Far right content creators training in the US

Australia's far right is connecting with far right/"Christian" extremists in the US. They are creating their own online ecosystem here. The "common sense" they are promoting is titillating bigotry.

Australia’s online influencers and content creators are constructing what has been termed a “hostile counterpublic.” That’s the concept of a group within the public that traps itself in a bubble of false information and is increasingly radicalised against facts and norms. They’re not creating the “hostile counterpublic” alone: it is being fostered across the information space by powerful rightwing platforms as well as the plutocrats who support them.

We are in an era where many of us see that radical change is necessary, but cohorts that want to do so in a fringe Right trajectory are dangerous. They are bonded by conspiracist visions of vulnerable groups, distracted from seeing the risk to us all created by the rightwing (fossil fuel) multi-millionaires and billionaires who are also bigoted zealots. Instead of reforming our society for a fairer division of the spoils, these actors want to eliminate whole groups from society and crush freedoms of their “enemies.”

This insight from sociologist of religion Gerardo Martí is useful:

Social media in particular has been depicted as “incitement capitalism,” where only the most sensational views get boosted. The radicalisation that follows has been tracked. For example, YouTube and TikTok accounts set up as belonging to a young man get directed towards “masculinist, anti-feminist and other extremist content” within approximately 20 minutes. The rank misogyny is just one of the bigotries amplified.

The participatory element is part of the draw: as with QAnon, the process becomes another online game and community. Entrepreneurial figures can build themselves a grift within the space.

Drawing on the experience in Germany over Covid, professors Slobodian and Callison track a middle class phenomenon that dragged left-leaning and centrist people rightwing. They translated the label from German as Diagonalism. One of the pointed threats these small-businesspeople saw was a “totalitarianism” in the state’s public health measures, with the old coordinated anti-science disinformation up and driving resistance. Covid resentment continues to be key to this coalition building.

The new rightwing has become more inclusive. Women are driving more of the rightwing parties. Pauline Hanson has been described as establishing a model for these political leaders. More young women are content creators, even while recognising the toxic misogyny of the men in the space.

From the halls of power and impact in Australia, we have Karl Stefanovic taking on a role in platforming One Nation as well as promoting self-made far right influencers.

The ground game of fostering a far right “counterpublic” in Australia is mutually reinforcing, but not detached from power. We have people like defence-sector entrepreneur Steve Baxter here acknowledged for sending Joel Jammal to US (MAGA-fest) CPAC as a Global Explorer in 2025. Jammal’s is a freakish review. Jammal (heading up Christian extremist Turning Point’s Australian franchise) is also a conduit for far right activists into Australia, mentored by CNP* member Charlie Kirk and UK’s Nigel Farage. Jammal spreads both antisemitic tropes and Great Replacement messaging.* (Antisemitic messaging pervades the comment threads of these influencers.)

Another of his CPAC Aus cohort is Calista Clements, promoted below on a podcast and here on 2GB with Ben Fordham. She’s also a “contributor” for (Atlas Network partner platform?) Sky News. Note the use below of the distinctive “common sense” claimed by the Right. That can involve such “common sense” as ethnostate and compulsory heterosexuality. It can include opposing climate and health science.

Switching between rightwing mainstream media operations and the feeds of the various far right content creators in Australia, there is a constant circulation of CPAC-Australia mentored youth.

It’s not easy to find whether Jordan Knight was a CPAC Global Explorer, but from his one-man operation Migration Watch Australia, he has been adopted by The Spectator (thick Atlas links), Sky and (Atlas Network thinktank-side project) the National Conservatism Institute of Australia. From there he’s been “awarded” a “Publius Fellowship” by the scandal-ridden California Atlas partner the Claremont Institute.

In yesterday’s post, I covered Barclay McGain who circulates these same spaces, as an emerging Atlas Network partner careerist and now Christian Right activist trying to take over the Queensland LNP for theocratic politics.

Working to mobilise the ground game, there are bodies like Australia Marches which has set up the Australian Lobby Group. It is using that “lobbyist” structure to arrange interviews with politicians.

The Australian Lobby Group’s (ALG) influencers Scott Challen and Sam Bamford describe being supported by Liberal Senator Alex Antic and claim politicians want to speak with them as lobbyists. A survey of their feeds shows regular connection with Christian Right nationalist Joel Jammal, as well as plenty of disturbing nationalism and easily debunked “facts.” Bamford was one of the far right figures featured on Stefanovic’s new show, with no pushback against fringe right comments.

Scott Challen said he left the March for Australia body because of the open integration of self-declared Neo Nazis.

Challen attended this conference bringing together a coalition of ethnostate parties from Europe in the US in March. The Alliance of Sovereign Nations was hosted by (Christian extremist) Turning Point Action. Challen says the event was important for “networking and sharing strategies. It is about learning how movements organise, communicate and win.”

Several images from Scott Challen’s Instagram where he discusses deporting 2.9 million people from Australia and networks with far right Europeans.

In an ALG event against so-called “mass immigration” in Brisbane, Challen hosted Christian extremist Edward Schuller. Schuller said on immigration: “What exactly is a nation… We’ve been told for a long time that anyone can become an Australian… It’s an existential matter for our nation… It’s confusing our identity as a nation.” Schuller was a CPAC Aus Global Explorer in 2025, and is now acting for Atlas-offshoot the Red Union movement. Barclay McGain spoke at this ALG event.

These posts from influencer Chriscoveries’ (Chris De Bruyne) Instagram show assorted Australian figures at American CPAC and Turning Point invents in March. De Bruyne, Jammal and Challen pose with “wealthy Neo Nazi associate,” Hugo Lennon in the second image. The last two images show Barclay McGain and One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts appearing at the Nazi-connected March for Australia/Day event in Brisbane. Roberts uses the white supremacist term for mass deportation “remigration.”

Two details from Sherryn Groch’s reporting at the SMH/The Age on Neo Nazis and fellow-travellers, including their trip to the US in March to overlapping conferences. “He” below refers to stockbroker Mitchell Hobbs. Note the interaction with Steve Bannon too.*

With the news of Victoria’s Neo Nazis having millionaire funders and a compound, we should be concerned if the government fails to take the threat seriously. The other threat, in the radicalising of a “hostile counterpublic,” is harder to tackle but crucial. Democracy is intended to be representative, and becomes toxic if made to represent a cohort enraged by conspiracist disinformation.

The combination of huge funding and strategy, with US training and networking, makes the ground game something we need to watch. The “hostile counterpublic” they are creating is metastasising violent intent towards their fellow Australians.

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*The CNP is the Council for National Policy which is the theocratic/”free market” network that built the Moral Majority through to the Handmaid’s Tale aspect of Project 2025. Steve Bannon is also a member.

Jammal is suggesting there that a dominant Christian Lebanese population has been “replaced” by Muslims with the relevant “warning” to Australians. In fact, Lebanon has been kept free of censuses for most of its history because Maronite Christians, the West and Israel never wanted to draw attention to the population proportion of allied Christians. The choice of a mandated Christian president was a matter of strategy.

I’m not yet sure if any of the Australian actors were at the furthest Right Remigration summit in Portugal. The AfD members who attended did not include Marc Bernhard, German climate denialist, with whom Challen communed at the US far right event.