Sydney Morning Herald, 5 August 2026
‘They’re just angry people’: Reformed neo-Nazi denounces former colleagues
From Perry Duffin
Deakin University researcher Josh Roose told the royal commission a sense of anger and conspiratorial beliefs about Jewish people were the defining element of antisemitism.
“Grief plays a role as well in someone’s turn to extremism. Emotions are often overlooked but are absolutely critical,” Roose said.
It has become described a shared destination between far-right and far-left conspiracists, who felt strong emotions around shame and disenchantment with their lives, he said.
Sovereign Citizens, Islamic extremists and almost all extremist groups agreed on Zionists or Jewish people as a common enemy.
Roose said the disintegration of trade union, political and church memberships, had sent such people searching for belonging and moral authority in the dark parts of the internet.
“People have lost a sense of belonging in their community,” he said.
“We are seeing the organisations that bounded the lives of working-class people evaporated… something had to replace that, and we see the internet, social media, the online world.
“There’s a place for extremist narratives to supplant broader ideologies of what it means to be Australian, and to belong.”