When neo-Nazi leader Thomas Sewell revealed that organizations he had spent years building—White Australia, National Socialist Network (NSN), and the European Australian Movement (EAM)—were disbanding rather than face retribution under the country’s new incoming anti-discrimination laws, the announcement spread across major international news outlets and far-right media nearly instantaneously.
A move calculated to keep Sewell and his followers out of prison, the groups that he and his compatriots have built seem destined to fade away, but the transnational community of those influenced and inspired by Sewell will long outlast the uniformed marches and violence he and NSN have become known for.
NSN has chosen not to fight the possible banning in court, especially as lawmakers, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, have said publicly the incoming Combating Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill 2026 is designed to specifically target groups like NSN and the Islamist organization Hizb ut-Tahrir. Sewell has raised AUD $153,586 on the platform GiveSendGo to help pay for a legal challenge, but he has said repeatedly the defense will be conducted by him as an individual, not as a representative of NSN or the other associated groups.
The bill extends the Australian definition of a “hate group,” giving the government increased powers to ban them—particularly if they make threats or commit violence based on race, publicly incite hatred, or commit other offenses on racial grounds. The legislation moved through the parliament after the tragic and senseless antisemitic murder of 15 people at a Bondi Beach Hanukkah celebration by two armed men.
NSN’s decision to disband has been accompanied by Sewell advising on a podcast in January 2026 with British far-right Patriot Alternative leader, neo-Nazi Mark Collett, that former members should not gather in groups larger than a few people, lest they be accused of continuing the organizations’ activities and face prosecution.
Despite the legal threats, Sewell has vowed to continue his work towards his goals of a “white Australia.” NSN and its associated groups are a clear example of how dangerous extremist networks can remain active, even though individual groups and leaders may come and go.
How Technology Changes Networks
Leaderless and decentralized organizing is an often sought-after but difficult to achieve model of organizing within white nationalist and neo-Nazi movements. Some of these attempts include the “Brüder Schweigen” (Silent Brotherhood) better known as “The Order,” a group in the 1980s that was responsible for the multiple robberies, bombings, and the murder of Jewish radio host Alan Berg. While led in part by avid antisemite and violent neo-Nazi Robert Jay Mathews, the organization was intended to be a broad criminal network of unconnected cells, using stolen money to finance the coming race war.
White Aryan Resistance (W.A.R.) founder Tom Metzger also attempted to create a national network for white supremacists in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s. Predating digital communication, Metzger relied on the tools available at the time to create central points to disseminate information to not only W.A.R. members, but also the national white supremacist movement. Efforts towards his goal included the creation of a telephone call-in number that replayed recorded news and updates on the movement to anyone who would call. Metzger was one of the few well-known white nationalists who praised James Nolan Mason’s “Siege” newsletters, later collated into a book of the same name, that advocated for small ideologically similar but independent cells to carry out terrorist violence to destabilize society. Metzger can be thought of as an early adopter of emerging media channels to get his message out. While he did work to create a central group through W.A.R., he also expanded his means of reaching people, including the creation of a public access television show and a radio program. With the advent of the internet, he created a website to the same end.
Similar to Metzger’s efforts with media, the contemporary far-right landscape is shaped by the medium through which it is delivered—namely digital communications technology and social media platforms. Where previously, consumers of far-right material and conspiracy theories were required to hunt for rare books, magazines, recordings of interviews, appearances on mainstream media, and in-person organizing to learn about and make contact with larger far-right movements, now all of these materials are a few keystrokes away.
Social media particularly aids in the creation of broad networks of directly and indirectly connected individuals, often united by shared interests and common influencers, rather than distinct organizational ties. Individuals who follow particular far-right personalities on social media may never join or participate in the communities associated with them, but can still be inspired and motivated by the materials or commentary influencers produce.
Inspired Violence
This is a pattern that has had deadly results.
Brenton Harrison Tarrant, the Australian perpetrator of the 2019 massacre of 51 people at two Christchurch, New Zealand, mosques was supportive of numerous white nationalist projects online, including Martin Sellner’s Identitarian Movement, to which Tarrant made a donation, and a precursor to NSN run by Sewell, a nationalist organization called the Lads Society. Tarrant even declined an offer to join from Sewell, as Tarrant was planning to relocate to New Zealand shortly after.
Despite his distance from the groups that made up the movement, Tarrant was supportive of these groups’ messages, commenting on their social media and even naming his manifesto “The Great Replacement,” after the white nationalist conspiracy theory that supposes a typically Jewish-led plot to replace European people with non-white immigrants. The same “replacement” conspiracy theory that, according to Tarrant, motivated his attack is also espoused by Sellner and Sewell, and has been linked to numerous other acts of violence.
A Perfect Medium For The Message
Social media has also distinctly changed how far-right networks communicate with the public. Formal and informal groups typically require some public outreach to recruit and often rely on public demonstrations to attract media attention. These actions are then recorded and photographed so the images can be used over and over again for the purpose of spreading propaganda.
Many far-right extremist groups have rather adopted a decentralized approach that relies on building and mobilizing a broad network. One of the most successful examples of a decentralized model among the far-right has been the Active Club (AC) movement. Founded by white supremacist Robert Rundo, ACs are united by a combination of aesthetics and ideology. Chapters are formed and operated independently by their local leaders and focus on bringing together young radicalized men from their respective regions. Research conducted by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) has found that ACs are a rapidly growing phenomenon, with 187 active chapters in 27 countries in mid-2025.
The look and style of these disparate organizations has great appeal to aspiring far-right activists who can also purchase affiliated clothing from Rundo’s web store, consume white nationalist documentaries from Rundo’s production house, and even start their own local white nationalist crews after watching instructional videos he spreads online.
AC activity focuses primarily on physical training, combat sports, and networking among its various chapters. Individual chapters will run their own social media accounts, often on platforms like X or Telegram, which are more permissive than others for neo-Nazi content. The aesthetic of the ACs is a clean-cut and respectable looking face to white supremacy.
Despite the image projected by the network, multiple members of ACs have been found guilty in racially-motivated assaults and terror. In November 2025, four members of the Sweden-based AC were found guilty of a series of random attacks against people of foreign origin they encountered on the streets of Stockholm. In December 2024, members of the Finnish AC participated in a Helsinki torch march with other far-right groups. During the event, counter protesters signs and banners were burned, while the marchers made Nazi salutes.
AC social accounts will often share and repost propaganda materials created by other channels. This can be postering runs, group workout and sparring sessions, and other activities, sometimes coordinated between chapters.
Other times the chapters will cross national borders to meet with one another. A former member of the Active Club Canada, Kristoffer Nippak, traveled across Europe meeting members of AC chapters in Estonia, Finland, and Sweden. Nippak was arrested in 2022 for his alleged participation and support for the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division, a listed terrorist entity in Canada. His trial is currently underway.
Other groups have adopted similar models to the ACs, though they may use different names. Sewell for instance said on neo-Nazi Alex Vriend’s livestream that the European Australia Movement (EAM) was built to be similar to the ACs. Far from the only group to adopt what Sewell called the “Active Club model,” there are numerous regional and national groups that use a similar organizational structure to the ACs, sometimes incorporating a more traditional leadership hierarchy, different imagery, and not directly aligning themselves with Rundo’s movement. Besides EAM, these groups include groups like the anti-immigration Second Sons Canada and the since folded “Rose City Nationalist Club.”
One of the most significant and deadly examples of a network phenomenon predating the advent of the ACs was the Atomwaffen Division. A group of militant neo-Nazis with cells set up across America, the group began on the fascist web forum Iron March, which promoted and created content supporting a philosophy of not only idolizing violence but also using it as a tool for accelerating what they saw as the inevitable collapse of society before it could be rebuilt as a totalitarian ethnostate. While the group’s propaganda posters threatening Jews, journalists, LGBTQ+ people, Muslims, and more were pasted onto walls and lampposts across the U.S. and eventually Europe, Atomwaffen Division exploded into the public consciousness after a series of murders connected to the group reached headlines. In May 2017, Devon Arthurs killed fellow Atomwaffen members, Jeremy Himmelman and Andrew Oneschuk, after they mocked his recent conversion to Islam. The group’s founder, Brandon Russell, who also lived with the three men, found the bodies of his roommates. He was later convicted for the possession of bomb making materials. After his release he was again convicted after planning to attack power stations in Baltimore with his girlfriend, Sarah Beth Clendaniel.
Groups that emerged from similar online communities as Atomwaffen Division either shared or emulated the aesthetic adopted by the organization. This included groups like the Sonnenkrieg Division (SKD), Feuerkrieg Division (FKD), and many others. While in contemporary reporting about their activities these groups were referred to as foreign branches of Atomwaffen, research into their inner workings found that they were distinct entities with their own leadership, social spaces, but often shared members, supporters, and ideology. Rather than branches of one large organization, they were all parts of the “Skull Mask network.”
During his 2024 trial for his membership and support for Atomwaffen, it was revealed that the group’s Canadian propagandist, Patrick MacDonald (better known as Dark Foreigner), had produced a pamphlet titled “The Atomwaffen Program.” The pamphlet gave a short reading list, the group’s uniform of a half skull mask covering their mouths in a rictus smile, and the German camouflage, Flecktarn. Despite AWD officially disbanding in March 2020, the Atomwaffen Program showed how anyone could ultimately organize and run their own cell under the Atomwaffen banner. This has resulted in a series of subsequent organizations, like the violent neo-Nazi Sonnenrad Squad or youth-led Kernatium Division, that all shared the same look and goals of provoking societal collapse but had no verifiable connections to the original group.
There have also been swift consequences for clubs that have attempted to push through bans by simply renaming or reforming as a slightly different group. One of the most important examples was in the case of National Action, a U.K. neo-Nazi group that attempted to spread fascist ideology and engaged in frequent protests and the creation of propaganda. In 2016, National Action became the first far-right organization proscribed as a terrorist entity in the U.K. After the listing, former members of the group attempted to reform as new organizations. National Socialist Anti-Capitalist Action (NS131), Scottish Dawn, System Resistance Network (SRN), and TripleK Mafia were all groups set up by former National Action members to fill the void after it was proscribed, though were found to be more or less versions of the original organization.
Interconnected Activism
Group affiliations will likely never fully cease to be significant as the far right continues to try to gain power through popular support. They do serve an increasingly temporary purpose. Imagery associated with these groups can be used to inspire, recruit, indoctrinate, and terrify the public, however, as more countries are passing increasingly difficult to navigate and even harder to circumvent bans and legal restrictions on some of the most extreme names in the far right, these affiliations are a temporary banner to organize under while developing the connections that last longer than any single organization.
Official memberships come and go, but the videos, pictures, rhetoric, ideology, and memes permeate far beyond the confines of small private chats. Informal networks are the new normal for all manner of social communities online, and increasingly proving resilient in the face of bans. Dangerous networks looking to spread hate and violence continue to adapt to new laws, dissolving their group affiliations where necessary, but always finding ways to spread and grow their message.
