Meet the former violent Nazis who now preach compassion

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.

Last month Mike Burgess, the director-general of ASIO, warned that while Islamist terrorism remains the biggest security threat in Australia, the threat posed by far-right extremists is “real and growing”.
Read the article by Bianca Hall in The Sydney Morning Herald.