Whether jihadists, fascists or just racist thugs, the common thread of violent extremists is vulnerable and angry young men recruited by unscrupulous preachers of dogmatic faith. Al The Writer reports (Part 3 in the series The Anatomy of the Bondi Attacks).
There has been a sharp increase in far-right extremism in Australia, with ASIO now dedicating 30-40% of its counter-terrorism caseload to far-right threats, up from just 10-15% before 2016, and the AFP’s Joint Counter Terrorism Team reporting a staggering 750% increase in nationalist and racist violent extremism cases since 2019.
These groups capitalised on anti-government and anti-vax sentiment during COVID-19 lockdowns, with far-right violence in the West rising from 14% of all attacks between 2002-2014 to 46% in 2019.
Neo-Nazi groups like the National Socialist Network (NSN), formed in 2020 by merging the Lads Society and Antipodean Resistance, have staged multiple White Australia protests and are planning to run as a political party in the Victorian state election.
A 2021 analysis by George Washington University found striking parallels between these seemingly disparate movements:
“Jihadists are the ideological fringe of the wider Islamist movement, while white supremacist extremists emerge from more mainstream, right-wing white identity and supremacist politics. They are both reactionary political movements. They treat any form of social or political progress, reform, or liberalisation with great suspicion, viewing these chiefly as a threat to their respective ‘in-groups.’ In this sense, jihadists too are extreme right-wing actors even if they are rarely referred to in such terms.”
Both movements share virulent antisemitism driven by conspiracy theories, distrust of government, and the creation of a superior in-group that ostracises outsiders.
There’s also the rise of the incel movement, a form of misogynistic extremism that has motivated at least 15 attacks in Western countries between 2009 and 2022, resulting in around 60 deaths globally.
While the Australian government was reluctant to acknowledge the 2024 Bondi Junction attack, where the perpetrator, Joel Cauchi, clearly targeted women and avoided the men according to police, killing five women and one male security guard out of six victims.
His father explained: “he wanted a girlfriend and he’s got no social skills and he was frustrated out of his brain.” Despite this, the attack was framed as the act of a mentally ill individual rather than potential terrorism, even as incel forums celebrated Cauchi as a “saint” and “hero,” with researchers Sian Tomkinson and Tauel Harper noting that the “framing of any violence committed by a Muslim as ideological and something that is a danger to all of us is generating community outrage around religious violence.
Conversely, the framing of any violence committed by a man against a woman as ‘psychological’ or ‘private’ perpetuates the spiral of silence about gendered and misogynistic violence.”
Warnings of ISIS links ignored. The anatomy of the Bondi attacks
Targeting vulnerable youth
When looking at video of Naveed Akram’s babyface proselytising on the streets at the age of 17, he looks more like a panda than a terrorist.
Many reports intimated he had been led astray by his father.
Yet the evidence indicates it is likely the other way around.
Australia’s terrorism threat level was elevated to probably in August 2024, with increasingly risks and instability leading into the December attack. There is a significant likelihood that a child would be involved in an attack.
ASIO has disrupted 24 attacks since 2014, with every single one involving young people, some as young as 12 years old. While jihadist-inspired violence remains a concern, the nation now faces an ideologically diverse extremist landscape, with far-right extremists and incel based movements all vying to recruit from this lost generation of boys.
Minors now comprise over 50% of ASIO’s priority counter-terrorism cases, a dramatic increase from just 2-3% several years ago. The median age of those under investigation is now 15 years,
with approximately 85% male and predominantly Australian-born.
Academic research into radicalisation has consistently identified youth as particularly vulnerable to extremism because of their developing identities, with radical groups offering a sense of identity, belonging and adventure.
Studies of at-risk and radicalised youth in Australia have found that the average age in samples was seventeen years, with a minimum age of fourteen.
Research has shown that the process of radicalisation differs for youth due to the impact of factors and vulnerabilities that are unique to childhood and adolescence, including social isolation, desire for belonging, weak personal identity and limited religious knowledge.
Mental health
A 2025 study published in Australasian Psychiatry found that 42% of adolescent Australian extremists had a history of mental illness or personality disorder. Diagnosis was usually made before individuals engaged in terrorism activities.
Additionally, 24% had a history of drug or alcohol use, and 18% had a prior juvenile record. Lone-actor terrorists demonstrate particularly elevated rates. Research by Corner, Gill and Mason (2016) examining 153 lone-actor terrorists found mental health disorders including schizophrenia (8.5%), depression (7.2%), bipolar disorder (3.9%), autism spectrum disorder (3.3%), PTSD (3.3%), and personality disorders (6.5%).
Childhood trauma also increases the likelihood of radicalisation. Studies from the US of former white supremacists show that nearly two thirds (63 per cent), reported exposure to four or more adverse childhood experiences before the age of 18, compared to 16 percent in the general population.
Many experience neurodiversity, such as ADHD or autism, social isolation, educational disengagement, and family dysfunction. Studies reveal histories of trauma, abuse, and child protection involvement. Feeling powerless and bereft of community,
they become susceptible to extremist ideologies that offer belonging, purpose, and a sense of empowerment.
Mental health issues represent a vulnerability factor rather than a causal mechanism for extremism. Most people with mental illness never engage in violence or extremism, and many extremists have no diagnosable mental health conditions.
However, for a subset of individuals, the combination of mental health challenges with other risk factors, including grievances, social isolation, exposure to extremist content online, and lack of protective factors, can increase susceptibility to radicalisation. This underscores the importance of mental health services in both prevention and intervention efforts targeting at-risk youth and adults.
Hyper-masculine
Contemporary scholarship increasingly recognises masculinity as central to understanding this wave of radicalisation. Research demonstrates that radicalisation frequently functions as what scholars term a masculinisation project, with extremist ideologies offering frameworks for reclaiming perceived lost masculine status in rapidly evolving social landscapes.
The incel movement provides particularly clear evidence of grievance-based radicalisation rooted in masculine identity, characterised by what researchers call “aggrieved entitlement,” where sexual frustration is attributed to both personal barriers and socially constructed notions of attractiveness.
A 2024 systematic review of 37 studies found that aggrieved entitlement represents a strong motivator towards violence, from assault and rape to mass shootings. Research analysing 1,933 incel forum posts documented how participants constructed masculinities through narratives of humiliation while expressing violent misogyny.
Far-right organisations similarly exploit masculine grievance, with movements capitalising on male feelings of grievance, dislocation, and resentment by framing gender equality and multiculturalism as existential threats to male identity. Research on groups such as the Proud Boys demonstrates how violence becomes conceptualised as “a path to manhood”,
a means to achieve status, defend one’s masculinity, and become a “real man.”
Recruitment to a lot of extremist groups in Australia now relies on hyper-masculinised spaces. Gyms and hyper-masculine activities like boxing and combat sports have been utilised by networks including Hizb ut-Tahrir affiliates and the National Socialist Network, which has specifically recruited vulnerable young boys through fitness centres.
Contemporary far-right movements have increasingly emphasised bodybuilding and healthy lifestyle practices as tools for both recruitment and training. For example, the Lads Society, before merging into the NSN, explicitly branded itself as a men’s fitness group to attract mainstream recruits who could then be indoctrinated into neo-Nazi ideology.
Online platforms
Likewise, online platforms like Telegram, Discord, TikTok, as well as gaming sites facilitate rapid radicalisation. The transformation of recruitment from physical networks to digital spaces represents a significant development in contemporary extremism.
The digital environment offers anonymity, transborder reach, low cost, and decentralised communication that bypasses national jurisdictions as well as “echo chamber dynamics,” where individuals locate information sources that validate their grievances. COVID-19 accelerated this trend by isolating youth in online echo chambers,
with radicalisation now occurring in weeks rather than months.
Distrust and conspiracy theories
Australia is experiencing a profound crisis of trust in government and democratic institutions that is creating fertile ground for radicalisation and violent extremism. The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer revealed that Australia has slipped into distrust territory with a Trust Index of 49%, down from 51% in 2024, with 59% of Australians in 2024 worrying that government, business leaders, and journalists are purposely trying to mislead people.
The the 2024 Mapping Social Cohesion Report found only 33% of adults trust the Federal Government to do the right thing, a decline from 44% in 2021. This erosion of trust has been fueled by a lack of transparency in political processes,
including secret political donations and opaque lobbying practices that create backchannels to power.
The Edelman report also found that declining trust in government has led to an increase in “hostile activism”, with nearly one in three Australians seeing hostile activism as a viable means to drive change, rising to over one in two for Australians aged 18-34.
The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically accelerated these dynamics, transforming latent distrust into active conspiracy adherence and creating an environment where extremist narratives could flourish.
Against this backdrop of institutional distrust and democratic erosion, Australia faces a growing threat from conspiracy-fuelled extremism, with ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess warning in his 2025 Annual Threat Assessment that the nation is experiencing a surge in issue-motivated extremism driven by personal grievance, conspiracy theories, and anti-authority ideologies.
Research demonstrates a clear pathway from conspiratorial beliefs to political violence: the Australian Institute of Criminology found that anti-authority protesters during COVID-19 had their grievances shaped and amplified by conspiratorial ideologies and sovereign citizen beliefs, fostering deep mistrust and anti-government sentiment, while a 2025 study of 1,595 Australians published in Terrorism and Political Violence revealed that conspiracy believers were significantly
more likely to endorse violent insurrection, harbour violent intentions toward government,
and self-report engagement in anti-government violence.
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the depth of the problem, with a survey of 5,276 New South Wales residents finding strong associations between belief in misinformation, distrust in public institutions, willingness to support violent extremism, and adherence to conspiracy theories.
Conspiracy theories function as a “radicalisation multiplier,” underpinning different forms of ideological extremism by demonising enemies, dismissing those who disagree as co-conspirators, and legitimising violence as necessary political action.