A trolling post from an Australian Proud Boys social media account pretending that they were flying overseas to fight alongside Russian troops in Ukraine has gone viral, amplifying the account’s false claims and helping them grow their audience.
Late last week, a tiny Twitter account claiming to belong to a local chapter of the far-right group Proud Boys made a series of posts saying that their members were flying overseas to Poland to join other international members of the group on the ground in Russia — a meme that had also been made by other Proud Boy chapters.
Crikey has chosen not to specify which account to avoid amplifying it further.
These posts were flimsy trolls. Some contained images lifted from elsewhere on the internet (a video of a plane taking off posted from the account was lifted from a 2018 video from an airline YouTuber), others contained clearly fake images that had been altered (like a 2017 image from the Texas Military Force Museum photoshopped to feature a Proud Boy who had “arrived” in Europe).
Despite this, these claims were amplified by a number of Australian and international journalists (including from The New York Times), military commentators and other Twitter users with hundreds of thousands of followers.
This boosting was then seized upon by conservative media and the far right who used it to undermine faith in the media. Right-wing social media personality and journalist Andy Ngo repeatedly accused journalists who had shared the claims of spreading misinformation.
Both the Department of Home Affairs and ASIO said that they have been monitoring those travelling to join the conflict, but Levi West, Charles Sturt University director of terrorism studies, told the ABC that there wasn’t any evidence that Australians had gone to join the conflict.
In April 2021 during an Senate estimates hearing, ASIO director-general Mike Burgess said that Australian Proud Boys weren’t like their US counterparts, specifically that they were smaller, less organised and less active.
Australian far-right researcher Dr Kaz Ross said it was very unlikely that Australian Proud Boys would be organised enough to co-ordinate to carry out their claims.
She said it was almost certainly a lie to get media attention, a common tactic of these groups.
“[Trolling the media] reinforces a notion that the mainstream media are idiots and didn’t do due diligence. It also adds to their cachet as larrikins out on the end and might help them attract new members. We know that Australian neo-Nazis in the past have gone to war zones to fight. Reporting these trolling efforts undermines the seriousness of those actions.”
Dr Ross criticised members of the media who shared the claims without qualification.
“It was so obviously a troll. Proud Boys have never amounted to much in Australia. They like to get attention.”
