Tom Sewell: Australia’s Violent Neo-Nazi Leader Inspiring Global Far-Right Extremists

“The disbandment includes not only the National Socialist Network, but its co-projects White Australia, the European Australian Movement and the White Australia Party,” the post read declaring the end of the organizations at midnight on January 18.

The move comes in response to incoming legislation passed by the Australian parliament that would enable it to ban organizations that previously were not covered by existing legislation. The Combating Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill 2026 is being moved through the parliament after the tragic and senseless murder of 15 people at a Bondi Beach Hanukkah celebration by two armed men. The bill extends the definition of a “hate group,” giving the Australian 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.

NSN/EAM and the Islamist organization Hizb ut-Tahrir were the intended targets of the legislation, though critics said the legislation is too broad and lowers the legal bar of what constitutes a hate group.

Since the announcement, Sewell has been on a press tour of far-right livestreams, assuring his supporters that while theses organizations may be shutting down, his work to spread National Socialism is only beginning.

“There was no fascism in Australia in 2020. There was no National Socialism in Australia in 2020,” Sewell told Henrik Palmgren, host of the white nationalist media company Red Ice. “There was no radical white nationalism. There was very tiny, sporadic little embers across the country. And we took all those little embers and we put them all together and we put all the fuel on the fire and we built a great flame.”

Sewell’s history with the NSN and EAM has shown him to be violent and crude but a capable organizer, provoking confrontation and galvanizing public attention to his beliefs.

For more information about far-right groups and political parties in Australia, read our full country report.

Who Is Thomas Sewell? Origins of an Extremist Leader

Most of what is known about Thomas Sewell’s early life comes from court records and his own statements in numerous interviews and livestreams. Born in New Zealand in 1993, he moved to Australia with his parents while still a child.  He will often talk about his childhood and home life in positive terms, though he has said he has a strained relationship with his brother.

After graduating from Balwyn High School in Melbourne in 2010, Sewell spent several years in the Australian army, where he enlisted in 2012 in an infantry unit.

He was stationed in Darwin with the 5th Battalion, Royal Australia Regiment, though he did not deploy. It was during Sewell’s time in the military that he became radicalized. Recounting the story in July 2025 to a far-right livestreamer who goes by Hermes, Sewell pointed to a stabbing in the UK, where Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale beheaded British soldier Lee Rigby in southeast London on May 22, 2013, as one of several inciting incidents.

“We were pulled into the lunchroom, and we were told that in the event of a terror attack to Australian soldiers…we were to basically hide in the lunchroom to board up the windows and doors and call the Northern Territory police,” Sewell said on the stream.

“I was in the infantry and we were being trained to go over to the Middle East to kill Muslims in their own country, which I didn’t have a problem with and I don’t have a problem with, as long as it’s for the right reasons. Not for spreading democracy, but for asserting our global dominance, I don’t have an issue with that…We were being ordered to not defend ourselves on our own soil in our own country, but we were being asked to kill these people, ideally to create refugees for the world transfer of brown people into white countries.”

Shortly after, Sewell claims that a re-reading of Adolf Hitler’s autobiographical manifesto Mein Kampf led him to leave the military after serving around two and a half years. He returned to Melbourne.

Sewell was reported during this time to have worked in the hospitality and security industry, while studying civil engineering at Swinburne University. He left the program before obtaining his degree to “focus on politics.”

He also worked at a home for at-risk children, though he told a court in 2025 that he was fired for his beliefs. He has since held a variety of different jobs in the construction industry. He also has claimed that his political activism has resulted in losing multiple bank accounts. He is married with two children and has discussed living communally with other people who share his beliefs.

Shaping an Activist, Building a Movement

Sewell is first believed to have become active in far-right politics shortly after leaving the military. His earliest reported political endeavor was in 2015 with Reclaim Australia, an anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim group that staged rallies against what they viewed as encroaching “Sharia law.” Reclaim Australia was a large movement of like-minded activists, rather than one specific group, though it did have central organizers. It attracted radical nationalists of many stripes, and individuals with neo-Nazi tattoos were reported at its rallies.

The movement formed in the wake of the deadly 2014 hostage situation at the Lindt Café in Sydney. Man Haron Monis took eight employees and 10 customers hostage during a 16-hour standoff that ended with Monis killing one hostage and two others being killed by police when they stormed the building. The attack became a rallying point for anti-Muslim activists, resulting in protests in numerous cities.

While never claiming to be an organizer within this movement, Sewell would recount attending his first Reclaim rally in April 2015.

“It’s the first time I’d heard of a public demonstration in this country, calling for the government to look at its immigration policy in regards to Islamic migration,” he told Australian public broadcaster ABC in 2016. By that time, Sewell was a leader in a group, the United Patriots Front (UPF), that had broken off from the growing far-right movement, and led by fellow neo-Nazi Blair Cottrell. Cottrell came to the group with a criminal history of violent assaults, stalking his ex-girlfriend, drug trafficking, and arson.

UPF would be the place where Sewell would start to grow into his own as a leader, and he has not been far from the helm of far-right organizing since.

Serving as the UPF’s deputy under Cottrell, Sewell also began the Lads Society, a fitness club that included training in combat sports while also promoting white supremacist ideology. The Lads Society, sometimes referred to as LadSoc, was a group similar in concept to today’s Active Clubs, a decentralized network of neo-Nazi workout clubs conceptualized by American white supremacist Robert Rundo in December 2020. This model of organizing would later inspire Sewell in his work with NSN and EAM.

LadSoc and the UPF’s social media received an incredible amount of scrutiny after the deadly attack against two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019, that left more than 50 dead. The perpetrator, Brenton Tarrant, was an Australian citizen and had been an active supporter of UPF and another organization run by Cottrell called True Blue Crew on Facebook. Tarrant left more than 30 comments over a 10-month period, starting in April 2016, on the groups’ social media accounts.

Sewell was also a “friend” of the perpetrator on Facebook, though both he and Cottrell said they did not meet him in person. Tarrant had been invited to join LadSoc by Sewell but declined since he was preparing to relocate to New Zealand. In his manifesto, titled The Great Replacement, Tarrant maintains he acted alone and was not a member of any group.

NSN and EAM were established in 2020, initially made up of former members of the Lads Society and Antipodean Resistance (AR). AR was an Australian neo-Nazi group that formed in February 2016 on the fascist web forum Iron March. Until it went offline in 2017, Iron March was a major digital meeting place for militant accelerationist neo-Nazis, far-right groups that believe that, through acts of violence and terror, the inevitable collapse of liberal democracy can be sped up and give rise to a National Socialist state. Several violent neo-Nazi organizations emerged from Iron March, including the Atomwaffen Division (a listed terrorist organization in Canada), National Action (a proscribed group in the United Kingdom), and Skydas (based in Lithuania).

Besides spawning multiple militant accelerationist groups, Iron March’s creator Alisher Mukhitdinov, who went under the name “Alexander Slavros” and “Quiet” online, wrote extensively on neo-fascist philosophy. Entry into groups and even private chatrooms on applications like Telegram and Discord often required demonstrating an understanding of the fascist concepts extolled in Mukhitdinov’s writings or in books like neo-Nazi James Mason’s Siege, which advocates for the creation of small autonomous groups to carry out violent attacks.

During an interview with British neo-Nazi and Patriotic Alternative founder Mark Collett in January 2026, Sewell was asked about what books he recommends as reading for aspiring activists. After recommending Mein Kampf and a list of other well-known authors in esoteric fascism, Sewell mentions the Iron March reading list saying, “There’s a starter pack. I think it was called the Iron March Starter Pack that a lot of us went through. A lot of those starter pack books are banned now, I’m pretty sure. So be very careful with those lists of books because some of them are actually illegal to own.”

A reading list detailing the order individuals should consume Mukhitdinov’s and other radical texts like Siege is still frequently shared in neo-Nazi spaces.

Punch ‘em Ups and Protests

In 2020, Sewell and Jacob Hersant came together to form the European Australian Movement, the National Socialist Network, and eventually White Australia, which they had intended to register as a political party until the recent decision to dissolve.

Hersant is the official leader of NSN, while Sewell runs EAM. The relationship between the two was best described by the Australian antifascist White Rose Society as two “groups [that] are part of one organization.” NSN carries out the street protests and activism, while EAM is a project meant to focuses on fitness training, community building, and providing “logistics and support,” according to Sewell.

“We need these men, we need everyone to be involved in the capacity they can be. So I’m interested in organizing as many white men in this country into mobilizing against a system that’s trying to destroy them and kill them and pollute their genes and pollute their culture and society and children and everything.”

Built to explicitly embrace and promote National Socialism more than Sewell’s previous projects, the NSN and EAM achieved attention in Australia after several high profile incidents of violence.

Formed out of former members of the Lads Society and Antipodean Resistance, one of the public’s first introductions to what is now NSN/EAM came in 2021, when Sewell and other NSN/EAM members burned a cross near Lake Bellfield in Western Victoria to obtain footage for a propaganda video.

When residents called the police to complain about the group of men marching and shouting white power slogans at the national park, Sewell responded by posting pictures of the officers’ name badges online. Pictures from the event show the NSN flag in the background.

Cottrell made a video at the time saying he did not support Sewell’s actions in the park, accusing those who used “skinheadery” of subverting the nationalist movement. He denied being a part of Sewell’s new projects.

“All I can say for now is yes, Sewell was a close colleague of mine years ago, no I’m not currently close to Tom or involved in his new group(s) or activities,” he wrote on Telegram at the time.

However, the incident that made Sewell a household name in Australia, and among the international far-right, was during a dust up with a security guard outside of the Channel Nine headquarters in March 2021. Sewell and Hersant arrived to confront journalists who had been covering their activities.

The men never made it inside the building and were stopped by a security guard. Hersant referred to the man, who was Black, as a “monkey” and when the guard put his hand on Hersant’s shoulder, Sewell attacked him. The incident was recorded and posted online. Sewell was found guilty of assaulting the guard, and sentenced to community service as it was his first offense.

The footage of the attack was shared and re-shared widely across social media platforms. While the public saw a violent neo-Nazi attacking an unsuspecting man, the far-right saw a hero and leader.

Only months later, in May 2021, Sewell, Hersant, and around 10 to 15 members of the NSN, attacked a group of hikers in Cathedral Ranges state park. The hikers reported finding stickers reading “Australia for the white man.” When the hikers and NSN found themselves in the car park, one of the men began recording NSN on his phone. The hikers were accused of being “Antifa” and locked themselves in a car as the group surrounded them, smashed the windows of the vehicle, and threatened them. The victims reported that two of the attackers were armed with knives. Attempting to flee, the car crashed into a boulder. The hikers were allowed to leave after handing over their phones to the assailants. Prosecutors said that DNA matching Sewell and Hersant was found on the vehicle along with Sewell’s fingerprints. The pair pleaded guilty, though Sewell claimed outside the courthouse he was not guilty and only made the deal to avoid spending more time in prison.

Sewell spent roughly six months in solitary confinement before being sentenced to a month and seven days for that attack. He was released on time served. Hersant received three days prison time and 200 hours of community service.

Other EAM public stunts include in April 2022, when Sewell duped a Bavarian beer hall in Docklands into holding a birthday party for Adolf Hitler and a June 2022 unfurling of the group’s extremist banner while members made the Nazi salute in front of children in a park near Sydney.

When regulations were passed in Victoria in 2023 banning Nazi salutes and symbols in public, Hersant was arrested for making the gesture days later. Despite this slip, the organization has often changed its behavior to avoid law enforcement and counter-protesters, but it has also been involved in repeated confrontations. And Sewell’s violent rhetoric has not let up.

In June 2024, Sewell falsely claimed on Cottrell’s livestream that the U.K. Home Office was planning to remove children from the homes of individuals found to be far-right extremists. He said that such an action could cause him to “become a terrorist.”

“If you take my child off me, I’m going to start killing people,” he said, “and I’m going to encourage every single person that I know to also start killing people that are responsible, starting with probably the police and the judges that ordered for a child to come off one of us.”

Roughly 20 members of NSN, dressed in balaclavas and all black, disrupted a protest organized by asylum seekers in Melbourne in October 2024 while chanting white nationalist slogans. Rather than advertising a plan to attend the protest, NSN showed up unexpectedly. Police officers used pepper spray on the group, but there were no arrests.

After the protest, Sewell went on a podcast and threatened to reveal an officer’s personal information who he said tried to remove an NSN member’s mask.

“This guy, he’s got all his social media, like his family, like his wedding photos. We’ve got it all downloaded, we’ve got it all saved,” Sewell said.

“Just working out how to legally post it all in a way that’s just maybe for comic purposes.

“You wanna dox our boys and then you’ve got like your missus and all your family and the house you bought all on social media, f*cking idiot.”

Seemingly having a knack for avoiding lengthy prison sentences, Sewell was sentenced to community service for the doxing threats after being found guilty in September 2025 of intimidating a Victoria police officer.

Sewell is currently out on bail for two alleged incidents in August 2025. This includes a fight with a man who confronted NSN during a march through the streets of Melbourne and a separate incident where he and a group of masked NSN activists attacked an indigenous protest encampment. Sewell was released on bail pending trial after two months in custody after the Supreme Court found the prosecution failed to establish that he posed an “unacceptable risk to the safety of the community.”

Messages posted by Sewell on Telegram show his intention for other Australians and immigrants that he does not view as people.

He adds later in the message, “Every one of those things you see in Australia, your grandchildren will have to see probably 100. Every one of them that is a rapist and home invader, your grandchildren will have to deal with 100 rapist home invaders.”

“We’re going into an intermission”

Outside of organizing, Sewell has been a constant international ambassador for his movement. His criminal prosecutions and steady stream of NSN propaganda and protest footage have elevated his reputation among the transnational far-right.

Sewell has appeared on dozens of livestreams with white nationalist and far-right activists including U.K. leader of Patriotic Alternative Mark Collett, U.S.-based Patriot Front leader Thomas Rousseau, and Second Sons Canada founding member Alex Vriend. He also made several appearances on the neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement’s (NRM’s) English-language podcast. NRM was designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. government in 2024 and banned in Finland after a court decision in 2020.

During his talk with Vriend, Sewell discussed using what he called the “Active Club model” for forming EAM. Active Clubs are a decentralized collection of far-right workout clubs united by aesthetics and ideology rather than a central leadership. Individual chapters operate autonomously, but are connected through an expansive network of social media channels engaged in constant collaboration and cross promotion.

“EAM is focused primarily on tribing [sic] and training,” Sewell told Vriend in 2025. “The community building, the MMA, the physical training, it’s got an active club model, it’s got a really specific structure to it. But the two [NSN and EAM] are just, we’re just evolving. It’s gonna take a lot of time to bleed the two together and have like a formality. That’s all going on behind the scenes. But for the public sake, we’re just the Nazis, we’re the white guys, whatever you want to call it, and we’re just, we’re just trying to save White Australia.”

In the July 2025 conversation on Hermes’ livestream, Sewell claimed he had been in “close contact and communication” with “Rundo and the guys that run the Active Clubs.”

Christopher Alan Pohlhaus, also known as “The Hammer,” and founder of the Blood Tribe, a U.S.-based neo-Nazi group known for its own confrontational and incendiary public protests, indicated that he was denied entry to Australia after being invited to talk by NSN.

In an August 1, 2025, Telegram post Pohlhaus blamed “k*ke-slaves” for denying him access to his “Saxon brethren.”

NSN and EAM social media channels were mostly deleted after the groups announced they would be disbanding, though many of the videos they produced live on after being re-shared by other supporters.

Next Leap

Sewell has said that he requires about six to 12 months to come up with a plan for how he will be moving forward. His only immediate plans are to fight the new law in court, an effort that has already seen him raise over $136,000 on the fundraising platform GiveSendGo.

“It’s not the closing act of the Opera, but we’re going into an intermission” Sewell said on Red Ice.

Sewell is an ideologue, but he is committed to keeping both himself and other activists associated with his cause out of prison. He has advised former members to not gather in large groups to avoid accusations of organizing.

The network that Sewell has established will outlive any one organization. He has dedicated years of his life to establishing not one entity, but a community and connected network of local activists throughout Australia, while building connections to high-profile individuals and organizations in the transnational far right. Much like the Active Clubs inspired Sewell, NSN has become a model for far-right groups to emulate abroad.

Through his confrontational protest style, ongoing legal battles, and reputation among the international far right, Sewell has established himself as a motivated and unwavering activist for National Socialism and white nationalism in Australia. While he has repeatedly denied in interviews that his movement or organizations are anything but “law-abiding,” he and NSN/EAM have repeatedly threatened individuals ann been involved in violent clashes, something that likely won’t change just because his groups have shut down online.