Neo-Nazis Mobilisations Are Becoming Normalised on Australian Streets

“When you dare stand up against the people that are destroying not just this town but this country, when you stand up against BlackRock and international finance, they come after your family, they come after your bank accounts, they firebomb you, they assault you,” Thomas Sewell, leader of the National Socialist Network (NSN), said at a rally in the southwestern NSW regional town of Corowa.

Footage of the event last Saturday, which comprised of Sewell and fifty-odd black clad neo-Nazis in line formation standing before the local war memorial, appeared online, and while it’s not apparent how many locals stopped to hear what the far-right actors, who’d come across the border from Victoria, had to say, the jeering, which include “Shut up, Dickhead”, didn’t suggest a great reception.

But the fact that neo-Nazis have become so emboldened, as to now be mobilising on behalf of workers’ rights should be raising alarm bells, as Labor and the Liberal opposition have been consumed by rising antisemitism and the Nazi doctrine led to the extreme prejudice of the Holocaust in World War II.

Both New South Wales premier Chris Minns and his Victorian counterpart Jacinta Allan condemned the rallies. Yet, their response to the issue of neo-Nazis publicly demonstrating now across four jurisdictions, has been decidedly lowkey compared to the dramatic way in which both premiers and many other pollies have been condemning pro-Palestinian demonstrators over the past 12 months.

Indeed, with the first public demonstration of neo-Nazis, as Nazi adherents and not simply as far-right white supremacist actors, having taken place on the steps of Victorian parliament in March 2023, the black clad white men have been mobilising in public periodically ever since, with varying receptions coming from state police, to the point that neo-Nazi rallies are becoming normalised.

“White man fight back”

As Sewell spoke, the neo-Nazis were standing beneath a large banner that read “White Man Fight Back”, and participants were heard to partake in their regular chant “Australia for the white man”, but The Age further reported hearing the phrase “male victory” being tossed about.

According to that same masthead, the reason the NSN has sprung into action in Corowa, is the group claims that ever since Brazilian meat company JBS took over local Australian pork processing company Rivalea in 2022, “locals” have been losing their jobs to “migrant workers”, although it needs to be pointed out that the civically minded NSN are only concerned about locals who are white men.

The NSN is also reportedly troubled by JBS buying up all the local accommodation for migrant workers, apparently leaving less for white locals. And in terms of the raising of BlackRock, it appears the gigantic investment company has a small stake in JBS.

Far-right white patriot types have been mobilising more visibility over the past decade, and at times this has involved parliamentary support. Such elements went through something of a revival period circa 2015, which was when Reclaim Australia first appeared on the streets. Yet, these earlier iterations of white nationalist groups weren’t actively promoting themselves as Nazis.

But this latest episode sees the NSN mobilising for a social cause in a manner that involves the group seeking to achieve an air of legitimacy in the public sphere, and neo-Nazis do appear to be incrementally gaining at least enough traction to up the ante next time.

Increasingly emboldened

Emergency services in Corowa were alerted to what was deemed an unauthorised assembly, NSW police then moved the men on, and the neo-Nazis left in cars. NSW police had previously moved on NSN members last January, when they gathered on the streets of North Sydney.

In August, Queensland police gave dozens of NSN members marching through Magan-djin-Brisbane a serving, with one officer telling the men that they weren’t welcome in that city, while South Australia police monitored a group of neo-Nazis counterprotesting a demonstration calling for permanent visas for long-term refugees in Yerta-Adelaide last month.

The approach by Victoria police has been criticised as being noticeably light when it comes to the NSN, which was apparent on the first occasion the NSN paraded before Victorian parliament in March last year. The Nazis turned out in support of UK antitransgender figure Kellie Jay Keen, as she was being protested by pro-trans antifascist demonstrators, who became the focus of police.

This pattern occurred again a few months later when it appeared that Victoria police were shielding neo-Nazi demonstrators from antifascists protesting their presence. And these two actions were further notable as the “open espousal of Nazism” involved was a “a departure from recent past practice by neo-Nazis in Australia”, according to independent researcher Andy Fleming.

However, the clincher that demonstrates VicPol’s casualness when it comes to policing neo-Nazis occurred when a couple of dozen NSN members were seen to march through Ballarat on a Sunday afternoon last December, chanting “white man” and shouting racial slurs. Locals complained. Yet, police did nothing, and the men were even photographed standing outside the local police station.

A legitimate concern

ASIO director general Mike Burgess has been warning about the far right in this country, since a significant escalation in white nationalist online networking occurred during the COVID lockdowns, which resulted in 30 percent of the domestic spying agency’s counterterrorism workload being focused on the far-right by October 2020 and this figure went on to rise to 50 percent.

But prior to these admissions by Burgess, there had long been a reluctance amongst the political class to call out the white nationalists in this country, as the local establishment was birthed with the passing of the White Australia policy, and it has seen figures like Senator Pauline Hanson and former Liberal Nationals MP George Christensen not long ago actively out in support of Reclaim Australia.

But rising Nazism has been recognised in parliaments in terms of enacting laws against open displays of adherence to the Nazi doctrine, which saw the banning of the swastika in Victoria in June 2022, with NSW doing the same in August that year. Victorian parliament then broadened its ban to include the Nazi salute last October, while a federal ban came into force for all Nazi signs in January.

Neo-Nazi Jacob Hersant was the first individual convicted of performing the Nazi salute under the new Victorian law last week. And the magistrate made certain that the 25-year-old who performed the salute in front of the press outside of a courthouse last October, just six days after it had become an offence to do so, will be sentenced to prison. But for the moment he’s out on bail.

Section 41K of the Summary Offences Act 1966 (VIC) contains the offence of intentionally displaying or performing Nazi symbols or gestures in public, which carries up to 12 months inside and/or a $23,000 fine.

But the Nazi symbol crackdown doesn’t seem to be having a deterrent effect upon rising far-right mobilisations, and the reason appears to be that white supremacist tendencies are a lot more entrenched in this nation’s institutions than is regularly admitted, as the case of the Victorian police officer who couldn’t stop performing the Nazi salute last week has further revealed.

A 65-year-old veteran sergeant performed the Nazi salute and said “Heil Hitler” to two different sets of officers, while posted at the Victoria Police People and Development Command Training Centre, both on Tuesday and Wednesday last week, and she’s since been suspended with pay.