On Saturday, August 9, in Melbourne’s Central Business District (CBD), in the Australian state of Victoria, a phalanx of black-clad men marched dead center down the road. They waved the national flag and the flag of the violent neo-Nazi group National Socialist Network (NSN), played drums, and sang.
Each of the men covered his face, save the one leading the march.
Walking at the front of the pack was Thomas Sewell, leader of the NSN. Video posted to various social media platforms shows more than 100 men chanting slogans together.
“Australia for the white man,” one man shouts.
“The rest must go,” the crowd yells in response.
An image of the August 9, 2025, protest in Melbourne by the National Socialist Network shared on neo-Nazi Thomas Sewell’s social media accounts. (Source: Telegram).
During the protest, a bystander tried to confront the group, running up to Sewell and appearing to spit at him. He threw his fist at Sewell, who immediately responded with multiple punches of his own, knocking the man to the pavement.
The video ends as Sewell continues to hit the man.
A screen capture taken from a video of a fight during the August 9, 2025, protest in Melbourne by the National Socialist Network. It shows Thomas Sewell striking an unidentified man. (Source: Telegram).
“It is alleged an altercation occurred during the protest where a man confronted the group and was assaulted,” a police spokesperson said following the protest. “The man was taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, and police will investigate the circumstances leading up to the incident.”
After the demonstration, Joel Davis, another NSN activist, posted a video online congratulating himself and others on a successful march.
“People say that Melbourne is the left-wing capital of Australia. It’s becoming the Nazi capital of Australia,” he said, staring down the camera in a video posted to Telegram. “We just did our biggest ever march. 150 men in the Black Battalions, marching around, midnight, Friday night in Melbourne.”
Davis claimed “police just had to accept our presence,” and “We have been treated very poorly by police in the past. We have now grown large enough; they simply have to accept the fact that we want to march and we will march. It’s a great omen. White Australia is rising, the movement is rising.”
Police say the demonstration began around midnight and continued for about an hour.
Backlash and Praise
The local reaction to the protest has been largely one of disdain.
Victoria Premier Jacinta Allan said: “Nazis don’t belong in this country and they know it. That’s why they hide behind masks in the dark.”
Allan pointed to new, enhanced laws that will be coming into force in the state in September as a possible solution. Under the Anti-Vilification and Social Cohesion bill, which passed in April, those found guilty of serious offenses—including inciting hatred or making physical threats—could face up to five years in prison.
Brad Battin, Victorian leader of the opposition, said the protest was “appalling” and “unacceptable.” “[This] does not align with the values of an inclusive, tolerant and multicultural state,” he said.
Neo-Nazis Worldwide Celebrate
Online, the far-right response has been very different.
Neo-Nazi networks across Australia, the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Ireland are hailing NSN’s Melbourne night march as a victory. Supportive posts about the march appeared on Telegram, Gab, 4chan, X, and other social media platforms.
The footage of the march shared by the Australian neo-Nazis spread quickly across far-right social channels, shared by like-minded extremists including Christopher Alan Pohlhaus, also known as “The Hammer,” and founder of the Blood Tribe, a US-based neo-Nazi group known for its own confrontational and incendiary public protests.
On August 1, Pohlhaus claimed he had been denied entry to Australia after being invited to speak by NSN. He blamed “k*ke-slaves” for denying him access to his “Saxon brethren.”
An image posted to Blood Tribe’s Chris Pohlhaus’s social media complaining about being denied entry to Australia. (Source: Telegram).
In Canada, numerous far-right networks, including Diagolon, and multiple channels connected to the Nationalist 13 Active Club, shared and praised the Melbourne protest.
“The fact that the NSN can now have Patriot Front sized marches despite the Anti-White political action that’s been taken against them is a testament to the quality of men in their organization,” Nationalist 13 wrote on Telegram. “They have achieved on a scale that was not thought possible by their detractors, and there is no ceiling on how much more they can achieve.”
Alex Vriend, a white nationalist livestreamer with the extremist group Diagolon, who has more recently been organizing a white-only men’s organization dubbed Second Sons Canada, posted a brief clip of Sewell punching the man during the demonstration.
“Maybe don’t punch the man leading the ‘White Man Fight Back’ rally,” Vriend wrote on X. “Hail Sewell. Hail the NSN.”
Social media posts by the neo-Nazi group Nationalist 13 (left) and white nationalist Alex Vriend (right) about the National Socialist Network’s march in Melbourne. (Source: Telegram/X).
One channel, affiliated with senior members of the Proud Boys with over 16,000 followers on the far-right social media platform Gab, wrote that it was a “very impressive demonstration by these men.”
The account estimated the numbers between 80 to 100, causing Sewell to post on Telegram in response, stating that “our count was 140 before we stepped off.”
On 4chan, a user who appeared to be from the UK celebrated the demonstration, calling it “insanely based.”
A post made in support of the National Socialist Network’s march through Melbourne on the image board 4chan by an anonymous user identified as being in the United Kingdom. (Source: 4chan).
As illustration of the transnational nature of the far-right extremist movement, the UK’s Nationalist 13, in particular, has used similar language and appearance to the NSN in its protests and frequently shares content created by the group and its leaders.
In neo-Nazi Telegram chats around the world, NSN’s video has been shared many times, sometimes garnering thousands of views from just one account.
For less than an hours work on the street, NSN has managed to create content that has made headlines in international media, at home in Australia, and spread their dangerous and bigoted message across the far right, serving as an effective recruiting tool. Posts by Sewell after the event include the claim that since the protests the group had seen a “couple hundred sign-ups.”
He added, “Our organization is almost 2.5x the size it was just six months ago.”
NSN History
NSN was founded in 2020, formed from remnants of another group of Sewell’s, The Lads Society, and the militant accelerationist group “Antipodean Resistance,” which came from the neo-Nazi web forum, Iron March. Iron March also sparked other violent white supremacist groups like the militant accelerationist Atomwaffen Division, a group whose members are credited with five murders and National Action, a proscribed terrorist organization in the United Kingdom.
NSN Logo
NSN’s purpose is to create collectives of white supremacists throughout Australia willing to participate in street actions like protests and banner drops while also engaging in physical training like weightlifting and combat sports.
Sewell is one of the very few public members of the organization. In interviews, he will denounce violence and terrorism. Despite this, Sewell has a criminal record that includes a conviction for recklessly causing injury and affray for assaulting a security guard outside of an Australian television station in 2021. He also pleaded guilty to violent affray after he and unidentified members of his group attacked a pair of hikers that same year.
Outside court, Sewell claimed NSN to be a “law-abiding organisation.” “We have behaved honourably at all times,” he is quoted as saying.
Sewell is currently awaiting trial in another case after allegedly threatening to reveal the personal information (often referred to as doxing) of a police officer. He was also charged in January 2025, along with 12 other people ranging from ages 16 to 57, for loitering and displaying Nazi symbols.
Members of NSN train in combat sports and weightlifting, with the organization holding semi-regular athletic competitions for its members. Though the training is often framed through the lens of physical fitness or self-defence, an undercover investigation found NSN members, including Sewell, discussing the inevitability of the coming race war.
Another protest by the National Socialist Network is planned by Sewell for August 31.
