Shortcut: How Serious Are Australia's Neo-Nazis?

Summary

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Australian True Crime: "Shortcut: How Serious Are Australia's Neo-Nazis?"

Date: June 21, 2026
Host: Michelle Laurie
Guest: Sharon Grotch, The Age crime reporter

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Overview

This episode of Australian True Crime, hosted by Michelle Laurie, delves into the disturbing growth, tactics, and real-world impact of neo-Nazi groups in contemporary Australia. Featuring investigative insights from Sharon Grotch, the discussion exposes how these groups recruit followers, adapt to crackdowns, exploit online algorithms, and manipulate public events as platforms for recruitment and influence. The conversation also explores the challenges of deradicalisation and the vulnerabilities of young Australians targeted by these extremist networks.

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Key Discussion Points

1. The 2026 Face of Australian Neo-Nazism

• Definition and Identity
  • Sharon Grotch defines modern Australian neo-Nazis as overtly embracing Nazi imagery and ideology. ("These are Hitler 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." – Sharon Grotch, 00:53)
• Past vs Present
  • Once a label to fiercely deny, "Nazi" is now flaunted for shock and power: "You'd call a guy and say...are you a Nazi? And they'd fall over themselves to say of course I'm not a Nazi...But now it's the opposite." (Sharon Grotch, 01:59)

2. Organisational Resilience and Tactics

• Cycles of Activity and Evasion
  • Neo-Nazi groups conduct public campaigns, then disband or go underground when facing legal pressure, only to resurface later, continually pushing the boundaries of acceptability and recruitment tactics. ("It's almost like every few years 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." – Sharon Grotch, 01:25)
• Growing Public Boldness
  • The now-visible presence of Nazi tattoos and symbolism in Australian suburbs marks a shift toward greater openness among members. (Michelle Laurie: "People upload them of Australian men...with proper Nazi tattoos...This bloke's from the Sydney suburbs. What on earth?" – 02:45)
• Exploiting Gaps in Legislation
  • Despite new laws, loopholes and insufficient denouncement from some politicians and communities have allowed these groups to persist and adapt. (Sharon Grotch, 03:02)

3. Digital Recruitment and Algorithm Manipulation

• Entry Points for Teenagers
  • Grotch describes a TikTok experiment: a blank account set as a young male was rapidly shown neo-Nazi content linked to the National Socialist Network (NSN). ("Within a couple of scrolls I wasn't just looking at questionable content, I was looking at neo Nazi content..." – Sharon Grotch, 04:05)
• Cross-Pollination with the Manosphere
  • Neo-Nazi recruiters borrow tactics from misogynists like Andrew Tate, including flooding platforms with content to game algorithms and rope in vulnerable youth. ("The Nazis have done the exact same thing. They've used the exact same style, sometimes even the same music, sometimes the same accounts." – Sharon Grotch, 05:28)

4. The National Socialist Network (NSN)

• Scale and Structure
  • NSN is described as the main, and one of the largest, neo-Nazi groups in Australia with chapters nationwide, but few hundred core members. ("...one of the biggest neo Nazi groups in the world. So they have chapters all around the country...about a few hundred members." – Sharon Grotch, 06:09)
• Recruitment Boosts Linked to Major Events
  • Key rallies and protests serve as fertile ground for new recruits. Notably, anti-immigration rallies and protests against the Indigenous Voice for Parliament have been meticulously planned and exploited. ("This was a coordinated stunt that they had thought about for months." – Sharon Grotch, 07:06)
• Tactics of Hidden Coordination
  • Members infiltrate crowds to simulate grassroots uprisings–a manipulation that has, at times, persuaded politicians to echo their talking points. (“So it looks like an organic protest...but really it's like 50 of of my mates just strategically placed through the crowd.” – Sharon Grotch, 07:44)

5. Targeting Women: The "Nazi Tradwife" Movement

• Recruitment of Women via ‘White Family’ Ideology
  • Partners of NSN members run promotionally styled content about “white babies” and the virtue of patriarchal, all-white homesteading, serving as both recruitment tool and narrative device. ("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." – Sharon Grotch, 08:40)

6. Leadership and Paradoxes

• Profile: Thomas Sewell
  • The leader of NSN is a New Zealander, a fact often ignored by the group’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. ("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 maximise on some of this global infamy." – Sharon Grotch, 09:32)
  • Paradox: Many prominent members, including Sewell, are immigrants themselves or rely on welfare, contradicting their public positions.

7. The Question of Community Responsibility and Deradicalisation

• Gaps in State Response
  • Heavy law enforcement crackdowns lack sufficient support for deradicalisation, leaving families unsupported. ("Where are the programs to de-radicalise these people?...A lot of former members that just felt so lost." – Sharon Grotch, 10:28)
• Youth Vulnerability and Mental Health
  • Young men, often with autism or ADHD, are specifically targeted with offers of camaraderie and group belonging (“Thomas saw is, bragged openly about building an army of autistics.” – Sharon Grotch, 11:10)
• Challenges for Families
  • Families struggle to know how to intervene: "If your son, your husband, your brother appears to be drifting into this world, what are we meant to do about that?" (Michelle Laurie, 09:58)

8. The Impact of Social Disconnection and COVID

• Lockdowns and Loneliness
  • Both hosts connect the spike in isolated, vulnerable youth and the surge in online extremism with the social fallout from COVID lockdowns. ("We do have a generation of young people who are lost and lonely." – Michelle Laurie, 12:49)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Taking Neo-Nazis Seriously:
  "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.”
  — Sharon Grotch, 00:53

• On the Shift in Nazi Identity:
  "Term Nazi once being unthinkable now...people are taking us seriously. But yes, certainly they are dangerous and they are growing even with this kind of new bit of theater."
  — Sharon Grotch, 01:35

• On Algorithmic Manipulation:
  "The Nazis have done the exact same thing [as Andrew Tate]. They've used the exact same style, sometimes even the same music, sometimes the same accounts."
  — Sharon Grotch, 05:28

• On Paradoxes Within the Movement:
  “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.”
  — Michelle Laurie, 09:11

• On the Bleak Path Out:
  "The path out I found is really disappointingly bleak...A lot of former members that just felt so lost."
  — Sharon Grotch, 11:20

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Important Timestamps

• 00:53
  Sharon Grotch introduces the current reality of Australian neo-Nazis and their extremism.
• 03:02
  Use of loopholes and mainstreaming of Nazi symbolism.
• 04:05
  The TikTok experiment: social media’s rapid algorithimic push to extremist content.
• 06:09
  Discussion of the National Socialist Network's organizational structure.
• 07:06
  Strategic exploitation of national rallies and political events.
• 08:40
  The “Nazi tradwife” subculture and its online footprint.
• 09:58
  The lack of deradicalisation support for vulnerable youth.
• 12:49
  Reflection on COVID’s impacts on youth vulnerability and loneliness.

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Summary Flow

The episode delivers a grounded, investigative look at the changing face of Australian neo-Nazi activity, illustrating how digital strategies, political events, and cultural contradictions fuel recruitment and radicalisation. The conversation exposes sophisticated manipulations both online and in mainstream discourse, while underscoring a troubling lack of social or governmental support for those wishing to leave such groups and for the families impacted.

If you’re concerned about radicalisation or affected by any of the themes discussed, the hosts recommend support lines including Lifeline, 1-800-RESPECT, and 13YARN.
(Resources mentioned at 12:56)

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Michelle Laurie]

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 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. Alright, so we need you to tell us please, where are we in 2026? What does it mean to be a Nazi in Australia?

[Sharon Grotch]

Well, I guess it means exactly how it sounds. These are Hitler 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. And people say this to me a lot like, oh come on, yeah, they're not actually Nazis. And it is tempting when you see these guys laughing 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 theater 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, 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, you know, back in the day you'd, 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.

[Michelle Laurie]

That's a really good point. I'm seeing photographs, you know, on, on socials. People upload them 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?

[Sharon Grotch]

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, they, 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.

[Michelle Laurie]

Well in that way they're definitely taking one out of the original Nazis handbook, aren't they? I mean if we look 100 years ago the same thing was happening in Europe. We'd have a, you know, 100%.

[Podcast Producer/Host]

Yeah.

[Michelle Laurie]

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 wonderful. 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?

[Sharon Grotch]

Oh absolutely. I did a little experiment actually when I started looking at this and I created a TikTok account because 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 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 international misogynist, influencer, accused sex trafficker. This guy, he's an Australian, ex porn star, he's really wealthy. He jets around the world, sometimes 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.

[Michelle Laurie]

That's the National National Socialist Network. Is that Australian only or is that international?

[Sharon Grotch]

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.

[Michelle Laurie]

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 Parliament, I believe was a moment for them, a recruitment moment.

[Sharon Grotch]

Yes, and this is a really good example, actually. Cause 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, you know, 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 en 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.

[Michelle Laurie]

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.

[Sharon Grotch]

Yes, Nazi tradwives. Tell us about that. That's part of the Venn diagram.

[Michelle Laurie]

Yeah.

[Sharon Grotch]

Most of these, the people 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.

[Michelle Laurie]

Is he the New Zealander? He was a New Zealander, right?

[Sharon Grotch]

He was. He was born in New Zealand, now a citizen. There was a bit of talk about what that meant, given their obsession with being Australia.

[Michelle Laurie]

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.

[Sharon Grotch]

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 maximise 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.

[Michelle Laurie]

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, what are we meant to do about that?

[Sharon Grotch]

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. Radicalise these people? Because so many of them are Keats. Like we were talking earlier about the manosphere and about your son on TikTok potentially. Sorry to have freaked you out there, 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 saw his, 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 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 a 15 year old kid. 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.

[Michelle Laurie]

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.

[Podcast Producer/Host]

Yeah.

[Michelle Laurie]

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.

[Podcast Producer/Host]

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.