Who Are The Lads Society, Why Do They Have Guns, & Why Have They Invaded Rowville? (June 2020 Update)

[This post was brought to you courtesy of the letters A, F, J, N, P & S.]

Above (L to R) : John Athanasiadis, Jacob Hersant, Mark Hootsen, Sam Hudson, Ulf Lindfors, ‘Darcy’, Tom Sewell, James Buckle and Stuart von Moger.

The Melbourne-based neo-Nazi groupuscule ‘The Lads Society’ (TLS) was established in late 2017 following the collapse of the ‘United Patriots Front’ (UPF). In 2015 the UPF, comprising Christian fundamentalists and neo-Nazis, had constituted itself as the political vanguard of ‘Reclaim Australia’; as a result, thousands of Ordinary Mums & Dads™ became their gormless followers.

Initially, The Lads’ two leading spokesmen were former UPF leaders Blair Cottrell and Thomas (Tom) Sewell. According to reports, however, in 2019 Cottrell exited the organisation, and Sewell emerged as its Grand Poobah. TLS has many dozens of members, principally in Melbourne and Sydney, but also in Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth. Along with the UPF, TLS has attracted participation from former members of Antipodean Resistance, Nationalist Alternative (NAlt), and a range of other groupsucules on the far-right.

Since its founding, TLS has leased a series of warehouses in order to host the group’s activities and to encourage recruitment to its goal of establishing a White ethno-state … but like, a really, really small one … in the suburbs (see also : Pioneer Little Europe). Thus for over a year, the group had a centre in Cheltenham and one in Ashfield in Sydney.

In terms of public activity, inter alia, members attended the Fraser Anning rally in January 2019 in St Kilda and more recently protested outside Box Hill police station (October 2019). Prior to this, in June 2018, TLS was hired by Dave Pellowe and Axiomatic Events to provide security for Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern during their Australian tour. Molyneux and Southern’s central thesis revolved around the destruction of Western Civilisation by way of ‘The Great Replacement’ of Whites by non-White immigrants. Naturally, their argument was celebrated by their fans at NewsCorpse, but mainstream endorsement by the likes of trollumnist Andrew Bolt was rendered problematic after the Christchurch killer put the theory into practice in March 2019.

Tom Sewell, the leader of The Lads, was referenced in media reportage in the aftermath of the massacre. The convicted killer, Brenton Tarrant, was invited to join TLS; the Killer also described Cottrell as his ‘Emperor’. Publicity surrounding the massacre, and the links Tarrant had to the Australian far-right milieu, has brought further, unwelcome scrutiny to The Lads and, following the forced closure of their Cheltenham headquarters, TLS have sought a lower public profile. (Oddly, according to reports, along with his family a much younger Sewell flew here from Aotearoa/New Zealand.)

As noted previously, after being chucked out of Cheltenham (but not before Channel 7 celebrated their endeavours), TLS has obtained a new HQ in Melbourne: 1/10 Hi-Tech Place, Rowville (a suburb of Melbourne 27 km south-east of Melbourne’s CBD). The space was leased to TLS in July 2019, seemingly on the basis that it would host a commercial gym.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In addition to Tom Sewell, James Buckle and Jason Hersant (see below), the following men have joined the neo-Nazi network in Melbourne. Note that this list is representative, not exhaustive, and some further details have been withheld.

John Athanasiadis

Athanasiadis, a gun owner, is in his late 20s and has served as Treasurer for The Lads.

James Buckle

Buckle is the former President of gun lobby group Firearm Owners United. Like Sewell, he is reportedly ex-Army and, like Lindfors-Beswick, a licenced security agent (88351350S). See also : Pro-gun group claims shotgun rampage shows our gun laws are ‘utterly failing’, Ben Graham, news.com.au, October 2, 2019.

Troy (Eric) Crockett (AKA Troy/Trey Blackstone/Bloodstone/Targaryen)

Above : Crockett, surrounded by other Lads, is second from L. Photo from Melbourne leg of Southern’s tour.

Crockett (b.1976) has been kicking it with the boys for some time. In June 2015, he joined the UPF outside the ABC’s offices in Melbourne to protest the appearance of Zaky Mallah on Q&A. Crockett was also one of a dozen men Victoria Police gave permission to force Dandyman to leave Fed Square after the True Blue Crew flagwit parade in June 2018. Crockett is ex-Army Reserve and like other Lads a (former?) member of NAlt.

Jacob Hersant

Above : Hersant practicing his aim for the coming race-war.

Hersant has been active in a number of groups, from Antipodean Resistance to Iron March to the National Socialist Network, but remains a very naughty boy.

Mark Hootsen

Hootsen is a leading member of Nationalist Alternative. In 2014, he was exposed as such by his former kamerad Neil Erikson.

Sam Hudson

Hudson is Treasurer for The Lads, is very close to Lindfors-Bewsick (below), and like Hootsen is (was) a member of NAlt.

Oscar Izard (AKA Oscar Iseult/Oscar Oldham-Bradford)

Above : Oscar complains that The Lads should stop leaving copies of The Turner Diaries (the nazi tract that inspired Timothy McVeigh to commit mass murder in April 1995) lying around.

Izard, like Hersant, is (was) a member of Antipodean Resistance. He briefly gained some online notoriety in January 2016 when he published a petition demanding that British actress Emma Watson spend a week in a migrant camp in Calais.

Ryan Ulf Lindfors-Beswick (AKA Ryan Lindfors/Ulf Lindfors/Ulf Lehmuskoski)

Above : A Terrible photo of Ulf on L & another attending Final Solution’s anti-African rally in St. Kilda on R.

Lindfors-Beswick (b.1990) is a licensed security guard (91077690S), the owner of the business — Aus Get Fit Pty Ltd (ABN: 57 634 618 465) — through which the lease to the property in Rowville was obtained, and serves as the Sgt-At-Arms for The Lads. Of Finnish descent, Lindfors-Beswick sports a Solar Cross and Helm of Awe tattoo on his right forearm and an Irminsul on his left. Lindfors-Beswick also owns guns and has trained other Lads in their use. Currently, Ulf is employed by MSS Security on University campuses, and as Ryan Lindfors-Beswick would appear to have been, along with Nicole Bourman, the Shooters/Fishers/Farmers candidate for the Southern Metro region at the 2018 Victorian state election.

Will Schlecht

Schlecht (b.1992), along with de Pyle, is a former member of the short-lived groupuscule ‘Australian Nationalist Youth’.

Matt Trihey (AKA Matthew Raine)

Trihey (b.1963) is a former boxer, MMA fighter and builder. Trihey teaches The Lads how to fight (which is mighty White of him) and also occasionally provides them employment via his building company. Trihey doesn’t like Jews much, and laments the fact that Albert Speer never got an opportunity to enact Hitler’s vision for Germania.

From Reclaim Australia to the United Patriots Front to The Lads Society to The European Australian Movement with Bonus! National Socialist Network

For a brief period of time after the establishment of its new bunker in Rowville, TLS engaged in a discussion about establishing a front group. Thus at the start of 2020 TLS rebranded itself as the ‘European Australian Movement’, and even managed to obtain a website for the projekt. Curiously, the EAM was to have a ladies division (for which a very good friend of Tom’s called Rosie had been nominated to do the heavy lifting).

For reasons, EAM was junked in favour of a more straight-forwardly nazi project: the NSN. This is an interesting development insofar as The Lads are no longer pretending not to be what they are: neo-Nazis. This also has the benefit of making it a little more difficult for members of the commentariat to pretend otherwise (though they will of course try). Beyond this, in being more honest about their politics, The Lads have abandoned any real attempt to ‘go mainstream’ while wrapped in the national flag, and the semi-mythical Ordinary Mums & Dads™ have similarly been abandoned in favour of recruiting from among Angry Young Men. The explicit embrace of neo-Nazism also seeks to draw upon the teenyboppers who’ve been radicalised by way of Iron March, Fascist Forge and other, more obscure forums; nonetheless, Facebook and YouTube remain important platforms for agitation and propaganda. Thus, on Monday, June 29 Sewell is scheduled to join David Hiscox and Matthew Roebuck of XYZ blog and Timmeh! Wilms (of The Unhinged blog — pictured above in his vewy special ‘Right Wing Death Squads’ tee) to discuss ways forward for white nationalism. Ironically, despite spreading antisemitic and other racist muck on Facebook for years, just a few days ago Hiscox, Roebuck and XYZ were kicked off the platform after subjecting TV personality Waleed Aly to one of their regular batshit diatribes. In further Bad News for the nazi milieu, the NSN website lost its website after the Anti Defamation Committee complained to its host.

Finally, it’s sometimes remarked that the Christchurch massacre was a pivotal moment in the history of the Australian far-right with many — not least ASIO — subsequently issuing statements identifying its partisans as constituting a potential ‘terrorist’ threat. One enthusiast, Phillip Galea, has since been convicted of terrorisms, and is awaiting sentence. Last week, another 100% Dinky-Di Aussie Patriot, Cormac Rothsey, was ‘jailed over anti-Muslim social media posts, threat to kill Jacinda Ardern’ (Liz Farquhar, ABC, June 19, 2020), while in March three men on the south coast of News South Wales were arrested in connection to an alleged plot. Police also alleged that one of the accused, Joshua Lucas, is a far-right extremist. “What we know is this person had anti-government sentiment, he was anti-Semitic, he has neo-Nazi interests and he has anti-Indigenous interests,” NSW Police Force assistant commissioner Mark Walton said (Right-wing terrorism on the rise in Australia, Drew Rooke, The Saturday Paper, March 21, 2020). Still, while the NSN may have adopted the name their English brothers in the now-proscribed groupuscule ‘National Action’ assumed after it was declared an unlawful association, and while they may continue to draw inspiration from NA and recruit from the same milieu, the espousal of neo-Nazi doctrine is lawful in Australia, as is establishing a party to advocate Nazi doctrines, and leasing a property to organise and train a fascist cadre.

All this being the case, it remains up to the general public to Do Something about these meatheads.

A. Shut ‘Em Down

TO BE CONTINUED …