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- [00:04]
A
This is Australian True Crime with Michelle Laurie. What does it mean to be a Nazi in 2026? As extremist groups adapt to the digital age, crime reporter at the age, Sharon Grotch examines how they attract followers online, who they're targeting, and the symbols, language and online communities that help these movements grow. This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung People of the Kulin Nation and a warning. This episode of the podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence.
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C
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- [00:49]
B
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- [01:16]
A
all right, so we need you to tell us, please, where are we in 2026? What does it mean to be a Nazi in Australia?
- [01:23]
C
Well, I guess it means exactly how it sounds. These are Hitlershire worshipping swastika waving out and proud Nazis. They hate Jews. They want to deport people of color and build their own white only societies, you know, run by men, of course. But I guess at the moment, Nazis in Australia, they're in a bit of a strange moment in their evolution where because the government has cracked down on them again, they've sort of scuttled back into trying to appear like everyday Aussies, just concerned about immigration numbers. You know, fed up with all the woke lefty politics. Let's go boo the welcome to country. Nothing to see here, lads. And look, they've pulled this tactic a few times. I mean, in the 80s you had guys out there in their black combat boots saying we're technically not Nazis, we're white fascists. I think it was during the, about a decade ago, during the sort of second coming of Pauline Hanson. We had Nazis out there targeting mosques and with really nasty stunts like fake beheadings, but still saying very firmly we're not Nazis. And now they're more organized than ever. They're growing here in Australia and they've sort of ramped up to the point where they've gone from their little stunts in their black bucket hats to proper stunts that are getting serious media attention. So, you know, obviously like, you know, a few hundred die hard Nazis is not enough to enact their coup that they are planning.
- [02:57]
A
I'm sort of shocked to be honest and I think I'm pretty engaged with the news and with what's going on around the place. But I think people of my generation, I'm in my early 50s and I, it feels like most of my life the term Nazi has been almost a joke because it's so ridiculous that anyone would actually be a Nazi. We used to fling it around about John Howard. We used to, people used to say Margaret Thatcher was a Nazi. It was like a way of saying ultra conservative and a way of saying we didn't like someone. But it never occurred to me that anyone ever again would actually think of themselves as Nazis. I think because the Third Reich ended in such humiliation for everybody who, who followed Nazism. I mean it was an absolute debacle. I think it's an understatement.
- [03:48]
C
It was a wipeout, right?
- [03:50]
A
In every way, on every level. They came out looking like fools, racist fools who just followed a lunatic.
- [03:58]
C
And so it was win or die, right? And that's not, that's not a great philosophy, is it?
- [04:03]
A
And the anti Semitism of it all was ridiculous. You know, when we, when we really looked into the pseudoscience they were using to justify it all, it was stupid. And you know what? So for me I always think of Nazi calling someone as a Nazi as a bit of a, almost a cop out. Like oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you can call anyone a Nazi. Oh yeah, he's a Nazi, she's an aware Nazis, whatever. But you're actually seriously saying these people are Nazis in the traditional sense? In the historical sense, yes.
- [04:34]
C
Like, you know, they've got a Hitler book club, you know, they've got the flags, they're doing the hails, throwing Roman salutes and people say this to me a lot like, oh come on, they're not actually Nazis. And it is tempting when you see these guys larping around, it is tempting to sort of laugh at them. Like aren't they ridiculous? But the reason I got interested is because these guys are, you know, they're serious, dangerous people. A lot of them have got really serious criminal convictions or they've got serious ties to terrorists overseas. I mean I discovered they're linked to about 30 extremist groups overseas. Like, you know, they had dealings with the Christchurch shooter before he went off and did his massacre in New Zealand. So it's, it's sort of we've reached the point where we can't laugh at them anymore. And that is almost. It's a strange sort of beast. It's kind of what they want. They think, oh, now people are taking us seriously. But yes, certainly they are dangerous and they are growing even with this kind of new bit of theatre they've sort of carried out with the government really cracked down quite hard. And so they said, look, oh, you know, we're disbanding formally. Nothing to see here, lads, it's all good. But of course they're still there. So it's almost like every few years they're, they crash in hard as Nazis. Then they might do a tactical retreat, but with every wave of this they're, they're eating the shore. And that idea of the term Nazi once being unthinkable now, like, you know, back in the day you'd call a guy and say, hey mate, you know, what's with the swastika tattoo that you just sort of hid under the bed there? Are you a Nazi? And they'd fall over themselves to say, of course I'm not a Nazi, how dare you call me that. But now it's the opposite.
- [06:17]
A
That's a really good point. I'm seeing photographs, you know, on, on socials. People upload them a of Australian men mainly wandering around with proper Nazi tattoos. That is mind blowing to me. On a calf, a swastika on a calf. This bloke's from the Sydney suburbs. What on earth?
- [06:35]
C
Yeah, and, and it's outlawed in a lot of places now recently because we've seen so much of this. But there are still loopholes and people are more, a lot of them seem to be more concerned with not sort of denouncing the Nazis than separating themselves from them. So they've done very well at kind of, you know, eating the shore, like charging, charging through his all out Nazi sort of mask off and dragging the right further to the extreme.
- [07:03]
A
Well, in that way they're definitely taking one out of the original Nazis handbook, aren't they? I mean if we look a hundred years ago the same thing was happening in Europe. We'd have a, you know, 100%. Yeah, we'd have the riots, we'd have the big push and then they'd pull back. But really more hearts and minds had been won during that, that big push forward.
- [07:21]
C
And, and these guys are quite nerdy about World War II history as well, so they're absolutely learning the lessons. They're also weirdly into like ancestry websites and carnivore diets and raw milk, but that's a, that's a side note.
- [07:35]
A
Well, it is, but it is all part of it, isn't it? I wanted to ask you if there was a Venn diagram of where. Cause you know, we think, okay, Nazism extreme obviously, but it overlaps with a number of other groups, particularly online, doesn't it?
- [07:52]
C
Yes, and that's a good point because during, particularly during the pandemic where so many people were basically forced online for their socialisation, a lot of people were angry. Conspiracy theories really had this kind of wildfire moment where they kind of just set a lot of places alight online. The Nazis had a feeding frenzy. I mean we documented them at really lots of key protests, particularly here in Melbourne, which became like the lockdown city and kind of the heart of it. And they made some really good inroads there. I mean, you know, we were leaked internal recordings and things of Nazis sitting on sort of live streams with all these other cookers, as we call them, like the sort of the sovereign citizen anti vax movement. And they're talking about, oh, you're going for a government grant, maybe we'll get in on that. And these are, these are people that are part of an neo Nazi group. I mean at that stage some of them were still in disguise, they hadn't come out as Nazis. But we really did see a lot of infiltration then and now I think, you know, we're seeing the effects.
- [08:53]
A
If I've got, which I do have, I've got a 16 year old son where online might he his life intersect? You know, is if he was, he's not, but let's say he was into the manosphere or into man looks maxing or any of those things. I mean, do they sort of meet anywhere?
- [09:11]
C
Oh, absolutely. I did a little experiment actually when I started looking at this and I created a TikTok account because I, I'm worker always threatening to make me go on TikTok and I've tried to resist and I made a little TikTok account and I had no preferences, I had no history. I think my, I think I set my gender as male though. I just wanted to see what happened and I set my age as young. This is before the social media bans obviously. Just a quick little experiment. And within a couple of scrolls I wasn't just looking at questionable content, I was looking at neo Nazi content that I knew was from the National Socialist Network, which is the main neo Nazi group, because I'd seen it on telegram. I couldn't believe how fast that was. I mean I don't know, maybe TikTok is more invasive. I mean, we do hear it's quite invasive, so maybe it already knew what I was up to on Telegram, but certainly that alarmed me. And then in some of my investigation into this group that I've done over the past year, I discovered that one of their senior members is a close mate of Andrew Taish, the. The international misogynist, influencer, accused sex trafficker. This guy is an Australian, ex porn star. He's really wealthy. He jets around the world sometimes, you know, on the private jet of the Tates. And he's there training with these Nazis, giving them cash. And I realized as part of this, I think he gave them the idea for how to artificially inflate some of their content. Because Andrew Tate blew up online, not because his content was incredible, but because he paid like an army of young people and people over in Romania to post and edit his videos from their own accounts so that it confused the algorithms and it looked like this, you know, grassroots movement of people posting Andrew Tate videos. The Nazis have done the exact same thing. They've used the exact same style, sometimes even the same music, sometimes the same accounts who had posted for Andrew Tate. I saw them posting NSN content and then I recognized this guy, Sterling Cooper, the ex porn star, mates with Andrew Tate at all their training. And it started to kind of click in my mind that they'd really turbocharged their propaganda. Andrew Tate, at the moment, he's facing multiple charges in multiple countries for sex trafficking and all kinds of things, but he's not currently in jail. And there's been talk about whether or not he had help from the White House. And there was the questions of what happened with the US prosecution. So certainly he's still out there. Sterling Cooper, his friend, is still flying around the world. He's still at NSN events. They've technically disbanded now, so we're not seeing them publicly anymore for the past few months.
- [12:06]
A
That's a national, National Socialist Network. Is that Australian only or is that international?
- [12:11]
C
That's Australian only, but it's one of the biggest neo Nazi groups in the world. So they have chapters all around the country. And look, there are about a few hundred members. So we're still not talking huge numbers here, but during the past year they had a surge in recruitment, largely driven by the March for Australia, anti immigration rallies that we revealed that the Nazis were secretly running. It kind of funneled all these recruits in. So the numbers are actually a little bit unclear because by the time we were starting to See these new faces come through and every time you'd see these guys out in the field, there'd be new faces. Unfortunately, you know, by the time all that kind of happened, they'd gone underground and they disbanded because of this new crackdown.
- [12:55]
A
But they do use those sorts of cultural events, don't they? Like you said, the march for Australia, also the protests against the Indigenous Voice for Parl Parliament, I believe, was a moment for them, a recruitment moment.
- [13:07]
B
Yes.
- [13:08]
C
And this is a really good example, actually, because this was a coordinated stunt that they had thought about for months. We called it out at the time, but they still had a great win on the day because within hours we're saying, look, here's a Nazi booing in the darkness of the dawn service of Anzac Day. And we still had our then liberal leader, Peter Dutton, saying, you know what, they've got some points. Welcome to country. Maybe the place for it isn't here. So that was a pretty good win for them. And then we saw it happen again this year, only people didn't really call them out to the same extent, but this year we saw the same coordination online. They're talking about, oh, patriots are on route. Boys, you know, scatter through the crowds. So it looks like an organic protest. It looks like people in the crowd are rising up, but really it's like 50 of of my mates just strategically placed through the crowd. They did face a little bit of opposition this year. A few older veterans, you know, pushed them around a bit, were not happy. Quite a few people were offended. And some of the neo Nazis who were charged last year are actually in court this month facing sort of the consequences of that, fairly minor charges.
- [14:16]
A
What are the consequences? What, what's the ultimate sort of punishment?
- [14:19]
C
Oh, they've been charged with things like offensive behaviour, so we're still sort of seeing that play out in the courts here.
- [14:28]
A
Other ways that they look to recruit both men and women that I read about in some of your writing, mothers groups. Tell us about that.
- [14:37]
C
Yes, Nazi tradwives. Tell us about that. That's part of the Venn diagram. Yeah. Most of these, the people in the. In this group, they've actually taken themselves offline. They had a fair bit of interest, I think, from the media and they've sort of disappeared when the NSN formally disbanded earlier this year. But they're mostly partners of men in the Neo Nazi group and they'll post pictures and talk about how great it is to have white babies. A really key plank of the Neo Nazi movement here and everywhere is this Idea of the white homestead and the white family and men being really firmly in charge. We're seeing, like speaking of the manosphere earlier, Thomas Sowell, he's the leader of the nsn. I mean, you probably know him, he's bald, he's got a mustache.
- [15:27]
A
Is he the New Zealander? He was a New Zealander, right?
- [15:30]
C
He was. He was born in New Zealand, now a citizen. There was a bit of. Bit of talk about what that meant, given their obsession with being Australian.
- [15:39]
A
A lot of talk from me about what that meant, actually. Yes. I mean, I was one of the first person to go, hang on a minute. We've got Desi Freeman being a sovereign citizen and saying he hates the government while he lives on welfare. And we've got Thomas Sewell who's doing protests about immigrants. And he's an immigrant, like it seemed to me a real moment for these guys.
- [16:01]
C
And there's a lot of Nazis on welfare too, actually. So he's kind of. He's the leader. He's really built it up into what it is. And even since they disbanded, he's managed to kind of maximize on some of this global infamy. These stunts they've been pulling have given him to really kind of, you know, keep spreading his message online. Now he fancies himself a bit of a manfluencer. He's friends with them all because of Sterling. So he knows Justin Waller and Jake Shields and some of these manfluencers who are saying really, you know, offensive or controversial things because there's a big crossover in the manosphere with neo Nazi content and really far right views. And in turn, I'm noticing more of that coming into the internal groups teachings and the internal groups organization. More and more Thomas Sewell is going on these rants about how they have to control and manage their women, down to makeup, down to how to choose a mate they talk about. I mean, when I was looking at Sterling Cooper, for example, I got in touch with the guy who originally leaked some of the war room chats within Andrew Tate's network. And this is part of where they say he trafficked women and taught men how to traffic webcam girls for profit. And in these chats there were messages that hadn't been published before that I found where it appeared as though Sterling Cooper was, you know, aware and involved in this. And then I saw similar coaching techniques being talked about in the neo Nazi group chat logs that I was also leaked. So it was again this idea of like, you know, oh, you know, test your woman with little Little things. But this is about racism this time. So, you know, see how she reacts to mentioning, you know, multicultural error on sbs, you know, and all the N word. It was, it was quite bizarre to sort of. And the level of detail and thought that goes into this from the people involved did surprise me.
- [18:11]
A
It feels like it kind of legitimizes it to them. It gives them an excuse for perhaps not succeeding in other parts of their lives, that they're just too focused on their, you know, Nazism. So I can see they're really into it, if you know what I mean. Mothers groups, a network of home schools. I heard that that was a dream of this group.
- [18:31]
C
Yes. So the government here in Victoria actually said it was going to investigate because in court and on live streams, Thomas Soell has talked a bit about, you know, as part of their white community building, the need to educate their own kids. And so he said that they'd started to build this network of like minded cliques he called them, that were forming sort of schools. So, you know, white families in his group coming together to teach the kids. But of course in all states there are laws about how you're meant to homeschool kids. There are things you're meant to follow.
- [19:10]
A
My kids, after Covid fancied being homeschooled for a minute, you know, they didn't want to go back to school basically. And so they were saying to me, oh well you should homeschool us. And I looked into it and I mean it's a lot of work which wouldn't surprise any teacher listening.
- [19:25]
C
There's regulations and rules for a reason.
- [19:27]
A
I would have had to, to submit my like lesson outlines and lesson plans and all that. You can't just reckon it, oh, don't worry, I'll teach em at home. So. But at the same time this organisation is very, what's the word I'm looking for? They're very enthusiastic. Once they take on a project, they really take it on. So it wouldn't surprise me if they did go to all that trouble just to keep their kids away from non white kids.
- [19:51]
C
We'll see, I guess what comes of that. There are even dangers for, just more broadly when inspectors go out to some of these unregistered services schools, which is actually a problem in, in Victoria and other states. There are all kinds of dangers that can come with that. Like you can hear about, you know, anyone can really set up a school if they want to, if they're living on some commune in the middle of nowhere. So then the question becomes well, you know, are they actually prepared to, to do this proper investigation? I haven't really heard what's come of it, but certainly when the government announced they were doing that, the NSN got very angry and made sense some threats and talked about what would happen because they've always said if you come for our kids, that's when we become terrorists.
- [20:32]
A
Oh, God. What about. It seems that the government sort of says to us as a community that we need to take responsibility, a bit of responsibility. If a member of our family appears to be drifting into these groups, is that fair to say? It seems as though there's a sort of a. Like we can't police literally everybody. We don't know what's going on. Everybody everywhere. If your son, your husband, your brother appears to be drifting into this world, what are we meant to do about that?
- [21:03]
C
Well, with this big crackdown on extremism, one of the big things that's been left out is exactly that. Where are the programs to de. Radicalize these people? Because so many of them are kids. Like we were talking earlier about the manosphere and about your son on TikTok potentially. Sorry to have freaked you out there, but. But the people they are targeting are teen boys. So when I really looked into this, you know, I found so many cases of families telling me that their boys had mental health issues, they were lonely. A lot of them had diagnoses of autism, adhd. And Thomas Sor has bragged openly about building an army of autistics. Oh my God. So it's, it's part of the group's stated sort of operation is that they kind of draw these kids in. They promise, you know, join our active club, get fit, come on heights, you know, learn to box, pick up women. It's a men's self improvement club. But then, you know, on Tuesday nights it's Hitler Book Club. You know, like it's a key part of how they first kind of indoctrinate these kids. But the path out I found is really disappointingly bleak. Like, I spoke to a lot of families, a lot of former members that just felt so lost. In some cases they did get into a program, but they would, you know, sometimes you'd even get booted out. I was surprised to see there wasn't more talk of funding and support because so many of these guys, they are really young. So it's, it is one thing to say, let's send them all to jail for 15 years. Not all of them are the Thomas Sewells of the world. Some of them are you know, a 15 year old kid. And when I first came across these guys, the reason I got interested is because, I mean, it was just like a random Saturday afternoon. It was what you do as a journalist. Here's a tip from a member of the public. And there's a bunch of men at a beach in Elwood. And I went there, literally ran into these Nazis. And we were able to document a bunch of teenagers with them training. So for the first time we could say, look, they're training kids. There's Jacob Hassan, one of the leaders in his Klu Klux Klan T shirt. And next to him there's like a 15 year old boy.
- [23:18]
A
I've read a report where more than one family has felt that their last resort was to actually report a member of their family to the National Security hotline. Which we know, you know, leaves them open to prosecution and open to God knows what. But you know, the desperation that families, it reminds me of, you know, families with a family member with deep mental health issues where they believe that this person is a threat to themselves and others. Oftentimes it's impossible to get assistance until they actually do something.
- [23:50]
C
What a terrible choice for a family. I've spoken to a lot of families that they just, they really didn't know what to do. One woman said to me, it's like, I've got two sons, I've got my boy. And I know he understands right from wrong. Yes, he's had some, you know, in this case it was an autism diagnosis. But you know, I know he believes, you know, he understands me when I talk to him about this. But then there's the other boy that goes off with them.
- [24:17]
A
Well, it's hard when they're your friends, if that, if it feels like they're your only community. And we speak to people about so many issues and we keep coming back to this idea that the COVID lockdowns, there's, this is part of it. The online lives that our kids live now is another part of it. And that we do have a generation of young people who are lost and lonely.
- [24:37]
C
Yeah, and it's some of these guys that are in the group too. Like some of them are older guys from like the old generation of white fascism. Some of them have been in biking prison gangs, some of them are up for DV assaults, assaults on members of the public. And you know, as we've shown, they have serious ties with terrorists and groups overseas. So these are not, you know, it's not like it's just a group of, you know, Angry boys in a park. This is pretty concerning to find out your 15 year old is hanging out with these guys on the weekend.
- [25:12]
A
Yeah, it's being utilised as part of an international far right movement. I mean I can't think of much more terrifying than that. Where is there an overlap on our Venn diagram with mainstream political parties? With One Nation, for example. Is that hysterical to suggest that Pauline Hanson and One Nation are at the very least encouraging of these characters?
- [25:33]
C
I wouldn't call it hysterical. We know a lot of politicians on the right do dog whistle to these groups. I've even seen politicians like Craig Kelly, Ralph Babbitt sharing some of their content. There's a far right news site called the Noticer that you know, almost exclusively publishes NSN content and conveniently won't tell anyone who runs it. And quite a few politicians share its. Just recently Jacob Hassan was in court defending himself for the booing on Anzac Day last year. And he said to the media he felt it was, you know, unfair to prosecute someone for this because it's political expression. And you know, Craig Kelly shared that said, it's hard to disagree with him.
- [26:22]
A
The right wingers who love to throw free speech in our faces whenever there's something, something's being cracked down upon but then they don't like it to give the left wing free speech or you know, free speech is a classic term that is thrown around, isn't it, when, when these sorts of things go to court.
- [26:39]
C
And like, obviously, you know, I'm a journalist, you know, I really care about free speech, we all do. But there some of what the Nazis have done with their stunts, for example, the booing have really helped out some of the political parties like advance with their, you know, their campaign against the Voice like One Nation in normalizing these conversations. If the Nazis hadn't booed on Anzac Day, would we then think it was totally okay to say let's get rid of the ceremony? They did kind of open a door. I mean granted they like crammed it open, you know, and raced through but it certainly, it's, there's benefit for both sides. That being said, there's also a lot of, you know, the usual infighting in the far right. It's pretty toxic and entertaining as a space. So it's not to say that they 100% back each other, but there's certainly some, I think, mutual benefit there.
- [27:35]
A
But it's interesting what you just mentioned, you know, again, the booing at the Anzac Day ceremony. It's I think a classic example of it does embolden some people in our community who would never have said before, yeah, actually I hate the welcome to country. And I think it's bullshit. And I, you know, they would never have said that out loud before. So on the right, people say, well, that's good. It's giving them the opportunity to say what they think. And they weren't, they didn't feel confident to say that before. But then there's people like me, I guess, on the left who think, well. Cause they wouldn't have thought it before. Like, they wouldn't have. I just don't think it would have bothered them as much had this movement not sprung up that had said, hey, come on, if you don't like it, join us. We don't like it and we don't think it should. And so it grows. Is that fair to say?
- [28:20]
C
Yeah, I think for me, the clear thing we need to remember is that it was a stunt. It was planned, it was carefully orchestrated,
- [28:28]
A
but it's not reported that way. I mean, I know you're a journalist, but generally it's reported as. Some people booed the welcome to Country. So it feels like, oh, that is a real movement that's growing in our community. That is a grassroots kind of thing.
- [28:41]
C
And they knew that they were relying on that. That's why they scattered through the crowd. I mean, we did call them out at the time, but you know, we're not all the media. Like, we know some of the media is going to fall for it and not, not intentionally, but they laid this trap. And in the past year since I've looked at them, they've been really successful in doing these really pointed stunts where they've laid traps for the media and we have walked into it. So during the federal election, which is when the first booing happened, they also were doing a series of stunts where they were ambushing politicians on the campaign trail. And I noticed this happened a few times. You know, Albo got ambushed at a hotel here in Melbourne. This guy's shouting at him about immigration. It looks all organic. Looks like just a regular guy. Nothing to see here, lads. And then when I actually looked at where the account came from, well, it's an ex proud boy who were a far right terror group in the US and this guy is mates with some of the nsn. So I took a bit of a closer look and a few more of these stunts popped up. All of them were close to the nsn, photographed with them, known associates. So I did report it then, but it was certainly like a New sort of tactic. They've basically tried to break into the mainstream under the cloak of the Australian flag. And I think they're being biggest move was the march for Australia where they covertly organised it. Then on the day they got Thomas Sewell up there speaking on the steps of Parliament and they led a violent march and afterwards they had a massive brawl which would have turned off some people because they were hitting like women and old people at an indigenous camp. That had like nothing to do with the rally, but. But unfortunately in online circles, it added to the infamy of Thomas Sowell that two days later he's ambushing the Premier at a press conference, grinning because he knew he'd already made headlines around the world and he's ambushing the premier. That also went viral. So they understand now how to bait and use the media. On the other side of that, though, I don't think it's fair to sort of say, well, we just can't report on them anymore. Like that'll fix the problem, let's smother the fire. Because we're in a bit of a tricky situation. The media, because they've gotten so big and social media is now such a platform for people to get their news that we, when people notice stunts like this, we have to address them. So I think it's just really incumbent on us to, you know, make sure we know what we're reporting, that we're not falling into a trap. We are checking who these people are or at the very least, where, you know, we're making the effort to figure out what's going on.
- [31:32]
A
Yeah, absolutely. That's what we're asking for. We're asking for the situation to be reported on in total to. Even if it takes a little while, even if you don't realise on Anzac Day what's happened, but a couple of days later you've put it together, we need to hear that. But also, I'm aware that we don't all sit down and watch the same six o' clock news anymore. We don't all get up and buy the same newspaper anymore. So it's hard to get information out there and it's hard to know where to look for truthful information. What about. There are some parts, some aspects of traditional media who seem to embrace this as well. I don't know why, I don't know why people sort of think, oh, well, it seems to be a zeitgeist, I want to keep my career going, I might jump on it.
- [32:14]
C
Certainly there are, there's a lot of, you know, former journos who have become sort of more influencers now, who are sort of realizing that this gets clicks. I mean, this is why Andrew Tate was able to sort of amplify in the way he did. The more extreme your content, the more the algorithms on social media promote them. And so he saw that as an opportunity. And the NSN are no different. Their hype edits, as they call them, are everywhere. You get on TikTok. The NSN has disbanded, but their content got everywhere because it's the way social media is built is sort of this kind of to feed this beast of outrage. And, you know, if you're angry, you'll watch. If you agree, you'll watch. So they've got you either way.
- [33:04]
A
So so many traps. All right, where are we headed with this? I mean, realistically, this is the other thing. Until I really started reading your work, I thought, this is a bunch of losers who couldn't organise a route in a brothel. And I was not worried about them one bit. I thought, I don't care about these wankers. There's actual stuff going on in the world. I just didn't think they were a real threat. They were serious people. You've changed my mind. But also, realistically, how many people are involved? How worried are we? How successful are they? Are they really growing?
- [33:39]
C
This is what I thought as well. You know, I saw them sort of laughing in the park at Elwood beach at the start of last year. I thought, who are these guys? I only recognize maybe two of them. And so that I did set out to answer that question. And unfortunately, I say this knowing they love the publicity, but they are one of the biggest neo Nazi groups in the world. And they're not, you know, they're still not massive. As I said, it's a few hundred Die Hards now. They have, though, a sort of a bigger crew around them because of the March for Australia rallies that have been very good at kind of scooping up people that were maybe in their orbit before, but not officially part of the group, not going to training. So there's still kind of this, you know, few hundred really Die Hard guys, they're still going on their hikes, only now it's Australian banners, it's Australian flags, you know, nothing to see here, lads. But around them, they now have these new sort of communities and they've been even meeting up with them in real life and kind of continuing on, just not under the NSN branding anymore. So certainly they're bigger than they've ever been. They're more organized. All the experts have told me this is really worrying. The thing that worries me too is that now that they have disbanded, there's a lot of people that were in their orbit, cut loose suddenly from the organization. And so it's a bit of a dangerous moment for lone wolves. And we know that they've had so much interaction with dangerous people, convicted terrorists already when just before they disbanded, Bondi happened, the Bondi shooting, which was awful. And then within a couple of days of that, I found a discord server where there was just like a chat room online where there were heaps of these Nazis all chatting. And they were sort of using it to informally organise the next March for Australia rally. And they were already talking about, let's get a. Let's get a van and kidnap the Prime Minister. This is the way I can get bombs from Amazon. So the cops ended up raiding them because like some of the things they were saying and the threats they were making were wild. Like Prime Minister Albanese had to actually come out and acknowledge the threat after we ran the story. Cause the cops had raided a few of them but. And a few of them were ex NSN members, mostly in Sydney. They were then threats made against the Invasion day rallies on January 26. And most of those were foiled and didn't come to anything. But of course, in wa, police say a white supremacist did throw a bomb into the crowd. It didn't go off, but that happened. There hasn't been a huge hullabaloo.
- [36:25]
A
No, there hasn't about that, but.
- [36:27]
C
But certainly that was a pretty scary moment. Over the past year, I've noticed that they're not just aggressively recruiting vulnerable teenagers and really upping the propaganda online, but they're also, they seem to be drawing in men of influence, so people with useful connections, whether it's to money, whether it's to guns, whether it's. Maybe someone's got some property up in the bush where they can train with weapons and no one will notice. And Thomas Sewell, the leader, has been bragging more and more about getting in big investors and connections for the group when these new hate speech laws came in. Within a few hours he'd already fundraised like over $100,000 so he could challenge it in the High Court. And of course they still have their project to create a neo Nazi political party, which we revealed back in April.
- [37:22]
A
Would that be legal under Australian law?
- [37:24]
B
It is.
- [37:25]
C
So I. I was surprised at the time. I thought, you know, at the time though, they wanted to register White Australia as the party name. So I. Basically how this happened is I came across this dinky little website, White Australia, and it had the exact same proxy server as another NSN website. I thought, oh, that's an interesting coincidence. And then of course, it was them. I went to the Australian Electoral Commission and asked them, would this be all right? And they said, look, we have very few to stop a new party registering because we have to stay apolitical, so the name would have to be deemed overtly offensive. And they didn't think that name would meet the threshold.
- [38:09]
A
The White Australia Party would not be
- [38:11]
C
deemed White Australia Party. So it was looking like all systems go. They were also setting up little parties in all the states, particularly Victoria and New South Wales. Now then, of course, there was the rally in November in New South Wales that really horrified New South Wales Parliament. And we, we reported on that on the time and revealed who some of those people were. But that led to some, a bit of a crackdown at the state level in New South Wales. So that kind of put those plans on hold. And then we had the big federal crackdown after Bondi, where. So previously for. For many years, experts had been saying, look, look, why don't you just outlaw these guys as a terror organization? They've talked about violence, they've committed violence, they've got terrorist mates. Why don't you just do that? And the government's always said, look, they don't quite meet the threshold. So after Bondi, after the Nazis, you know, on Parliament House steps in New South Wales, which does actually happen a lot in Melbourne, but it sure does. Anyway, we're used to it, apparently, here in Melbourne.
- [39:19]
A
I always tell my kids, it's always. It's a. It's. It's protests and brides on the steps of our Parliament House, isn't it? Every single day of the year. And we don't pay too much attention to either anymore, to be honest.
- [39:30]
C
And sometimes that Venn diagram gets kind of weirdly cosy and people accidentally photobomb. I know, it's weird. So you can look quite fabulous suddenly at a protest. But. So they brought in this new crackdown which effectively would outlaw the NSN as a hate group rather than a terror group. And so the group, kind of effectively, before that came into place, they said, we're formally disbanding. Of course, they're still around. But the reason for that was they were quite spooked by these laws. They're very similar to what happened in the uk, where a lot of Sewell's friends over there running neo Nazi groups were outlawed, put in jail. So he knew to take this quite seriously. And you know, I've since heard that they're even getting legal advice now when they post to telegram some of them. So they are taking it quite seriously. But it's kind of an interesting moment because for years one they've wanted nothing to do with politics. They've been, you know, of the view, the accelerationist neo Nazi terrorist view that there's no point trying the political route. What we have to do is accelerate the collapse of society. So everything we can do to mess with society is a good thing. They used to call it, you know, they still do. They call it riding the tiger. So you basically, you jump on the tiger's back, the tiger's the state, it's got big fangs. But if you ride it hard enough, you make it run itself to exhaustion, then you can defeat the tiger and you can slide off its back to victory.
- [41:00]
A
And then what though? What does victory look like if the state collapses, then what?
- [41:04]
C
It looks like their state. They're white Australia, where they've deported people of colour. There's elder statesmen within the movement that would lead it.
- [41:16]
A
Well, it sounds like America in a way. I mean how, how close is this all associated to as you're talking? It feels like. Oh, it feels like America's just a few steps ahead of us right now.
- [41:28]
C
Well, interesting. It's like the, the Nazis in Australia weirdly have become a little bit of like a leadership position in the global movement. Normally it's the U.S. because out of the U.S. i mean we, we saw really classic and we still do see really classic homestead white nationalist movements. There was the Order, I think in the 80s and they went around like robbing banks and killing people ahead of their planned race war. And you know, again, they're an inspiration for our guys here. But now it's Australia's sort of managed to kind of inch in at least I think in terms of maybe coverage attention.
- [42:10]
A
But America has a government that is employing a lot of these techniques itself. Now it feels like that tiger's been ridden pretty hard to the point that it's like they have, you know, sort of an army, a private army that the leader has given these powers to. They're obsessed with the idea of deporting people, non white people. It seems like all of these, these ideas are actually taking shape in the States.
- [42:37]
C
We might need to do some vet checks on the American tiger. You're right.
- [42:40]
A
Yeah. Right. So yeah, I gotta Check that tiger out and warn our tiger. Oh, who's got access to guns in Australia, by the way? You were just saying that that's part of the current push within the movement, is to have relationships with people who have access to guns, was one of the things you mentioned. Australia has famously difficult, tight gun laws. So who's got access to guns in Australia?
- [43:04]
C
After the Bondi shooting, one of the things that did come out was the idea that our famously tight gun laws have really slipped and have loosened and there are a lot of loopholes that have opened.
- [43:18]
A
I mean, I know There are about 100,000 missing firearms in Victoria. I'm aware of those. But I'm assuming that you're talking about a sort of more reliable source of guns than that.
- [43:28]
C
Yeah. So there's loopholes in the existing legislation. For example, like if you join a gun club, they're not really checking what kind of person you are. But if you're in a gun club, you can also be a neo Nazi on the side, but they're not doing those checks. And that was one of the things that actually came up on the other side of extremism with the Islamic terror incident in Bondi that we were looking into just recently. So that there's loopholes there. There's also, though, like, the NSN are known to post manuals for 3D printing guns, for example. They're known to brag about owning guns. Some of them are ex soldiers, some of them are ex cops. And part of that's also part of the recruitment. If you've got guns, that's, you know, that seems to be attractive to them. In any case,
- [44:19]
A
If you need support after listening to this podcast, you can call Lifeline on 131114 or contact 1-800-Respect on 1-800-737-732 or 1-800-Respect. Org au Indigenous Australians can contact 13 Yarn on 139276 or 13 yarn.org au.
- [44:51]
C
The producers of this podcast recognize the traditional owners of the land on which it's recorded. They pay respect to the Aboriginal elders past, present, and those emerging.