See also : The UPF and Reclaim Australia aren’t ‘concerned parents’ or a bad joke, Andy Fleming, The Guardian, October 20, 2015 (‘Don’t get sucked in by the hijinks of far-right activists: active neo-Nazis are welcome and hold leadership positions in a movement gaining in appeal’).
Last month, 9Fairfax published an exposé of Australia’s nazi edgelords the National Socialist Network (NSN). It did a good job of not merely highlighting the fact that ‘Yes Virginia, Nazis Do Exist’, but also — crucially — identifying the NSN’s core membership and providing some detail about their lives and loves hates.
Below is some further infos on NSN members identified in the reportage, followed by some more general observations on the group and its current situation.
The NSN’s fuehrer, Thomas ‘Tom’ Sewell, currently languishes on remand in Port Phillip Prison in Truganina. Sewell returns to Melbourne Magistrates’ Court for committal hearings on October 10 and 27. NSN temp fuehrer Jacob Hersant — the Hitler Yoof given responsibility for the grouplet’s OpSec — was allegedly arrested and charged a few days before Nick McKenzie’s reportage dropped but if so, there’s no court listing that I can find. In any case, the dynamic duo are trying to raise funds from their nazi Telegram followers — ostensibly to pay Legal Aid lawyers (?) — but are continuing to experience various, ah, technical difficulties, in doing so.
Sad!
With the two leaders of the NSN rendered impotent, leadership of the group (and responsibility for continuing to pump out its nazi agitprop) has fallen to several of their flunkeys: viz, ex-Proud Boy Jarrad ‘Jaz’ Searby, keyboard worrier David Hiscox and ‘Truth Viking’ Bradley Ingram. Brad was dropping antisemitic troof bombs on the COVIDIOTs who assembled in Melbourne a few weeks ago, while his boofhead mate Brendan Maher was yelling racist abuse at serial pest Avi Yemini. The anti-lockdown/pro-COVID mob remains fertile recruiting grounds for neo-Nazism, but nazis have to battle a range of other grifters for a slice of the political pie.
Leaving aside Alice McNamara (AKA ‘Alice Spazzy’ of The Spazzys and KiddyRock — RIP), a number of other nazi schmucks were named in the reportage:
1) Ari Fink
Ah … apparently Fink is not a Fink, has links to OMCs, works for federal government agencies(!) … and is a seriously wEiRd unit.
2) Bradley Ingram
Along with Sewell and Hersant, Ingram was one of a handful of nazis who lived at the property that ‘The Lads Society’ leased around the corner from their closed bunker in Rowville. Seemingly evicted, Ingram presumably keeps busy plumbing and/or roofing, talking about the impending RaHoWa, and being wistful about apartheid South Africa.
3) Brendan Maher
Maher is a meathead who recently harassed convicted spousal abuser Avi Yemini at an anti-lockdown/pro-COVID rally in Melbourne.
4) Damien Pearce
Pearce’s name has been invoked in the context of shadowy nazi grouplet ‘Battalion 88’ (one of umpteen nazi social media projekts).
5) Dan Newman
A bonehead who now boasts of having links to a nazi prison gang, Newman is a:
senior Australian member of the ultra-violent and secretive international neo-Nazi terror group Combat 18, which has been banned in both Canada and the UK … [and] the National Socialists’ link to skinhead [sic] gangs in Victorian jails. Any network member who found themselves inside had been promised protection … The National Socialists also use Newman to recruit those fresh out of jail, including a fresh-faced young man who confides … that he’s spent years in youth detention.
Sounds legit.
Bizarrely, a veiled reference to Newman (and myself) may be found in ‘The Interplay Between Australia’s Political Fringes On The Right And Left: Online Messaging On Facebook’ (Cécile Guerin, Jacob Davey, Mario Peucker and Thomas J. Fisher, 2020), in which attention is drawn to the fact that Some Body suggested that Newman was a menace. Hence:
… a very small number of comments [on ‘far left’ Facebook pages] alluded to potentially violent acts of defence or retaliation. In one instance, a commentator responded to a post about a local member of a neo-Nazi group who had allegedly ‘intimidated women of colour’ in the local area of Footscray in Melbourne. Seemingly alluding to setting up a local vigilante force, a commentator asked: ‘Any other Footscray locals interested in organising to manage such situations?’
6) Daniel Todisco
Sadly, Crown Casino ‘launched an investigation into [Todisco] after it was revealed the man is part of a neo-Nazi group and boasted about “bossing around the f—g n—-rs” who are his subordinates at the Melbourne casino’. Along with his kingly jerb, it’s unclear if Todisco retains his security licence (582-665-81S). See also : Ben Simmons stands firm on claim of racial profiling at Crown Casino, The Guardian (AAP), October 24, 2019.
7) David Hiscox
The editor of XYZ blog, Hiscox has seemingly abandoned his career (teaching children to tinkle the ivories) in order to become a volunteer in The YouTube Nazi Army. For several years, Hiscox was joined at XYZ by other silly antisemites, including fellow teach David Hilton (now retired?) and — until recently — Matthew Roebuck. Sadly, Christian Soldier Roebuck had a doctrinal dispute with Hiscox’s colleague James Fox Higgins and was then forced to upload a YouTube vid ‘Responding to the Lies and Damnable Heresy of James “False Prophet” Higgins’.
Gosh!
As for Higgins, he’s being attacked by other nazis on the basis that his wife is allegedly Jewish (which is generally considered to be A Very Bad Thing in this corner of YouTube). Armed with a different variety of Christian woo-woo to Roebuck, Higgins has worked alongside PHONy Senator Mark Latham in order to “make libertarianism [sic] sexy”, written for The Spectator in defence of Lauren ‘The Great Replacement’ Southern, and at Liberty Fest 2018:
… James Fox Higgins, a 32-year-old born-again Christian who bemoans the fact that “You can be proud to be Asian or black, but being proud to be white means you’re a Nazi”. Higgins, who has previously accused feminists of “flagrant hypocrisy” for demanding the right to “slut walk” wherever they like without being responsible for their own safety, tells the audience that there is “nothing so powerful as a group of intelligent men with women and daughters they want to protect”.
Speaking of intelligent men with women and daughters they want to protect, Higgins also participated in the 2020 XYZ virtual conference (along with Sewell and Blair Cottrell).
8) Dean Lynch
If nothing else, Lynch’s worship of Odin and A.R. Mills — Mills’ book The Odinist Religion, Overcoming Jewish Christianity ‘extolled a racial pagan view within the context of the British Empire which continues to be used by some neo-Nazi groups to the present day’ — is good for a laff.
9) Jacob Hersant
A racist teenybopper, Hersant soon came into the orbit of nazi groomers like Cottrell and Sewell, joining first Antipodean Resistance and The Lads Society (both now defunct) and then the NSN, where his superb OpSec skills have come in really handy.
10) James Greig
AKA James Jameson. Greig has had his fingers in many nazi pies, including ‘The Base’. Here he is with Queenslander (and former Lad) Grant Fuller:
See also : White supremacist who allegedly scouted abandoned Michigan jails for ‘hate camps’ ordered to stand trial, Steve Neavling, Detroit Metro Times, September 2, 2021.
11) James Lawrence
A troubled bonehead who’s also a member of Combat 18 (apparently). Several years ago, YouTube forced me to remove a phantastic video of Lawrence wishing Herr Hitler a very happy birthday.
12) Jarrad ‘Jaz’ Searby
A recent graduate to neo-Nazism, Searby first made a name for himself in mid-2020 when he tried to sneak across the New South Wales/Victoria border but, while he subsequently failed to raise half-a-million dollars to finance his batshit court case, he’s gone on to bigger and better things, detouring thru the Proud Boys to become a member of the NSN. Searby has even recently obtained a sidekick: Jimmy Mizzi (AKA ‘Jimmy Hittah’).
13) Joel Hawthorne
Another meathead from Queensland, Hawthorne once Marched for South Africa.
14) Michael Edwards
A crankypants nazi, blogger and amateur physicist (who’s inspired by the racist views of Crick, Pierce and Shockley), Edwards reportedly lives outside Bendigo in Goornong; at the 2016 census, Goornong had a population of 654, apparently.
15) Patrick O’Sullivan
A veteran bonehead (and one widely-despised by other boneheads), O’Sullivan is a former Creative turned Combat 18 booster, who’s spent the better part of the last two decades (after being released from prison) chucking up badly-photocopied nazi stickers around town. In 2002, O’Sullivan was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison for stabbing another bonehead (also at a party) — which is where he became chums with nazi killer Dane Sweetman. Like his erstwhile kamerad Newman, O’Sullivan specialises in preying on vulnerable yoof to recruit to violent racism.
16) Rhys Morrison
Weirdly, the photo of Morrison used by 9Fairfax to illustrate him in their reportage excludes his face.
17) Ryan Ulf Lindfors-Beswick (AKA Ulf Lehmuskoski, Ulf Lindfors)
Unlike Fink, Lindfors-Beswick is a Fink, apparently. Ulf was also once employed by MSS Security on University campuses, but seems to have lost his security licence somewhere along the way. The extent to which nazis are recruiting from bikies has been the subject of some commentary, though as a rule OMCs have enough on their plate and are generally loathe to attract even moar attention from authorities for ‘political’ stoopid.
18) Steve Zoumis
Along with James Buckle, Zoumis was an officer holder with gun lobby ‘Firearm Owners United’. (And probably shouldn’t have access to guns, in my opinion.)
19) Troy Crockett
Another graduate of the UPF, as noted previously:
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 [Nationalist Alternative].
Crockett currently run a window cleaning business called ‘Eagle Professional’.
20) Tyrel Cameron
A computer geek who may/not be employed by Australia Post (and studies at RMIT). Reportedly, the naming of Cameron caused some ructions within the RMIT Liberal Club.
21) Vinnie O’Neill
O’Neill was until last month employed by a meatworks in Warrnambool. He was reportedly ‘shocked and felt like vomiting when he saw his face on Sunday night’s episode of 60 Minutes‘, and further claimed that “I don’t hold any neo-Nazi or national socialist views, nor do I want to be part of any [K]lan activity. I just see myself as patriotic” — which is an oldie but a goodie. See : Man says he doesn’t hold neo-Nazi views, issues public apology to Warrnambool community, Katrina Lovell, The Standard, August 17, 2021.
*Among those who could have but — sadly — didn’t get a guernsey are Mark Hootsen and Max Wilson.
In general, the NSN continues to trundle along on Telegram, redpilling angwy teens and upset older men with Nazi and Nazi-adjacent news and views. Meanwhile, the ‘European Australian Movement’ (EAM), which was established at about the same time as the NSN, was ostensibly formed in order to provide a more palatable public face for neo-Nazism and the NSN, but in subsequent weeks the distinction between the two, always tenuous, has collapsed. Beyond this, while Tim Wilms of ‘The Unhinged’ blog formed a brief partnership with Searby in order to produce propaganda for YouTube, Hiscox — having separated first from Wilms and then Roebuck — has launched a NEW! smash-hit YouTube series called ‘The David Hiscox Show’.
Oh wait.
In news just to hand, YouTube has DELed David’s channel!
Oh well. There’s always BitChute, Gab, Minds, Odysee, Parler and ah … Slug.
Along with being targeted by (((ASIO))) for repression, another concern expressed by the NSN is proscription. Currently, the federal government’s ‘Inquiry into extremist movements and radicalism in Australia’ is considering a range of measures in order to quash ‘extremism’, including Very Angry Tories. Given that in the last few years Canada and the United Kingdom have proscribed various grouplets related to the NSN as ‘terrorist’, this is not unimaginable (though unlikely, in my opinion). Certainly, ‘Victoria is set to become the first state to ban the public display of the Nazi swastika as part of an expansion of anti-vilification laws’, though given that the NSN employs other symbols as substitutes for the swastika, this is unlikely to have any real effect on the groupuscule should it survive its current difficulties.
Of course, whether the NSN survives or not, the milieu which produced it persists, and will undoubtedly throw up further examples of deeply patriotik political associations.
