Troll or Oppressor: A Critical Review of the Emerging Right-Wing’s Social Media Presence

Freya Leach, a 21-year-old content creator and student at the University of Sydney (USyd), took to her Instagram and TikTok account on the 22nd of September to display her distaste for the ‘always was, always will be Aboriginal land’ statement featured on USyd Library’s website. In the video, Leach told her followers:

“This is everything that is wrong with Australian universities. I go onto my university website – tryna find the library – and what do I see? ‘Always was always will be Aboriginal land’. Can I not even get onto the library without some sort of woke indoctrination? I am so over it.” 

The video has over 44,000 views on Instagram and over 131,000 on TikTok at the time of writing this. The comments (which have since been limited on her Instagram post), were filled with backlash from viewers. The video has also appeared on multiple First Nations rights and advocacy pages, where there has been harsh criticism of Leach’s scorn towards a phrase dedicated to respecting First Nations protocols and custodianship. 

Like thousands of others, I was saddened to see such divisive content appear on my Instagram feed, especially from a fellow student at a neighbouring university. What was worse, however, was the knowledge that the video was bound to continue circulating, and there was nothing to do but watch it happen. 

Leach is a self-proclaimed hard-line conservative, who ran as the 2023 Liberal candidate for the electorate of Balmain (and who lost to the Greens candidate, Kobi Shetty). After gaining notoriety from her ‘Vote No’ content during Australia’s 2023 Voice to Parliament referendum, Leach has managed to retain her online audience by branding herself as an overt and vocal neoliberal ‘truth teller’. The topics her videos repeatedly turn to, include (but are not limited to) her fierce Zionist stance, her belittlement of First Nations rights movements – including the ‘politics’ of an Acknowledgement of Country – and her belief that the immigration policies of the Labour Party are responsible for Australia’s current housing crisis. 

So while there is a big part of me that hates to write this article, as in doing so I am directing more viewers to Leach’s platforms (which I’m sure was the exact intent behind her video) I fear that some conversations – albeit difficult and uncomfortable – are simply too important not to have. When viewing Leach’s content (or content from similar creators, as this flavour of political branding is adopted by many right-leaning individuals online), we must recognise that there is something much bigger and graver going on here. 

Because there’s a common denominator that unites all of these agendas, and it is not politics, it’s race. 

No, this is not just an individual sharing harmless ‘opinions’ online. 

Am I really meant to assume that this girl has randomly developed a profound interest in these varying (and quite unrelated agendas), and the fact that they pose BIPOC individuals as the cause of the problem has nothing to do with it? 

Sorry, but I won't accept that. 

Leach is disguising white-superiority as ‘politics’ and she is piggybacking off the branding of institutions such as USyd and the Liberal Party to legitimise her rhetoric and make it socially acceptable. Not only is it absolutely not socially acceptable, thanks to the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977, to publicly vilify communities based on factors such as race, is illegal. 

So where is the accountability?

Vertigo contacted the Liberal Party and Leach herself for a comment, but received no response. However, a spokesperson for USyd responded to Leach’s video by stating that:

“We want our campuses to be inclusive and welcoming for all, and we’re committed to creating higher education and leadership opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and to valuing Indigenous culture. We believe the delivery of a Welcome to Country or Acknowledgement of Country shows respect for the lands on which we work and we’ll continue to support our community to include them in our events, in meetings and on our websites as appropriate.  

We are aware of the video, and while our students are free to express their personal opinions in line with our policies on free speech and academic freedom, they do not represent those of the University.”

Vertigo respects this sentiment, however, one cannot help but feel that this fails to address the more nuanced implications that arise from opinions such as Leach’s being publicly correlated with brands like USyd in this way. 

Sure, this particular video might not breach USyd’s policies on free-speech and when viewed in silo, can be seen as a lawful expression of Leach’s ‘personal opinion’. But there is no denying its racist undertones, which are only amplified when viewed alongside the rest of her content. There is also no denying that by engaging with these brands – whether passively or not – Leach is using them to leverage her online reach. To the 131,000 TikTok viewers who (most likely) will not read this article, they will not be made aware of USyd’s response and must therefore fill in the blanks on their own. When Leach is also a representative of the Liberal Party (as stated in her Instagram bio) this ceases to be a matter of ‘personal opinion’. It becomes one of public opinion.

In dialogue with Vertigo, a fellow USyd student and former Honi Soit editor Ethan Floyd commented on Leach social media presence: 

“White conservatives always claim they ‘don’t see colour’ in order to try and disentangle their racist views from questions of race. We use ‘terrorism’ as an excuse to persecute black and brown people, and recently we’ve seen the housing crisis used to justify international student caps rather than the real rationale, a racist fear of immigration. Freya’s rhetoric is no different, it’s just not as imaginative. She is conjuring up worn-out sentiments of what it means to be ‘Australian’ and to have a ‘fair go’, to justify hateful attitudes towards First Nations peoples.”

Let's also recognise that when it comes to free speech and online politics, our First Nations communities enter the debate from a position of drastic disadvantage.

In their 2023 report, the Australian Digital Inclusion Index stated that our First Nations communities living remotely are “among the most digitally excluded Australians” in the country. It noted that these individuals scored 7.5 points behind the national average in digital literacy, where points are allocated according to access, affordability, skill and use. The report continued, that over 43% of predominantly First Nations communities/homelands across Australia have no service.

What this tells us, is that those using their social media platforms to advocate against the rights of First Nations people, do so from a position of disproportionate power. This is just when we are considering equitable access to social media alone. When we also take into consideration the immense structural advantages that non-Indigenous individuals have in all other facets of life, this imbalance becomes harrowingly apparent.

So, Leach, let me pose it this way: 

Is the antagonisation of a community that has been subjected to violence, oppression and suffering for multiple centuries, really worth a couple of thousand Instagram followers? 

And when will we start to see some accountability taken for this type of vilification? 

Because online hate does not stay online… it translates into real life consequences. 

Because by turning a blind eye to content such as Leach’s, we are allowing her opinions to be validated by an echo chamber that insinuates that these views are acceptable and shared by millions of others.

They are not acceptable, and we must keep calling them out. 

Because the only way to bridge the divide that is being constructed by people like Leach, is to acknowledge what they are doing, and to demand accountability — not just from them, but from the institutions they hide behind.

You can consider this article my personal attempt to use my platform, my politics, and my privilege, to do just that.