Firebomb 05 | The Gang Rises

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Just before we start, this episode contains some strong language and descriptions of violence.

When I was 10 years old, my parents used to ask me to record the news.

They worked at the restaurant every night and I was at home, so I'd just be watching it by myself or with my brother.

And the people who firebombed our restaurant, the A ⁇ M, they were finally on trial and in the coverage, I remember it was almost like seeing it for the first time again.

Jack Van Tongren had set fire to Chinese restaurants in an attempt to drive Asians out of Australia.

I remember seeing the burnt restaurants, the interviews of my parents, and hearing all about the man that was behind all of this.

After two days deliberating, the jury returned returned their verdicts late this afternoon.

Supreme Leader Jack Van Tongren guilty of 53 charges, including conspiracy to harm Asians and drive them out of Western Australia.

And it was at this point, as a 10-year-old now, that I was, you know, for the first time, actually old enough to start properly understanding the racism and the hate that motivated the attack against us.

And that understanding, that feeling stayed with with me as I went into high school.

All these things are just kind of gnawing at me and kind of eats at you.

So, you know,

I almost started believing the worst things that people were saying about me, about Asians, and I started to question whether I was Australian enough.

I found myself really conscious about my parents speaking Cantonese loudly because I found found that suddenly embarrassing.

I started dreading going on family holidays because I was worried that people would look at us and presume that we were tourists from overseas.

And being a smart student would just fulfill another stereotype, so I just slacked off.

I started chipping away bits of myself,

and in some ways, they were the best parts of me.

And then as I got to year 11,

things went to another level.

I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians.

It was 1996 when right-wing politician Pauline Hansen gave her maiden speech to federal parliament.

And it kind of felt like that was the moment when hostility towards Asian immigrants went mainstream.

They have their own culture and religion, form ghettos and do not assimilate.

Of course I will be called racist, but if I can invite who I want into my home, then I should have the right to have a say in who comes into my country.

I started getting yelled at by random people in the street to go back to my own country, which was simultaneously awful, yet also so fucking stupid.

I mean, I was born and raised in Perth and Rockingham.

I mean, is that where they want me to go?

And something kind of clicked for me at this point.

And all of a sudden, I was like, fuck that.

I'm Australian and Chinese.

I'm both.

And in a way, it was only really from then on that I started to fully embrace that fact, to accept who I was.

I wasn't going to stay quiet anymore.

So when I got to uni, I studied theatre and film, and I started weaving the A ⁇ M story into some of my work.

But then in 2002, when I was 22 years old, Jack Van Tongren was released from prison.

Van Tongren's put on a bit of weight and his jet black hair and moustache of the late 80s have now got streaks of grey.

But while his appearance may have changed, his message has not.

i remember this sense of dread because after 12 long years in prison jack was completely 100

unrepentant it seems his stint in prison did little to change the political views of the leader of the australian nationalist movement our australian nation deserves a fair bit of game

i hope that you people will report correctly and see to the welfare of our australian nation

i am not a terrorist.

When Jack had been out of prison for about a bit over a year, I was in rehearsals for a play about growing up Chinese in Australia.

It was a kid show called Hidden Dragons.

And I had one of the main roles as this Chinese-Australian boy caught between two cultures and trying to find his identity.

But just a week before opening night,

Something kind of mind-blowing happened.

We were going through our final rehearsals at this inner city theatre studio when news broke.

Someone had been on a firebombing spree and their targets were Chinese restaurants.

They smashed the front windows, poured fuel inside and set the light, adding insult to injury, spray-painted swastikas.

Victims of the weekend fire said news of the racist attacks had already spread to Southeast Asia.

Almost a decade and a half after my parents' restaurant was set on fire, it was happening again.

This is Firebomb, the latest season of the ABC's Unravel podcast, episode 5.

The gang rises.

So this time my family was lucky.

The Man Lin wasn't one of the restaurants firebombed, but it's hard to put into words just how weird it was, how eerie and scary it was to see Chinese restaurants being torched again.

I mean, everything about the attacks was just so similar to what happened to my family.

Like the way the news of the attacks reached the owners.

Remember that on Saturday night, about three or four o'clock, people ring me up.

They say, oh, your restaurant got attacked by the firebomb.

Ling Long hopped in her car with her husband and headed straight towards the Chinese restaurant in Yanjib.

It was the first one to be targeted that night.

Oh my goodness.

We saw some police outside

in front of the restaurant and we said, oh no, it must be something very bad happened.

Lin swaps between English and Cantonese as she describes what she saw.

Lin said the place was a wreck.

The windows were broken, the air conditioning units were burnt, and the ceiling was black with smoke damage.

The whole dining hall was black.

And on the news, there were these close-up shots of a spray-painted swastika right on the restaurant's front wall.

The whole Chinese community was scared.

Why people do things like this?

Why did they light up my restaurant?

I did nothing wrong to them.

I didn't do anything to other people.

I mean, why they do this to us?

I mean, with swastikas appearing on firebombed restaurants and Jack Van Tongren appearing on the news again, I mean,

I remember this feeling of disbelief, like,

he's at it again.

You gotta be fucking kidding me.

But it was 2004.

And some things had changed since the last firebombing campaign.

This time, the Chinese community got really active.

Politicians condemned the attacks, police sprang into action straight away, and in what seemed like no time at all, the firebombers were caught.

And when I saw the names, it wasn't who I expected at all.

18-year-old Joshua Benjamin McDonald, 19-year-old Jonathan Christopher Aimsbury, and two other people decided after a heavy drinking session to set three Chinese restaurants alight.

It wasn't Jack or the A ⁇ M.

Today McDonald was sentenced to 30 months jail while Ainsbury received a term of 26 months.

They said they regretted causing concern to the community and denied being racist.

But what was clear is that Jack's release from prison had restarted the spread of his toxic ideas.

Police had found his propaganda in one of the firebombers' bedrooms.

The court heard police found pamphlets from the Australian nationalist movement.

The teenager claimed he hadn't read the material.

And even though police had made arrests and locked up the offenders, somehow the spate of racist attacks continued.

The offenders struck under the cover of darkness.

In three separate attacks, racist and offensive slogans were plastered over shops, windows, and bus stops.

Swastikas covered nearly every building and shop front.

However, the owners say the threats won't drive them out of business.

At each of the crime scenes, pamphlets and posters promoting the Australian nationalist movement were scattered.

And it was around this time that another of Van Tongren's posters appeared on the doors of the Man Lynn.

And I had this little flashback to when I seen them on the bus stop in front of the restaurant as a little kid.

It felt like we were being sent a message that the AM was back.

We've established that Mr.

Van Tongren is almost certainly a person of interest and he will be spoken to as will a number of other people to further the inquiries.

The police weren't going to wait until Jack slipped up.

They started actively monitoring him and they discovered that Jack had actually teamed up with his old mate John Van Blitiswick again and they started recruiting followers.

And then they found out something completely unbelievable.

but also somehow unsurprising.

Jack was planning to firebomb restaurants again.

And he had three targets lined up and one of them was my family's restaurant, the Man Lin.

16 years after he had done it the first time, Jack wanted to destroy our livelihood again.

But this time the police got to Jack Van Tongren before he got to us.

Jack Van Tongren was taken into custody last Friday when police charged him with conspiring to carry out arson attacks on four Asian restaurants.

He'd been out of jail for less than two years and now Jack was again behind bars.

He was also charged with 19 counts of criminal damage.

Then, as if this whole story wasn't already wild enough, in early 2006, things took a totally ridiculous turn when Jack Van Tongeren was released on bail and promptly did a runner.

A nationwide hunt for Jack Van Tongeren was launched last Friday after police belatedly discovered he had failed to meet the daily reporting conditions of his bail.

He had fled with one of his followers, a guy called Matthew Billing.

Anyone with information about the pair is asked to contact police.

It took six weeks, but somebody did contact WA police.

They said they'd seen Jack and another person in a small country town, driving around at night, trying not to be seen.

Dario Bozzonella was in charge of the WA police investigations team given the job of tracking Jack down.

He told the local cops he was on the way.

We're coming down this afternoon, we're coming down now.

And sure enough, a Pajero turned up with two guys wearing wigs and beanies.

One of them had the old school black rimmed reading glasses on.

And as they got out of the car, we arrested him.

Jack Van Tongeren was back in custody last night after being confronted at a house in Boddington where heavily armed police were waiting.

The fugitive pair gave up without a fight after six weeks on the run, possibly hiding out in bush camps.

Officers seized three high-powered firearms and ammunition during the arrest, which were allegedly found in this four-wheel drive.

For the third time, Jack Van Tongren had been caught and was again behind bars.

But when he was sentenced, Something crazy happened.

He basically got released on an undertaking that he would leave WA.

Dario Bozzonella is now a commander in the WA police force.

He was involved in the operation to arrest Jack, but he wasn't involved in the decision about what charges to lay or in the court case.

Even he seems kind of surprised by how it turned out.

It was quite interesting because we were looking at it going, well, how do we enforce that?

We can't, right?

You know what I mean?

Like, that's just, that's just him telling the judge, I'm leaving.

And the judge goes, okay, see you later.

Of all the things about this story that blow my mind this one nearly takes the cake Jack Van Tongren had been busted planning a second terrorism campaign against Chinese restaurants including my family's but when he gets caught and locked up somehow he gets bail he then skips bail and when police catch up with him six weeks later he's found with firearms some of which had been illegally modified and then when he finally gets sentenced, he gets set free.

We were a bit suspicious that the judge felt sorry for him because he'd passed out in court at the previous appearance.

Jack had fainted in court and he'd been taken to hospital for a short stay.

His lawyer told the court that Jack had retired from all his previous activities.

But Jack's lack of remorse or regret wasn't discussed in the sentencing hearing.

And I think the judge thought, oh, this is a frail old man that he's not in good health and he's seen the errors of his ways and he's generally going to leave and put everything behind him.

And I think that's what happened.

But Jack was only facing relatively minor charges like criminal damage and conspiracy to commit arson.

So if you take into account the time he had already served, this sentence isn't that out of the ordinary.

If he could have been kept in jail for longer, it might have only been for months rather than years.

So maybe the bigger questions here are for the WA police.

Because by 2004, there were other additional charges that Jack could have been hit with.

I mean, for starters, there was this incitement to a racial hatred bill brought in specifically to combat the very racist posters like the ones Jack and the gang put up.

But more importantly, there was a whole suite of incredibly broad counter-terrorism laws that were brought brought in after the World Trade Center attacks in 2001.

I do think police should have charged him with terrorism conspiracy.

I think, at the very least, it should have been the first charge that was

put against him.

I showed the judge's sentencing remarks to Rita Jabri Markwell.

She's a lawyer, an academic, and an advocate.

And she spent the past few years looking at terrorism cases in

The facts of it are pretty compelling.

I wouldn't say that these are a weak set of facts to be testing the law on.

So it's been put to me that occasionally, when laws are new,

police and prosecutors are hesitant to be the first cabs off the rank.

And it means that sometimes cases that could be tried under the new laws might get tried under the old regime until a new trend is developed.

And that line has been run for the last 20 years that

we're not sure whether we can extend this law to apply to racist nationalists.

And that's not good enough.

For laws against preparing to commit a terrorist act are pretty broad, but it's not until recent years that they've been used to convict a right-wing extremist.

The law says an act intended to advance an ideological political or religious cause.

Racist nationalism is an ideology.

It was politically motivated.

It's not good enough to say that where we're afraid that we may fail.

If it fails, then the law is no good.

And then the law needs to be changed.

And I think the fact that we have 20 years of police saying this is an indication that they're either unwilling to apply terrorism laws to racist nationalists or there is a problem with the law that no one wants to talk about.

We sent questions to the WA police and the sentencing judge, but they declined to provide a response for publication.

After everything that happened, it's like Jack Van Tongren was able to just melt away.

The way this whole decades-long saga ended, It makes me wonder if this country learned anything from it at all.

It feels unfinished.

Like, what happened to Jack?

Where did he go next?

And what happened to all the people who followed him?

I want to know what they're doing now.

And I want to know what they'd say to me face to face if I was standing right there in front of them.

It's just clicked over to 5:32 a.m.

The

sun is not yet up here in Perth.

Morning, mate.

How are you going?

You're good?

I'm with my co-reporter, Alex Mann, and we're about to do something that could backfire.

A teenager sneaking out of my parents' house in the dead of night.

Alex is actually a bit of an expert when it comes to reporting on white supremacy and right-wing extremism.

As an investigative journalist, he's uncovered secret plots, spoken to infiltrators, insiders and recruiters, as well as confronted senior members of some of the most active groups around at the moment.

It's actually the whole reason why we're working together on this project.

And I'm really grateful he's with me for this next step.

Because we're going to see a guy called Ben Verheim.

So what do you actually know about this guy that we're going to see?

Benjamin Verheim is this former follower of Jack's neo-Nazi group, the Australian Nationalist Movement.

And he was convicted for being a getaway driver for one of the groups that was involved in a poster graffiti campaign.

Yeah, so this guy started following Jack in the early 2000s, which is sort of after he got out of jail the first time.

I ran his name past a contact of mine, and they've sent me a bunch of his online posts from that period.

We're talking anti-Asian, anti-Muslim, anti-Jew kind of content.

Some of it's really, really full-on.

And he was posting this stuff a couple of years after he was convicted as well as before.

And

I guess in terms of what we've got to look out for today, in my experience,

it's actually often pretty hard to figure out when these guys genuinely change, right?

Like if they do at all.

And just having a bit of a poke around, this guy seems to be the real deal.

He doesn't seem to believe any of that stuff anymore, but I guess either way, we're going to probably find out today.

Ben Verheim has agreed to do an interview of us on just one condition.

And this is also when things get a little bit interesting because before we do the interview, he's insisting that we participate in a kind of men's health retreat that he's hosting.

And he's even given us a list of stuff to bring.

So, definitely some

bordies, some togs.

Okay, I've got those.

Got those.

He's asked us to bring something that we're comfortable moving

in yoga clothes.

He mentioned, want it something that light or white.

He said it sounded a bit cultish, but that's just the kind of vibe he's going for.

Can I just ask, like, how you feel about doing this?

I didn't sleep very well last night.

I couldn't stop.

kind of thinking about where we've gone with this research we've done so far and this is the closest that we've gone to somebody who kind of

was in the circle with jack

but it's been a bit nerve-wracking actually you know we're going three hours down south to a farm that we couldn't even see on google street view actually because the car didn't even go down that street So we don't even know how the front of the place looks like.

I'm genuinely interested to hear what he has to say and to be face to face with someone who has been with that group.

Alright let's do it.

So we head south for this pretty long drive towards a place called Bridgetown and when we get there we keep going a little bit further and soon we're on this windy single lane country back road.

It's hilly and there's sheep in the paddocks and then we turn up this long driveway and we pull up in front of this beautiful old farmhouse.

This house is owned by a friend of Ben's and out the front there's a group of about 10 to 15 guys who are standing around getting to know each other.

A few guys are pouring bags of ice into this industrial sized chess freezer and there at the front, easily recognizable in his white white flowing clothes is the guy that we've come to see Ben Verheim.

I guess I should

welcome all of you

so welcome everybody.

Ben's this tall fit looking tanned guy.

He's got a small reddish beard a white bandana and he's wearing a white sarong around his waist.

He's got no shirt so I can see what looks like Nordic style tattoos on his chest.

I have got no idea what the people here know about his past as a follower of a new Nazi group.

One of Ben's helpers uses a cigarette lighter to set fire to a small bundle of dried herbs.

With some sage and some rosemary.

He begins waving the smoking torch around us.

It feels bizarre, like this is not what I had in mind when I set out to get face to face with Van Tongren's ex-followers.

There's no backing out now.

now.

Ben pulls out this shallow drum and he starts playing to mark the beginning of the day's activities.

I'm just going to drum over you just gently, just to allow the sound vibration to help you to ease into the next few hours.

Ben asks us all to close our eyes and so I do.

It'll be a while before Alex and I can sit down and interview him and before that happens, Ben wants us to participate in whatever he's got planned.

For now, I guess we're both just kind of going along for the ride.

Keeping his eyes closed.

Staying where you are.

First stop is by a dam to do some low-key yoga under a tree.

And taking a seat on your yoga mat in a cross-legged, easy-pose position.

We do a short meditation

and then Ben starts singing a song.

You know, your will to be free

is matched with love secretly

and when it ends, we get up, we're moving again,

and we're chanting

hard,

hard,

hard,

Then all of a sudden, things kind of escalate, and we're screaming into each other's faces.

Breathe in that deepest hurt you've ever felt and scream it out.

Turn to your partner next to you, brother next to you.

Face each other.

Face each other.

Good.

Safe to say, the day so far has been one of the strangest experiences I've ever had.

And we haven't even spoken about neo-Nazis yet.

As we walk up the hill back towards the house, it becomes clear what the next activity is.

It's ice bath time.

Alex steps into his huge ice chest first.

Catch that breath, catch that breath.

Slow it down.

And he spends two minutes completely submerged up to his chin in water.

That's not far off zero degrees before stepping back out again.

It's extremely cold.

I feel like I might never see my testicles again.

Next, it's my turn.

How you feeling?

Surprisingly good.

But yeah,

you just breathe.

You have to just breathe through it.

That's the coldest thing I've ever been in.

I can't tell if it's cold or it's hot.

Then we head inside for a 30-minute guided sound meditation.

And then it's time for what Ben Verheim has been calling the sharing circle.

This is you're welcome to share anything that's been coming up for you.

I think it's really important

for us to be able to share amongst each other because we can have these different perspectives of things when we

hear

other stories.

Alex and I share a quick look and we focus on Ben at the front of the room.

So thank you for coming.

If

I'd like to go around the circle.

Ben passes a stick to the person on his left.

When each person finishes talking, they'll pass the stick on.

Introduce yourself with your name.

The air is hazy with incense.

Come from a lived experience of

what was worded to me as disability all through my life.

The men share stories of their traumas and how they're dealing with it.

And they've been really brutally honest about this really personal stuff in front of a bunch of people they've only just met,

which is just incredible.

Alex is just sitting off to my side.

I knew that there was going to be

this

sharing circle, but now I'm actually a bit

apprehensive about

Crispian because I don't know what he's going to say

about his reason for being here because to do it he's gonna have to basically out Ben to this whole group of people.

So I don't know how this is gonna play out.

There's about one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,

nine people

that have gotta share their story before it gets to crispy.

Yeah, I've recently been diagnosed with prostate cancer

and um it's just part of what's causing anxiety.

There's three people now.

Trying to turn things around but I've got a good woman down in a new town and life's going forward so

used to that.

Thank you very much.

It was great down there.

Hi I'm Christian.

I'd like to thank Ben for inviting me to come and join and be a part of this.

I was born in I was born here in Australia, but I'm actually Chinese.

Parents from Hong Kong and

I guess I've grown up kind of being in this kind of place where

I've never really felt like I knew where I belong.

And

we'll talk about this more with

Ben, but

in the 80s,

my parents' restaurant was firebombed during the period of the Australian Nationalist Movement, which was a group that...

a new announcement group that was

firebombed Chinese restaurants.

I was eight years old at the time and it's something that I have kind of been my memory has lived with me for a part and Ben has a part to play in that and so

I mean I'll leave maybe Ben for you to talk about that more from your side.

Good to share once it gets to me.

Yeah but I'm here to listen, I'm here to connect and I'm here to be present and yeah.

I hadn't really planned it this way.

In fact, Ben did mention the sharing circle, but I wasn't expecting us to share in it.

So when this happened, I just had to say what I could and be honest.

And I guess in the process, I outed Ben in front of all these guys.

And I was like, freaking out.

I mean, what was going to happen next?

Thank you, everybody.

It's really disarming to see

a

group of men coming from all different different walks of life

showing that vulnerability.

Ben starts by describing his teenage years, having behavioural problems and feeling isolated.

I had anxiety because I felt like I didn't belong.

And this is where

we have a commonality here, Crispian.

And

I would have these negative attention seeking behaviors because it would then get the attention of my parents and of other people or whoever

and I would feel

like I was

being paid attention to.

His mum was diagnosed with cancer and his dad had a big drinking problem and they separated when he was in high school.

He dropped out of school in year nine and was going to raves at 15 and started taking drugs and partying hard.

A few years later, both his parents died within a year of each other: his mum from cancer and his dad from the drink.

And after my parents had passed away, I descended further into alcoholism and drug abuse.

I'd had a daughter

with

someone I was seeing,

and

that had happened shortly before my parents had passed away, and I was in no state to look after myself or anybody else

and the level of shame

and guilt and remorse

that I had

to look my daughter in the eye, little

bravi girl

to feel like I was this utter piece of shit

I had no concept

of

looking after a child.

I wanted to die.

I became

angry at the world.

Angry.

Frustrated, confused.

I needed a target.

I needed,

you know, anyone in that situation needs something to project onto.

And that came in the form of racism.

And I became involved with this organisation

called the Australian Nationalist Movement.

I'm sort of surprised that he's admitting to it

here in front of everyone.

I knew it was wrong.

I knew it was wrong to be doing it.

And yeah, then one night

what took place was a spree of graffiti and just senseless damage to property.

What Ben is doing is brave, but the words he's using are sort of detached.

Like he's not saying, I did this.

He's sort of saying this bad stuff got done.

Sites were graffitied and

posters were put up and it became

a big issue in the media and politically as well.

That's why Crispian is here today and that's why

I've agreed, I felt enough time had passed and initially when I was asked about the interview I was very apprehensive and then I was like, okay, no, let's do this

because

I want people to understand that there is a collective healing that needs to take place on this planet

and that we are one of the same.

You know, on one level it makes sense that Ben's troubled childhood led him to lashing out.

But what I want to know is why lash out in this way at the expense of another community?

There's a lot of people out there who've had tough lives, tougher even than Ben's.

And they haven't ended up working with a neo-Nazi group.

So what did Jack Van Tongren say or do to make it seem like following him was the answer?

When we sit down, Alex and I are going to ask Ben about that.

Thank you, Ben,

for having us.

Thank you, yeah.

It was a nice way to

break the ice, yeah, to open things.

So we pick up Ben's story when he was in his early 20s.

It's around 2002 and Jack Van Tongren had just been released from prison for the first time after serving the sentence for the firebombing attacks in the 80s.

Ben's sitting on the couch in this dodgy share house in Northbridge.

And there was a news report that came on about Jack

and about the things that had taken place with the A ⁇ M back in the 80s.

And

yeah, I remember watching

that news report and

yeah, thinking I thought it would be the perfect way that I could be able to

express my anger and the frustration that I was feeling.

And then I wrote him a letter after that.

I mean, he fired bomb those restaurants, including my parents' restaurants in the 80s.

It was racism.

I mean, that's what his ideology was.

Why did that particular ideology seem to be the platform that you want to base your anger on?

Where Where did that particularly come from?

Was it a reason why?

I wanted to feel a part of something.

I wanted to

express

what I was feeling in whatever way that I could.

And

the appealing thing was about it was that, well,

there was harm being caused.

There was harm being caused, and it was attracting this attention

and I could be a part of that.

Jack Van Tongren hadn't been out of prison for long when he got the letter from Ben.

And he called me

and then

he said he was going to

send over someone to meet me at my house.

Could you describe that first time that you met Jack Van Tongren?

I was quite surprised the first time I met him because

he was softly spoken and

didn't seem intimidating

and didn't

to me didn't pose a risk physically or in his mannerisms or he was softly spoken he appeared to to me as educated

He was

charismatic in a in a way.

He had it like a brand.

He was wearing khakis and like the big army boots, like the 16-hole boots.

And I actually do remember it was summer and it was hot.

There was me in probably a tank top and shorts.

And I thought, well, that's dedication.

Ben told Jack that he liked the posters he'd been seeing around town and that he could be useful to Jack's neo-Nazi group.

I mentioned that I was

experienced in video editing

and that I could create content, videos, that could

interest people, like recruit people.

And that's the start of it and that's what I said I wanted to do.

Pretty soon Ben was helping with the A ⁇ M's poster runs too.

I I would drive the vehicle and I would help, you know, load the posters into

the car and

the glue

that was used to stick them up.

Over two nights in July 2004, Ben and two other guys hit nine different spots.

The guys put up A ⁇ M posters and sprayed swastikas on the synagogue, a kosher food center, bus stops and a police station.

Ben says he may have put up posters but he was mostly just a driver and he never did graffiti.

Because I knew that would have a much worse negative blowback

on to, well, the organisation and myself.

My parents' restaurant was also targeted with AM posters at this time.

But that isn't one of the things on the list that Ben and the other guys got done for in court.

And I'm kind of wondering about that as I'm sitting here talking to him.

I have a recollection of my parents' restaurant having those posters posted on the door in that period.

I don't know if you remembered hitting any Chinese restaurants during that period on your runs.

Okay.

If...

You might remember it in the Man Lin Chinese Restaurant.

It was on Manning Road.

I'm just wondering whether you remembered...

Manning Road.

If that was one of the ones that you hit.

I think it actually was.

Yeah,

because I remember we...

I remember I

was

driving

a Ute.

It was a work ute.

Yeah, I do remember that.

And I'm sorry.

It's all good.

Yeah.

Yeah, I do remember that now.

I don't know why I said it's all good.

I mean, it's not all good.

And sorry wasn't what I was looking for anyway.

Ben was arrested for what he did and he got a suspended sentence.

But it didn't mark an immediate end to his racism.

He was really active online for years afterwards, and some of the stuff he posted back then is really nasty.

And

there are

something like reportedly 800 messages

against Asians, Jews, Muslims.

There's even a quote here, if you don't mind, says, the more the white youth of Australia stand up and show them their true feelings towards the invaders, the better.

Yeah, it's not.

It's not something I'm proud of.

You know, those behaviours that are going to impact other people negatively and send ripples out through communities

and on in that sense you know I wish to sincerely apologize

you know

firstly to to Crispian you know firstly to you and and your your family

and extended family and anyone who

You know who even just used to like coming in and getting a spring roll from your restaurant and they couldn't because it was closed one day.

Yeah, I would like to apologise for

any

discomfort or questioning of one's own identity that may have arisen from

what took place.

And

yeah,

I think that's

that's really really all I would like to say.

Yeah.

I hope I've heard you.

Yeah.

I've heard you.

How does it feel for you to

have someone facing you to say sorry

about

your past?

Um

feels good.

It feels good.

I asked Ben when he and Jack last spoke, and he said not since they all got busted.

As far as Alex and I can tell, Ben's left Jack Van Tongren, the A ⁇ M, and the racism behind him.

Ben's hard life doesn't excuse what he did.

But

amidst all the ugliness, there is

this moment.

At least Ben is sitting here in front of me confronting this stuff and trying to make up for it in some way.

And I appreciate the fact that he's trying to be better and he's running workshops to help other men avoid the mistakes that he made.

But the man who recruited Ben?

The man who started all of this?

He's never apologised or even expressed regret.

As far as I know, Jack Van Tongren holds the same extreme views to this day.

And now, I want to find him.

Hi, this is Jack Stone.

Please leave a message, your name and number.

Do you know where he lives?

He sends me a Christmas card every year.

From what I can gather, he's a good way out of town.

We just want to know: like, is it safe to go out to this property?

We're on the corner.

This is it.

This looks like bush.

Hobbits haunt.

What the?

I wasn't expecting that.

I wasn't expecting that either.

This series is hosted and reported by me, Crispian Chan and Alex Mann.

We've been making this podcast on Garaguland and Wutjagnuna Land.

Our producer and researcher is Dunya Karagic.

Research and fact checking by Johnny Liu.

Our theme and music composition is by Martin Perolta.

Sound design and additional music by Simon Branthwaite.

The commissioning editor was Alice Brennan.

And our executive producer is Tim Broxbro.

To make sure you're the first to get the next episodes, follow the Unravel podcast.

You can find it on the ABC Listen app.

If you're looking for other great podcasts, I can suggest checking out one of ABC RN's most popular podcasts, All in the Mind.

It's a show all about how we think, feel, and behave.

It covers everything from performance psychology and how top athletes think, to how the brain makes sense of music, to what bipolar disorder feels like.

It's a show about the joy, pain, and struggle of being human.

Just search for the All in the Mind podcast.

Find it on the ABC Listen app.