employed at Daily Mail Australia despite the company repeatedly being made aware of his online racism, according to multiple former and current staff who spoke to Crikey on the condition of anonymity.

A spokesperson for Daily Mail Australia said, “We have investigated your claim and confirmed that Sam Duncan does not run the account @patrickbasedmn.”

They did not respond to questions about how the investigation was carried out, nor about Duncan’s previous complaint and his subsequent promotion. Duncan did not respond to Crikey‘s emails.

One former Daily Mail Australia staff member said Duncan earned a reputation for pitching stories that would appeal to a far-right audience when he was hired in 2017. They gave an example of Duncan searching for inspiration for a story to write on the day of the 2017 Queensland state election. 

“He saw photographs of a woman in a burqa going to vote, and so he thought it was a good story. He did a whole article about it. I was stunned, I was like, ‘Who is this guy?’” 

That day, Daily Mail Australia published an article by Sam Duncan called “Not a One Nation voter, then? Mother in a burqa arrives to vote with her daughter — as 3 million Queenslanders head to the polls for an election”.

In 2017, a Daily Mail Australia staff member made an official complaint to the company about Duncan’s posts on his @samuelrduncan Twitter account (which later changed its username to @patrickbasedmn). The account’s bio listed his job as a Daily Mail Australia news reporter.

(Image: Twitter/@samuelrduncan)

Crikey has seen tweets included in the complaint as well as contemporaneous messages between staff discussing the complaint at the time. The tweets included a defence of Islamophobia (“a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons”), a claim that Australia doesn’t have First Nations peoples, and an accusation of a journalist being a “shit-stirring race reporter”. 

In another tweet, Duncan replied to Sky News Australia host Chris Kenny to say “I am a proud Naziphobe, Marxphobe, postmodernismophobe, and Islamophobe.” (His use of the uncommon word “Naziphobe” echoes a @patrickbasedmn tweet warning people of the dangers of “Naziphobia”.)

(Image: Twitter/@samuelrduncan)

Duncan was promoted to editor in 2018 in spite of this complaint. Since then, Crikey understands Duncan has commissioned stories, edited copy and arranged the homepage for the highly influential online tabloid, which claims to be the most visited English-language news website.

Duncan previously denied any involvement with the @patrickbasedmn account. He told Crikey in an email that he handed over the account in October 2020 to a US-based friend but did not provide any proof or follow up on promises that he would get them to contact this publication. He did not respond to further proof linking his identity to @patrickbasedmn. Duncan also deleted his IMDb account and turned his Google reviews private after they were used to corroborate his identity.

Staff have noticed that Duncan has been pulled into meetings with Daily Mail Australia higher-ups after the article was published, but his name remains on the roster through July and he remains at work.

One place Duncan has disappeared from is Twitter. The platform’s community of white-nationalist accounts mourned the loss of @patrickbasedmn when it was first deactivated without notice. When Crikey’s investigation was published, they urged each other to take steps to avoid having their identities revealed, too. 

“REALLY IMPORTANT: IF YOU CHANGE YOUR HANDLE/@ THEY CAN STILL IDENTIFY YOU! EVERY USERNAME YOU USE IS ASSOCIATED WITH YOUR ACCOUNT ID. THIS IS HOW THEY GOT @patrickbasedmn,” one account tweeted.