Former skinhead tells royal commission how multi-ethnic Australia helped him leave neo-Nazism

Life in multi-ethnic Australia helped decouple a former skinhead from neo-Nazi groups as he discovered the brotherhood was “a load of lies”.

The unnamed witness offered his experience to the royal commission into antisemitism and social cohesion on Wednesday, on the same day the commissioner Virginia Bell rejected an assertion proceedings had been hijacked.

The witness said a somewhat isolated suburban upbringing as the child of British migrants pushed him toward right-leaning skinheads.

Those friendships, a period of “upheaval” in his life and conflict with a person from a minority background during his time in the defence force helped solidify a hardline supremacist stance.

But he said working in the wider community eventually helped him leave a neo-Nazi organisation, first for one year, and then in 2013 for good.

“I took a good hard look, and I’d also been doing some work in different places where I had been mixing with people of all different ethnicities,” he said.

“Some of these people of different ethnicities were the people that actually had my back and that showed some true brotherhood to me, and I decided that, yeah, [neo-Nazism] was all a load of lies.

“I love Great Britain as much as I love Australia. I still identify as very British, you know, but I also am very fervid in the belief that that’s got nothing to do with racist beliefs or anything like that.”

He suggested early intervention and openness to other cultures could have changed his course as a younger man.

Earlier on Wednesday, Bell reproached the authors of “truly abusive, Islamophobic emails” directed at a protest group’s counsel after Tuesday’s hearing.

Ragni Mathur SC, counsel for Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, asked a Jewish leader about the timeline of Israel’s response to Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack in the context of a protest held at the Sydney Opera House two days later.

Alex Ryvchin, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry’s co-chief executive, told the Australian newspaper it was “deeply concerning that these groups predictably used the opportunity to hijack an examination of lethal antisemitism for their clickbait theatrics and gratuitous slurs against Israel”.

The NSW premier, Chris Minns, later told News24 Mathur’s questioning was “disappointing”.

Bell, without naming Ryvchin, defended Mathur who “did not hijack this royal commission” and said counsel appearing should not become subject of attacks.

The hearing was also told the aesthetics, language and grievances of the radical right were capable of enticing youth without espousing a traditional political ideology

Modern neo-Nazism is more “perhaps narcissistic, more focused around their identity building” than before, the counter-terrorism expert Julian Droogan said.

Online content from groups such as involuntarily-celibates or manosphere creators was among the exploitative movements responsible, he said.

The political sociologist Joshua Roose said antisemitism and blaming Jews for grievances was alluring to the already disenfranchised.

Individual circumstances – financial, romantic and broader troubles – “pushed” many across the political spectrum towards antisemitic narratives, he said.

Hearings will continue on Thursday.