Australia’s Neo-Nazis: How They Are Fueling an Open War on Muslims and Migrants

With painful symbolism and dangerous implications, Melbourne witnessed one of its most shocking incidents in recent memory on September 7, 2025, a violent attack that has shaken both Indigenous communities and Australian society at large.

What began as a far-right, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rally swiftly descended into bloodshed, as a group of men stormed "Camp Sovereignty", a sacred site for the Boonwurrung and Wurundjeri peoples of the Kulin Nation.

Dressed in black, around fifty men, most of them linked to the National Socialist Network (NSN), a neo-Nazi group, descended on the camp armed with metal pipes and batons. 

They tore Indigenous flags, trampled the sacred fire, and assaulted men and women present at the site. Four people were injured in the attack, with two hospitalized in critical condition.

According to Australian media, the assault was not entirely unexpected. In the hours leading up to the attack, NSN leader Thomas Sewell, a former soldier with a well-documented history of violent Islamophobia, was seen patrolling the area with followers, a move interpreted by many as a forewarning.

By nightfall, the worst had come to pass. Police only arrived after the attackers had fled, prompting widespread accusations of bias and deliberate inaction in protecting the victims.

The incident has cast a harsh spotlight on the National Socialist Network, a group both active and dangerous. How did it rise to prominence? Who leads it? What ideology does it propagate against Muslims and other minorities? And how closely is it tied to the broader networks of global far-right extremism?

Open Nazism

The National Socialist Network (NSN), a neo-Nazi political organization in Australia, was formed in 2020 through the merger of two far-right groups, the Lads Society and Antipodean Resistance.

Based in Melbourne, the group claims to have a presence in all six Australian state capitals, as well as several regional cities.

NSN capitalized on anti-lockdown protests during the Covid-19 pandemic, using tactics such as media manipulation and attention-seeking stunts to recruit new members, although much of this activity was carried out unofficially and without public acknowledgment.

On Australia Day, January 26, 2021, dozens of NSN members were seen in Victoria’s Grampians National Park carrying Nazi symbols and chanting slogans such as “White power”. A cross was burned, and leaflets were distributed bearing the phrase “White Australia”.

Since March 2023, the presence of neo-Nazis in Australia has no longer been a secret. That month, NSN members stood on the steps of the Victorian Parliament in Melbourne, performing Nazi salutes.

Previously, Australia’s far-right had largely cloaked itself in the language of white nationalism without openly declaring allegiance to Nazism.

But Thomas Sewell and his followers decided the time had come to step into the light. Demonstrations followed in Ballarat and Sydney, culminating in the recent violence in Melbourne.

Each event has intensified scrutiny of the police response, with opposition parties and human rights organizations accusing authorities of shielding neo-Nazis while targeting those who protest against them.

In early August 2024, NSN members stormed a refugee encampment outside the Department of Home Affairs in Melbourne, hoisting a vulgar anti-immigrant banner.

They also staged demonstrations targeting migrant workers at a meat processing plant, and held a protest outside the Chinese consulate in Melbourne, where they burned images of Chairman Mao Zedong, President Xi Jinping, and the Chinese flag.

Dinner Table

But street attacks are only one side of the picture. On September 24, 2024, far-right leaders gathered at the “Urban Street” restaurant in the Melbourne suburb of McKinnon for a private dinner forum under the banner of “defending Europeans”.

At the dinner, held in secret, the National Socialist Network outlined its next-phase objectives, presenting a defined agenda for what it calls a renewed Australian Nazism. The group identified Islam, Chinese people, Han populations, Judaism, and people with darker skin as direct enemies.

The event, organized by the NSN, was joined by another far-right group known as the National Workers Alliance, and featured prominent figures such as Thomas Sewell and Blair Cottrell.

After the gathering was exposed, the restaurant faced widespread public backlash, forcing its owners to consider shutting down.

It was the second such forum, following a similar meeting at the “Polish Club” in the Melbourne suburb of Rowville, suggesting the movement is working to establish more open spaces for gathering and recruitment.

Widespread Hatred

The rhetoric of the National Socialist Network (NSN) goes far beyond opposition to immigration as a concept. It explicitly targets Muslims, who number around one million citizens, as well as Asian migrants and Jewish communities.

Slogans such as “Australia for the white man” and “The white man fights” have become recurring mantras in their actions.

Videos circulating on TikTok and Telegram show members engaging in combat training, reflecting the “Active Clubs” model, a global framework for creating small, ideologically and physically connected far-right cells in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

Researchers from the White Rose Society confirm that NSN is now part of a broader international network, connected to platforms like “Terror Gram”, and involved in producing propaganda that promotes white supremacy, anti-Muslim hatred, antisemitism, and violence against people of color. Much of the messaging draws on Holocaust revisionism and seeks to justify violence against minority groups.

The White Rose Society is an independent research collective in Australia that monitors far-right and neo-Nazi groups, with a focus on digital networks and public activities such as rallies and dinner forums.

It was founded as part of a wider movement to counter the rise of right-wing extremism and racism in Australia. The group takes its name from the German resistance movement “Die Weiße Rose”, which opposed Nazism during World War II, and now works in the Australian context to confront the revival of neo-Nazi ideology.

Neo-Nazi Leader

According to previous statements made by Thomas Sewell, the leader of Australia’s National Socialist Network, he attempted in 2017 to recruit Brenton Tarrant, the Australian terrorist who would later carry out the Christchurch mosque massacre in New Zealand on March 15, 2019.

Sewell claimed he had a connection with Tarrant, and saw in him an enthusiasm for nationalist ideas and white supremacy. For that reason, he tried to bring him into the Lads Society, the organization Sewell led at the time, which would later evolve into the current movement.

That massacre marked a shocking turning point for the world. Tarrant committed a brutal act of violence against Muslims, killing around fifty people in cold blood, driven by a regressive and extreme ideology rooted in white supremacy and the extermination of so-called “historic enemies”.

Tarrant, whose views closely align with those of Sewell, laid out his racist worldview in a manifesto spanning more than seventy pages. 

He described his ideology as part of an ongoing clash between ancient civilizations and fallen empires, referencing historical leaders, battles, and colonial-era symbols.

His manifesto included particular hostility toward Turks and Muslims, naming Istanbul, Hagia Sophia, and even Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan directly, reflecting a worldview that cast the “Eastern” and Islamic “other” as central enemies.

The symbolism of his crime was reinforced by racist messages scrawled on his weapon, including the phrase “TURKO FAGOS”, or “Eater of Turks”, a reference to ancient Greek militias that once fought the Ottoman Empire.

This link between Sewell’s early efforts to recruit Tarrant and the massacre itself highlights how neo-Nazi networks in Australia work to recycle white supremacist rhetoric and connect it to real-world acts of violence, making them a direct threat to Muslims, migrants, and multicultural communities in the region.

Thomas Sewell has never hidden his ideological allegiance to Nazism. He has openly declared himself “political soldier for the white race, and Adolf Hitler is my leader.”

According to Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Sewell justified this stance by saying, “If you take my child off me, I'm going to start killing people, and I'm going to encourage every single person that I know to also start killing people that are responsible, starting with probably the police and the judges that ordered for a child to come off one of us.”

In a later move that further revealed the depth of his extremist messaging, Sewell posted a video in January 2025 showing Elon Musk performing a straight-arm salute, commonly associated with the Nazi gesture, and captioned it as “Hail Trump !’ “Moment White power.”