Government Targeting of Australian Nationalists To Continue Post-Election
Thankfully Kristina Kennelly won’t become the new Home Affairs Minister in the Albanese Government after losing her bid for the lower house seat of Fowler. Though you can guarantee that whoever is sworn in as Minister next week will continue to use ASIO and the AFP to continue to target Australian nationalists.
Australian Parliamentary Extremism Inquiry
Just before the federal election, The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Security and Intelligence (PJCSI) released an interim report on April 1 this year on its inquiry into extremist movements and radicalism. This report stated that due to more pressing demands it had deferred the completion of this inquiry to the new committee in the next parliament.
The terms of reference for the inquiry drafted by then Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton in December 2020 last year included looking at potential changes to terrorist organization listing laws to ensure they are fit for purpose. Kristina Keneally had been lobbying for such an inquiry and constantly raged about a surge in so-called ‘far-right extremism.
Kennelley has repeatedly decried that there are no right-wing groups designated as terrorist entities in Australia like in the other five eyes intelligence nations. In response, Dutton and his successor in Home Affairs have now listed three neo-Nazi groups as terrorist entities: Sonnenkrieg Division, The Base, and the National Socialist Order.
The PJCSI held two days of public hearings on April 29-30 2021 which were streamed live on the parliament house website with the replays available. Kristina Keneally’s questions of the witnesses called dominated the proceedings.
The Committee made the unusual decision to not publish all submissions received by the public “due to the sensitive subject”. Only 18 submissions were published on the Committee’s website from either law enforcement or regulatory bodies, university counter-terrorism centers, and the big three social media networks. All the witnesses called were from these organizations and bodies that had their submissions published.
There will be a new PJCSI when the 47th Parliament is opened and will have a Labor majority with a Labor Chair. The 11 committee members in previous parliaments have all been from the two major parties.
ASIO Director-General Mike Burges told the PJCSI in April last year that it was probable that a terrorist attack would occur in Australia in the next 12 months. No such terrorist attack occured. Burgess has since said that foreign interference and espionage now take up the majority of ASIO’s workload.
Banking Deplaforming Continues
Banking deplatforming of nationalists began in 2019. Australian bank Westpac canceled banking services for Australian Blair Cottrell in 2019. Another Australian bank ANZ also shut down the accounts of numerous people involved in nationalist activism. Proud Boy Chair Enrique Tarrio had his bank account closed shortly after he was elected chair. In 2020 Mark Collect and Laura Towler of Patriotic Alternative UK had their banking services canceled.
In July 2021 Westpac sent a letter to Jaz Searby who only began his nationalist activism this past year that they would provide him their banking services and were shutting down all his business accounts with no explanation as to why.
Neil Erikson’s Disturbing Religious Worship Convictions
The Victorian legal system has already sent Neil Erikson to prison once in May last year when Magistrate Charlie Rozencwajg convicted Erikson of disturbing religious worship at a public Friday Islamic prayers at Federation Square in April 2019. Rozencwajg sentenced Erikson to four weeks in prison which he decided to serve rather than appeal as his bail appeal conditions would have been him from social media.
In July Erikson was sentenced to prison again for disturbing religious worship, this time for offending a public gathering of the LGBT Metropolitan Community Church in Hawthorn in May 2019. Magistrate Angela Bolger sentenced him to 10 weeks imprisonment, almost the maximum of three months imprisonment under this charge. Erikson decided to appeal and was granted appeal bail but this time without any social media posting ban. His appeal in the County Court is currently taking place being heard by Chief Jude Peter Kidd.
National Socialist Network Charges
The National Socialist Network (NSN) is an openly neo-nazi organization with Thomas Sewell its most recognizable face openly supporting Adolf Hitler. While you can be rightfully repulsed by Sewell and the NSN’s views, in a free society their right to non-violent free speech and assembly needs to be upheld, after all, communist revolutionaries don’t face a similar level of government and media targeting.
Sewell spend seven months in custody last year, first at the Melbourne Assessment Prison then at Port Phillip Prison being held in remand after being charged with armed robbery, assault, violent disorder, and breaching bail following an alleged confrontation he had with leftists in a vehicle at the Cathedral Ranges State Park where the National Socialist Network was holding a camping trip in May last year.
In March last year, he was charged with affray, recklessly causing injury and unlawful assault after an altercation with an Afro-Caribbean security guard outside Channel 9 whose A Current Affair program was airing a hit piece on the National Socialist Network but was granted bail over these charges.
During his seven months of imprisonment because of covid regulations, Sewell spent his first month in total isolation only being allowed to walk the hallway for 10 minutes a day. For the remeaning six months, he was only allowed out for an hour a day but had to remain in a caged area alone and wear a mask at all times.
On August 13 last year three months after Victoria Police’s Counter-Terrorism Command raid the National Socialist Network living quarters in Rowville, Melbourne Jacob Hersant the official leader of NSN was also charged over the alleged armed robbery at the Cathedral Ranges. Unlike Sewell at the time, he was granted bail but his bail conditions prevented him from posting or communicating and not associating with anyone from the National Socialist Network or its associated group the European Australian Movement (EAM)
Sewell was finally granted bail in December last year after being denied it in June on the condition that he reside at his father’s residence. He has since resumed posting content on his Telegram and Odysee channels and participating in EAM activism and events.
In December 2020 Albury teenager Tyler Jakovac was arrested in an early morning raid. Police alleged he had spoken about a “mass casualty event” and his desire to be involved and supported the ideology of Brenton Tarrant who committed the Christchurch massacre. In March this year, Jakovac entered into a plea of guilty to the charge of advocating a terrorist act or commission of a terrorism offense after having spent 15 months on remand.
A raid on the properties of South Australian NSN members in April last year where police obtained copies of ‘extremist material’ and ‘weapons’ they argued could be used in a terrorist attack. These raids resulted in charges laid against Cameron Brodie-Hall, Anthony Paul Dobson, Justin Bassett, and Patrick Patmore. Brodie-Hall is still on remand.
Nick McKenzie and Dave Ryan’s Infiltration of the National Socialist Network
During the height of the pandemic, the mainstream media and law enforcement agencies’ priorities changed to persecute those opposed to the covid lockdowns, masks, and mandatory vaccines. But they never ceased persecuting their original enemy pre-pandemic the senior leadership of Australia’s nationalist and patriot organizations.
On Sunday 15 August last year Channel 9’s 60 Minutes program dedicated 90 minutes of their programming over two weeks to an investigative series entitled ‘Nazis Next Door’ by Reporter Nick McKenzie and Producer Joel Tozer. At the same time, The Age and Sydney Morning Herald also owned by Channel 9 published McKenzie and Tozer’s written investigative content.
McKenzie set up an infiltrator to join the National Socialist Network who said his name was Dave Ryan and passed the new recruit screening with Sewell and Hersent. Ryan secretly filmed NSN members over two months until the May raid on their headquarters. Despite wanting to expose this ‘sick’ organization Dave Ryan provided the NSN members with food and alcohol and even gave them cash donations. Ryan also drove around in a sickening hate trailer which was reported in other mainstream media as being real.
McKenzie through the recordings Dave Ryan made was able to doxx NSN members and list their place of employment which resulted in seven of them losing their jobs. In March this year, Stan a Channel 9-owned streaming service repackaged McKenzie’s 60 Minutes report into a 75-minute documentary entitled Revealed: Amongst Us – Neo Nazi Australia.
Further Law Changes Targeting NSN
On Australia Day this year an NSN and EAM associated group the Warriors of the Convict Resistance (WCR) released a video where they read out a statement celebrating the conquest of Australia by white settlers and then burnt the Aboriginal flag followed by a Nazi salute. The mainstream media’s report on this video also mentioned a sign in the background which read ‘Lidia Thorpe: Abo Whore’. Thorpe considered this sign a threat to her safety and decried the lack of police action in response to this ‘threat’. Nick McKenzie published an article doxxing one of the masked men in the video as Stefan Eracleous also known as Australian Meditations.
In May the Andrews Labor Victorian Government announced it would legislate a ban on the public display of the Nazi swastika through the passage of a bipartisan bill to take effect one year from when it is passed by the Parliament. The maximum penalty will be 12 months in prison and/or a $22k fine which is double the maximum jail sentence for racial and religious vilification in Victoria and four times the maximum jail term for disturbing religious worship. A day after the ban was announced two Nazis were arrested for putting Swastika stickers around the Melbourne suburb of Caulfield.
The Victorian Government also has on its agenda Fiona Patten’s Racial and Religious Tolerance Amendment Bill which expands the vilification characteristics to gender, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics with a maximum penalty of six months imprisonment. The state parliament is also conducting its own far-right extremism inquiry and will explore any links the far-right has to the freedom movements that have emerged over the past two years.
These new Victorian laws will make Victoria Police and its Counter Terrorism Command it easier to charge members of NSN and EAM with non-violent offences which can put them in prison. These new laws can be also be used authoritiesw to target the broader nationalist movement leading to even less overall freedom and free speech.