I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while. Cookers, sovereign citizens and conspiracy theorists can be a fascinating bunch, albeit in the same way a train wreck is fascinating. Yes, it can be very amusing to watch them try and ‘pseudo law’ their way out of trouble when they caught doing something very stupid, but there’s often something darker lying under the surface. For every giggle you get from listing to some SovCit proclaim ‘I’m traveling, I’m traveling!’ after being pulled over by the cops for driving like a fuckwit, there’s probably a less visible tie they have to some extremist movement. And there’s nothing humorous about that.
This is what Ariel Bogle and Cam Wilson really dig into in Conspiracy Nation: the serious and concerning side.
From an Australian perspective, the current increase in activity from these groups—and the corresponding renewed interest in conspiracy nuts and sovereign citizens from the general public—can bet traced back to the the COVID-19 pandemic and the rules and restrictions that were implemented to fight the spread of the virus. But Australia’s history of conspiracy movements dates back far further than that. And while there are prominent conspiratorial movements in other countries—especially in the US—the conspiracy landscape in Australia is its own beast. It may at times ‘cross-pollinate’ with other movements, but it is something that is truly shaped by our own culture and our own grievances and not imported wholesale from elsewhere.
Two conspiracy ‘landmarks’ that this book returns to throughout are the Port Arthur Massacre and the Wieambilla shooting. For those who are not familiar, the Port Arthur Massacre was the 1996 mass shooting in Tasmania where a single gunman, Martin Bryant, killed 35 people and injured many more. It was the worst mass shooting in the country’s history, and it led to the tightening of Australia’s gun laws.
This change in legislation upset many people at the time, including a number of gun control fringe groups who, in a desperate attempt to throw shit at the wall and see what sticks, linked these increased controls to every odd and bizarre conspiracy they could think of. In turn, the Deputy Prime Minister started accusing a number of these groups of being followers of American conspiracy nut and cultist, Lyndon LaRouche.* A conspiracy slap fight, if you will. To be clear, in the immediate aftermath of Port Arthur, there was very little doubt in the public’s mind that Martin Bryant acted of his own accord when he murdered all these people. But with he power of hindsight, we know conspiracy seeds were being sown, and with the aid of the still relatively new Australian public Internet, they all started to germinate. Nearly thirty years on, the Port Arthur Massacre has become a magnet for a rather healthy population of truthers. A garden of cranks that has sadly become very resilient.
So how does this tie into Wieambilla? The 2022 Wieambilla shootings involved the residents of a regional property in Queensland ambushing and killing two of the four police officers that had been sent to conduct a welfare check, alongside their neighbor, Alan Dare. All three residents of the property were then killed after a standoff with police. Of these shooters, Gareth Train, in particular, was revealed to be a consummate Sovereign Citizen and conspiracy theorist. His digital footprint was found to have traversed a wide range of conspiracies from across the internet. He was also a follower of Christian Premillennial doctrine—and a Port Arthur truther. An absolute tinderbox of a man.
One of the threads that really stands out when reading Conspiracy Nation is that there is a strong level of ‘crank magnetism’ involved in conspiratorial thought. Once the barriers come down and someone permits themselves to be taken in by one outlandish idea, the easier it becomes to allow the next one in. And then the next. Gareth Train and his relatives were a perfect example of this, to the point that it lead to their deaths. (I will later mention at least one person where this does not perfectly apply, however.) Have you ever wondered why the alt-heath to SovCit to white nationalist pipeline is so strong? Now you know.
Part of what makes this pattern so persistent is that while different conspiracies cover a broad range of subjects, the motivations are the same: It’s us verses them. It’s not our fault. It’s some bigger, murkier entity that’s at fault. The feelings matter, the facts don’t. Sadly, while many people who follow these conspiracies cling to them in hope that they’ll make things easier to understand and give people something to rally around, in the long run, they often do not make the believers feel any better.**
One of the other common threads in Australian conspiracies I feel the need to point out is the presence Pauline Hanson and her One Nation Party. They are known scumbags, but still, it is shocking to read just how often Hanson herself, a One Nation party member, or a party supporter can be linked back to so many conspiracies: not just Port Arthur trutherism, but conspiracies promoting white genocide, secret elite pedophile rings and anti-drag queen fear mongering.*** Is it odious? One Nation is likely involved. They have fingers stuck in all the shit-pies.
In my opinion though, the most impressive thing about Conspiracy Nation is the level of leg-work Ariel Bogle and Cam Wilson put into researching this book. It’s phenomenal. I would never have learnt about the one man who could be described as the mad horticulturalist of the Port Arthur truther movement if it weren’t for their digging. They went ahead and conducted interviews with people linked to the Wieambilla shooting, including Alan Dare’s widow. Cam was sent away to spend a weekend on retreat with charismatic celebrity chef-turned-neo-nazi-meme-poster, Paleo Pete Evans. They also snagged interviews with SovCit influencer Monica Smit, and, surprisingly, One Nation Senator, Malcolm Roberts.
I want to finish with Roberts’ interview, as it’s one of the most surprising things in the book. Though it’ss probably not terribly well known outside of Australia, we have our own QAnon/Epstein-style list of 28 (or sometimes 29) high-ranking pedophiles circulating around amongst certain conspiracy groups. Around 2019, another Australian senator reached out to Roberts with this list, wanting to do more with it. Roberts—who is no stranger to conspiratorial thinking and suspects that global warming is linked to establishing a global socialist government—got a staffer of his to go through the list and verify it. All of it. Not only did he decide not to publicize the list for being defamatory, he outright dismissed it as an urban myth in a YouTube video.
Wonders never cease, right? And a great example of how crank magnetism is not always complete.
Again, while I have derived some amusement from conspiracy and SovCit antics in the past, I think it’s becoming clear that this is no longer a fringe movement. These kinds of people have friends in higher places, and their convoluted leaps of logic and painfully twisted pseudolaw musings are fully capable of jumping out of the their internet silos and into the real world. (It is very easy to start a micro party in our Senate, remember.)
And if we want to see what that might be like, just peek outside the boarders of Australia.
An impressive read.
For cbr17bingo, this is… you guessed it, Citizen.
For the SovCits.
Couldn’t pass it up.