Blair Cottrell, a neo-Nazi Australian who terrorist Brenton Tarrant had idolised. Photo / Getty Images
Blair Cottrell, a neo-Nazi Australian who terrorist Brenton Tarrant had idolised. Photo / Getty Images
At a fruit and vegetable market in Melbourne's southeast, a pony-tailed man brazenly strolled through the stalls wearing an armband featuring the unmistakable hate symbol of Nazi Germany – the swastika.
The man, whose image has been shared with Victoria Police, has not been tracked down.
There is a temptation to assume the Hitler-sympathiser is a fringe-dweller out to make a scene and little else. He most likely is.
But his actions are part of a bigger pattern that seeks to normalise hateful extremism.
That's what we saw when up to 40 members of a far-right group camped close to and visited the small Victorian tourist town of Halls Gap, about 150km west of Ballarat, over the Australia Day long weekend.
Somebody knows who this grub is. Spotted wearing a swastika at a Moorabbin Wholesale Farmers Fresh in Melbourne on Friday. @newscomauHQpic.twitter.com/2VjJJIzxbl
The camping trip coincided with the 76th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, where the Nazis murdered more than one million Jews, as well as Poles, Soviets and gay people.
Two years ago, on the St Kilda Beach foreshore, white supremacists openly gathered to celebrate their toxic views before police arrived to disperse them.
On social media, these extremists share content so disturbing that the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) has had to sit up and take notice.
They know what Australians are yet to fully realise – hateful ideology and violent extremism go hand-in-hand.
Deakin University terror expert Professor Greg Barton has written a detailed analysis of Australia's growing extremist threat.
"The worst-ever terrorist attack by an Australian didn't take place in Australia, but it was very much made in Australia," Prof Barton wrote for The Conversation.
Right-wing activist Blair Cottrell (right), who the Christchurch terrorist idolised, and disgraced politician Fraser Anning, who was the victim of the famous 'Egg Boy.' Photo / Twitter
"The Christchurch shooter did not go from hateful extremism to violent extremism overnight – it only looks that way. He had been cold-bloodedly preparing for and planning his terrorist attack for years.
"The warning signs were there in his hateful social media posts, but they were lost in a cacophony of extremist noise."
The noise includes what happened in the Grampians where members of the National Socialist Network burned crosses and preached hate.
A local business owner, who did not wish to be named, told news.com.au: "I never thought living out here I'd be in danger of extremist groups."
He continued: "You look at these people and they're the ones you fear the most. They're like a cut snake, you just don't know what they'd do."
Barton says the Christchurch terrorist was giving clues ahead of the massacre that would become New Zealand's deadliest day.
"It is possible that, with more attention, his deadly trajectory could have been identified and interrupted," he says.
"It is true most of these neo-Nazi bullies, moving in packs and hiding behind balaclavas, will not cross the line and become violent extremists.
"But the danger is they will inspire lone actors to launch violent attacks in the toxic-narcissistic hope of going from 'zero to hero', competing for attention with avidly consumed manifestos, live-streamed bodycam footage, and a sick obsession with 'body counts'."
Barton argues that Australia's public needs to change its attitude towards the far-right but, more than that, Australia's authorities need to change their approach.
"There is a pressing need for a properly resourced and maintained open registry of hate crimes and incidents, rather than the shambolic, haphazard, disconnected, array of incomplete collections that currently exist," he said.
A racist note left on the windscreen of a shopper at Chermside Shopping Centre, Queenland. Photo / Twitter
Australia's chief intelligence officer, ASIO director-general Mike Burgess, said in February last year: "In Australia, the extreme right-wing threat is real and it is growing.
"In suburbs around Australia, small cells regularly meet to salute Nazi flags, inspect weapons, train in combat and share their hateful ideology," he added.
News.com.au looked into racist ramblings and anti-Semitic language in conversations online.
It reveals a confused range of beliefs. They at once want to persuade people of the "merits of our cause" while also conceding their views are so unpopular the only way to achieve them would be to overthrow democracy.
One group used its social media presence to applaud some Australians, not connected to its group, for their deeds.
But when news.com.au contacted one of these people, he said it was the first he'd heard of it and the neo-Nazis were nothing more than "vile fascist pigs" that he hated with "every fibre of my being".
On the sentencing of Christchurch mosque shooter Brenton Tarrant, the son of a victim had a message for his father's killer. Photo / Supplied
The group posted images of the Third Reich hike on to social media. "We managed to get 40 racist white men to march through the Grampians singing Waltzing Matilda," the post said.
The group boasted that police were unable to stop them "because [we] aren't actually doing anything wrong".
