This Doco About A Teen Taking On Fred Nile Is The Most Exciting Political Drama Of The Year

Forget The Killing Season — the new must-watch #Auspol documentary is here, featuring the inside story of a Sydney teen’s attempt to oust notorious homophobe Fred Nile and take his place as leader of the Christian Democratic Party.

This story has everything you want from a political drama: intrigue, chess-playing montages, betrayal, a group of Christians shouting at each other about whether they need to vacate a community hall following a shocking turn of events, and Fred Nile himself vehemently denying that he takes naps in Parliament.

The events depicted in The Feed’s new video actually took place in June, when 18-year-old Samraat Joshua Grewal teamed up with 22-year-old friend Joel Jammal to make their mark…on the Christian Democratic Party. The pair were sick of Fred Nile (who isn’t?), and craved power (who doesn’t?), so they concocted a plan to launch a coup and seize leadership of the party for themselves.

Grewal, the 18-year-old, is the current president of Christian Youth, the youth wing of the Christian Democratic Party (the main party employed him as an administrative assistant because “he was very good on Microsoft Office applications”). He attends Hillsong Church, and lives in Mt. Druitt in Western Sydney. And look, the kid seems like a promising alternative to noted hater of gays, Fred Nile, right up until the camera pans out and you can see that he keeps a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf on his bedside table.

It’s not like it was an accident, either. Later in the documentary he shows off a selection of his book collection to the camera, proffering Marx’s Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf side by side as if the two somehow cancel each other out. “I do appreciate good historical books and political literature,” he says by way of explanation.

Waving Mein Kampf around really doesn’t help Grewal make the case that he’s a mature, reasonable contender for party leadership. Neither does a scene in the documentary where he sits in his backyard with his mother, who asks if he would like to help her feed their chickens.

“In a suit?” he asks, because he is indeed wearing a full suit to sit around on his back steps and sulk about his thwarted political ambitions. “They crap everywhere.”

“Don’t worry,” his mother advises him. Grewal ignores her, and continues to sulk.

While Grewal sulks, we hear about the coup itself from his friend Joel Jammal, who describes their actions very seriously as “the biggest political coup since Julia Gillard’s 2013 leadership spill”.

“The tension’s just been building and we had to make a move — we didn’t have a choice. The party was going downhill,” Jammal explained. So, at a Christian Democratic Party state council meeting, “we had our usual group prayer, and as soon as that prayer finished, I moved a motion to dissolve the current NSW CDP board.”

“I put the motion forward, and it was shut down.” The chair ultimately adjourned the meeting, claiming that all the shouting in the room was simply too loud and “totally unruly”. Fred Nile has said that Grewal “made a fool of himself”, and to date, nothing has actually changed (pending legal advice).

Jammal, however, believes his and Grewal’s actions will resonate for some time. “I’d like to think that the people in time, in the history books, when it’s written — maybe even Wikipedia — would believe that this was a move to reform the party, and bring it into the 21st century,” he said. “We may be losing the battle, but we will win the war.”

So far, their actions have yet to make Wikipedia. They live on in The Feed‘s excellent short documentary, though. Watch it below.