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May 19, 2025 • 15 mins

From afar, many of us saw the odd agitator pop up on the federal election campaign trail, where they yelled at politicians, or others, like an indigenous elder on Anzac Day. They looked like the actions of random ratbags.

But watching on was crime reporter, Sherryn Groch, who discovered something unusual.

A small but sophisticated group of people, involved in many of these incidents, had links to Neo-Nazis. 

Today, Groch joins me to discuss the rise of neo-nazis in Australia. And the steps they’re taking to form a political party.

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Episode Transcript

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S1 (00:02):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Selinger Morris. It's Tuesday,
May 20th. From afar, many of us saw the odd
agitator pop up on the federal election campaign trail, where
they yelled at politicians or others like an indigenous elder

(00:23):
on Anzac Day. And we thought they were just the
actions of random ratbags. But watching on was crime reporter
Sharon Crock, who discovered something unusual. A small but sophisticated
group of people involved in many of these incidents had
links to neo-Nazis. Today, Sharon Rocks joins me to discuss

(00:44):
the rise of neo-Nazis in Australia and the steps they're
taking to form a political party. So, Sharon, can you
please take us back to the run up to the
federal election, which is when you noticed some agitators, I guess,
popping up at various press stops doing various stunts. What

(01:05):
were they doing?

S2 (01:06):
Yeah. So you probably noticed this election got pretty wild.
And something that happened, which we hadn't really seen as
much of before, were these coordinated confrontations with politicians. It
started on the very first day of the campaign. The
Prime Minister and the treasurer were heckled by a guy

(01:27):
asking questions about immigration.

S3 (01:29):
1.8 million immigrants in five years is going to increase
demand on the medical system.

S2 (01:34):
They also held a rally outside a liberal senator's office
in their full, you know, black masks earlier in the campaign.

S4 (01:41):
Is swamping us with Third World populations. And the Labor
Party is dragging us into third world conditions.

S2 (01:49):
Then they actually ambushed the prime minister in his hotel lobby.

S4 (01:53):
Elbow.

S5 (01:54):
How do you feel about the rise in immigration, mate?
Do you think it's fair? Yep. Thank you. Do you
think it's fair?

S2 (02:01):
And a white supremacist crashed a forum in Kooyong that
went a bit nuts when an older woman actually threw
a punch at him.

S4 (02:08):
Relation between immigration and immigration. Back off, back off. When
will you address it? Are you also scared to address it?
You say that you don't have any problem with political donations.

S2 (02:22):
I realized you sort of all of a sudden that
the men behind these stunts had personal connections to known neo-Nazis.
So either they were friends. They'd been photographed with Nazis
at their events recently, or they were part of the
Lads Society, which was the early club run by the
main neo-Nazi leader in Australia, Thomas Sewell. So look, I

(02:45):
knew the Nazis had done well at pushing deeper into
the far right during Covid and all the anti-vax, anti-lockdown
stuff that really sprung up then. But it wasn't until
the election that I saw just how central they'd become.
And then, of course, A group of neo-Nazis booed during
the Anzac Day dawn service. And they kind of came

(03:06):
out into the open, so we were able to kind
of pick them out as Nazis pretty quickly then. But
in the last week of the campaign, things got even
wilder because these known neo-Nazis started impersonating the Liberal Party
at early voting centres. One guy was handing out anti-Semitic
flyers in a blue T-shirt.

S6 (03:27):
Liberal party, great policies.

S2 (03:30):
It looks like the Liberal Party branding. But when you
looked closer, you could see a Star of David and
the flag on the logo. And there were guys there
in costume beards and fake Jewish Orthodox clothing. It was
really offensive. And the Flyers were claiming the liberals wanted
to give Jewish people free money.

S6 (03:48):
We need to give Jews free money because we know
the Jews are a little short on cash. Right? So
Liberal Party website, these are our policies and not our
policies from Liberal Party. I'm just a big fan. I'm
a dumb goy. I'm a convert.

S2 (03:58):
And they did the same thing with the Labor Party.
Actually they Actually, they handed out these fake red flyers
making racist claims about Indian migration. So look, Nazis doing
stunts isn't new, but this sneakier strategy of teaming up
with others in the far right who were more like
Nazi adjacent, let's say, than open neo-Nazis, seemed like a

(04:20):
shift in tactics to me. So I decided to take
a closer look.

S7 (04:24):
Okay, so can you just take a step.

S1 (04:26):
Back for a moment and just explain to us who
are these neo-Nazis?

S2 (04:31):
So neo-Nazis have been active in Australia for a while,
recruiting young men like training in combat and weapons and plotting,
building their own white order from their sort of homes
and gyms. But experts who tracked them online say they're
more organized than ever. This group are called the National
Socialist Network or the NSN, and they're the biggest Nazi

(04:53):
group in Australia. So when we talk about neo-Nazis, we're
mostly talking about them. They're based in Melbourne, but they
have chapters around the country and they're one of the
most high profile neo-Nazi groups in the world, really, which
I hate to mention because they love the publicity. But,
you know, their numbers aren't actually even that huge. It's

(05:13):
just that they're dedicated. They'll bus members into a rally
in their black bucket hats and boots. They'll hold up
their racist signs. Sometimes they'll do a Nazi salute. They're
successful here because they run what's called an active club model. Basically,
they get young men in by offering a boxing and
fitness club camping trips, and members actually pay a fee

(05:36):
every month to be part of this group. And that's
when they start indoctrinating them in their Nazi ideologies and
Hitler worship. And it is full on worship. I mean,
they recently celebrated Adolf Hitler's birthday. Tom Sewell, he's the
most well known. He runs the group. He's already been
convicted for a string of violent offenses. But back in

(05:57):
sort of the earlier days, he and the group were
less open about what they were. So Saul would be
telling recruits, you know, let's build our own white neighborhood
so that one day we can overthrow the rest of
society and start mass deportations of people of color. And
then he brought in people like Jacob Hassan, who was
running around with his own little anti-Semitic graffiti and stunts

(06:21):
like that. And that's the guy that booed on Anzac Day.
So they were kind of less keen on politics up
until now. Um, they thought the only way to achieve
their goals was to speed up this coming collapse of
society and seize power. And these guys are serious people.
I mean, some of their members have been part of

(06:42):
terror groups like the base combat 18 or bikie clubs,
prison gangs. But now we're kind of seeing in this
new generation of Nazi, they're getting better at recruiting, and
their problem is they keep getting nabbed more and more
by the cops. You know, the cops are actually starting
to take them pretty seriously. And we're seeing these new

(07:04):
laws come in. So now they're sort of turning back
to this idea of playing the sneaky Nazis. Tom Sewell
has put it to his followers so they can break
into the mainstream. And that was kind of the point
of the Anzac Day stunt. And some of the stuff
we saw on the election trail this morning.

S8 (07:22):
I'm here to welcome everybody to my father's country. Beautiful
boomerang country. But before we do that, we pay our
acknowledgments and we pay our respects.

S2 (07:35):
So the shrine stunt was planned for a while on
Anzac Day. There were about 40 neo-Nazis there. It turns out,
along with their wives, they were all spread out throughout
the crowd. They didn't want the media to realise it
was them and one of the main Nazis, Joel Davis.
He's since spoken about this online. He said they'd expected

(07:57):
it would just be reported as Australians fed up and
spontaneously booing the Welcome to Country and, of course Peter Dutton.
He condemned the stunt, but he also seized on it
to criticise welcome to country ceremonies. And Joel Davis has
been joking for a while that, say Clive Palmer's trumpet
for Patriots Party stole their idea with all his ads about,

(08:20):
you know, railing against Welcome to Country, which the major
media outlets ran, including us, I should say. So to
some extent, the Nazis succeeded in hijacking the national debate
in those final weeks of the campaign. Since we outed them,
they've actually since kind of run with it. And they've
declared war on both the major parties. Now they've actually

(08:43):
planning to go after the liberals in particular, as traitors
for backing recent anti-vilification laws which have been passed in
states like Victoria. So they really want to tear down
the libs so they can kind of create this new
coalition of far right micro-parties who were more sympathetic to
their ideas, and it turns out they're actually making a

(09:06):
run at politics themselves.

S1 (09:09):
We'll be right back. Well, I really want to ask
you this, because this is sort of at the crux of,
I guess, where this could go next. And really about
your reporting, which is that the NSN, the National Socialist Network,
this group you're talking about, they are actually trying to
form a political party. So I guess, how far into
this process are they?

S2 (09:28):
Yes. So they have this kind of sneaky plan where
they want to register with the Australian Electoral Commission to
stand candidates for the next federal election. And they've already
got a slick propaganda wing set up. They actually just
dropped like a couple of days ago. This kind of
self-styled documentary, which features a lot of boxing and clips

(09:49):
of them facing off with the cops in a very
strange rants about needing to be a militant force to
take back Australia for the white man. The experts are
saying to me, even if they don't get anyone up
at the ballot box, the tactic could help them in
a couple of ways. They could gain more of this
false legitimacy as they push further into right wing politics.

(10:11):
You know, popping up as just everyday citizens asking reasonable questions.
Or it could actually help them evade a crackdown by authorities.
So Sule can't meet with the group technically, but he
does these kind of little lonely live streams where he
talks about his plans to followers. So Sule has spoken

(10:32):
about how lucky they are so far not to have
been designated a terror group like the bass and other
groups they know have overseas. So Sule argues they have
to outmaneuver the cops, and he wants to kind of
do it by forming a political party without the overt
National Socialist Nazi branding as a way to kind of,

(10:54):
you know, call it all political expression.

S7 (10:57):
And tell us, though, I mean, how do you think
this group.

S1 (10:59):
Will actually go with regards to getting a political party
off the ground?

S2 (11:03):
Well, I mean, it's hard to imagine Australians actually electing
an out and proud Nazi. I mean, but they might
be successful in elevating, say, a far right candidate who
shares their radical views on immigration. And and again, is
part of that more sneaky Nazi adjacent cohort. neo-Nazi groups

(11:26):
around the world have sort of taken the polarisation of
politics that we've seen of late, particularly under Donald Trump.
And the US is a bit of a, you know,
open season for recruiting. And I know the Nazis here
do talk about the return of the far right in Germany,
for example, as a bit of a guiding light for them.
But when you talk to other extremism experts, like Josh Roose,

(11:49):
for example, he said to me, look, you know, in
in Australia at least, we've seen massive backlash to Trump.
And that hurt Peter Dutton in the Liberal Party. So
that could also hurt their political plans. Also their criminal
convictions could start to pile up enough that their main
leaders can't actually serve anymore. Or what you might see,

(12:11):
which is what often happens with far right parties, is
they might all just sort of turn on each other.
I mean, these other little micro parties like the libertarians,
one nation, they might not like sharing the stage with
the Nazis or, you know, everyone wants to be Führer,
so the group itself might tear itself apart trying to
actually find a leader and find someone to stand. So

(12:33):
none of this is inevitable just because they get up
it or they they register a party. It doesn't mean
that they're about to take power in Australia like they
love to talk about, but it does mean we should
take them seriously. And on face value, you might look
at these plants. It's just ridiculous. Like as if this

(12:53):
is ever going to happen. But all the experts, they
say to me, look, these guys are serious and they're dangerous.
So we need to be really alert.

S7 (13:03):
And I'm just.

S1 (13:03):
Wondering, I have to ask, you know, given all the
scrutiny on so many of these members, why have they
not been banned? You know, by ASIO or by our
government or by anybody really?

S2 (13:13):
That's the million dollar question. What I hear is that
unless the group are sort of caught in the act
of planning a violent event, it is very hard to
designate them as an all out terror group. And certainly
with this new round of anti-vilification laws, which is still
to come in in Victoria, and the new round of

(13:36):
actually banning Nazi symbols, that has cracked down and started
to narrow what they can get away with, and they
are starting to be pinged more and more. There's been
raids on their houses more and more. So they know
they're in a more tenuous landscape now with what they
can get away with. But yes, they are yet to

(13:57):
be designated, and that would really change the game. And
it's what they fear the most.

S1 (14:05):
Well, Sharon, we're lucky you're reporting in this space. So
thank you so much for your time.

S2 (14:09):
Thanks, Samantha.

S1 (14:13):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by myself,
Julia Katzel, and Margaret Gordon, with technical assistance by Josh towers.
Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Tom McKendrick is our
head of audio. The Morning Edition is a production of
The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. To support our journalism,
subscribe to us by visiting The Age or smh.com.au. Subscribe

(14:39):
and sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter to receive
a comprehensive summary of the day's most important news, analysis
and insights in your inbox every day. Links are in
the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris. This is the
morning edition. Thanks for listening.
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