America’s far right isn’t happy about Australia’s COVID-19 response, with Alex Jones (bottom left) spouting his usual conspiracy nonsense while Candace Owens (top left) actually called for a US invasion. Photos (clockwise from top left): Newsone, Wikipedia, Twitter (John Blaxland, digitally-altered), Media Matters for America.

“Australia currently, make no mistake, is a tyrannical police state. Its citizens are quite literally being imprisoned against their will. So when do we deploy?”

In case you missed it, that was excitable American right winger Candace Owens last week, calling on the US military to invade Australia and free us from the COVID-19 tyranny of our “totalitarian regime”. Owens went on to compare us to Hitler, Stalin and the Taliban, because of course she did.

The joke’s on Ms Owens, of course: America invaded us years ago. Stay with me and I’ll explain.

As you can see (clip above), Owens is a right-wing demagogue and YouTube talk show host who makes wilfully inflammatory statements – up to, and including, a claim Hitler wanted to “make Germany great” – in order to expand her profile, drive up engagement, generate revenue and normalise the outrageous. This is standard business practice on the far right, except she’s from America, where it takes something special to shock an audience (which she’s more than happy to do).

Thus, it was business as usual when Owens lashed out at tennis star Naomi Osaka, calling her “weak” for her decision to withdraw from the French Open over media demands that were taking a toll. When celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain took his own life, Owens blamed his supposed frailty on the “PC culture” of “victimhood”, while suggesting her ‘self-sufficient’ outlook protected her from such weakness.

Invariably, Owens adds a bit of ‘wriggle room’ to her desecrations, distancing herself from the abovementioned Hitler gaffe after the fact and, on the US military storming the beaches of Manly and St Kilda, adding: “I say that of course, in jest.” The problem is, her audience is focused on her affirmation of its members’ fear or anger, not on the disclaimer, much as McDonald’s customers ignore the clearly-stated kilojoule count on their Big Macs.

In demolishing Owens’ idiocy, where do we start? Is it low-hanging fruit to poke fun at her failure to distinguish between Australia’s “totalitarian regime” of Scott Morrison (who wants us to “live with the virus”, a position she surely supports) and that of Victoria’s Dan Andrews, someone whose politics she could truly sink her teeth into if she knew a thing about our Federal system of government?

Then there’s the fact that, per Johns Hopkins University, America has suffered 2067 COVID-19 related deaths per million population, compared to Australia’s 48 per million. Tell us again, Candace, whose COVID-19 response has been more apropos.

I must confess, it’s a pet peeve of mine when Americans aren’t sufficiently self-aware to look at the totalitarian tactics rife in parts of their own country – ‘tactics’ that, in Owens’ USA, saw George Floyd murdered over nine harrowing minutes under the knee of a police officer. Instead, Owens prefers to hurl inflammatory barbs at Australia, a so-called “totalitarian” country that’s merely trying to protect its citizens. You should give that a try sometime, America.


Like the Nazis in Crete (1941, above), the American right has established a beachhead, at least into our political discourse. Photo: Getty Images.

In calling for the invasion of Australia, Owens seems unaware that, in one sense, it’s already happened and that she and fellow right-wing shit-stirrers like Alex Jones and Ben Shapiro are a part of it. Their stories resonate with the disaffected, “are captivating, easy to remember and create an outsized footprint online,” Yochai Benkler of Harvard University said.

Owens and company may only be in it for a buck, but their business model is so powerful (relying as it does on misplaced anger and fear of the ‘other’) that it can be piggybacked by even-more-nefarious types whose agenda is more one of outright Information Warfare (IW).

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Defined as the manipulation of data trusted by targets without their awareness, IW uses, among other methods, the spreading of propaganda or disinformation so those targets make decisions which are contrary to their interests.

Typically an element of broader conflict, IW can also be utilised to spread an ideology or – in this whacky social media world of ours – divide a country through means such as ‘culture wars’. It won’t bring down a country in the sense of conventional warfare, but it can severely weaken its societal foundations and leave it decidedly vulnerable.

Crikey’s Margot Saville wrote that in social media echo chambers, “anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic messaging and far-right conspiracy theories such as QAnon are used to recruit and engage users” in Australia. According to researchers from Macquarie and Victoria universities, this “creeping threat” to our liberal democracy is aimed mostly at Australian men under 35, who are attracted to “the theme of white identity under threat”.

Threats to white culture are a leading QAnon narrative, and it has an audience here. “(It) was the major influence on the Christchurch terrorist (then aged 28) who live-streamed the fatal shooting of 51 worshippers at two mosques in 2019,” Saville wrote.

A Roy Morgan survey last year revealed more than 60 per cent of Australian respondents trusted the internet as their main source of news, and more than half of those relied on the same social media used by mostly American right wingers to spread their message. On closer examination, much of the ‘news’ those readers consume turns out to be “salacious and agenda-driven disinformation to drown out factual content”.

Right-wing social media influencers, conservative media outlets and other fellow travellers dominated online discussions around politics in 2020, according to a US review of Facebook posts, Instagram feeds, Twitter messages and chat rooms. Australians are flocking to many of these discussions, especially (but not only) those spreading disinformation on COVID-19, a topic of concern in both countries.

The review’s findings demonstrate “how a small number of conservative users routinely outpace their (progressive) rivals and traditional news outlets in driving the online conversation … indicating that right-leaning talking points continue to shape the worldviews” of millions of consumers, Australians included.

Journalist, interviewer and writer Shannon Molloy says Australia “has never been more divided on social and political issues.” Whether or not you agree with Owens and her like, she’s clearly (and perhaps unwittingly) abetting a form of IW which has many of us “making decisions against our interests” and helping split this country down the middle.

It’s easy to laugh at Owens, as Lisa Wilkinson of The Project did on Friday’s show. Wilkinson admitted to being “mesmerised” by Owens’ puffy sleeves (above) and her broadcasting “from the set of American Idol.”

However, Owens and the American far right’s invasion of Australia is having an impact which moves well beyond comedy and into outright division and disinformation. It is, in a very real sense, a gateway into darker corners of social media which glorify indiscriminate violence and pose an “enormous ongoing challenge” for Australia’s security agencies amid a rapid expansion of extreme right-wing material, according to the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor’s annual report.

“The threat from extreme right-wing terrorists has increased since the Christchurch attack … and there remains the possibility of individuals being radicalised to extreme right-wing ideologies,” wrote independent monitor Grant Donaldson.

The COVID-19 pandemic would continue to have implications for counter-terrorism efforts, amid “concerns that social isolation caused by lockdowns may lead vulnerable individuals to engage more with terrorist propaganda,” he added.

Of course, our Federal Government politicians have enough trouble silencing the far right on their own backbench, much less keeping a serious eye on the potential for far-right terrorism in Australia.

One would have hoped red flags popped up in Parliament House, Canberra, when anti-vaxxers influenced by the far right ran amok on the streets of Melbourne and Sydney, or following the events of 6 January, when a mob swayed by the Candace Owens’ of the world tried to seize the US Capitol.

Yet here we are.