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Arielle Bogle (3:54)

As we dove into conspiracy theories in Australia for the book, the thing that it made it so obvious is that the conspiracy theories that take off here, the ones that are created here, it's not an accident. They reflect the things that we are really scared of. They reflect the things that we think are really important. The conspiracy theories, whether we like it or not, reflect something fundamentally about what we think and feel as Australians.

Cam Wilson (4:21)

The question of how many Australians really believe in conspiracy theories, it's a difficult one to measure. There's been some great research on beliefs in Australia, and one study we looked at was from 2019. They surveyed a bunch of Australians about whether they were aware of certain conspiracy theories and whether they endorse them, whether they believe them. And there were some, you know, like, was Pharaoh poisoned by American gangsters? Or was Harold Holt stolen away in a Chinese submarine? Like, these are ones people are probably pretty familiar with, but there were ones that implied, you know, a pretty negative belief about this country. You know, was Port Arthur, you know, a false flag, a plot to take guns away from Australians? There was this idea too, that fluoride was put in the water to make us all docile, compliant. You know, if somebody did endorse these beliefs, it implied something pretty negative about their relationship with what this country is. And so these are the kinds of ideas we wanted to explore. It wasn't we're not alleging that every Australian is conspiracy theorists by any means, but there certainly are conspiracy theories, conspiratorial ways of thinking that have become pretty influential in certain circles that even at the highest level of politics. And this is what we started to dig into in our reporting. And one of the most interesting examples for me in reporting was a chapter about what I'm calling pseudo law. But people might be more familiar with the term sovereign citizen. So people have probably seen these videos on Facebook. You know, somebody at the traffic stop has this bizarre interaction with a cop where they say I'm traveling, I'm not driving, thus you have no jurisdiction over me. Some version of this, like quite elaborate phrases and the cops are just completely bemused by the situation.

Host (6:03)

There have been very serious crimes related to some of these groups, these off grid sovereign citizen groups. And the most well known example is of course the murders of three people in Weeambilla in Queensland.

Cam Wilson (6:16)

Good afternoon. We begin with the horror attack in Queensland that's taken the lives of six people, including two police officers in their 20s. A group of officers were called to a property in the Western Darling Downs through three hours west of Brisbane to reports of a missing person. Late last night, Constable Rachel McCro, aged 29 and Constable Matthew Arnold aged 26 were gunned down. A neighbour who went to the property to investigate was also killed. Identified as 58 year old Alan Dare. Special Operations Police. Shot dead three suspects, brothers Nathaniel and Gareth Train and a woman, Stacey Train.

Host (6:56)

How do we describe Gareth and Nathaniel Train and Stacy Train, Gareth's wife. Were they sovereign citizens, were they conspiracy theorists? How do we describe these three people who'd hold themselves up in a, in a house there?

Arielle Bogle (7:08)

Yeah, it's kind of hard because they had a whole range of beliefs and, and that is actually a symptom of what it feels like. Modern conspiracy theories alike, which is everything just kind of gets pulled into it. So you can call them anti government activists, you call them sovereign citizens, they, they were anti vaccine as well, that are all kinds of beliefs. But in the case of we and Biller, you know, there were these three individuals who were suffering from what was said at a inquiry that had happened into it from delusions. And they believed ultimately that the police were coming there to kill them. And so one day some police came out to check a missing persons warrant for one of them, the younger brother. And the three of them ambushed these police, killed two of them, injured others, and then also, also killed a neighbour who came to check out what was happening.

Marc Maron (8:01)

Hey buddy.

Arielle Bogle (8:03)

He shot Rachel, I believe. I think she's dead.

Cam Wilson (8:07)

Hell mate.

Arielle Bogle (8:07)

Hang in there.

Cam Wilson (8:08)

Have you.

Ryan Reynolds / Adam Grant (8:08)

What about the other two?

Arielle Bogle (8:09)

You got eyes on Keely and Matt? Matt's not moving.

Cam Wilson (8:12)

Rachel's not moving.

Arielle Bogle (8:12)

Now. You know, they were motivated by the fear of all kinds of things that the government was surveilling them, that the pandemic was a new world order and everyone was taking over. And ultimately, you know, they lived in this very secluded areas called the blocks. Remote Queensland. And it's a complex picture. You never really understand it. And the more you actually like pull the strings of these things, the more you realize like it's very, very difficult from the outside to understand exactly what makes people do anything and why some people who believe crazy things might do something extreme and why others may not but ultimately will kill themselves in the act. By. By police.

Host (8:49)

They did upload some videos. I wouldn't suggest there's a manifesto involved, is there? I mean we. That's a word that's often used in these situations. But they certainly uploaded videos about what they were thinking and feeling.

Arielle Bogle (9:00)

Yeah, and so like I was actually the journalist who, who found them in the first place and someone sent me this link, you know, like one of the nights afterwards just, just an anonymous researcher who was like, hey, this really looks like those guys. And so I opened up the link and it was honestly like chilling. You know, the first video that I saw these two gaunt faces in the dark looking into the camera saying that, you know, devils had crossed the boundary of their property and they'd killed them. You know, they pitched themselves as in this great battle of good versus evil. It was later described as a Christian terrorist attack. And they said that they believed in this idea of pre millenarianism which basically means that they thought that the world was ending. And so, you know, they were, in their minds. What they thought happened when the police were coming to get them was that they thought they were defending themselves. They thought it was in self defense. Like I looked into the background of some of them and saw that, you know, they'd been on these kind of old school like pre social media conspiracy websites and stuff. And these beliefs combined with the isolation they'd had and all kinds of other factors ultimately led them to commit one of the, you know, biggest acts of mass violence in Australia in recent history.

Host (10:08)

And it's devastating because all three of their victims were trying to help them. Like it's, in a way, it's almost a parable for the times because not only were they not under attack, their neighbour Alan Dare was trying to help them, knew who they were and all that kind of stuff. And the two police members, Matthew Arnold and Rachel McCro, as you said, were there to perform a welfare check because Nathaniel Train had been reported missing and his family and people wanted to know if he was alive, if he was okay, if that's where he was. So how was this entire scenario received by the broader conspiracy community? Was it a wake up call to anyone?

Arielle Bogle (10:51)

I mean, you probably can predict that no, it wasn't. And, you know, there's this common thing that happens in conspiracy theory communities where they're called self sealing, which means that every new piece of information, information, no matter what happens, somehow goes to prove their existing beliefs that the whole world is against them. So, you know, there were people saying that it was either a false flag, which is a term meaning that actually this didn't actually happen, you know, that it was faked in some ways. Other people saying that it was set up by the government to kind of get access to, like, gas fields around the area, like all these kind of crazy theories that came out of it. It's such a sad situation. And but there's also this sad irony that even in this situation, people who thought very similar things to the people who ultimately acted out and committed this viol violence, people with very similar beliefs, ultimately didn't believe those people and thought that they were actually against them as well. In the final, like, irony, you know, the conspiracy beliefs kind of end up consuming them.

Host (11:45)

So fellow conspiracy theorists stop believing each other.

Arielle Bogle (11:48)

The fellow conspiracy theorists, they didn't either. They didn't believe that the event happened, that they thought it was faked as, you know, as a reason to, for example, enact more gun laws, or also that it was a kind of plot to acquire land so that the government could then, you know, tap into the gas fields. I guess what I'm trying to say is that, like, you know, there was no sense of community. It wasn't like, we've lost one of our own. As soon as it happened. The people in the rest of these communities immediately said, you know, these aren't one of us, they're someone else, and turn their story into yet more proof that they were on the right side and whatever happened was more proof of the evils that they believed all around the world.

Arielle Bogle (12:36)

It's third down.

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Host (14:48)

So a false flag is essentially what I would refer to as burning the Reichstag. Like is is that the belief that when, when they say something was a false flag, they're saying, oh, it was actually the government, for example, the Sandy Hook murders in America where children were killed and conspiracy theorists said it was all, they were all actors, the people who were their parents. It didn't really happen. They're trying to take our guns.

Marc Maron (15:12)

People just instinctively know that there's a lot of fraud going on.

Arielle Bogle (15:17)

But it took me about a year.

Marc Maron (15:18)

With Sandy Hook to come to grips.

Arielle Bogle (15:20)

With the fact that the whole thing was fake. Yeah, I mean the kind of best example of this in Australia that we wrote about was the Port Arthur massacre, which happened in 1996. We kind of make the argument that it was Australia's first online conspiracy theory because the, the event like happened in 1996 and that's really before most people had Internet. But a couple years later these theories started bubbling up that you know, I'd heard were in the community, but started to gather steam. Actually know Martin Bryant, who killed dozens of people that day, didn't actually kill them in this telling. It was actually set up by the government as a excuse to enact stricter gun laws that Australia actually did do to then, you know, kind of institute the, the gun buyback and, and all the other stuff around that. The false flag is this idea that events aren't what they seem. You know, even something where you might be like, you know, like from the conspiracy community, you might be like, oh, someone I know or someone who has similar beliefs to me did something terrible rather than believing that they actually something where they say that it was. It's actually not the case. And actually this is more proof that, you know, there's these schemes against us. In this case they said that it was either actors that mun. Brian couldn't possibly have done it or that he was, you know, himself like set up in some way to do it or to kind of avoid this responsibility of actually what happened and to really understand it.

Host (16:41)

These conspiracy theories are people trying to make sense of the world but going really a long way around the most likely scenario. You know, Occam's Razor, the theory that the most obvious explanation is probably the right one. Yeah, it's such a long way further around things to think that the truth of these is something else. It requires for there to have been lots of people in on the conspiracy who've never spoken about it publicly. How does that work? How. How does someone find it easier to believe a crazier story?

Cam Wilson (17:15)

You know, one thing we do talk about in the book is this idea of motivated reasoning. Like a lot of us would like to imagine that we're really rational scientific creatures who only make a decision about what we believe or do after carefully weighing all the evidence on all sides and then arriving into belief. But in fact we mostly go through the world with sort of a vibe based approach. Maybe we have a feeling that something's not quite right about, say, wind farms, you know, a very perennial kind of debate in Australia, which has a lot of conspiratorial elements in some parts of the. The community that opposes them. We have a feeling that something's not quite right. We don't like how they look, we don't like how they sound, we don't like the idea. We don't like perhaps how it represents the decimation of some industries in our town, for example. So we try and come up with a reasoning for why that might be the case. And so we sort of pick at the evidence and choose the evidence that best suits our narrative, our feeling. So that's one thing. Like, I also think too, that a lot of these conspiratorial ideas or conspiracy theories put the person that's into them at the center of, like, an epic tale. Like, there's something quite appealing about our past. If there might be other things growing in your life, but in this case, you're the truth seeker, you're the activist in this broader story. You see through life and you see the evil.

Arielle Bogle (18:36)

I think it's. It's funny, you know, you often find yourself in the situation where you'll be like, someone will say something that you're like, I know is not right. And then they'll say something, you know, they'll be like, but what about this and this? And you're like, well, I, I just, you know, I believe that man landed on the moon. And I'm sorry that I haven't, you know, dissected this myself, but I. I feel pretty confident about that. And so you get in this, this situation where actually sometimes it's like a weird, like, almost information imbalance. And I think that's why we feel like conspiracy theories are really present in modern society, because all the things that we kind of do and depend on are just so complex that it's really just hard for any individual to understand. I'm going to put my head up here and say, I'm a technology reporter. If you actually ask me how a computer works, like inside, I couldn't tell you. And so ultimately, I guess I'm totally relying on, like, what someone else has said about this. And. But, but that's the kind of me being like, you know, I obviously seems to work for me, other people seems to work. I trust that. So, you know, the conditions for people to believe things that aren't real are there, and they're often the conditions that are same for us to believe things that are real. And I think that's another good reminder to be like, stay away from trying to get to the facts of it and trying to be like, you know, we know this. This isn't just about conspiracy theories. This is about all of, like, communication. People don't remember what you say, they remember how you make them feel. And it's so important to, you know, within boundaries to make people feel like, I am here for you. I'm not rejecting you, if you can. Obviously, you know, it's not on any individual to pull another individual out, but we do know from the people. In the circumstances where people say, I change my mind, it's often because someone lent, like, an ear, like, they just listened and they understood and they maybe were just around enough to give them the help when the person actually wanted it. And I think that's, like, it's hard to do.

Cam Wilson (20:25)

It's very circumstantial. You know, you have to make those decisions for yourself about whether you are being put at risk by this person's behavior or if you're willing to maintain the relationship and not break that thread just yet. Because you never know, that thread might be the one that pulls them back.

Host (20:45)

Thank you to our guests today, journalists and authors Arielle Bogle and Cam Wilson. If you need support after listening to this podcast, you can call Lifeline on 13, 1114 or contact 1-800-Respect on 1-800-737-732 or 1-800-Respect. Org au. Indigenous Australians can contact 13 Yarn on 139276 or 13yarn.org au.

Marc Maron (21:24)

The producers of this podcast recognise the.

Arielle Bogle (21:28)

Traditional owners of the land on which it's recorded.

Arielle Bogle (21:33)

They pay respect to the Aboriginal elders, past, present and those emerging.

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