One Nation’s candidate for Melbourne has a history of promoting far-right rhetoric about waging religious war against Muslims, using misogynistic language and spreading COVID-19 conspiracy theories.
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candidate → have → theories
Matthew Collins has deleted or locked his social media accounts since being selected as a candidate – one of 112 running for Pauline Hanson’s party at next month’s state election.
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Collins → delete → election
But The Age has obtained a catalogue of his X (Twitter) posts captured before he shut down his account, and has verified them using data-scraping tools which archived some of his almost 17,000 posts made over the previous decade.
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which → obtain → decade
His posts display a fixation with a perceived clash of civilisations between Christians and Muslims, which an extremism researcher said was a preoccupation of extreme right-wing figures that should be rejected.
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that → display → figures
One Nation refused to answer detailed questions about Collins’ posts, including his calls to “decolonise” parts of the Muslim world and his frequent references to the Christian crusades.
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Nation → refuse → crusades
The candidate did not respond to attempts to contact him through his election campaign Facebook page this week.
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candidate → respond → page
The party’s candidate profile for Collins says the 35-year-old works in sales and is running in the Greens-held seat to restore community safety and government responsibility, and to ease cost-of-living pressures.
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old → say → pressures
One Nation is currently polling at a 23 per cent primary vote, according to the latest Resolve Political Monitor conducted for this masthead, suggesting the party will for the first time have a significant presence in the next Victorian parliament.
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party → poll → parliament
Collins, whose profile picture on X portrays himself as a knight, posted in November last year: “If you thought the crusades ended with Richard the Lionheart, you’ve got another thing coming.”
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thing → portray → Richard
In another post, he suggests that The World Decolonization Forum – an academic event that examines the legacy of colonisation – should “decolonise constantiople [sic]… and syria and kurdistan”.
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that → suggest → constantiople
Another post in August features a picture of the Battle of Clavijo in 884AD captioned “RECONQUISTA” – a reference to the Christian military campaigns to retake what is now Spain and Portugal from Muslim rule.
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what → feature → rule
Expelling Muslims from the Turkish capital Istanbul – previously called Constantinople when it was the capital of the Christian Byzantine Empire – is a tenet of some extreme far-right ideologies.
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it → expel → ideologies
Brenton Tarrant, the Australian man who murdered 51 Muslims in the 2019 Christchurch shootings, referred in his manifesto to “coming for Constantinople” and making it “Christian owned once more”.
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Christian → murder → Constantinople
Tarrant also inscribed “Clavijo 844” on his weapon before opening fire.
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Tarrant → inscribe → fire
Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in a terrorist attack in Norway in 2011 and inspired Tarrant, referred to the “Reconquista” several times in his manifesto and also adopted crusader iconography.
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who → kill → iconography
There is no suggestion Collins endorses violent extremism, only that his online posts closely align with elements of some of those ideologies.
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posts → be → ideologies
Deakin University political extremism researcher Josh Roose said Collins was using the language of elements of the extreme right which was preoccupied with the idea of launching a modern Crusade against Muslims.
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which → say → Muslims
“It’s the idea of the need for a modern great crusade to take on global Islam aggressively, to fight it.
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It → ’ → it
He’s talking about decolonising Constantinople, which means effectively to rid it entirely of its Muslim population,” Roose said.
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Roose → talk → population
“You can only imagine how that would be read by Muslim communities in Australia but more broadly the wider Australian community.
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that → imagine → Australia
“It actually speaks to the violent rhetoric that underpins a lot of the extreme right.
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that → speak → right
If One Nation wants any claim to be developing into and becoming a mass political party, they would do well to reject rhetoric of religious conquest and exclusion associated with elements of the extreme right.”
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they → want → right
In other X posts, Collins sent images of the September 11 terrorist attacks to New York mayor Zohran Mamdani, and referred to Mamdani, who is Muslim, as having a “jihad face”.
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who → send → face
In one post Collins also uses the term “foid”, a term taken from the misogynistic “manosphere” subculture.
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Collins → use → subculture
A glossary compiled by the United Nation defines “foid” as a dehumanising word for women meaning “female humanoid organism”.
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glossary → compile → organism
Collins’ selection as a One Nation candidate has exercised support for the party from members of banned neo-Nazi group, the National Socialist Network, with prominent member Michael Nelson – who attended One Nation’s campaign launch earlier this month – describing Collins on X as a “patriot”.
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who → exercise → patriot
However, Collins has previously argued against the NSN’s brand of white ethnonationalism, and suggested the group is a “psyop” (psychological operation) created by the Australian Federal Police.
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group → argue → Police
In other posts, he theorised that ASIO’s concern about violent right-wing extremism was a ploy to deliberately provoke a far-right terrorist attack – a “brenton tarrant type lunatic to take extreme overreaction” – to give the federal government a pretext to curtail Australians’ freedoms.
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concern → theorise → freedoms
Collins also posted a theory earlier this year that COVID-19 was “released on purpose” to unseat US President Donald Trump.
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COVID-19 → post → Trump
One Nation Victoria’s leader, Warren Pickering, has also publicly endorsed the “great reset” conspiracy theory which states the pandemic was deliberately facilitated.
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pandemic → endorse → theory
Hanson has frequently attacked Muslims, including suggesting in March there was no such thing as a “good” Muslim, a comment she has since tried to walk back.
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she → attack → comment
The party’s Victorian campaign launch last Saturday opened with an AI-produced video featuring a Middle Eastern man wearing a bomb vest and a young African man with a machete.
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launch → open → machete
Asked about the video on ABC radio on Monday, deputy state leader Colleen Harkin said she was “not accepting that it’s racist.
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it → ask → Monday
It’s a messaging issued out to people... about all the things that are going wrong in Australia”.
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that → ’ → Australia
The Aporia
