Ambushing a premier, leading marches: How neo-Nazis grabbed the spotlight in 2025
Experts say they have never seen Australia’s neo-Nazis as emboldened as they were in 2025. But under new crackdowns, they’ll have to fight to stay in the frame.
Ambushing a premier, leading marches: How neo-Nazis grabbed the spotlight in 2025
As if on cue, he appeared – striding suddenly into frame at an otherwise standard morning press conference in September.
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan had been speaking about working-from-home policy, but questions quickly turned to the violence that had erupted at anti-immigration rallies that weekend, when neo-Nazis stormed an Indigenous camp and assaulted women and elderly counter-protesters.
Thomas Sewell gatecrashed Premier Jacinta Allan’s press conference in the days after neo-Nazis led violent clashes at the March for Australia anti-immigration rallies they organised.Credit: Nine News
Now, the man who allegedly led that attack – the bald, mustachioed leader of the National Socialist Network, Australia’s biggest neo-Nazi group, Thomas Sewell – was stalking up behind Allan. And he had some questions of his own.
It was a made-for-television moment. Allan retreated as Sewell shouted insults and falsehoods at her, held back by security but shadowed by one of his lieutenants filming the stunt.
The image of Sewell appearing behind Allan – chosen by The Age as one of the defining images of the year – would take on an even more disturbing life online as neo-Nazis compared their leader to a lion stalking antelope on the savannah.
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It was just one of the many stunts the National Socialist Network would pull in 2025 as its members stepped insistently into frame.
During the federal election, their far-right associates bragged of being given “private intel” on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s location at a Melbourne hotel where they ambushed him– again with aggressive questions.
The idea then was to pose as “everyday Aussies” concerned about immigration. To play, as Sewell calls it, “the sneaky Nazi” to broaden their appeal and drag the right further to the extreme.