From Antipodean Resistance to the National Socialist Network

Yeah, I know: Australian neo-Nazi groupuscule ‘Antipodean Resistance’ (AR) has passed on, is no more, has ceased to be and has expired and gone to meet its maker; a stiff, bereft of life, it rests in peace. Fortunately for fans of dead foreign incestuous coprophiliac dictators, while AR is deaded, the ‘National Socialist Network’ (NSN) is alive!

Anyway.

I first made reference to AR back in December 2016, describing it as follows:

A new kid on the neo-Nazi bloc, AR evolved on tumblr and made a splash in October when the boys claim they plastered the Hawthorn campus of Swinburne University in homophobic propaganda. In early December, they threw up racist posters at the University of Melbourne. Modelled on National Action in the UK, and closely associated with other boys on the altright in Melbourne, it will presumably seek further publicity through staging similarly provocative stunts. Member/s attended a number of nationalist rallies in 2015–2016.

Since then, I’ve made further mention of these local Hitler Yoof, generally as and when their publicity stunts gained them some smol attention in meeja reportage. Hence in September 2017, following a splash in The Daily Telegraph, I wrote Who are Antipodean Resistance?, to which I made an update a year later — Who are Antipodean Resistance? (August 2018 Update) — noting that The White Rose Society had named Matthew Baston and Nathaniel Anderson as members. By the end of 2018, the AR webshite had deaded, sadly, and the group appears to have gone AWOL. Of course, I’d also nominated a local geek called Jacob Hersant as a YUGE Holocaust fan; a dedicated re-enactor, Hersant has since re-emerged as the spokesperson for the NSN, the groupuscule into which AR collapsed.

In April 2019, summarising AR’s stellar career, I wrote:

One of the newer kids on the neo-Nazi bloc, AR evolved on tumblr and made a splash in late 2016 when the lads plastered university campuses in homophobic propaganda. Modelled on National Action in the UK and Atomwaffen in the US, and closely associated with other boys on the AltRight in Melbourne, as predicted in December 2016, it did indeed obtain lots of ‘further publicity through staging similarly provocative stunts’ — at last count, something like 80 or more ‘actions’ have been staged since then, though the group’s webshite has been closed and their gab account has been inactive since late last year.

Later that year, the contents of (defunct) neo-Nazi website Iron March was made public. The publication of this data provided an interesting insight into AR and the milieu of angwy young men from which it was drawn (see : Iron March Leaks : Aussie Pride Edition (1) (November 10, 2019) and Iron March Leaks : Aussie Pride Edition (2) (February 28, 2020)); also recommended is bellingcat’s dive into Transnational White Terror: Exposing Atomwaffen And The Iron March Networks (December 19, 2019). As noted previously, AR:

… has its origins on tumblr and on neo-Nazi website ‘Iron March’ (IM), with two young fellows from Melbourne, one using the handle ‘kehlsteinhaus’ (‘Eagle’s Nest’: a Nazi-era building erected atop the summit of the Kehlstein, a rocky outcrop that rises above the Obersalzberg near the town of Berchtesgaden), and the other ‘Xav’, forming its core.

Hersant used the handle ‘Vandal Nationalist’, Anderson ‘HalArts’ and … ‘Xav’ on IM, where they were joined by several other notables, including Lisa Beulah/Sandford, Shermon Burgess (Reclaim Australia and the United Patriots Front) and Matthew Grant (an ‘esoteric racial Presbyterian’ of the ‘Eureka Youth League’: the Australia First Party’s alleged yoof wing).

Douglas Paterson : not often described as “charismatic”

One other participant was ‘kehlsteinhaus’:

On March 2, 2016, ‘kehlsteinhaus’ wrote by way of introduction to IM that he was 22yo, unemployed, and interested in creating an Australian version of [National Action]. Originally from Perth, he now resides in Melbourne. ‘kehlsteinhaus’ also claims to have been a ‘communist’, a ‘democratic socialist’, to have attended meetings and rallies organised by Socialist Alternative, but most recently to have been involved with the UPF. And, like Blair Cottrell and Neil Erikson, he also claims to be a member or former member of the Melbourne-based neo-Nazi grouplet ‘Nationalist Alternative’ (NAlt). According to ‘kehlsteinhaus’, ‘Blair and Thomas [Sewell] are full 14/88. I’ve met and talked to them in person many times. They’ve recently converted [Chris] Shortis, who now thinks Hitler was right about pretty much everything. [Scott] Moreland [sic] is shit. [Dennis] Huts is a mixed bag.’

And so on and so forth.

According to his LinkedIn, Douglas attended Wesley College in Perth (motto: Audendo Atque Agendo: Latin for “By Daring & By Doing”) in 2010–2011 but failed to complete a degree in politics and international relations at Edith Cowan University in 2013–2014, after which he moved to Melbourne. Recently, Douglas was a business student at Swinburne University, but would seemed to have gained his diploma earlier this year. Oddly enough, both AR and NSN have got up to funny business at this institute for higher learning.

October 2016:

A neo-Nazi poster urging people to gun down gay and transgender people has been plastered on Swinburne University’s walls, raising fears the toxic homophobic campaign was triggered by the plebiscite debate.

Students arriving at the university’s Hawthorn campus on Monday morning were confronted with an illustration of a skeletal man wearing a T-shirt reading “Gay and Proud”, with a bullet through his head. The poster, which included a swastika, was titled “Get the sodomite filth off our streets”.

July 2020:

A neo-Nazi group dressed in black with their faces covered have been pictured flashing the Hitler salute at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.

The National Socialist Network, which advocates white supremacy, posted the image to Russian-based social media network VK with the caption “Swinburne for the White Man”.

It thanked “the student body and faculty” for allowing them to come on campus to advance their far-right agenda “without opposition”.

Douglas did, however, receive an endorsement from Matthew Looke who — according to The White Rose Society — was good chums with ‘Eva’ (AKA Lisa Beulah/Sandford), attending her engagement party in Canberra to fellow neo-Nazi Justin Beulah. Hence:

Our source told us that earlier in the year Ben Puckett had attended the engagement party of Neo-Nazis Lisa Sandford and Justin Beulah. Ben was familiar with guests of Lisa and Justin’s who were later revealed to be part of the branch stacking of NSW Young Nationals, or who we know hold far-right views. Some of the guests in attendance were NSW Young Nationals members like Xanthe Winter and Neo-Nazi Nicholas Walker (pressured to resign after the ABC Background Briefing investigation was published), fascist Steele Archer and Neo-Nazis Matthew Looke and Marlon Vrancic.

TL;DR : AR collapsed into NSN (a projekt of Tom Sewell’s grouplet ‘The Lads Society’), but is Carrying On in much the same fashion; I’ll publish some further deets on the network’s membership and activities at some point in the future. In the meantime, you can thank Douglas Paterson and … for kick-starting this latest failed brownshirt maneuver.

See also : Antipodean Resistance: The Rise and Goals of Australia’s New Nazis, Julie Nathan, ABC Religion & Ethics, April 20, 2018 | Who Are The Lads Society, Why Do They Have Guns, & Why Have They Invaded Rowville?(June 2020 Update), June 26, 2020.