QAnon conspiracy theories end up in the Federal Court of Australia

The Guardian, 29 August 2020:

In May, Anne Webster, a first-term Nationals MP from Mildura in regional Victoria, quietly launched a defamation action in the federal court over a series of posts and videos about her on social media site Facebook. 

According to a statement of claim seen by Guardian Australia, posts made about the federal MP in April claimed, without any factual basis, that she was “a member of a secretive pedophile network” who had been “parachuted into parliament to protect a past generation of pedophiles”. 

Within weeks of the case being filed, Justice Michael Wheelahan made urgent orders for the defendant to remove the posts, labelling them “vile” and describing the legal action as “one of those exceptional cases” where the court could order the removal of the allegedly defamatory material before a trial. 

“Given the potency of the allegations [in the] online posts, the scandal created may well reach quarters that cannot be known … this is one of those rare cases where damages may not be an adequate remedy,” Wheelahan said. 

Webster’s case was filed against a woman named Karen Brewer, an Australian who the court believes may now live in New Zealand. Though she is basically unknown outside of the online communities in which she spends much of her time, Brewer – which may not be her real name – is one of Australia’s leading conspiracy agitators. 

Brewer’s personal Facebook page, which has thousands of followers, is a petri dish of beguiling theories and vicious abuse. In the steady stream of live videos and posts she feeds to her thousands of followers each day, Brewer rails against vaccinations, fluoride, and the cabal of Freemasons she believes controls Australia’s parliament, judiciary, media and bureaucracy as part of an extensive paedophile protection racket....

Though Australia’s conspiracy landscape is complex, increasingly the thread that unites these groups is a messy Antipodean adaption of QAnon, a sprawling and baseless internet conspiracy theory born in the online messaging board 4chan in 2017. 

Wide-ranging and preternaturally bewildering, QAnon adherents are loosely tied to the belief that, as the Guardian put it this week, “a cabal of Satan-worshipping Democrats, Hollywood celebrities and billionaires run the world while engaging in pedophilia, human trafficking and the harvesting of a supposedly life-extending chemical from the blood of abused children”. 

Evangelical in its zeal, adherents believe a multitude of spin-off theories, including that Bill Gates is using Covid-19 to implant microchips in people and that the ongoing lockdown in Victoria is a cover for the premier, Daniel Andrews, to install 5G technology throughout the state. 

Though Brewer is not outwardly affiliated with QAnon, many of her beliefs line up with the conspiracy. Webster’s defamation claim, which also includes her husband and a not-for-profit women’s organisation called Zoe Support Australia that they founded together in Mildura, alleges the posts falsely accused the couple of founding the women’s organisation to “access young children on behalf of a secretive pedophilia network”.

To date, social media companies have had little success controlling the growth of QAnon on their platforms.

Last week, Facebook announced it had taken down or restricted 790 groups, 1,500 ads and 100 pages tied to QAnon, and blocked more than 300 hashtags used by its followers on Facebook and Instagram. It followed Twitter’s announcement of a broad crackdown on about 150,000 accounts linked to the conspiracy in July.

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But those steps have had little effect. On Twitter, QAnon followers successfully hijacked a save the children hashtag after the purge and in Australia the Guardian noticed little if any impact on local QAnon groups after Facebook’s crackdown.

In fact, a recent report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue found QAnon’s following was growing considerably in Australia.

“We found that the US was consistently the largest QAnon content-producing country, followed by the UK, Canada and Australia,” the report stated.

Though most of QAnon’s lore is specifically catered to a US audience (QAnon’s followers believe the US president, Donald Trump, is secretly working to thwart the network of paedophiles and their “deep state” collaborators), its inherent adaptability means it’s capable of hoovering up pre-existing conspiracy theories into its swirling illogic.....

Coalition shields firebrand MP Craig Kelly from censure for spreading Covid misinformation

Read moreIn Australia, its adherents have had no trouble retrofitting the theory to suit our politics.....

Karen Brewer
Snapshot taken from a YouTube video
30 August 2020

On 19 May 2020 there was a hearing in the matter of Webster v Brewer (No 2) [2020] FCA 727.

There was no appearance at that hearing by counsel for 52 year-old Ms. Brewer.

The Court accepted that Ms. Brewer had been properly notified of the hearing date, court details and had received the statement of claim & revised statement of claim.

On 19 May the Court reaffirmed Orders of 8 May - the following is an excerpt from those Orders.

THE COURT ORDERS THAT: 

PENAL NOTICE TO: 

KAREN BREWER IF YOU (BEING THE PERSON BOUND BY THIS ORDER): (A) REFUSE OR NEGLECT TO DO ANY ACT WITHIN THE TIME SPECIFIED IN THIS ORDER FOR THE DOING OF THE ACT; OR 
(B) DISOBEY THE ORDER BY DOING AN ACT WHICH THE ORDER REQUIRES YOU NOT TO DO, YOU WILL BE LIABLE TO IMPRISONMENT, SEQUESTRATION OF PROPERTY OR OTHER PUNISHMENT. 

ANY OTHER PERSON WHO KNOWS OF THIS ORDER AND DOES ANYTHING WHICH HELPS OR PERMITS YOU TO BREACH THE TERMS OF THIS ORDER MAY BE SIMILARLY PUNISHED. 

 IN THESE ORDERS: 

 a) the respondent’s Facebook account is accessible at the URL address ‘https://www.facebook.com/karen.spiers.336’. 
b) the “First Post” is the post uploaded to the respondent’s Facebook account on or about 26 April 2020 at 6.21am. 
c) the “First Video” is the video post uploaded to the respondent’s Facebook account on or about 26 April 2020 at 2.01pm. 
d) the “Second Post” is the post uploaded to the respondent’s Facebook account on or about 27 April 2020 at 5.14am. 
e) the “Second Video” is the video uploaded to the respondent’s Facebook account on or about 30 April 2020 at 6.13pm. 
f) the “Third Post” is the post uploaded to the respondent’s Facebook account on or about 8 May 2020 at 5.42am. 
g) the “Third Video” is the video uploaded to the respondent’s Facebook account on or about 8 May 2020 at 6.00am. 
h) the “Fourth Video” is the video uploaded to the respondent’s Facebook account on or about 8 May 2020 at 7.44am.

THE COURT ORDERS THAT: 

Upon the applicants giving the usual undertaking as to damages (see Practice Note GPN-UNDR), until further order, the respondent by herself or by her servants or agents, or howsoever, be restrained from publishing or causing to be published in any form, or maintaining online for downloading, or uploading so as to make available for publication online: 
a)the First Post; 
b) the First Video; 
c) the Second Post; 
d) the Second Video; 
e) the Third Post; 
f) the Third Video; 
g) the Fourth Video; and any other matter to the same purport or effect as any of the above matters to the extent that such other matters identify the applicants, whether expressly or by implication.