How did it happen?
A man wearing a makeshift tactical outfit and helmet takes footage of himself on an action camera mounted on his helmet in the bathrooms of Newcastle's Civic Theatre.
He is armed with a knife, handsaw and a hammer. He leaves the theatre, crosses Hunter Street in front of the light rail, and enters the office of Newcastle MP Tim Crakanthorp with what police allege was the intent to kill the Labor politician.
The man leaves almost immediately and walks to Newcastle Museum, where he is met by staff.
Footage of his actions was livestreamed. He is breathing heavily and audibly in the video.
He leaves the museum, and the livestream is cut off shortly afterwards. Staff at the museum contact police and the man is arrested moments later. He is charged with actions done in preparation for or planning for a terrorist attack.
The scene is chillingly familiar. In the days leading up to the event, the man accused of planning a terrorist attack in Newcastle, Jordan Patten, sent a fountain of tweets declaring his intentions.
His social media accounts are rife with anti-semitism, racism, grievance politics, bigotry and violence.
Before allegedly beginning the livestream, he published a 205-page manifesto that catalogues a nihilistic diatribe of themes common to those expressed by people who have committed atrocities.
Patten rails against what he calls "Western hypocrisy", touches on a slew of culture war dog whistles, denigrates women and LGBT culture, parrots far-right conspiracy theories, rails against pornography, child sex and paedophilia, and calls for the reinstatement of the death penalty.
The title of the document is lifted from that of Brenton Tarrant, the Australian terrorist who committed the Christchurch Mosque shooting that killed 51 people.
Anti-fascist researchers who have infiltrated the spaces where people like Tarrant are radicalised into violence describe a bleak and cultic "saints" culture that circulates in online militant accelerationist groups where young men, in particular, are desensitised, egged on to commit atrocities and venerate those who do as martyrs.
Contemporary saints culture, which has roots in fascist and Nazi history, took hold anew almost immediately after the 2019 Christchurch attack and was retroactively applied to pre-2019 terrorists such as Robert Bowers, who carried out the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, and the 2011 Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik, according to research by the Global Network on Extremism and Technology.
A spokesperson for the Australian anti-fascist research group, The White Rose Society, said the subculture that circulates in isolated communities online "changed the aesthetic" of the modern terror attack.
"People live-stream, they have their action camera, and they dress a certain way because they want to replicate their hero," a researcher who spoke anonymously with the Newcastle Herald said.
Teens and boys are a target for such groups because they are often primed to be receptive to their cultic ideals of toxic- and hyper-masculinity.
Often, those who fall into these circles will seek out desensitising material online, they will retreat from social relationships, become fixated on particular ideas, and spend unhealthy amounts of time online, the spokesperson said.
Oftentimes, radicalisation is done in small, insulated, private groups and forums where the material is shared, and vulnerable targets develop fraught relationships with other radicalised people who urge them to carry out their dark fantasies.
Researchers say it is difficult to group or generalise about violent incidents, but there are early warning signs.
"When we speak to parents, we really encourage oversight of what children and teenagers are doing online, and in gaming, and who they are speaking to," the researcher said.
"In Australia, there are few resources for families whose children are radicalising.
"There are few places that they can go except the police, and if someone needs deradicalising, particularly young people, they usually don't engage with the deradicalisation process until they are engaged with the justice system; it's not based in the community, it's based on something very carceral ... and we know with feedback from extremists, particularly ones who've done the programmes through the prison system, they just treat it as a joke."
For families, the signs are often withdrawal, researchers say; social isolation, spending a lot of time online, or being secretive about the amount time spent online and what that time is spent looking at, engaging with, and who they are speaking to.
Researchers also pointed to the effects of desensitising material being shared online: gore, child abuse material, violence and discussions of committing violence, which can draw vulnerable people further into the dark rabbit hole.
The spokesperson pointed to helping particularly young people learn media literacy, critical thinking and about respectful relationships as pathways towards a community approach to deradicalising those most at risk.
- Support is available for those who may be distressed. Phone Lifeline 13 11 14; MensLine 1300 789 978; Kids Helpline 1800 551 800; beyondblue 1300 224 636.
