White Supremacist Terrorist Attacks Are Trending in NSW: Three Incidents in Four Weeks

Sebastian Newman was charged in Sutherland Local Court with two terrorism offences on Thursday. And it would appear from a number of details in the reports that he’s a white supremacist-type of terrorist, but as to his distinct ethnic background that’s not noted, which often denotes white.

Newman was already on remand when charged with the offences, as last week, he’d set off homemade plastic bottle bombs, containing chlorine mixed with alcohol, inside a bathroom at Westfield Miranda Shopping Centre. And he was then arrested out the front with a knife on him.

But after NSW police officers had a snoop around his Loftus townhouse, they found more chemicals and a manifesto that he’d prepared and shared online. And the deeming of the 25 July occurrence as a terror incident, marks, likely, the third case of white supremacist terror within four weeks.

Another clue to conclude this is far-right Brenton Tarrant-inspired behaviour is that terrorism charges were laid against the 21-year-old Australian man and then the police said that the prosecutor would be arguing he had “mixed and unclear ideological beliefs”, which is newspeak for white terrorism.

And the reason why we know that indicates far right terror is that NSW police described a white man who stabbed a Chinese individual in the back and had previously threatened to perpetrate a “Christchurch-style” attack on 2 July, was described as “mixed and unclear” ideologically-motivated.

And the bizarre aspect to that is when the stabbing out the front of Sydney University happened police were giving the “mixed and unclear” ideological motivation explanation to suggest it might be reason to resist charging a teenager, who wanted to mimic Tarrant at school, with terrorism crimes.

Rising “ideological” terror crimes

Newman was on remand over custody of knife in public place, possession of dangerous articles and sending article to cause alarm, when he was charged with the terror offences on Thursday, during what appears to have been a bail application hearing.

The new charges consist of planning or preparing terrorist acts, contrary to section 101.6 of the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth), which carries life imprisonment, along with collecting or making documents likely to facilitate terrorist acts, under section 101.5, making one liable to 15 years inside.

White Australians being charged with terrorism is a rare occurrence. As the Australian Muslim Advocacy Network (AMAN) points out there’s only been one white male convicted over terrorism since passing terror laws became a bipartisan obsession following the 9/11 New York terror attacks.

Yet, not only did this happen on 1 August, as weeks earlier, a Raymond Terrace white Australian teen was also charged with planning or preparing terrorist acts, which the Joint Counter Terrorism Team announced on 30 June, which was when the first of the recent far right extremist incidents occurred.

This one involved 19-year-old Jordan Patten walking down a Newcastle street dressed in combat gear and armed with a knife, then entering the electoral office of Labor MP Tim Crackenthorpe, aiming to behead the state politician, but at the last minute, he backed out and left the premises.

Salad bar is the new white supremacy

NSW police assistant commissioner Mark Walton described the Sydney University stabber as having ideas that were “categorised as mixed and unclear”, while the knifing was “not religiously motivated” and he added that the teen, who’d mentioned Tarrant in the past, held “a salad bar of ideologies”.

The definition of terrorism in federal law is an act of violence or the threat of it to advance a political, ideological or religious cause. But as AMAN points out, under international law, it’s simply politically-motivated violence, and the group argues that religion and ideology should be dropped.

So, while white Australians rarely get charged with terrorism, Muslim Australians appear to make up the bulk of civilians charged with the crimes that carry such steep penalties, and Australian authorities don’t resist laying such charges against Muslims, in the way they do white people.

AMAN adds that only Muslim people ever get charged with “religiously-motivated” terror charges. So, this gives the false impression that Islam advocates this sort of behaviour, when in actual fact, if a Christian or a Muslim or a Hindu or a Buddhist carries out a terrorist act, it is for political purposes.

And at present, the ideologically-motivated addition to the terror definition is superfluous, as ideologically-motivated terror acts are obviously politically-motivated acts.

However, right now, the concept of ideologically-motivated terrorism is usually applied to violent far-right acts in a manner that appears to disguise the fact that these are neo-Nazis and white supremacists actively committing terror acts to encourage a society shaped around fascism.

Indeed, one week, a mix of right-wing ideologies and a tendency to idolise the Christchurch killer is a reason not to identify white supremacist acts of violence as terror, but, weeks later, and the DPP is going to argue that Newman’s act of terrorism was motivated by “a salad bar of ideologies”.

White men can terrorise

Indeed, those white supremacist types, such as the National Socialist Network (NSN), like to hearken back to an idea of a purely white Australia. And while the presence of First Nations peoples refutes this illusion, the Australian state was founded on a seven-decade-long White Australia policy.

The Australian state was further predicated on the doctrine of terra nullius, meaning there were no Sovereign Peoples here, and the earliest iterations of the Australian police forces were permitted to carry out acts of terrorism to “reclaim” the land.

So, this might go a fair way to explain why law enforcement and the justice system in general, along with the government, has always had such resistance to charging white people with terrorism or even hesitating to add white supremacist terror groups to the official list of terrorist organisations.

But one thing seems clear and that is incidents of white Australians committing acts of politically-motivated violence are on the rise in NSW. And their political motivations are the same as held by all white supremacists, whether that be Nazis, skinheads, neo-Nazis, Reclaim Australia or Tarrant.

And the fact that two white males with lots of different ideas floating around about the superiority of white people have been charged with terrorism in little over a month, with a third incident in tow, could point to the need for authorities to accept, rather than deny, what’s going on.