Tony McAleer, a dapper Canadian in his early 50s, is unrecognisable from his previous life as a violent skinhead and organiser of hate group White Aryan Resistance.
Some of the memories from those days still have the power to haunt him. McAleer remembers his group chasing a gay man into a building site, throwing rocks at him, and hearing the man’s screams as the rocks struck him. He still doesn’t know what happened to that man.
Robert Orell, 39, is a direct-talking Swede with the confident air of a military man. He too is a former violent white supremacist, having spent years in the Swedish neo-Nazi movement before leaving at 19.
As a teenager, Orell trained his mind and body to prepare for the violent revolution he believed was to come. He worked out five times a week, abstained from alcohol and swotted up on far-right propaganda.
But enrolling in the military opened his way of thinking to new ideas. Crucially, it gave him a sense of brotherhood, stability and belonging.
“It fulfilled those needs in a healthy way,” Orell says.
McAleer and Orell have spent the past week in Melbourne meeting with police, local and state government officials, academics and community groups in the lead-up to the first anniversary of the Christchurch massacre.
Their first-hand experience in the “cult-like” culture of white nationalist groups is a valuable resource for agencies trying to understand what makes far-right groups tick and how to intercept the threats they pose.