‘Surpass the Liberal Party’: Neo-Nazi group claims surge in sign-ups after Melbourne CBD march
A neo-Nazi group claims it has seen “hundreds” of sign-ups following a Melbourne CBD march, prompting add warnings over its brazen recruitment drive.
An Australian neo-Nazi group claims it has seen “hundreds” of new sign-ups following an incendiary march through the Melbourne CBD, prompting warnings about the group’s boasting and recruitment tactics.
Around 100 members of the National Socialist Network (NSN), wearing masks and dressed in black, paraded through the streets of Australia’s second-largest city at around 1am on Saturday, banging drums and holding a banner reading “White Man Fight Back” as police watched on.
The event was met with outrage by Jewish groups and the Victorian government, with Premier Jacinta Allan vowing to introduce new laws giving police powers to “unmask cowards at protests”.
NSN leader Thomas Sewell, who led Saturday’s march, posted on private messaging app Telegram that the event had generated a surge in interest for the group’s new political arm, White Australia, and even claimed it was poised to overtake mainstream parties in membership.
“White Australia is tracking to surpass the Liberal Party membership in less than 18 months,” he wrote, sharing a graph appearing to show a sharp increase in registrations on August 8 and 9.
“We’ve had a couple hundred sign-ups in just the last couple days. Our organisation is almost 2.5x the size it was just six months ago. White Australia Rising!”
Another prominent NSN figure, Joel Davis, shared a purported traffic overview of the group’s website, whiteaustralia.org, appearing to show a surge in total traffic.
“When neo-Nazis brag about surpassing the Liberal Party, we are no longer debating ideas, we are confronting a recruitment drive for an Australian chapter of the Third Reich,” said Dr Dvir Abramovich, Chair of the Anti-Defamation Commission, who led the national campaign that resulted in the banning of the Nazi swastika, salute and the sale of Third Reich Memorabilia.
“Thomas Sewell’s dream of a ‘White Australia’ is not nostalgia, it’s a blueprint for racial war, and he’s building his army in plain sight. This is an extremist enterprise that dreams of ethnic cleansing and is openly recruiting foot soldiers.”
Dr Abramovich warned that “every day they are allowed to operate, they are normalising a future that has no place in this country”.
“This is the moment to draw a line that will not be crossed,” he said.
“Ban them. List the National Socialist Network and its satellites as terrorist organisations. Shut down their digital pipelines of hate. Freeze their accounts. Dismantle their recruitment channels before another teenager is pulled into the vortex.”
Dr Abramovich said the NSN were “Hitler-worshippers who openly talk of ‘remigration’, their sanitised code for mass deportation, while privately fantasising about executions”.
“They are using our freedoms to turn our democracy into a coffin, and we need coordinated national action and the full weight of law enforcement, intelligence, and political will to stem this tide of hatred,” he said.
“That means proscription powers with teeth, and constant monitoring of extremist infiltration into political parties. The rise in sign-ups that Sewell brags about is a siren. We can stop this but only if we act like we mean it. No sanctuary for Nazis. No refuge for those who worship genocide. No platform for the merchants of racial war.”
White Australia also appears to have seen a surge in donations since Saturday.
A crowd-funding campaign on GiveSendGo, created by Mr Sewell to “assist with costs tied to our advocacy, such as legal expenses from ongoing disputes”, has received nearly $79,000 since the start of the year, including several large donations this week.
“Awesome march through Melbourne guys!” wrote one supporter who contributed $10,000.
“Inspiring. You’re showing the White world how it should be done. Blood and honour!”
Another who pitched in $500 wrote, “Just given a little something back for all the org has done.”
In a message on the group’s website, Mr Sewell claims “White Australians must organise as a collective body in order to secure our existence” and that the country was founded as “the White working man’s paradise”.
“Demographics are destiny, every year Australia becomes less White,” he writes.
“This is a harsh reality everyone understands to be true. You cannot sit on the fence for a matter as important as the future existence of our kind.”
A spokesman for White Australia said in an email, “Our membership of activists is around 300. We have thousands of signed up supporters nationwide and intend to register a political party in the near future. Our recruitment has surged following our recent national meet in Melbourne.”
A group needs at least 1500 members on the electoral roll in order to apply to register as a political party with the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC).
Membership numbers of the major political parties are a closely guarded secret.
The Liberal Party has around 40,000 members nationally, according to a 2022 estimate by former federal party treasurer Michael Yabsley.
A more recent report in The Guardian suggested membership has been in steady decline, with around 9000-10,000 in Victoria and 8000-10,000 in NSW.
The Labor Party had an estimated 60,000 members as of 2020, according to The Guardian.
In a video shared to Telegram following Saturday’s event, Mr Davis boasted the procession had been “our biggest march in history”.
“People say that Melbourne is the left-wing capital of Australia — it’s becoming the Nazi capital of Australia,” he said.
“It was quite something because the police just had to accept our presence. We’ve been treated very poorly by the police in the past. We’ve now grown large enough that they simply have to accept the fact that we want to march … We’re all on a dopamine rush because we know this is just the beginning.”
The march caused outrage and led Ms Allan to declare, “Nazis don’t belong in this country and they know it.”
“That’s why they hide behind masks in the dark,” she said.
Ms Allan announced a series of measures to crack down on protests in December, including bans face coverings as well as certain flags and symbols.
The Jewish Council of Victoria urged the state government to act when parliament resumes next week.
“Eight months after promising anti-masking and anti-hate symbol laws, the government must act now,” it said in a statement.
“(The NSN) are a tiny fringe, rejected by the overwhelming majority of Victorians, who proudly embrace our multicultural communities.”
Victoria Police said officers responded to the protest to “ensure public order was maintained”.
No arrests were made but a man was allegedly assaulted when he confronted the group, a police spokesperson said.
He was taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries and as of Tuesday, police were still investigating the incident.
Footage circulated online appeared to show the moment a member of the public confronted the marchers and a fight broke out.
Messages from Mr Davis to the group also boasted the march had been the “top story on the news tonight”.
He called on his followers to march again — next time, in a nationwide anti-immigration rally planned for August 31, which has police in capital cities on alert.
“This could be the beginning of something massive,” he said.
In a post on Telegram, Mr Sewell wrote about the event, “After only just arriving home from our summit today, I have been informed that foreign fifth columns are attempting to hijack our August 31st public rally for Australia. White Australians must assemble on August 31st against the traitors and foreigners who are trying to destroy our great nation.”
But groups like Reignite Democracy, which sprung up against “tyranny” during the pandemic, are furious about the link.
“31st August is ruined,” the group wrote on social media.
“It had great potential, but something went wrong. Whether it was planned by extremists or hijacked by extremists, it doesn’t matter. When the leader of the Nazis claims it as his event, there’s no coming back from there.”
On Saturday, NSN members from around the country gathered in country Victoria for their “national conference” — one held at a caravan park in Ballan. Approximately 250 white nationalists were in attendance.
Anti-fascist researchers from the White Rose Society, an organisation that has been studying neo-Nazis for several years, told news.com.au they want to “clear the country of their perceived enemies — Jews, Muslims, Asians and anyone not white and right-wing”.
Importantly, they said they are careful about what they discuss in public — and it’s not the same as what they say privately.
“In public they talk about ‘remigration’ — but we know in private they talk about executions and mass murder,” a spokesperson for the White Rose Society said.
“‘Remigration’ is a sanitised word for genocide. To achieve their long term goals, they want to recruit members and sway public opinion in their favour. They do that through public stunts and sparking outrage.”
The White Rose Society said the group’s national conferences were always paired with “some public stunt”.
“On previous occasions, state police in NSW and SA have disrupted these stunts so this time the group went ‘sneaky Nazi’ and filtered into Melbourne city in small groups, seemingly escaping police notice,” the spokesperson said.
“The neo-Nazis are claiming the march as a victory because they were unimpeded and their actions received widespread media coverage. However, what they don’t want us to notice is that after five years of working hard to expand, they had around 100 men marching.”
The spokesperson said “it’s not the victory they claim at all” but “does follow a new pattern — one of their stunts was at 3am”.
Mr Davis, meanwhile, is currently facing a charge of displaying a Nazi symbol on a belt buckle at an earlier march in Adelaide on Australia Day.
His defence lawyer, Andrew Hopkins, has argued the allegation impinges on Mr Davis’s implied constitutional rights to political expression.
The 29-year-old, speaking outside court after a hearing in May, said he would go “all the way” to the High Court to fight the charge. The next hearing is set down for September 23.
SA Police arrested and charged 16 people with loitering and displaying Nazi symbols after the Australia Day rally, although charges against some of the men, including Mr Sewell, have since been withdrawn.
South Australia’s parliament outlawed the display of Nazi symbols or salutes in December 2024.
Originally published as ‘Surpass the Liberal Party’: Neo-Nazi group claims surge in sign-ups after Melbourne CBD march
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