Christian extremist belief that inspired the Wieambilla shooting a growing threat, experts say

Queensland Police has classified last year’s Wieambilla shooting as a “religiously motivated terrorist attack” inspired by an apocalyptic branch of Christian extremism.

On Thursday, deputy police commissioner Tracy Linford gave an update on the investigation of the December 12 shooting of two police officers and a neighbour by Nathaniel, Gareth and Stacey Train.

Linford said evidence including 190 interviews, the group’s online activity and Stacey Train’s diary suggested the trio acted alone and in a premeditated way. 

The group were inspired by their Christian fundamentalist beliefs, Linford said, and viewed police as “monsters and demons”.

Last year, Crikey was first to report on the Trains’ YouTube and Rumble accounts, which showed Gareth and Stacey Train foreshadowing and then acknowledging they had killed police. Videos and comments in the lead-up to the attacks contained Christian quotes and iconography.

Previous reporting had also shown Gareth Train’s history of engaging in online conspiracy spaces with anti-government, anti-vaccine comments, typically grounded in his Christian beliefs. 

What is premillennialism? 

Linford said the trio were adherents to “a broad Christian fundamentalist belief system known as premillennialism”.

Premillennialism is a belief the second coming of Jesus Christ will happen after a Judgement Day, ushering in a thousand years of peace. The Trains’ YouTube and Rumble accounts included frequent references to an imminent apocalypse. Both Gareth and Nathaniel were brought up in a Christian church created by their father, Ronald Train, and Stacey was said to have strong religious views.

Dr Gerard Gill is an independent researcher who’s written about Australian extremism for the Global Network on Extremism & Technology, including on millenarianism in Australia’s freedom movement, an umbrella term for a (typically Christian but not always) belief in an impending apocalypse that includes premillennialism. 

He said that understanding the influence of premillennialism in the Trains’ decisions to carry out an act of mass violence is complex. 

“[Premillennialism] is not necessarily an extremist belief,” he told Crikey.

“The difference is when it blends in with all of this conspiracist thinking. Then, you might see [the apocalypse] as something that’s happening now and you might think you need to take extreme action.”

He pointed to research showing that millennialism beliefs are associated with a propensity for violence and extremism: “It heightens the stakes for things, it allows you to see the world in a very black-and-white way. It’s a point of no return that certain people are the devil, and certain people are of God,” he said.

Gill said that millennialism is present in conspiracy movements such as Australia’s freedom movement and among QAnon believers. The belief in an impending apocalypse has also crept into mainstream culture and politics, he said, although more so in the United States than Australia. 

Gill is worried about whether radicalised individuals who believe in premillennialism will continue to commit acts of violence as they’re constantly bombarded by new “threats” concocted by the anti-vaccine, anti-government leaders of the freedom movement.

“I felt like I wanted to point this out in the freedom movement because they’re not going to take responsibility for what they’re putting out there,” he said.

Gill said he saw how leaders of the freedom movement, rather than considering their role, reacted to the Queensland shooting by spreading conspiracies in online Telegram channels about the attack in the days after. 

“The big players in the freedom movement, [the Wieambilla shooting] slowed them down for a day, but they believed that they weren’t responsible. They threw out that it was a false flag and kept promoting conspiracies,” he said. 

Earlier this week, ASIO chief Mike Burgess told a Senate committee they’re concerned the next terror attack in Australia is more likely to be committed by an individual or small group rather than an organised group. 

What happens now the shooting has been labelled a ‘terrorist attack’?

Commissioner Linford said that while the Queensland coroner will make a final determination, they were treating it as a religiously motivated terrorist attack. Linford downplayed the role of sovereign citizen ideology in the shooting.

Dr Josh Roose, an Deakin University associate professor who focuses on extremism, said this designation is likely to have two impacts: informing the direction of the coronial inquest’s investigation; and the future allocation of government and agency resources.

“I’d expect to see more resources dedicated to monitoring these individuals and groups,” he said.

Mark Fletcher, an ANU PhD student studying the development of national security law, said it’s difficult to know exactly how the classification of a terrorist attack by a state would influence the federal response, but pointed at two “highly possible” consequences.

“The first is that this opens the door to organisations with similar conspiratorial ideologies being treated as terrorist organisations … The second is that this gives ASIO more of a basis to use intelligence-gathering powers against people in these groups,” he said.

An ASIO spokesperson did not directly answer Crikey’s questions about whether the classification by Queensland Police would affect its operations.

“ASIO investigates Australians who embrace violent extremist beliefs. They do not need to be part of a listed group to attract our attention,” they said.