Natasha Wanganeen is unafraid to speak about the struggles and concerns of her community. But the once rare racist comments on her social media posts have gone from a trickle to a torrent. “Disgusting abuse,” she says, has become a daily reality.
“I got a voice message saying he was gonna rape me … and if my ancestors come back, he’ll kill them again,” the Kaurna, Narungga and Ngarrindjeri woman told Guardian Australia.
The voice memo landed in her Facebook Messenger inbox in 2020. In the message, heard by Guardian Australia, a man threatens her with sexual assault, while calling her a “fucking filthy abo whore”, and says that Australia was “white people’s land now”.
The messages keep coming. In the past six months she’s been called a “black cunt” and a “cancer on society”.
Wanganeen’s experience is at the extreme end, but a number of high-profile Indigenous Australians told Guardian Australia the same thing: the online abuse they receive is frequent and getting worse. Many noted a marked uptick in violent rhetoric since the failed voice to parliament referendum in 2023.
Evidence of this uptick has been collected by the Jumbunna Institute at the University of Technology Sydney. It established the Call It Out register in 2022 to allow members of the public to submit reports of racist incidents towards First Nations people.
It consistently receives about 500 reports a year, a mix of first-hand and witness accounts. Dr Fiona Allison, associate professor at the Jumbunna Institute, says online hate can have “real-world implications”.
“There’s so much in the report that comes through about some pretty hideous online threats of violence, including [threatening] the killing of young people who are seen to be offenders,” she says.
“People are reporting incidents involving sightings of KKK symbols, there’s references to KKK ideology and to lynchings [of First Nations people] online.”
The messages are so frequent that those experiencing the deluge say it’s difficult to distinguish between a threat that may be acted upon and those just spewing hate.
After the attempted terror attack allegedly targeting Indigenous people and their allies in Perth on 26 January, the minister for Indigenous Australians, Malarndirri McCarthy, said she was “very concerned about the increase [of] online hatred and racism”.
On Thursday, McCarthy announced a parliamentary inquiry into racism, hate and violence directed toward First Nations people. It will examine both the attempted terror attack in Perth and the attack on Melbourne’s Camp Sovereignty by neo-Nazis, events which McCarthy said had left First Nations people “feeling scared and angry”.
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“I know this has been a difficult time for families and communities,” she said. “This inquiry ensures they can have their say and their experiences will be heard by the parliament.
“I regularly hear from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that they are facing increasing hate and racism, especially online. We must stand up against racism in all its forms.”
Submissions to that inquiry will close on 1 May and findings will be tabled in September. It replaces an earlier call from McCarthy for First Nations people to make submissions to the royal commission on antisemitism and social cohesion.
McCarthy and other Indigenous politicians are subject to a high volume of racist abuse online. Her Labor colleague, Yamatji and Noongar woman Dorinda Cox, told Guardian Australia she regularly receives racist “trolling” or abusive phone calls and voicemails, as well as comments on her social media pages.
“An example of one post we put up, so some guy [wrote]: ‘You haven’t been to community for a while, have you?’ Or ‘[you’re] just a lying cunt’,” Cox says.
Moderating comments on her public page is “really important”, she says, to protect her followers and broader community from seeing racial slurs.
“People feel a little bit emboldened right now to make some of that commentary, which I haven’t seen in many, many decades in my working life,” the Western Australian senator says.
‘Comfortable being racist’
Allira Potter is a fitness influencer and content creator who rose to prominence during the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement. But the wave of support that followed that global moment has tapered off, leaving a rise in unwelcome or abusive comments in its wake – especially when she speaks about issues such as Invasion Day or cultural strength and knowledge.
“I’m just always getting the same typical whitefellas in my DMs or commenting, just saying dumb, uneducated things, and they’re not willing to sort of listen and have a conversation,” she says.
Comments on her social media pages are split: Instagram, a more curated following, skews positive; while TikTok, where the algorithm pushes videos out to new audiences, can be “a bit scary”. She’s taken to restricting comments to her followers only. That’s something everyone Guardian Australia spoke to has also done – either comments are turned off or access is heavily limited.
“It’s really hard to keep up with the comments as well, too. If one starts, then a whole bunch will sort of be on there,” Potter says. “A lot of people in general feel really comfortable being racist.”
Independent Victorian senator Lidia Thorpe says she expects a certain level of attention for her impassioned advocacy for issues affecting First Nations people – but she has also become a lightning rod for racists and their abuse.
“It’s never been this bad,” she says.
The Gunnai, Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung woman tells Guardian Australia that growing exposure to abuse and hate speech, both online and in person, is affecting the daily lives of First Nations people.
“This systemic racism – which is ultimately systemic abuse and violence – that’s playing out in the whole society that our people live and work in and raise their children in. No one’s feeling safe,” Thorpe says.
A single social media post can quickly drown under hundreds of comments. Death threats and threats of sexual violence fill her parliamentary inbox or arrive slipped under a door. She receives emails saying she is a disgrace, an “abo”, “nigger bitch” and that she should “off herself”. One message seen by Guardian Australia reads: “bring your abo shit and I will kill you in a heartbeat slut’.
In 2023, the Australian federal police investigated a video directed at Thorpe in which two men donned balaclavas and burned the Aboriginal flag before performing a Nazi salute. The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, condemned the video at the time, describing it as “threatening towards Senator Thorpe and towards the government”.
Thorpe now takes safety precautions when in public and is reluctant to announce speaking engagements. Mail is no longer sent to her home. Federal police officers and security officers trail behind her while she is out and about. After receiving another alleged death threat from neo-Nazis, Thorpe says this protection is no longer something she is able to do without.
“I’m always on guard, and I’m always careful making sure my family are safe and my community is safe from any harm wherever I go. It’s relentless,” she says.
“I now have to pick and choose who [of all those sending threatening messages] I’d like to pursue, because there’s too many to pursue.”
Her office has developed a risk matrix to assess the likelihood of physical harm based on the hate messages. The doors to her office are locked and they ensure there’s multiple exits in place if escape is necessary.
“We have a procedure that all my staff go through. We’re regularly updating those based on the threat, and we use intelligence from the ground and from the police, and we make the call on what level that risk is at.”
‘Let it give you energy to defy them’
Those who spoke to Guardian Australia noted a shift in online rhetoric after the failed voice to parliament referendum in 2023. The campaign and its subsequent defeat unleashed a racist underbelly in society after a toxic debate, political divide and community harm coalesced in a way that has yet to be undone.
Thomas Mayo, a Kaurareg, Kalkalgal and Erubamle Torres Strait Islander man from Darwin, was one of the lead campaigners for the yes vote.
“Before the Nationals [and Liberals] decided to oppose the voice in late 2022, I didn’t experience much racism online,” Mayo says. “It exploded around the time that the Coalition started to ramp up a campaign against it. It was like they had not only given permission to racists to attack Aboriginal people, to try and intimidate us, and to try and make us cower and not pursue what we thought was just and right … It was like the floodgates were opened.”
Mayo says his family has also been subject to racist abuse and threats as a consequence of his profile in the voice campaign. He believes “menacing questions”, like asking where his family is, are aimed at intimidating him and silencing his voice.
“I say: let it give you energy to defy them [racists], and not let them keep you down.”
Thorpe also refuses to back down, saying that speaking out against injustice, genocide and violence is a duty; something instilled in her by family and community. But there is a paranoia that comes from being always under attack.
“There is a sense of nervousness. What if someone’s pretending to be an ally or something, and they just fucking knife me? That does go through my head,” she says.
“But at the same time I go, ‘Well, I’m not letting them fucking silence me and stop me from doing this’. Because this is my responsibility. If you’re a fucking casualty at the end of the day, then that’s what you are, as long as you go down fighting.”
Indigenous Australians can call 13YARN on 13 92 76 for information and crisis support; or call Lifeline on 13 11 14, Mensline on 1300 789 978 or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636
