By Jordan Baker and Jessica McSweeney
He’s a twenty-something tradie from Sydney’s north-west fringe. He has a chubby toddler, runs his own business and leads the NSW chapter of a neo-Nazi organisation that has shot to notoriety after three attempted Sydney gatherings were intercepted by police at the weekend.
Self-described “white man of honour” Jack Eltis spent the holidays re-reading Adolf Hitler’s manifesto Mein Kampf. Every month, he meets fellow members of the European Australian Movement in a Sydney park to train – strength, mixed martial arts – and wave an inverted Swastika flag.
A photograph posted on social media shows leaders of EAM’s NSW and Qld chapters at a meeting at a remote homestead. Eltis is on the right.
NSW Police are watching. On social media last April, Eltis described officers knocking on his door at 7am, saying his firearms licence had been revoked by the commissioner (this was confirmed by police). “They seized my two rifles, one shotgun and two handguns and ammunition for all the aforementioned,” he wrote.
NSW has not experienced the blatant, public neo-Nazi activity seen in Victoria, where members have given the Sieg Heil salute outside parliament, gatecrashed rallies for other causes and intimidated people. Eltis’ comrades have also attacked hikers and a security guard.
Over the Australia Day long weekend there were public incidents in Sydney. On Friday, police detained dozens of black-clad men, many with their faces covered, at North Sydney train station. They included Thomas Sewell, a high-profile neo-Nazi who had travelled from Victoria.
On Saturday night, police broke up a meeting at North Turramurra and another in a park at Artarmon on Sunday morning. Police sources and neo-Nazi watchers could not explain why they chose to gather on the north shore. Eltis has not confirmed he attended either protest, and had not answered questions by deadline.
Members of EAM, gathered in a Sydney park to do some MMA training last October.
“This was their first attempt at a big stunt in Sydney,” said independent researcher Dr Kaz Ross, who has been closely tracking the Australian neo-Nazi movement for years. “They’ve brought everyone’s attention to the fact they’re recruiting in NSW and building their numbers.
“Their actions have brought people’s attention to the fact [National Socialist Network] is not just a Victorian problem, it’s a national problem.”
Of the men fined for offensive behaviour, authorities said one-third, or 24, had travelled by bus from Victoria, suggesting to police that the group was still weaker in NSW. Sixteen were from Sydney, 11 from regional NSW, five from Queensland, six from South Australia, and four from Tasmania.
The Victorians filmed their bus trip back, on which they sang a song about being a bulwark against the “foreign flood”. On encrypted messaging site Telegram, the National Socialist Network claimed that the weekend was a “massive propaganda triumph for our movement”.
“We will not be paying a single dollar of these fines,” one leader said on social media.
The two key organisations in Australian neo-Nazism work closely together. The National Socialist Network (NSN) tends to be the more militant arm, said Ross, and the European Australian Movement (EAM) is for older men and families.
Last year they jointly hosted the first White Power Lifting Meet, in which 50 members gathered in Melbourne for seminars and weight-lifting competitions. In one video, the winning lift was greeted with Nazi salutes. Eltis and Sewell gave speeches.
The NSN grew out of two now-defunct extremist groups, the Lads Society and The United Patriots Front. During Sewell’s time in the Lads, he invited Christchurch terrorist Brenton Tarrant to join. Tarrant made a donation but refused so he could pursue his New Zealand shooting plot.
Thomas Sewell and Jacob Hersant outside Victoria’s County Court in October last year.Credit: Nine
Eltis’ social media page provides an insight into the group’s activities in Sydney. He posts photographs of monthly “tribe and train” gatherings, in which members do fitness training – putting a Spartan emphasis on physical prowess – and hold up neo-Nazi flags.
In 2022, locals at a Balmoral Beach’s children’s playground one busy Saturday were shocked to see EAM members doing sprinting exercises and push-ups beside them. “Here I am, with my five-year-old daughter, and these men were looking me straight in the eye while giving a Nazi salute,” one local resident told the Herald at the time.
Eltis talks about a growing membership in the Northern Rivers district of NSW, calls for interest in the Wagga area, and mentions a Townsville branch to complement the Brisbane one.
He discusses the galvanising issues; immigration pushing the white man out of jobs and houses, feminism inverting the natural order. In one post, he talks about the danger of losing male warriors for the cause “as a result of their women not being in order”.
“They are based on the notion of inequality,” said Ross. “That some people are superior, and they put themselves in the superior category. They can say whatever you like about disabled people, Aboriginal people; you can be as racist and homophobic as you like. That’s quite appealing to some young men.”
Ross says the neo-Nazi movement is distinct from the freedom and sovereign citizen movements, but recruits from their ranks. Their mission is to convince “lukewarm normies [normal people]” of the merits of their cause.
In another post, authored by Sewell and shared by Eltis, EAM calls for donations for a property the movement aspires to buy in Victoria, which would be “a safe and independent living space for our families”. So far, it has raised $8500.
NSW Premier Chris Minns on the weekend warned that police could tear the balaclavas off neo-Nazis and expose them as racists to their friends. On Monday, NSW Police Minister Yasmin Catley said she “wouldn’t mind” seeing neo-Nazis named and shamed.
Under laws introduced following the Cronulla riots, police have the power to unmask people involved in large-scale public disorder. “The police know exactly who they are and let me tell you, they’ll be keeping their eyes on them,” Catley said.
Naming and shaming is a common response to moments of public outrage, but it isn’t necessarily the best way to prevent people from joining these neo-Nazi groups, said Greg Barns, SC, spokesman for the Australian Lawyers Alliance.
“Generally speaking, naming and shaming laws have been proven to be ineffective in working as a deterrent and in a perverse way it can have the adverse effect because people see it as a badge of honour,” he said.
With Clare Sibthorpe and Ben Cubby
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