Australia’s spy chief has warned anti-immigration rallies are being exploited by neo-Nazi groups and “Russian operatives” to sow discord, as the country faces a trend seen across Western democracies of declining trust and rising disinformation.
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation’s director-general of security, Mike Burgess, said on Tuesday community cohesion is under attack in an unprecedented way.
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ASIO is investigating pro-Russian social media influencers who are working with an offshore media organisation to condemn Australia’s support for Kyiv, while also using “social media to spread vitriolic, polarising commentary on anti-immigration protests and pro-Palestinian marches”, he said.
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Australia in August expelled Iran’s ambassador and said the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had directed two anti-Semitic attacks in Australia by using intermediaries.
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Such efforts were achieving “limited traction”, he added, pointing to the stabilising impact of Australia’s social-welfare safety net, compulsory voting and growing economy.
While social media algorithms are accelerating extremism and raising the risk of violence, it is people who create the content and decide to act on it, Burgess said.
“I worry we risk creating real world ‘aggro-rhythms’ where grievance, intolerance, polarisation and rhetoric feed on themselves,” he said.
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Or maybe, here’s an insane hypothesis: Immigration numbers are too high 🤯
I’m a Labor voter and would vote Greens if they were more strict on immigration. You can’t keep shutting down the opinions of so many Australians across the political spectrum by saying “They’re all Nazis and Russian spies”
Why do they say they’re too high ? What number of immigration do you think is an appropriate number?
It’s not the first time that nation state actors have been accused of supporting division in western societies.
I’ve read allegations that Russia tends to fund / encourage / amplify both sides of debate in the USA to increase division.
Wonder if they are also secretly on the counter protest side here too.
IMO the 1% are the real and immediate beneficiaries of this. The business council wants more immigration. More potential workers than jobs = more compliant workforce and lower salaries. There is also more customers, renters, real estate demand.
No surprise to see newscorpse and other right wing business mouth pieces fanning the flames on this issue. Now instead of having a reasonable discussion about what a sustainable amount of population growth through immigration is, we get a polarised outrage debate. You either support unlimited mass immigration or you are a Nazi.
I wonder if the neonazis realise they have been used as pawns in this game. I doubt they are smart enough for that.
Oh, so it’s Russia that’s 'using “social media to spread vitriolic, polarising commentary on anti-immigration protests and pro-Palestinian marches” ’
Bro, do you even social media?
This guy won’t even pass the 16 year old age check.
yes it is Russia
The whole world knows it as facts. The UK GCQ did a study and found Russia was behind Brexit propaganda, Netherlands did a similar study, EU has done a study, the US FBI has done a study.
Russia even admits it.
Russia has been doing psyops since WWII ended.
Russia has been doing psyops since WWII ended.
To be fair so does the US and to a lesser extent Australia does, albeit on a more limiteded basis.
What bothers me is not somone on social media inciting people to be cunts but that so many are willinging, and often glee ful participants
But that goes back to the 10/10/80 argument to explain the ubiquity of Nazis in WW2, suggesting its still likely to be the case.
How are we conducting extraordinary rendition of people in Australia on the qt to Naru for instance. The government itself is literally full of cookers. So this bullshit is a distraction IMO
Much earlier. The protocols of the elders of zion, a core conspiracy doc, dates back to 1903, Russian Empire, long before the Bolshevik revolution, the KGB or Putin. Russia has a lot of competence in the information space. It is a tool like any other and it is well documented that they use it to their strategic and economic advantage as any nation would. The western alliance have played similar games with propaganda and destabilization.
There are a huge number of people and groups in the anglosphere and Europe who are sympathetic to this propaganda and create plenty of it themselves. They would still be around and very dangerous to our liberal democracies with or without Russia’s involvement. Russia’s playbook in this is to fan fires that already exist. I suspect most of the real money and direction is from within.
Russia to some extent is a scapegoat for our own failings and highlighting their involvement an attempt to de-legitimize these movements by association. I think these groups are de-legitimized by their existence. I don’t need Russian involvement to hate a bunch of Nazis.
I believe there is evidence of Russian operators attempting to infiltrate marginalized groups and stir up discontent. If it turned out their operators were inflaming discontent in indigenous groups, amongst the poor, homeless, alt-health, environmentalists or whoever might have reason to distrust or dislike the current establishment I am not going to judge them like I am a Nazi.
I don’t like to touch on this one on social media but it is probably fair to say Israel and Iran are in a huge information war and Isreal is losing badly in Australia, UK etc because of the very bad optics of their actions. Does knowing that Iran is to some extent funding anti-Isreal debate delegitmize concerns about a Palestinian genocide? I don’t think so. So its complicated.
Russia to some extent is a scapegoat for our own failings and highlighting their involvement an attempt to de-legitimize these movements by association. I think these groups are de-legitimized by their existence. I don’t need Russian involvement to hate a bunch of Nazis.
Absolutely.
This OP account (randomname) along with a couple of others are foreign accounts which only post here to agitate against Russia, China and others. So when they come along to our instance every week to stir up a fuss about foreign interference, it’s clearly insincere. They’re not here to help us.
Neo-Nazis are the base problem here, foreign state actors (including both non-West states and Western mass media like Sky and Fox) are inflaming them. Propaganda accounts like OP are just opportunistically pushing a campist perspective, trivialising our local problems, the root problems.
Would it be possible to create a tag for these certain users who have demonstrated an insincere and clear propagandist-line in their approach to posting?
So, i don’t think blocking them would help, just a game really of whack’a’mole, but if a prominent warning label like,
Account has been identified as a likely State actor
If it could be placed at the top of any posts these users make to AZ communities, it at least gives other users a heads up that this isn’t a normal post, alerting them to the insincere campaign of influence. I don’t even think these account holders would mind something like that, they don’t seem to care about disguising their campaigns.
You’ll have to ask the admins, I don’t know how/if tagging works.
Account has been identified as a likely State actor
To be honest, I’m not ready to conclude they’re specifically a state actor. They certainly could be, although there are other reasons people post think tank political propaganda.
So, i don’t think blocking them would help, just a game really of whack’a’mole
We’ve already seen one go through a bunch of names (Lucky8 was one of them), clearly the same user. A local warning seems to be a good approach as they might not even notice and therefore are less likely to try and evade.
This OP account (randomname) along with a couple of others are foreign accounts which only post here to agitate against Russia, China and others.
Yes, I have noticed. I don’t mind the anti-Russia stuff. Fuck Putin. Our relationship with China is complicated and nuanced. While we need to prepare for hypothetical threats we also need to make the most out of our current relationship. I think promoting anti-Chinese sentiment plays into the hands of the supposedly Russian influenced racist neo-Nazi types the account is supposedly critical of and does nothing for the 1.3 million Australians with Chinese ancestry or other Australians of east asian descent.
Social media makes it too easy to do a huge influence operation and get unintended consequences. Polarized, angry societies that can’t engage with each other for the common good are a bad outcome.
Australia’s spy chief warns anti-immigration rallies are being exploited by neo-Nazi groups
They’re being run by neo-Nazi groups. We’ve been talking about that for months in this comm. The second M4A was a mask-off white supremacy rally.
TIL Russian spies grew the NSN members in vats and loosed them on us. They are also behind the white Australia policy and our refusal to reckon with genocidal and slaving history.
Like I’m sure operatives can do a few nudges or offer some funding or training but like… the Nazis are coming from inside the house.
Yep, this. We can’t blame the local racism on others. At its core, it’s Australian, and it’s up to us to keep making it unAustralian.
or offer some […] training
That would be the Azov Battalion, and US neo-Nazis. The Russian gov are likely more into informational campaigns, like giving digital megaphones to the Nazis inside the house.
Tbh I don’t feel comfortable speculating on what state stupidity operations are. My exposure to some as an info sec enthusiast suggests they’re extremely varied and often quite stupid. Following the same logic as scams a lot of the time: go wide and see who bites.
But to get back to the point: there’s this growing trend of liberals (little ell) blaming everything they don’t like about politics on Russian/Chinese psyops which credits state stupidity too much and disguises the underlying issues in our society.
Further xenophobic paranoia and militarism is… unlikely, shall we say, to address or protect against the political movements that fester in such environments.
No shit, they’ve been doing that around the world since 2010.
Okay, if Russians are doing this, lets do something the UK and the USA have inexplicably not done in recent years, investigate then, then, then take… proportionate action.
Mind blowing advice, I know.
One way is to deliver more fuckin military hardware to Ukraine. Maybe we could hand them some of those new ghost shark subs? ^(I don’t know if thats possible regards how they might be controlled)^
The UK and the US did investigate and did take action.
we could cut Russia off the internet tomorrow but they would just continue using the net through places like Bulgaria and Romania
OH NO! you mean rallies organized by a bunch of racist fucks are being used to promote racism? Who could have guessed?
Pauline Hanson?
