My daughter Nadia, a history and critical thinking teacher at an Australian high school, brought me this book as a Christmas present. She met with the authors at a conference down under and got me a signed copy! The authors spent years in research, using primary source material, personal interviews, and references to publications from North America, the United Kingdom and other nations outside of Australia, their primary focus. Conspiracy theories, in this age of social media, know no boundaries. Cam Wilson who co-authored this important resource, is a Sydney-based technology reporter who has written for many major media outlets, including Australian television and Buzzfeed News. Ariel Ogle is a reporter with a focus on technology, law and the internet who has also written investigative reports for major media outlets. She won a prestigious Walkley Award for her outstanding journalism.
Conspiracy theory, as the authors note throughout this investigation, is a loaded term that can refer to actual conspiracies as well as delusional ones. Either, or a mix of both, can turn to extremes with dangerous, even deadly. outcomes. The key to the power of any dangerous conspiracy theory is information that motivates masses to exhibit apophenia, an increasingly popular term that means seeing connections or patterns where there are none, or strong connections when they are very weak.
Populist jargon often employs the word cult to label conspiratorial behavior. We are all susceptible to short, easy labels—the thought-terminating cliché—but conspiracy theories tend to enhance them.
In Chapter 11, “Stand Up, Fight Back,” the authors cite activist Robert Sudy, who exposes “pseudolaw” through his website Freeman Delusion. Sudy argues that anarchists and antigovernment extremists who call themselves Sovereign Citizens employ pseudolaw to convince themselves and others that a greater, more primal law is the true law, and individuals, who are born sovereign, are enslaved by a corrupt government. The Sovereign Citizen selects signs and incidents that seem to corroborate their basic assumptions, creating a conspiratorial network aligned against their freedom. Because there is little or no evidence to support their claims, the Sovereign Citizen suffers from paranoid delusions, according to Sudy.
Populist jargon often employs the word cult to label conspiratorial behavior. We are all susceptible to short, easy labels—the thought-terminating cliché—but conspiracy theories tend to enhance them. The authors offer their overview: “[Conspiracy theories] draw from how we feel about our environment, our place in the world and our relationships to one another. They place you at the centre of an epic tale” (248).
I agree with the authors on their assessment that conspiracy theories place the believer at the center of an epic tale. At one extreme, they feel they have a God’s-eye view as they tie all the loose ends together, like a psychic detective who has solved a crime. At another extreme, the narcissistic belief that they control information reduces their insecurity about what seems like mysterious powers that run our lives. In other words, they can feel like the character Sherlock Holmes in a novel they write about themselves.
Many of the events and cases referred to in this book feature leaders or influencers with deep character flaws, including narcissistic behaviors. Using the infamous Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania in 1996, when Martin Bryant slaughtered twenty visitors and staff and injured twelve more at a café with two AR-15 rifles, the authors recount how in the ensuing decades the event became Australia’s first online conspiracy. Similar to the weird and bizarre conspiracies that emerged from the John F. Kennedy assassination in 1964, the massacre in Tasmania morphed into what conspiracy fanatic Gareth Train tagged and coded as PA96. Despite the killer pleading guilty to the crimes, Train touted PA96 as one of a series of false-flag events orchestrated by the government. “Over almost thirty years since the event, Port Arthur ‘trutherism’ has grown from the fringes to an increasingly prominent position in popular culture and has found a foothold in parliament” (26).
We learn from Bogle and Wilson that Train believed in a number of conspiracy theories including climate engineering, microchips inserted into victims by a nefarious government, antisemitic conspiracy theories, and the Great Reset.
On December 13, 2023, Gareth Train and others were killed during a shootout with police in Queensland after Train and his brother baited police to their property.
We learn from Bogle and Wilson that Train believed in a number of conspiracy theories including climate engineering, microchips inserted into victims by a nefarious government, antisemitic conspiracy theories, and the Great Reset. Throughout the investigation by Bogle and Wilson, we find characters who blend their conspiracy theories with older and emerging ones. Paranoia about shadow governments and deep states occurs frequently. COVID-19, mask and vaccine mandates, and the shutdowns energized every dodgy anarchist in Australia as they did elsewhere.
In Chapter Seven, “Off-Grid,” we encounter a meeting in recent years of the Elders of Gaia near Byron Bay in northeast Australia. Dubbed by locals as the original hippie, Chris McIlrath bought the 330-acre property in 1971 when he was in his early twenties. McIlrath and his brother planted thousands of macadamia nut trees, sourced their own water, and had no phone service, mimicking the back-to-nature communes already active in the United States by 1970. Byron Bay subsequently emerged as both a popular beach resort and an alternative spirituality center with appropriate natural food cafes, colorful boutiques, start-up cults, and psychic advisors. After the COVID-19 pandemic, the Elders of Gaia, meeting with McIlrath as emcee, discussed local and national management to get back the many freedoms lost since the pandemic and how to return to the “natural” state and get rid of “alien DNA” in the gene pool (128).
We also encounter a man at a conservative Christian rally in Thirroul, south of Sydney, who in 2023 wore a red cap mimicking the American MAGA movement that said Make Australia Holy Again. The evangelical group he was in opposed vaccine mandates while describing the anti-lockdown protests as a “spiritual battle” (234).
In Chapter Five, “Expose the 28,” we read about a rally held in 2023 at Sydney’s Hyde Park where protesters exhibited signs and wore t-shirts saying, “expose the 28” and “Rope. Tree. Journalist. Some assembly required.” The rally was primarily about opposing a yes vote to the Voice to Parliament referendum that sought to constitutionally recognize Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The “28” referred to a secret list of prominent people, including a prime minister, whom Australian Senator Bill Heffernan alleged in 2015 were pedophiles. Heffernan’s evidence soon proved to be bogus, but “[t]he failure of Hefferman’s list to be publicly investigated has become proof, for believers, of the list’s veracity” (78). Expose the 28 believers continue to align with antisemitic and anti-LGBTQIA+ sentiments in Australia. Enhanced by later QAnon fabrications about pedophile circles within opposition party circles, Expose the 28 was subsequently absorbed into ultra-conservative politics in Australia to attack every liberal or progressive cause, including unrelated native rights issues expressed in the Voice to Parliament referendum.
The solution offered in this book to remedy the harms of conspiratorial ideas and behaviors in the end is to not give up, to keep trying, and to continue to report facts and write exposés. The authors cover many more socially significant conspiracies that will interest anyone involved in research on this topic. For me, this book was a page-turner. And with over fifty pages of endnotes, the reader can choose to chew on and digest a lot more in depth.
