At 3:55am on July 5 last year, an anonymous five-person cell allegedly committed an attack at Lovitt Technologies – a Victorian defence manufacturer.

Now, Australian authorities have announced they are investigating it as a possible act of far-left terrorism, “motivated by anarchist and revolutionary ideology”.

In Australia, serious damage to property or risk to health and safety of the public can be considered a terrorist act.

Authorities have been concerned about right-wing terrorism for some years. News reports suggest it is the first time a left-wing attack has been investigated as a potential act of terror, and it may pose a growing risk in Australia.

The attack and the aftermath

The group that attacked Lovitt Technologies allegedly set fire to three cars and vandalised the premises.

Some ten days later, people representing the cell issued a claim of responsibility for the attack, published by pro-Palestinian movement Unity of Fields.

The cell claimed it targeted Lovitt Technologies as a “bottleneck” in the Australian supply chain for the production of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jet components.

These, they argued, had been deployed in the service of colonialism, American imperialism and the arming of Israel. They believed it had contributed to the “accelerated genocide against the Palestinian people”.

They warned they possessed the addresses of “complicit” workers who manufactured these products on stolen Wurundjeri country.

They specifically rejected their actions as “thoughtless vandalism” and instead........

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