Toowoomba, Queensland is a conservative Christian city. The harm that fringe Christian cults have done to some Toowoomba people is discussed, mainly by focusing on the Train family at Wieambilla and the Saints. With the pandemic came Asian hate graffiti and swastikas plastered on walls, and a growing mistrust of the government that was taught in many prominent Christian Churches. The pandemic spread a far-right movement that was anti human rights. The movement was reviving the promotion of individualism at the expense of the vulnerable. It was the opposite of Kropotkin’s mutual aid and based upon ighting the ‘tyrannical holocaust apartheid communist mask mandates on behalf of Rosa Parks. It was the revival of the black lodge.
In Twin Peaks, the black lodge is a mirror of the white lodge, where the evil doppelganger of the true and righteous person abides, the evil alter ego. This far right anti-vaccination movement mirrors the left movement which is pro union and anti-capitalist with its opposite, the anti-union, anti-socialist movement led by racists and anti-Semites, some of who are political candidates.
Like Malcolm Roberts from the notoriously racist One nation party, who appears on an anti-Semitic you tube channel called New World Order and is a sitting member of the federal government. One nation off shoot parties like the great Australian Party and One Australia party, masquerading as average Aussie blokes who are male chauvinists who condemn abortion but love the death penalty, who want to increase the number of guns and rhapsodise on about the ‘China Virus’. These are total Chicago Boys. Like Jesus, they are anti union, anti public health and hate poor people. The last few years have been a revival of everything bad, influenced by America.
‘The Saints’ are a Christian Cult who, like the very prominent Christian Scientists in the middle of Toowoomba’s CBD, do not believe in modern medicine, and do believe in the power of prayer and faith to heal people. Elizabeth Struhs was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 2019. When she was 8 her mother and father, both members of The Saints cult decided to stop giving her insulin. A group of 14 church members then prayed as they watched her slowly and painfully die on a mattress over a number of days. Elizabeth Struhs mum Kerrie Struhs had been in jail for 5 months before in 2021, for failing to provide Elizabeth with the necessities of life. All 14 members of the church are now charged with manslaughter, with 2 members charged with murder, and are currently on trial. One member spoke of the beauty of watching Elizabeth die under these conditions. More alarmingly not one church member has admitted to feeling any sense of remorse, or had any sense of doing anything wrong.
Steven Harrison in Warwick took his own life as a result of a police siege, convinced that he was going to be taken to a concentration camp, due to being radicalized by members of the federation party, a far -right political party. The Federation Party main campaign was against the Covid 19 vaccinations and mandates. Harrison is reported to be a ‘very churchgoing person’ Christian extremism was a causal factor behind the killing of two police officer at Wieambilla The Train family consisted of Gareth, Nathaniel and Stacey Train. These three people murdered two police constables and one local resident in a paranoid shoot out at Wieambilla. The shootout resulted from a welfare check that was requested for Nathaniel by his ex wife.. All three were later shot dead by the police in a shootout. The Train family had multiple high power rifles and sniper hides. By the time the police had arrived their property was completely fortified.
Dr Aboud has testified at the royal inquest that Gareth believed in a grand opus of world events, weather events, paranoid beliefs about being monitored, hacking, poisoning, chemtrails, people being abducted, people being turned into non humans and human beings wearing meat suits, as well as police and authority figures being the agents of evil. Stacey had calculations in her diary regarding the second coming of Christ, where the three of them would reach religious salvation. There was a shared belief that Nathaniel would be taken away, forced, subjugated and turned into a non human entity. Gareth had led Stacey and Nathaniel to believe that they had to fight to the death because being apprehended by the police would be a fate worse than death where they would be subjugated, drugged and turned in to non humans.
Just like The Saints cult, Nathaniel had also refused to take medication for his heart condition, refused surgery and refused to have a pacemaker device installed. These decisions, as well as the refusal to get a covid vaccination left Nathaniel unable to work, increasing his reliance on his brother. The common theme between these examples of violence and harm done by people in Right wing Christian cults are ones of mistrust of the health system, mistrust in the state and full trust in religious delusion, coupled with total trust in misinformation provided by some kind of leader or powerful friend, either in real life or online.
Building Control
The internet has led to the growth of Christianity in the way that religious tv and prayer chains never could have. What once was termed as a New Right, binding together the ultraconservative Old Right with the rational strategies of liberals, is now just a part of main stream American and Australian policy. The internet turned the artful skill of grifting into something even the most mediocre cult leader can have a crack at. Liberal ideas borne from the last bastion of the Roman Empire have amplified the notions of hard work, hierarchy and blind faith in leaders.
Having worked for Catholic Organisations there is a sense that if you are paid properly you are stealing from the ordained bosses who graciously have supplied you with your new found reason for living. It’s as if working is a part of Christian happiness, and happiness comes from accepting your station in life as the working poor regardless of your circumstances. Class mobility, as a near impossible ideal fed to the American Poor as something they have control of, is seen as selfish and ungodly by the Christian Right.
George Orwell describes Fascism as both a romanticism for the past and a belief that everything needs to come from the top, nothing from the masses. Christianity lends itself to fascism in this was, as a hierarchical masculine system ruled by a male God that requires total obedience and blind faith. He also describes fascism as a belief in the never- ending cycle of history. If history can’t change then society can never be changed for the better, human inequality becomes a matter of fact. Human equality is written about and endorsed by most religious texts themselves.
Checking the Foundations
The other link between fascism and magical thinking according to Orwell is the belief that knowledge is secret and can only be held by an elite few. It is this type of thinking that led to the spread of Q anon, as it started as puzzle games where users had to follow clues to solve crimes, and ended up as a fascist Christian cult claiming to have knowledge that main stream society has no access to. This game was supercharged by both the pandemic and the growth of social media, where people were isolated, frightened, disempowered and vulnerable to misinformation.
The internet and the growth of social media has also given people the ability for people to form instantaneous angry mobs based on misleading and wrong information. Some recent examples of this are the anti immigration riots in the U.K. These riots were instigated by misinformation spread by popular modern day preachers/grifters Andrew Tate and Tony Robbins. There have been similar such riots in Western Sydney instigated by right wing political parties such as One Nation and the United Australia Party mostly as a response to Pride events. The was a large angry crowd that gathered after the stabbing of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel in response to a live stream, which delayed the Bishop from receiving medical attention. The angry crowd had taken it upon themselves to apprehend the attacker.
These examples show that fundamental Right Wing Christian beliefs are often connected with a mistrust of the government and a mistrust of state authority, along with a blind trust in the authority of preachers and grifters on social media platforms, as well as a penchant for magical thinking. Neo-liberalism echoes this mistrust of the government. Whilst to the rich, the government is a great and powerful state, to the poor, just let the market principles prevail and don’t expect any help from the government. The government is the problem, the government acts against you as the police are there to arrest you, not to help.
Establishing the scaffolding
The ideas of Neo Liberalism such as mistrust in the government, a lack of expectation for government institutions that have been created to help people, and an acceptance of fate as being immovable along with a society that is unchanging through the distortion of history. This same ideology forms the basis of all millennial movements and Cargo Cults that have been created to support never ending capitalist exploitation and fascism as Orwell described it. Romantic, magical thinking coupled with an acceptance of hierarchy and a stagnant unchanging society.
As the liberal ideas that capitalism would eventually free the world from want and misery became weakened by the large amount of want and misery everywhere, the protective patriarchal Oxford Group came to save the day transforming into morning show Moral Re-Armament to support our troops, with Charlottesville to run over our protestors and with Milton Friedman and the Chicago Boys backup choir to call everything from welfare to solidarity to health care for the elderly as simply unbiblical. The Moral Re-Armament statement of not one cry of hatred, not one hour of work lost, not one drop of blood shed was taken up as union training by national union leaders, local union officials, shop stewards and rank and file union members from 75 countries. In 1936 Frank Buchman, the founder of the Oxford Group stated ‘ I thank Heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler, who built a front-line of defence against the anit-Christ of Communism’. In the 1950’s Radio Moscow stated that Moral Re-Armament “supplants the inevitable class war by the permanent struggle between good and evil and has the power to attract radical revolutionary minds’
From the Moral Re Armament to Milton Friedmans capitalism, Christianity was used not only as a justification for militarism, but also ruthless capitalism that punishes the sick and the weak and the disabled and the elderly for not being able to pull their boot straps up and work for a living. In short, Christianity was linked to fascism. The Vatican was from the beginning a supporter of the original fascist regime of Benito Mussolini in catholic Italy. The Vatican and Spanish ecclesiastical authorities backed Francisco Franco’s rebellion against the democratic Spanish Republic. The Catholics were involved in the fascist leadership of Hungary and Croatia in World War 2.
From Such Great Heights
Ronald Reagan’s religious vision for America as a shining city on a hill, whereby America is a global model for freedom. Reagan hoped to obtain this by cutting taxes, ending industry regulations and privatizing government functions. Defeating communism was seen by Reagan a part of a cosmic battle between a good empire and an evil empire, where the good empire rewarded the rich and punished the working poor.
Former President Trump shows a deeply Christian ideology. The latest such demonstration was a video in which Trump promoted Bible sales “Let’s make America pray again,” he urged viewers. “As we lead into Good Friday and Easter, I encourage you to get a copy of the God Bless the USA Bible.” Far right Christian ideology, as well as Neo liberalism have spread mistrust towards global health organisation. During the Covid pandemic many major churches were actively defying lock down directives and encouraging the Christian congregation to refuse to wear masks or get vaccinated, as a show of strength and faith in God.
The awakening
How do you revive? We want to wake the people up. Wake up people.
For some, the word revival is a renewal of some kind. For others, it is to bring something back from the dead. In cases of natural disasters, people will often talk about the revival of community spirit. When the pandemic first hit, people were checking on their neighbours, dropping food off to the elderly, organising themselves to support vulnerable people. Air pollution cleared dolphins started swimming in the Venetian Canals. It seemed for a minute that things would change.
But this revival of Kropotkin’s mutual aid did not lead to any kind of utopian society in Australia. The renewal of community spirit was short lived. With this attempt to return to normal, came mandates, and with mandates came people who refused to get vaccinated and therefore opposed them. And thus, a new kind of community was formed. At the same time, the right-wing Australian government also had a revival. We also saw a revival of xenophobia and nationalism. Australia turned away from the kind of collective responses that were needed to address the existential threats of climate change and nuclear war.
Australia turned back to the outdated ideas of patriotism and fossil fuel reliance, supporting petrol state autocrats. We turned our back on renewable energy targets, committing to sustainability, and lessoning our ecological footprint. We mined more coal. We mined more gas. There was a housing crisis, and we blamed it on immigration. If only the LNP had stuck in there, they told us, we would have stopped the boats, so Peter Dutton constantly warned us on the ABC. And although these asylum seekers that by some chance happen to make it to Australia make up a tiny minority of migration, then boy have they been demonised by both sides of Parliament. None more than the asylum seekers from Gaza, whom Dutton is dead against letting into Australia.
We have come to value comfort above all else. Refugees threaten our safety, therefore must be punished. Transitioning to renewable energy threatens our safe energy supply, so it must be stopped. It’s smoke and mirrors from the suits who make the dough of course, the business of fossil fuels, the business of jails. Lock them all up and burn that coal. A media led corporate dogma to stoke the fear of embracing change. Anyone that threatens comfort must be punished, ridiculed at first, but later punished.
In the aftermath of the large amount of fear mongering and largely inexplicable doomsday style conspiracy theories that spread like wildfire, there has been a lot more violence reported in the news cycle. People openly stabbing other people with knives, as in the Westfield Bondi Junction mall attack. The family of this man is from Toowoomba, and involved in the Toowoomba City Church, founded by Lyle Shelton, who was once head of the Australian Christian Lobby and describes the Proud Boys as polite young men.
The Revival
According to the NBC news nearly 20 percent of Americans believe Q-Anon conspiracy theories. 15 percent of Americans believes that the U.S. government is controlled by a group of Satan worshipping paedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation, and 15 percent agree that true American patriots will have to resort to violence in order to save their country. The members of the Qanon style cult in Australia accuse the Australian government of protecting a number of Australian federal and state politicians who they are convinced are paedophiles, making increasingly outrageous claims about satanic paedophiles and ritual abuse.
After two years there are still a small number of protestors who randomly converge on Canberra for another performative failed insurrection. They strongly believe that the governor general will dissolve parliament, and replace it with their ultra nationalist fascist regime, so they yell at the governor generals gate in the hope of pressuring the GG to use their power to dissolve parliament. Some speakers in this group demand the names of the leaders of the satanic paedophile ring that is holding children captive in the drains of Canberra.
These protestors also still march on Saturdays in Melbourne. They shout a pro union left wing chant of ‘the people, united, will never be defeated.” The storm that was coming, turns into a light shower, and the protest turn into aimlessly yelling at police. These people hate unions, yet use union chants, intermingled with the Australian national anthem and nationalistic songs. They want to unite the people under nationalism and fascism against what they view as a tyrannical government.
Revival after death, the black and white lodge
To the untrained eye, the forests that were burnt in the last great bushfires in Australia, the fires that burnt between 24.3-33.8 million hectares, are growing back. Walking through Crow’s Nest National Park, the forest is mostly a monoculture of acacia, too dense to allow native grasses to grow back. They are a part of the primary succession; they grow fast and last around 15 years. For a rainforest to reach its original diversity takes 2000 years, the ecologists say. Time is like that. Revival takes time. And constant nurturing.
And it would be ideal if what was nurtured was solidarity, worker’s rights and environmentalism. But I’ve been watching the revival of Christian right extremists, I’ve been watching the revival of the anti vax movement, the revival of government distrust, and the revival of neo Nazis and the far-right politicians, and the revival of grifters. The only thing being nurtured on the left is judgement and punishment. The new normal is confronting the old questions, how as a society can we work with people who we disagree with on fundamental issues, what kind of beliefs are so unacceptable the only sane reaction is to fight them?
The revival is measured in inches. It’s measured in decades. It’s a daily struggle. It’s an endless conversation confronting bigotry and hatred. I revive the fight against hopelessness when surrounded by floods and fires. I revive the fight against the xenophobia that leads to the torture of refugees, fleeing the same catastrophes that we have created. And all I can really do about it is write, so I continue to write, like the re enchantment, the renewal, the rebirth the revival is not only possible but inevitable, and that one day we will truly be free.
Bibliography
Cesare, D. D. Immunodemocracy, Capitalist Asphixia Semiotext, South Pasadena, CA. 2020
Chomsky, N. Requium for the American Dream
Kropotkin, Petr Alekseevich. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. London: Heinemann, 1908
Todd, C., Murray, M and Dunne, C. “Study finds nearly one in five Americans believe QAanon conspiracy theories” NBC news May 2021
The Conversation (2024) Reagan’s great America shining on a hill twisted into Trump’s dark vision of Christian Nationalism
