Politics

It Turns Out Those Attacks On Magda Szubanski Were The Result Of “Right-Wing Extremists”

All this over a COVID-19 public health campaign ad that wasn't even a minute long...

by Michelle Rennex  22 October 2020
Magda Szubanski right wing extremists

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The eSafety Commission has shared that Magda Szubanski was the victim of a “coordinated right-wing extremist attack” over her COVID-19 safety ad.

In a 40-second government public health campaign back in August, Szubanski reprised her role of the beloved Kath & Kim character Sharon Strzelecki to remind Victorians to take the coronavirus seriously. The ad showed a masked Szubanski playing netball on her own as she explained that “it’s not the lockdown that’s the enemy, it’s the virus”.

“The sooner we obey the rules, the sooner this will all be over and we can get back to the stuff that really matters,” Szubanksi urged Victorians.

After the ad began to circulate online, Szubanski was immediately viciously trolled by COVID-19 deniers, who claimed that the actress was a “puppet of the communist party” and a “Nazi responsible for the the murders of people”.

The attacks then intensified when “alternative health” advocate and major COVID-19 truther, Pete Evans, criticised the campaign — and Szubanski’s involvement — to his 1.5 million Facebook fans.

In the post, Evans called the government-run ads “offensive and disgraceful” and shared that they were a tool to “brainwash” children and families in Victoria.

After suggesting alternative therapies like “spreading love, being free, and hugging each other” would be the real key to solving coronavirus, Evan’s fans then begun attacking Szubanski and, in particular, her size.

At the time, Magda Szubanski told Today that an e-security professional had said the attack was “some of the worst trolling that they had seen”.

But the real magnitude of the attacks has now been revealed with Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, calling the trolling an “avalanche of hate”.

According to the ABC, during last night’s Senate estimates, Ms Inman Grant explained that the trolling that both Szubanski and Sudanese-Australian lawyer Nyadol Nyuon received in recent months, were coordinated by “white extremist and conspiracy theorists”.

“The volumetric attacks on Nyadol Nyuon, who is an African-Australian activist, as well as Magda Szubanski, in the wake of her public service announcement around wearing COVID masks were all co-ordinated right-wing extremist attacks,” Ms Inman Grant told the hearing.

“What we’re really seeing a lot of is what we call volumetric cross-platform online abuse, which is coordinated by ostensibly white extremists (and) conspiracy theorists.”

With the rise of volumetric attacks online and right-wing extremism in real life, Julie Inman Grant said that the eSafety Commission were tracking these movements with a “substantial set of new powers”.

“In the wake of the Christchurch atrocity we were given a substantial set of new powers around abhorrent, violent material but also some powers around ISP blocking in the event of an online crisis,” she said. “Many of the events we had to assess in the last year have involved right-wing extremism including the Halle terrorist attack that happened on Twitch, El Paso and others.”

“We’ve of course been following things like Q-Anon, the (far-right) Boogaloo movement and some of the right wing extremists here in Australia because some of the volumetric attacks that I mentioned have targeted Australians,” the commissioner concluded.

In response to the eSafety statements, Magda Szubanski expressed her relief that “these orchestrated attacks are finally being seen for what they are: not the genuine voice of the people, but coordinated right-wing attacks”.