Campaigning on conspiracy theories
Pro ‘freedom’ parties are packaging up and authorising conspiracy theories for the purposes of political advertising with our monitoring noting narratives being cited more often and in more explicit terms. One Nation, the United Australia Party, and various fringe parties have leaned into ‘World Economic Forum’ (WEF) and ‘Great Reset’ conspiracy theories, pouring money into online advertising that falsely claims major parties and their candidates are ‘pawns’ and ‘puppets’ in a grand global scheme.
Coded language and vague references are out. Bold name-drops are in. As one UAP candidate puts it, ‘W.E.F is destroying Australia’. One Nation has been straight that it ‘does not support the WEF’s Great Reset’ whilst UAP’s Craig Kelly published a post on Telegram during the week that called a vote for major parties and ‘fake’ independents a ‘vote for Klaus (Schwab, founder of WEF) and the WEF.’
This is not all. We also noted that it’s moving from the online world to the offline. Conspiracy theories that were once confined to the corners of closed chat apps and semi-closed spaces are being printed on corflutes posing as legitimate political ads. Political ads must come with an authorisation but otherwise they can display almost anything they desire. The Australian Electoral Commission has been clear that it ‘has no role in regulating the political content of electoral communications’. The uptick in misleading and unverified content posing as political posturing is a reminder to voters that they should not take online or offline ads as official information.
Earlier in May, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation used an animated video to push well known tropes about voter fraud that mirrored those used in the US to falsely discredit electoral processes. But as First Draft noted to the ABC, just as worryingly the video weaponised the use of satire to push racism and conspiracy theories. In the video, the character of Penny Wong hands the character of Anthony Albanese (who was recovering from Covid 19 at the time) a bowl of soup, from which a screeching bat later flies out. ‘Bat soup’ videos were weaponised against Chinese people from as early as January 2020, despite debunks that found the videos were from Palau and three years old at the time. The problem of racism and xenophobia arose quickly at the start of the pandemic, and shows the potential for how damaging this type of content can be. It seems those lessons are still being learned.
Julia Bergin, Senior First Draft Research Reporter
Anne Kruger, First Draft APAC Director
This article was first published in the CMT newsletter of 13 May 2022, which dealt with key issues of public interest - Election misinformation, radicalisation through social media and public interest journalism and more. Click to read the full edition here. If you want to receive this newsletter direct to your inbox, please subscribe here.
