Married to the alt-right

Updated

The ugly past has caught up with a young Australian couple, just months after they walked down the aisle in a classic white wedding.

WARNING: This article contains content that may offend some readers.

The clandestine activities of an Australian neo-Nazi couple and their network have been exposed in a leak of hundreds of thousands of secret messages from a forum used by American white supremacists.

A joint investigation by ABC News and The Sydney Morning Herald reveals the pair also tried to recruit others to their cause and spread their views to mainstream political parties.

The messages, which date back from 2017, show that they engaged in racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic slurs, as they conversed in a closed community of like-minded zealots.

The investigation identified the couple as Canberra newlyweds Lisa Beulah (née Sandford) and her husband, Justin, who say they have now renounced their former lives.

Their presence on the forum was discovered after US online publication Unicorn Riot obtained the leaked messages from several Discord servers, a chat platform popular with gamers.

The platform was used to plan the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a woman was killed after a car was driven into a group of counter-protesters.

The messages, which were leaked shortly after that event, reveal the highly interconnected nature of the global far-right movement.

ABC News has chosen not to publish some of the more offensive posts from the leaked chat logs which also show how the Beulahs were in contact with prominent American neo-Nazi Elliott Kline, who uses the alias Eli Mosley.

Kline, who was also one of the organisers of the Charlottesville rally, told members of the forum that he had donated funds to support Australian white supremacist Blair Cottrell — a claim Cottrell denies.

Lisa and Justin Beulah are no strangers to Australian politics. Lisa was a One Nation supporter and volunteer manager of an unofficial Pauline Hanson Facebook page. Justin was a member of the Young Liberals.

They were also part of a group of self-described fascists whom ABC's Background Briefing revealed had infiltrated the NSW branch of the Young Nationals last year in an attempt to steer their policies further to the right.

The Beulahs were among the 22 people subsequently banned for life by the NSW Nationals over their role in the plot.

Confronted with their involvement in the white supremacist movement, the couple agreed to be interviewed and explain how they were radicalised and ended up in the hate-filled gutters of the internet.

Path to radicalisation

The Beulahs tied the knot in a classic white wedding at Canberra's St Andrew's Presbyterian Church in February.

"Happily married to the most perfect man," Lisa wrote on her Facebook page bio.

Eighteen months earlier, Lisa (using her alias MsNatSocialist) told members of the Discord forum of her wishes for another style of wedding altogether — one with a "Fashy" (fascist) 1940s theme featuring men in Nazi uniforms.

MsNatSocialist MsNatSocialist Lisa Beuleh Lisa Beuleh Brad Small Brad Small Justin Beuleh Justin Beuleh

MsNatSocialist: I think my extended family will probably have a heart attack at how Fashy my wedding will be.

MsNatSocialist: I want the Fashy goys dressed in SS uniforms. The women in 40's dresses and I want an old fashioned themed wedding

The SS, the Schutzstaffel, were the feared paramilitary arm of the Nazi party and the group charged with overseeing the extermination of millions of European Jews and others deemed to be racially inferior.

Lisa didn't get her dream wedding, but she did get her bloke.

Gangly and bespectacled, Justin Beulah, 23, attended one of Canberra's top Catholic schools before enrolling to study commerce at the University of Canberra. On Discord, he called himself Brad Small.

They had bonded over a shared hatred of other races and their mutual infatuation with Nazis.

Brad Small: When are you gonna mail me some cakes?

MsNatSocialist: @Brad Small I'll bake swastika cupcakes for you

Brad Small: 😍

These days, Lisa describes her views as "conservative Christian" and says she came from the men's rights and anti-feminist movements.

"I also have very strong passions for traditional family values as well as traditional homemaking values as well. I believe in stay-at-home mothers and stay-at-home wives," she told ABC News.

But in the leaked chats, Lisa, 27, repeatedly boasts about her darker obsessions. In one instance she claims to have "always loved Hitler".

She now says her comments on the Discord forum were an attempt to fit in so as to avoid being kicked off by the administrators.

"The only thing about Hitler's views was that he was a Christian and that he believed that a lot of — just keeping the country just as it was," she told ABC News.

Justin's path to radicalisation began during his final years at high school when he began reading extremist material online.

He had long held conservative views but plunged further into the "hate vacuum" after becoming exposed to Pol (short for politically incorrect), a forum on 4Chan, the infamous online bulletin board.

"If you are reading that sort of stuff in 2015, [it] definitely reinforces your views because that's when refugee crisis happen (sic). That's when terrorist attacks happened all the time throughout the world," he said.

"You just got dragged into it and dragged further and further and further until eventually you'd start to think well, maybe other people think like I do, and you find them and you end up in these Discord servers."

Lisa arrived at Discord after Justin invited her to the group, but she first had to supply a photo of her wrist showing her username.

"That's the way they determine if you're white or like of descent is your veins, if they can show on the back of your skin that means you're white enough."

Both boasted online about their connections to the Australian alt-right. Justin also claimed to be involved with the American neo-Nazi Richard Spencer and at one stage was an administrator on his Discord forum.

"I was well-connected," Justin bragged. "I used to be in and around all the right circles, you know, mostly overseas."

Infiltrating the Young Nationals

In March 2018, Justin Beulah and Lisa Sandford joined the NSW branch of the Young Nationals as part of a plot by members of the alt-right to infiltrate the party.

Clifford Jennings was one of the key figures behind the plan. He was elected to the party's executive along with Lisa in May last year.

That same month during a dramatic state conference, the new members put forward a motion calling on the NSW Young Nationals to "endorse immigration from culturally compatible peoples and nations" while supporting "strict immigration controls for those who are not".

NSW Nationals state director Ross Cadell said both Lisa and Justin Beulah initially denied they were involved in the infiltration.

But as an investigation into the matter got underway, the pair resigned.

"There was a lot of denials from a lot of people, including them. And then when it all got too hard they ran rather than face the show cause that we were giving them," he said.

"We think they basically wanted to use us as a megaphone, that they wanted enough numbers to try and influence some policy or make some statements."

Lisa had previously posted in the Discord chats about how stressful it was to hide her "power levels" — the true extent of her racist beliefs — from her co-workers. Another user counselled her, "[Y]ou have to live a double life".

Recruitment drive

Before being elected to the Young Nationals executive, the leaked Discord logs show Lisa Beulah was focused on strategies to recruit more people to the neo-Nazi movement.

She even used her role as an administrator of a popular Harry Potter Facebook fan page to post images and messages idolising Hitler and denying the Holocaust.

To her friends in the Discord chats she wrote: "If I can get the word out — I'll do it any way possible."

After the Facebook page was pulled down, Lisa complained on Discord about the "hate" and "awful words" she was bombarded with by upset Harry Potter fans.

Lisa also started a series of female-targeted neo-Nazi groups like "Woman's Nationalist Club Australia" and the "Australian Women's Association" on Facebook and Instagram.

Despite the innocuous titles, they were removed by the social media platforms after a notorious photo was shared of female members of the SS enjoying a day out near Auschwitz.

MsNatSocialist: Yeah, feminism is gross. I want feminists thrown in a pit of fire

MsNatSocialist: My sons will be great leaders in their communities. My daughters will be hardworking mothers.

"I would not wish that on any woman in any point of time I would never encourage them to join the movement. I think it's toxic to women."

'My come-to-Jesus moment'

The Beulahs say they came to their senses after the incident that took place during the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville on August 12, 2017.

One person died and some 20 were injured when a white supremacist supporter drove his Dodge Challenger into a group of counter-protesters.

"For me like it was Charlottesville that was my come-to-Jesus moment, so to speak," Lisa said. "And then I decided... it was a very negative community. I was like, 'why am I here? Like what am I doing?' This is not right."

But the chat logs from the days after the incident show Lisa to be cheerleading the attack.

She also boasted on Discord about one of "our guys" prank-calling an ABC radio interviewer to discuss the rally.

Five days after the attack, Justin also appeared on Discord (via his mobile phone) throwing his support behind the white supremacists.

Brad's mobile: Dude you guys literally changed the world

Brad's mobile: Just with one rally

Brad's mobile: And a dodge challenger

'Get out from behind the screen'

The Beulahs now say they want to publicly apologise to the vast spectrum of people they have offended.

"What I said was wrong. To be honest, I should not expect forgiveness for the things that I have said," Lisa explained. "I feel absolutely disgusted with myself."

She advised others who had been radicalised to "get out from behind the screen" and get a reality check.

"Please talk to your family," she said. "Please talk to someone that... isn't involved in it. Because sometimes you just need to have that person that is your anchor and someone that can shake your shoulders and just say 'this is not normal'."

Her husband reflected on his online posts, acknowledging the harm they caused.

"You're reinforcing the ideology in someone and you know you're not helping them move away from it, you're encouraging them to move in deeper," he said.

And digging themselves out of that hole was also a work in progress.

"It's something that takes time, you know, to go from being a normal kid to being radicalised takes months, years. Same thing the other way around."

The couple claim they are now no longer involved in any secret white supremacist groups online or in real life.

Lisa's last known public post referencing white supremacism was published last October.

She commented on a Facebook post recommending a white genocide conspiracy theory manifesto by neo-Nazi terrorist group leader, David Lane.

She claimed that too was a joke.

Credits

Additional reporting: Patrick Begley, The Sydney Morning Herald

Additional research: Justine Landis-Hanley, Alex Tighe, Christopher Moir

Producer: Kyle Taylor

Digital producer: Stephen Hutcheon

Development: Nathanael Scott

Design: Alex Palmer

Photography: Dave Maguire





Topics: fascism, government-and-politics, canberra-2600, university-of-canberra-2617, act, australia

First posted