Australia Has An Alt-Right Movement And It’s Called #DingoTwitter
The white nationalists are down under.
1. The rise of Donald Trump in the US coincided with the emergence of a new movement of aggressive white nationalists who call themselves the “alt-right” online.
The loosely connected group of people, who gathered on Twitter, Reddit, and 4Chan and adopted the cartoon frog Pepe as its mascot, saw its ideas about white nationalism and anti-immigration thrust into the mainstream by Donald Trump.
2. Now in Australia, similar social media accounts espousing the same vicious, racist, anti-immigration rhetoric and memes have popped up, rallying around the hashtag #DingoTwitter.
3. Like their American counterparts, accounts purporting to be members of #DingoTwitter rail against immigration, Islam, Judaism, feminism, and multiculturalism.
One of the users in the online community, THRILLHO, told BuzzFeed News over Twitter via direct message that one of the main ideas of #DingoTwitter was pushing anti-Aboriginal ideas:
“Dingo Twitter argues that the Aboriginal peoples of Australia belong to a seperate species and must be segregated into the Northern Territories [sic] in order to restrict their atavistic dark energies.”
4. That’s not all. The group has targeted Australia’s Sudanese refugee population, Muslim and feminist activists, and has taken a big interest in the freedom of speech debate around the Racial Discrimination Act.
5. “Aborigine genocide, British Colonization, EmuLivesMatter, and something we like to call ‘banter politics’,” cited user NIK, when asked what #DingoTwitter is all about.
7. According to the group, “Banter politics” plays into an idea that they’re not being entirely serious about what they’re posting – i.e. they’re trying to troll people. Some of those ideas are shown on this graphic obtained by BuzzFeed News titled “Dingo Twitter Content Mindset”.
“I am in DM groups with dozens of frog avis [avatars] from all around Twitter and we discuss how we can influence… through shitposting,” said NIK.
“That is what started Dingo Twitter.”
8. One signature of the group is taking local links and targetting the polls with overseas votes to alter the outcome.
9. #DingoTwitter even made it to the screen of Australia’s top-rated political show, the ABC’s Q&A;.
10. A few weeks earlier they scored some screentime on ABC’s Hack Live special episode on immigration and far-right groups in Australia.
11. While #DingoTwitter might be a joke to some, it’s definitely a more serious political movement for others. People claiming to be “esoteric Lathamists” have taken the American alt-right ideas and started Australian blogs and podcasts.
A listen through some of @TheDingoes’ recent podcasts – four Australian-sounding men talking for up to two hours – lays bare some of their ideas about Aussie politics.
Government MPs George Christensen and Cory Bernardi are “heroes” of the Liberal party (which is “a party full of cucks”) and Tony Abbott himself is labelled a fake conservative, or a “cuckservative”.
Labor is obsessed with “poofter marriage”, “brown skin” Waleed Aly is a “stupid person’s idea of a smart person”, and prime minister Malcolm Turnbull is a “secret Jew”.
“[Turnbull is] an arsehole, he’s a merchant banker, and his mother was likely Jewish, sounds pretty Jewish to me mate,” said one of the hosts of the show.
12. In the most recent episode, during a discussion about scrapping the Racial Discrimination Act, the group made it abundantly clear that their interests are served by One Nation.
“If they don’t [change the law] and the left become even more drunk on their own power and like blood to the sharks that they are, that’s only going to give us more traction and haemorrhage their base to us,” said one of the hosts.
“By us, obviously I mean One Nation, and so have a broader alt-right in Australia.”
Later on, the same host mused, “Our collective heart want One Nation to do very well.”
13. According to user NIK, the #DingoTwitter community is both foreign alt-right accounts and Australian users with the same white nationalist message.
“We’re just normal NEETs [not in education, employment or training] on Twitter with frog avis trying to make a living and stopping our countries (DingoTwitter is just for Australia but we have a lot of support all over the world) from becoming caliphates.”
