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ASHLYNNE:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ashlynne McGhee. This is 7am.

An attack at a Western Sydney church last week is inextricably linked to social media.

The bishop who was attacked was a social media celebrity. The stabbing itself was live-streamed and went global, and within minutes an angry mob had started to surround the church.

The Australian government’s so concerned, it’s picked a fight with the global social media giants, ordering them to pull down content about the attack.

Today, counter-terrorism expert and Lowy Institute Fellow, Lydia Khalill, on the attack and how terrorism is changing.

It’s Wednesday, April 24.

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ASHLYNNE:

Lydia. Last week, an attack on a church in western Sydney was declared an act of terrorism. To begin with, can you tell me a bit about the community this attack happened in and what we know about this church?

LYDIA:

Sure. Well, the attack happened at an Assyrian church.

That particular church and the bishop that was leading that church, Bishop Mar Mari, was actually a breakaway faction from the mainstream Assyrian Orthodox community.

Audio excerpt — Bishop Mar Mari in sermon

LYDIA:

The important thing to note two is that in recent years, the Assyrian community had been targeted by violent jihadist actors in the Middle East, particularly the Islamic State.

Now, many of the people that belong to that church in the Assyrian community, more broadly in Australia, come from that background. Many of them are recent migrants that have migrated to Australia after that experience with the Islamic State and that experience of persecution.

Audio excerpt — Bishop Mar Mari:

“Islam came in 635 AD. The Gospel of John was written around 100 AD…”

LYDIA:

He was excommunicated from the church or chose to leave, depending on different accounts. And he started his own church community that brought together many of the beliefs of mainstream Assyrian Orthodox community. But he differed both in his approach and in certain things that he tended to emphasise both politically and religiously.

Audio excerpt — Bishop Mar Mari:

“Hollywood is from the enemy. Illuminati is from the enemy.”

ASHLYNNE:

In terms of where he sat politically – talk to me about some of those things. He was a little bit controversial in some ways, I guess.

LYDIA:

Yeah, that's been a label that's been thrown at him. I don't think he's particularly controversial in terms of his doctrine, in terms of his Christian teachings. They’re relatively mainstream. But certainly he has been controversial in terms of some of the ways that he has intersected religion in politics.

Audio excerpt — Bishop Mar Mari:

“There is no one government on the face of this planet that has the right to impose a certain lifestyle on people.”

LYDIA:

And he has delivered many messages through various forums, in his sermons and online, where he has an actually quite a massive following, which is where he came to prominence, really. And his influence started to grow outside of the Assyrian community. But through these various platforms he talked about Trump being the saviour of a Christian America.

Audio excerpt — Bishop Mar Mari:

“If you don’t have Trump, you can kiss your country goodbye. The next superpower is coming. It will destroy everything.”

LYDIA:

He also put forward a lot of conspiratorial narratives, particularly around the pandemic, and that's again where his popularity had grown.

Audio excerpt — Bishop Mar Mari:

“Statistics say that those who have received the vaccine – that death rates out of those who were vaccinated, were more than the ones who died because of the coronavirus.”

LYDIA:

And so there were other individuals who believed in those type of conspiracies who weren't necessarily from the Assyrian community or Christian communities that started to follow him and pay attention to what he was saying, because he infused that religious in the political infused religion and conspiracy theories in a way. One of the very interesting things about him, and a statistic that I learned very recently, was he was actually the most popular religious figure on TikTok. So that goes to show you the extent of his visibility and his popularity through his use of social media.

ASHLYNNE:

And so when it comes to understanding exactly what happens on the night of the attack, what do we know?

LYDIA:

So we know that the bishop was conducting a church service, and that church service was live streamed. The alleged attacker obviously knew about this. Felt that this was an opportunity to attack the bishop. And we know that around that evening, around 7pm, during the mass, the alleged attacker came in, stabbed the bishop.

He was attempted to be restrained by parishioners. And then we also have come to see from, you know, footage that many other people gathered around the church, outside of the church. And that's where you saw a lot of the crowds and interaction with the police. And what some people have called a riot ensuing.

Audio excerpt — Church riot

LYDIA:

There was a wide variety of people that were on the scenes, from what we could see around social media footage that was spread around. People that belong to the community, that were concerned about relatives and friends that were at the church came through. But clearly there were other folks that were there who were not quite sure what their connection was to that church, but appeared to be of various Middle Eastern and also Orthodox Christian backgrounds as well. Who were there who were responding to an alleged attack on the church and an alleged attack on the bishop in a way that they perceived to be was an attack on their communities and their faith. And so they were responding, you know, both out of concern about what was immediately happening in that church but also this broader feeling that they had that their communities and their religion were being attacked.

Audio excerpt — Church riot

ASHLYNNE:

It's incredible how quickly it all kind of happens because at this stage, the alleged attacker is still inside the church, right?

LYDIA:

Well, I think because the attack was live streamed, people were aware of it through that. And I think that there was, from what we've seen and what we've heard, that it was spread very quickly through communications platforms and social media, that people became aware of it and then decided to to come down and to galvanise and mobilise. Twitter or X, was a platform where a lot of the footage was being shared, possibly other types of communication platforms like encrypted messaging platforms and also platforms like TikTok as well. So it played out on social media and in real time at the same time. We also saw that there were a number of kind of alt media type folks or citizen journalists who were taking live footage and commentary outside of the church at the time.

Audio excerpt — Citizen journalist:

“I’m just wondering what the hell is going on. Bishop Mar Mari was stabbed earlier this evening.”

LYDIA:

So what we saw was that a wide variety of actors from around the world, taking footage cutting it and splicing it, making other media around it, memes, other videos – adding commentary in a way that basically promoted whatever narrative or message that they were putting out.

Audio excerpt — Father Leo on YouTube:

“So here is a Muslim immigrant. This is coming from X…”

LYDIA:

And in many of those cases, it was a message of Christianity is being attacked. Conservative people are being attacked, using it to vilify the Muslim community. Putting narratives out there about the motivations of the attacker before the authorities made it a determination. And so it was a way for people with their own agenda and narratives using that and manipulating particular images in order to put their own narratives out there.

ASHLYNNE:

So we're still in the moment. We're in the heat of the moment. All of this is happening. And then a couple of hours later, you know, I think it's, you know, 1:45 in the morning, there is this pretty extraordinary announcement that comes out. Talk me through what was announced and how that was framed.

LYDIA:

Right. So one of the things that very quickly happened was a very, quick determination by the authorities that they're saying that this attack was motivated by a religious ideology and labelled this is an act of terrorism.

I think there was a couple of things that motivated or drew that relatively swift determination.

ASHLYNNE:

After the break – in a week with two major stabbings, what made one a terrorist attack and the other not?

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Audio excerpt — Commissioner Karen Webb:

“Ready to go. Good morning everyone. Thank you for being here. Overnight, police charged a 16 year old boy with a terrorism offence as a result of the alleged stabbing at a Sydney church on Monday evening.”

ASHLYNNE:

Lydia, Sydney and really, the whole country have been rocked by these two stabbing attacks. The other one, of course, being the one at the Bondi Junction shopping centre. Police have used very different language when discussing them both – one terrorism, one not. Why is that?

LYDIA:

It basically comes down to a legal determination behind the motive of the different attacks. So both attacks were quite shocking. They were confronting. They were violent. They were both alleged crimes. They both seriously impacted the community and both terrorised, for lack of a better word, the community. But that doesn't mean that both of them are legally the same type of crime. So the thing that determines a crime being terrorism, or labelled as such by the authorities, goes back to the legal definition of what a terrorist crime is, and it's based on motivation. So it has to be motivated by a religious or political or ideological goal. And the authorities alleged that they had clear evidence that one was motivated by a religious motivation and the other one wasn't, which was why the difference in terms of the language that was used.

ASHLYNNE:

So if you look at the bondi junction attack when you’ve police saying he focused on women and avoided men, in terms of the motivation that fits within incel ideology.

Audio excerpt — Commissioner Karen Webb:

“It’s obvious to me. It’s obvious to detectives that seems to be an area of interest that the offender had focused on women and avoided the men.”

ASHLYNNE:

So why have they ruled out terrorism in that sense, but not in the western Sydney attack?

LYDIA:

It doesn't necessarily by itself that he attacked women fit inside an incel ideology. There could be many reasons why he targeted women in his attack. Perhaps he had personal grievances, perhaps that he felt like women were made easier targets because they wouldn't be able to have the physical strength to fight back that a male would. We don't know what motivated him because he was killed immediately after in that stabbing in order to stop it, and there hasn't been any evidence unearthed that he was engaged in any type of incel ideology or extreme misogynistic ideology. The fact remains that violence against women is a national scourge, and is one thing that we see all too much of, and it makes it no less serious. But not all of the violence against women that we see is related to a political or ideological form. And just because that's the case doesn't make it any less serious. It just means it doesn't meet the legal definition of terrorism.

ASHLYNNE:

In terms of the definition. What does it actually change when it's declared an act of terrorism?

LYDIA:

Well, it brings a few more resources to bear in terms of the law enforcement response. So oftentimes it will go toward a specialist unit for investigation that have particular skills. It gives police perhaps some additional powers in terms of detention or investigation. And it also has potential implications in terms of if a person is convicted, their sentencing. But it doesn't necessarily mean one is more outrageous or terrible or impactful than the other. It just means that we understand that there's different motivations behind it.

ASHLYNNE:

And so finally, Lydia, when you think about terrorism in Australia and how authorities are responding to it, how are we doing when it comes to identifying and preventing all kinds of radicalisation? And in particular, how are we doing when it comes to working with these social media giants where so much of this content is spreading?

LYDIA:

I think that since the initial days of the September 11th attacks, when a lot of our counter-terrorism architecture and framework came to pass about 20 years ago, we've learned so much since then. The approach has shifted a lot in terms of our ability to intercept plots, to prosecute individuals, but more importantly, to intervene and to prevent, which is what we want to do. But we're challenged in many more ways now. The motivations behind terrorism acts are getting increasingly complicated. We are seeing more presentations of people with mental illness getting involved in terrorist crimes. We're certainly seeing a lot more violent extremism connected to conspiratorial beliefs. A lot of anti-government sovereign citizen, anti-authority type of violent extremism, where the ideology is mixed, fluent, not necessarily coherent. We're also seeing more far right and right wing extremism, and we still have the persistence of violent jihadist extremism as well.

And when it comes to social media and other communications technologies, there is a consensus that there impacts when it comes to violent extremism that they put up for it a lot of negative impacts in that space. When Musk bought Twitter and rebranded it into X along the way, he made a big song and dance about how there needs to be more freedom of speech, that social media platforms were too engaged in content moderation, and so what had happened was, as a lot of people who were originally deplatformed for either having harmful or extremist views were allowed back on, that platform has become under increasing scrutiny.

And we spoke earlier about how the live stream footage of the alleged attack at the church was on that platform and circulating quite widely.

At the same time, we have to think about well how can we harness these technologies as well to help us in our prevention and intervention efforts?

ASHLYNNE:

Lydia, thank you so much for your time today.

LYDIA:

Thanks for that. Bye.

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ASHLYNNE:

Also in the news today…

The number of people in prison in Australia is growing, according to the latest report from the Bureau of Statistics.

In the year to June 2023, the number of people locked up grew by more than 1,000 to about 42 thousand.

The report also revealed a jump in the portion of the prison population that’s Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. They now make up about 1/3 of all prisoners.

And court records released yesterday show that Channel 10 offered to settle with Brue Lehrmann before the defamation trial.

The settlement would have involved no payment or apology, but would have allowed Lehrmann to walk away from the suit. Instead, having lost, Lehrmann may now have to pay Ten’s legal costs, estimated at up to $8 million dollars.

I’m Ashlynne McGhee. This is 7am. Thanks for listening. I’ll see you tomorrow.

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