The disinformation dossier…
Folksy, but look beyond appearance: how an innocuous-sounding name conceals a far-right agenda
This is a story in my continuing series on disinformation, especially how it relates to the practice of journalism and the development of social movements. You can find a background to the theme here.
What happened?
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s 7.30 Report of April 3 this year profiled My Place, the organisation attempting to turn conspiracy theories into a social movement, implicating it in disruption of council meetings in Adelaide and Victoria, anti-semitism and holocaust denial.
Their spokesman, Darren Bergwerf, said he didn’t know if the holocaust was real because he wasn’t there, a wilful ignoring of the evidence and of history that positions personal attendance of some event as the test of whether it really happened. Does he extend his uncertainty to other events at which he probably wasn’t present, like the Lismore flood of 2022? We have seen this before. It is the classic disinformation agent ploy of denial.
In another clip, what one Twitter commentator identified as a first nations woman ranted about how it was the freemasons who are behind whatever conspiracy it was that she was on about. “The freemasons took over our culture”, she is heard to say. The freemasons have long been accused of evil doing and of being a cult, and have been suppressed under both fascism and communism. The Catholic church has in the past threatened freemasons with excommunication. The brief clip in the 7.30 Report raises the awkward question of Aboriginal people participating in the so-called ‘freedom’ movement that is a dilemma for those with socially liberal values supporting first nation people’s political agenda for representation and inclusion.
Links were also made with between My Place and the sovereign citizen thing.
The report investigated the movements new tactic of targeting local government. My Place has been implicated in the rowdy disruption of council meetings in Adelaide and Victoria, forcing the closure of a Yarra Ranges Council meeting in January.
The backstory
The organisation springs off the anti-vaxx, anti-lockdown movement that is quickly taking on the characteristics of a sometimes sometimes aggressive subculture. Some critics label it a cult, however I have not looked into this claim. Looking at Twitter and Mastodon commentary, what is clear is that the people My Place appeals to have a self-inflicted sense of being victimised by assorted culprits including the medical system, the media, the political left, the ALP, government including local government, Bill Gates, the World Economic Forum and whoever is behind all those chemtrails we see crisscrossing our skies after aircraft fly through cold air.
As a participant in the self-called ‘freedom’ movement, My Place is just another political clustering of the bewildering range of conspiracy theories and folk demons doing the rounds in some sectors of society. There is nothing new here other than the targeting of local government.
The tactics
Let’s open the disinformation handbook to look at the tactics My Place and their disinformation disseminating fellow travellers adopt. These are tactics adopted by fringe organisations that want to connect with the general public while knowing that their beliefs and actions are not popular.
1. Look and sound ordinary
Tactic: Deflect attention and misrepresent.
To build support it helps to look and speak like everyday people so as to appear less fringe, less of a threat and to sidestep the barriers to slipping your messages into susceptible minds. This misrepresents the organisation by deflecting attention from its ideology and mission.
That is what the group does. My Place is an amalgam of fringe group and far right political tactics where the political actors appear as everyday people but whose beliefs and attitudes are far from the everyday. We have seen over the past couple years how appearing to be supposedly ordinary people has been a tactic adopted by conspiracy minded entities as a smoke-and-mirrors tactic.
It is an adaption of the ‘grey man’ tactic used by intelligence agencies in which the operative adopts the get-up, appearance and style of local people so as to blend in and reduce an adversary’s awareness of their presence.
2. Adopt a folksy name
Tactic: Misrepresent, deceive, inveigl.
A folksy name that appeals to feel-good sentiment and popular belief is an undercover tactic to get people to listen to you by avoiding overly political and unappealing names. It removes the barriers that official-sounding names can set up through association, and makes mental links with innocuous attitudes and beliefs.
Example: My Place, with its appeal to a sense of place, localism, personal security and the home. It is a motherhood-type name whose sentiment is seen as something you could not disagree with.
3. Coopt existing symbols
Tactic: Coopt, repurpose, misrepresent.
Take over existing and known symbols of a culture and give them an alternative meaning. Subversion of existing symbols and slogans plays on the familiar, another way to get around barriers to ideas that people might find unappealing.
Examples:
- the cooption of the red, Australian maritime flag by the so-called ‘freedom’ movement
- the similar cooption of the Eureka flag from Australian history by the far right
- the cooption of the charity, the Save the Children’s slogan—‘save the children’—by the ‘freedom’ movement during its campaign against Covid vaccination and the lockdowns.
4. Infiltrate existing social movements and institutions
Tactic: infiltrate, influence and control.
Subvert from inside the society you would destabilise and take down by joining and white-anting social institutions and organisations.
Just as white ants (termites) weaken buildings by infesting and rotting their structure, so can institutions, organisations and what they stand for be subverted from within. Standing candidates in local government elections would be a tactic to be anticipated.
Local government is now being targeted as a conflict zone around 5G and the town planning idea of the 15-minute city. Once again, this is a tactic to create distrust between citizens and social institutions by spreading disinformation about 5G and by misrepresenting what the 15 minute city idea is about. Their rowdy disruption of council meetings is the opposite of civil discourse and demonstrates the extent to which My Place and similar organisations are prepared to go to force their demands on to the public. The goal? Control of local government policy and programs.
With their support for far-right political figure Ricardo Bossi, who has called for politicians, health workers and government bureaucrats to be hanged for their role in stemming the Covid pandemic (and whose vote in the recent NSW state elections clearly demonstrated that his ideas have little appeal to the public), My Place’s links with the far-right are clear.
Examples:
- the 2023 standing of far right candidates in the NSW state election was an attempt to influence and control the processes of government the candidates sought to eliminate or change (it failed dismally)
- standing candidates for local government elections to influence policy and as a rallying point for campaigns, another tactic of taking control of an institution to enact favourable policy or remove existing policies— this is ‘the thin edge of the wedge’ tactic; on the day following the 7.30 Report piece, ABC News reported the doings of a Cessnock councillor and her links with My Place; the councillor has addressed My Place members in a Zoom link to discuss tactics they can use with councils
- the ABC News item reported “A My Place slideshow outlining the structure of the organisation encourages branches to create a ‘council action group’, whose role is to attend council meetings with the eventual aim to ‘establish constant control over council decisions’”; in Victoria, the organiser interviewed by the 7.30 Report has set up a shadow council to run in parallel with the authentic council; this adopts the tactic employed in the past by leftist revolutionary movements setting up a parallel government that becomes the governing authority in liberated territory
- in an older incidence, the infiltration of the 1980s nuclear disarmament movement in Australia by members of a political organisation, the Socialist Workers Party, a Trotskyist group (and here).
5. Introduce new foci to sow suspicion, disagreement and distrust
Tactic: Maintain momentum, spread suspicion, disagreement and distrust.
Nothing new here other than targeting councils.
Like the local government town planning idea of the 15 minute city, the freemasons are a new conspiracy focus for these people, joining the existing anti-5G, anti-vaxx, Covid denial, climate change denial, chemtrails, deep state, anti-Bill Gates and the World Economic Forum and the myriad and confused other foci they adopt as themes to spread distrust between citizens and distrust of government and social institutions like the medical system and the media. Even within the ‘freedom’ movement there is a realisation among some that the movement grasps on to any new theme, which diffuses its energy and weakens it and which is reactionary to initiatives and policies made by mainstream institutions.
A complication arises in ascribing all of those foci to the movement as a whole. Participants do not always believe all of the conspiracy theories. They can be selective.
Driving the news
Cooption: and are farmers’/community markets becoming far right recruitment centres?
Among the tomatoes, the fresh farm produce, new age and the arty stuff at the Frankston market — it was unclear in the ABC report whether it was the Seaford Farmers’ Market or the Frankston Community Market (most likely that)— My Place brought a very different and heavy political vibe with the symbols of their far right allegiance such as Australia’s maritime flag and the Eureka flag which they have coopted, as well as their anti-5G posters. Are we now to see the cooption of farmers/community markets as propaganda and recruitment centres?
Strategically, setting up stalls in the markets is a sound tactic. The market offers visibility. Thousands of people pass through, offering opportunities to engage and promote conspiratorial ideas and their attendant political message. The markets are now a part of our culture and My Place’s appearance at the Frankston market signals a new tactic in the culture wars, one of infiltration of cultural institutions as a means of influence and political power.
What happens now?
Like any disinformation, that of My Place and its political fellow travellers is especially hard for us to fight because they use our strengths — our openness, our free press, our commitment to free speech — against us. It is the same tactic that Russian disinformation sources adopt and it gives them a voice in the public marketplace for ideas.
As far as farmers/community markets go, if the movement sets up in other markets, nothing is as sure to discredit them as much as a far right presence. Their appearance at a market in another example of how the movement coops existing institutions to its own ends.
Their encouragement of members to disrupt council meetings is a direct attack on Australian democracy. How this plays out will test not only the resiliency of councils but of the Australian public as well. The open question is what effect further disruption would have on the openess of council meetings and decision making.
An amplifier in a conflict too easily written off as fringe
Disinformation doesn’t just create divisions—it amplifies them. It confirms existing beliefs through confirmation bias in which people are attracted to sources who hold the same or similar beliefs. There, they believe the organisations give them a voice.
It is easy to dismiss noisy fringe groups as loud but inconsequential. But, as that 1923 meeting in a Munich beer hall shows, big things can grow from little things. This is the snowball effect. The question is whether the My Place presence at the community market will be its beer hall moment. Present indications suggest not, that it will remain a loud and conspicuous movement of the political fringe although it might grow if it becomes more sophisticated in its target selection. The reelection of Victoria’s Andrews government, the election of the Australian Labor Party and the later Liberal Party Aston by-election defeat strongly suggests that the politics of the fringe political right, including the far right and the Liberal Party’s entertainment of its agenda, have little appeal to Australian voters.
Changing peoples’ minds is unlikely. Combatting disinformation makes it necessary to confront the malign vectors spreading the disinformation — the ‘useful idiots’ as Soviet intelligence called them during the Cold War. The tactic here is to discredit them and flood the infosphere with authentic information.
The ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu, whose book, The Art of War, is compulsory reading in military leadership and intelligence circles, wrote that the advantage goes to those whose opponents do not realise that they are already engaged in warfare. That applies to infowar too. Now, on many fronts we are engaged in a war of ideas, influence and control. We should realise that.
Watch the ABC 7.30 Report here: https://www.abc.net.au/news/programs/730
More in The Disinformation Dossier and on conspiracy theories, journalism and communication around the disinformation pandemic…
