Messages sent by far-right activists presents new evidence of something that researchers have been observing for years and police are actively monitoring: far-right activists targeting conservative groups and encourage them to begin engaging in the anti-semitism and white supremacist politics of Nazism.
Melbourne’s far-right are agile and adaptive at spreading their message of hate.
Though small, they practise a nimble strategy to develop support, concealing their activities in encrypted channels, leapfrogging from issue to issue as they attempt to insert their antisemitism and white supremacist view into conservative movements.
First it was multiculturalism, then the pandemic and vaccine mandates, now trans rights.
Deakin University extremism expert Dr Josh Roose explains it’s a process called “breadcrumbing” – where a person drops nibbles of interest with the aim of engaging with someone else – and it’s effective in both polarising the debate and growing the far-right movement.
On Thursday, Roose joined a confidential meeting of more than 100 council representatives and police, all of them desperate to understand how to manage the hate manifesting at their meetings and drag queen story times.
The briefing was convened to cope with “threatening and unpredictable” behaviour that mayors across Melbourne had seen in the past few months, and Roose was up in the middle of the night on a work trip to Denmark to provide advice and skills to protect democratic norms now under siege.
Read the article by David Estcourt in The Age.