Raised threat level points to new face of political violence

Australia has just raised its terrorism threat level from “possible” to “probable”. What is perhaps the most interesting aspect of this announcement is not the shift in the threat level itself – frankly, that was a long time coming – but the comments of ASIO director-general Mike Burgess, who said the threat change was a result of an increase in “politically motivated violence, not just terrorism. Politically motivated violence encompasses terrorism but is broader than that”.

This is a unique acknowledgment that the security threats that democracies are facing encompass a lot more than just planned mass casualty attacks from without, but also include violent protests, riots or any violent attack on democratic institutions and their representatives from within.

In past years, when we have grappled with organised terrorist movements and networks with transnational dimensions, other types of politically motivated violence, such as violent civil unrest, were considered somewhat separate to the threat matrix.

It was a matter of law-and-order policing when it arose. But now, as ASIO’s comments directly acknowledge, the threat encompasses a broader spectrum of political violence, because we are now seeing that violent protests and civil unrest are being deliberately stoked by anti-government actors and movements.

Nowhere is this more apparent right now than in the UK, which is in its seventh day of riots, triggered by a tragic stabbing attack that killed three young girls and injured six more attending a dance class. The riots have been fuelled by disinformation-spewing far-right extremist actors, capitalising on deep-seated economic and cultural grievances, to target elected representatives, law enforcement, migrants and minorities.

What’s happening in the UK is reflective of what can happen in other like-minded democracies. It is driven by the dynamics Mike Burgess referred to in his remarks – where a toxic mix of extreme disinformation and conspiracy-fuelled assembly, intolerance and polarisation can spiral out of control and lead to civil unrest and violence.

Disinformation, spread strategically by vested interests and influencers, has fuelled violence against selected target groups in other recent contexts, and has fuelled mob violence and other forms of political violence. We’ve seen this in India when rumours deliberately spread against Indian Muslims have fuelled sectarian mob violence.

More recently, in Australia, in the instantaneous aftermath of the Walkley church stabbing, misinformation and disinformation circulated on WhatsApp chat groups and quickly mobilised group protests that turned violent against law enforcement and first responders.

Mob violence fuelled by disinformation and rumours is not new, it’s ancient history. But what is new is the digital technology that has allowed that disinformation to spread and enabled people to mobilise much faster.

It’s also coupled with years-long trends of growing far-right, anti-institutional and anti-government sentiments, accelerated during the Covid pandemic and now exacerbated by economic pressures, growing inequality that appears to be baked in, and discombobulating technological disruptions that are disorienting our shared sense of reality.

These drivers are leading to anti-democratic, virulent populist and pro-violence attitudes, which are increasingly driven by complex grievances and expressed spontaneously, as we’ve seen in the UK. But just because they are expressed spontaneously and are not organised by a single entity does not mean they are not part of a spectrum of extremist political violence.

It’s important to understand this recent mob violence in the UK as deliberate political violence. Mob violence is not just a spontaneous expression of anger, frustration or destructive passions.

It is often a political and ideological expression, meant to challenge government authority and legitimacy. It is a means of extrajudicially exerting social control through violent spectacle. It is an organised intimidation of enemies and an attempt to wrest back perceived loss of cultural and political power.

There is a narrative that these violent riots and protests are a response to “frustrations” about migration, assimilation and two-tiered policing, as the likes of Nigel Farage have suggested. This is not the case. While the protests that turned into riots were locally driven and reactive, they were led by people steeped in online far-right networks and narratives pushed forward by key influencers. They were fuelled by deliberate disinformation by these anti-government actors.

As events in the UK have demonstrated, terrorism is now only one part of the broader picture of threats against open democratic societies.