His recent claims about the Liberals quickly spread on social media and last week Hastie, while standing next to the prime minister, was asked about it. Hastie refused to answer and called the question “defamatory”. However, just hours later Goodenough told The Guardian he and Hastie had met Erikson at a rally for white South African farmers in April 2018.



That prompted Hastie to release a statement declaring he was “confident” that he had not encountered Erikson at the rally. “I have never sought to nor agreed to meet with Mr Erikson. I find his views abhorrent and his views should not be given a platform,” he said.

Goodenough later clarified his position and claimed a guy “dressed as a rapper” approached him from the crowd but he did not know at the time who Erikson was. Goodenough said it was a “brief encounter” and not a meeting.

Loss of Facebook account

Erikson told BuzzFeed News he had made the recent allegations because of a grievance he had with the Liberal party, which he claimed to have worked with for a few years.



Following the Christchurch terror attack, he and other members of the far-right had their Facebook pages removed — something Erikson blames on prime minister Scott Morrison. He believes the decision was actually taken to stop momentum gathering behind the right-wing minor parties, namely Fraser Anning’s Conservative National Party and One Nation, in next week’s federal election.

Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg said in a statement on March 30 the pages had been banned as part of a crackdown on hate speech and support for white nationalism in the wake of the Christchurch terror attack.

“We are also using our existing artificial intelligence tools to identify and remove a range of hate groups in Australia and New Zealand, including the Lads Society, the United Patriots Front, the Antipodean Resistance, and National Front New Zealand,” she said. “These groups will be banned from our services, and we will also remove praise and support of these groups when we become aware of it.”



In the aftermath of Hastie and Goodenough’s statements, Erikson has continued to hint at the alleged meeting in a series of short YouTube videos.