Note: this article makes reference to racist and violence content, and mentions the names of deceased persons.
An influential social media account has fuelled racism and calls for vigilante justice in Alice Springs as the town and its residents weather social unrest and political attention.
The Alice Springs “youth crime wave” crisis reached fever pitch last week when tempers boiled over at a “hostile” meeting of 3000 Alice Springs residents. After vocal frustration from local residents, the crisis drew national and international media attention, culminating in a visit from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
One Facebook page — “Action for Alice 2020” — has been praised by locals, national media and politicians for its part in highlighting the issue of rising youth crime.
The page posts photographs and videos showing what it deems alleged crimes or anti-social behaviour in the community. Indigenous peoples are predominantly the subjects of security camera footage or shaky videos taken by bystanders that are posted to the page. The identity of those filmed, including children, is not obscured by blurring, and the footage seems to be posted without their consent.
The page is run by Darren Clark, a local bakery owner and recipient of federal funding intended for promoting food security in remote Indigenous communities. After three years of posting, Action for Alice 2020 has grown to have more than 60,000 followers. Its videos have been viewed 6.4 million times in the past year, according to social media analysis tool CrowdTangle.
Action for Alice 2020’s influence extends beyond its social media reach. Clark has met with politicians, such as Malcolm Turnbull while he was prime minister, and has been interviewed by right-wing pundits like Sky News’ Andrew Bolt.
In particular, 2GB’s Ben Fordham has repeatedly spoken to Clark and referred to his content on the air. Clark told NT News the Facebook page “brought things to the forefront. Politicians wanted to meet with me, police wanted to meet”.
The page’s content is frequently reshared across other social media accounts and has even spawned copycat accounts. One such account is the recently deleted anonymous TikTok account @alicespringswarzone, which reposted videos from, used the same profile picture and captions as, and shared links to the Action for Alice 2020 Facebook page (Clark told Crikey he’s unaffiliated with that TikTok account).
Threats of violence and racism in the comment section
Racism and explicit calls to violence are rife in the comments sections of these accounts. When Action for Alice 2020 posted a video showing two underage children being allegedly caught stealing a pack of gum, the most popular comment was “Stolen generation. Everything they have is stolen”.
A common theme in responses to the videos is the prediction of violent reprisals by vigilantes. While Indigenous communities are still campaigning for justice for the vigilante attacks against teenagers Cassius Turvey and Elijah Doughty, which resulted in their deaths, users respond to the videos posted by these social media accounts with memes featuring fictional Wolf Creek murderer Mick Taylor and the words “I heard Alice Springs needs my help”.
“It will take just one person to make a stand,” one commenter remarked on the Action for Alice 2020 Facebook page. “Sadly, they will be the one that ends up in jail.”
Sometimes, these calls come directly from the accounts themselves. A video posted on TikTok by user @alicesprings258 using the hashtag #actionforalice2020 said “the word on the street is violence tonight in alice springs bring your weapons and good luck” over the sound of an AK47 rifle being fired.
Another shared an ABC news segment about the Alice Springs town meeting with the caption: “One attendee advocated for a ‘lynching’. Who could blame them?”
The @alicespringswarzone liked several comments calling for Aboriginal children to be shot or hunted, and that locals should “replicate The Purge” and enact “vigilante justice with no repercussions”.
Commenters call the Indigenous communities “the Untouchables” because they claim they benefit from “political correctness” as police are reluctant to carry out enforcement actions against them. While Indigenous peoples are over-policed and the Northern Territory last year announced plans to spend millions more to increase policing in Indigenous communities, some residents believed that’s not the case — a sentiment voiced by organiser Garth Thompson at the community meeting last week when he said “we’re not here to sugar coat things, or to be politically correct”.
The upcoming Voice to Parliament referendum has become a prominent theme in the responses to these online videos. Like Labor member for Lingiari Marion Scrymgour’s warning that the ongoing crisis in Alice Springs risks undermining the Voice campaign, commenters cite the videos as a reason to vote No in the referendum.
“If these people get a voice we’ll end up like South Africa,” one commenter wrote, seemingly referring to false claims by Voice opponents such as One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson that the policy would be “Australia’s version of apartheid”.
“The Slurred Voice To Parliament,” another user quipped.
Mixed feelings from Alice Springs residents
Alice Springs residents have mixed feelings about Action for Alice 2020. Some believe the page has been instrumental in bringing the youth crime crisis into focus across the country.
Matt, a manager at Alice Spring Cinema, took a break from fixing the door to his business after a break-in to speak to Crikey. He said residents feel Action for Alice 2020 brought the attention of the NT government and the federal government to the town’s crisis, but acknowledged there are some concerns about it spreading fear in the community.
“[Action for Alice 2020] doesn’t even begin to describe what’s happening in Alice Springs. It’s almost sugar coated, that page of everything that’s going on,” he said.
“You can call it a war zone if you like, if you stand there right next to someone wielding machetes, throwing a machete around, literally threatening a mother and her sons, saying I’m going to kill you. It feels like a war zone.”
Others, like Alice Springs councillor and Yipirinya school principal Gavin Morris, are concerned about how social media audiences see Alice Springs when viewed through the page’s lens, which he fears focuses on “one particular element of Alice Springs and one part of the population”.
There’s reason to think that Action for Alice 2020’s focus on local crime may be unintentionally encouraging it. Morris told Crikey he’s spoken to “half a dozen” students at his schools who have been featured on the page, who say they’ve been motivated by the page’s enormous audience.
While TikTok and Instagram have been blamed for failing to stop young users in WA from posting footage of them allegedly committing crimes, Morris said he was told that his students said they were pleased when footage of them ends up on Action for Alice 2020’s page.
“They do the crime, the anti-social stuff, so they get infamy on the Action for Alice page,” he said. “It gets 5000 likes, it goes around the nation.”
Morris said his students also told him that racist comments on posts were inspiring them to take revenge: “They go through and read the comments, they read the racist comments. That angers them and they want to go out and commit more crime. Retribution.”
Clark declined to answer questions about the threats of violence and racism in Action for Alice 2020’s comment section or why videos are posted with children’s faces unblurred. Instead, he defended the page.
“Why doesn’t everyone focus on the people at risk here […] The young children on remote communities […] The Indigenous women subjected to domestic violence,” he said in a text message.
“People are hurting, but the bad comments are from people who don’t understand the whole situation.”
