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Australia’s biggest neo-Nazi group is in recruiting overdrive. Analysis by this masthead and The White Rose Society suggests more than 100 new members have joined the NSN in the past year. “It’s more than we’ve seen before,” say White Rose researchers. “Some meet-ups have hit record numbers.” All those new faces are what allowed the group to send so many “undercover Nazis” into the March for Australia rallies around the country on August 31, as revealed by this masthead, to control the crowd and antagonise counterprotesters. They tried the stunt again to a smaller degree at the second march on October 19. But the main show this time was after the rally – when prospective recruits were sent directly to neo-Nazi vetting meetings held at secret locations around the country. This masthead discovered the location of the Melbourne meeting in an inner-north car park and observed about 10 people run through ID checks with senior neo-Nazis holding clipboards, including convicted criminal Jimeone Roberts. Recruits were then given a second location to attend a “political seminar” introducing supporters to the NSN. White Rose researchers say rallies have always been the NSN’s key recruiting ground – their numbers also swelled after pandemic-era anti-lockdown protests, and key leaders themselves met at far-right rallies down the years. But, with many members – including Sewell – now facing serious charges for a string of violent assaults, NSN leaders have spoken of recruiting “younger” of late and looking to gain funding and legitimacy by starting a neo-Nazi political party. Parents of young men in the NSN, who did not wish to be identified for safety reasons, said they felt Sewell had exploited their children’s mental health, social isolation, or underlying conditions to build what he has called his “army of autistics”. “His thinking is so black and white, I’m worried what he could be persuaded to do,” said one parent, of their son. “It’s like there’s two of him. There’s the part that goes off as their soldier, and there’s my son who knows right from wrong. And that’s who I’m holding onto.” In a video to followers earlier this year, Sewell claimed to have “recruited hundreds of autistic teenagers”. New-Zealand-born Sewell served two years in the army and has spoken of taking traumatised teens under his wing to “toughen them up”. He used to work with some of the state’s most vulnerable children for his job in residential care. “Still, they don’t really care about us,” said one former member who called the group violent and “hypersexual”. Some families said their sons had found neo-Nazis on gaming platforms, or incel forums (which promote hatred of women). For others, it was at their local gym. But experts say the NSN’s reach has grown to the point where they no longer have to actively recruit. After stumbling across a TikTok video, recruits can then be funnelled to their local chapters for vetting by the NSN’s dedicated Telegram bot. While the group has ties to proscribed international terror groups such as Combat 18, the Proud Boys, Atomwaffen Division and The Base, the NSN itself has not been banned in Australia. “Get a white domestic slave” How Stirling Cooper the self-described “retired and repenting porn star” joined the ranks of Australia’s neo-Nazis is unclear. According to his website, he studied chemistry at university in Western Australia and worked as a pharmaceutical research scientist before moving to Miami. These days, he is increasingly based back home in Australia, or else driving his Ferrari through the twisting streets of Marbella, Spain – a favourite tax haven of gangsters and oligarchs. Since the Tates’ numerous arrests, Cooper has continued to defend the brothers and mix with their same circle of friends, often speaking of helping to carry out their plans, and discussing the Tates’ mission to get rich “running webcam models” with them on livestreams. Chat logs from a closed group within Tate’s War Room, first leaked to the BBC and obtained by this masthead, further reveal Cooper’s apparent involvement. As early as June 2021, Tristan Tate had named Cooper and a mutual friend as collaborators in his webcam “mission”. The group, the Tates made clear, was an elite “PHD – or Pimpin’ Hoes Degree” to help men make money by grooming women into online sex work on the site OnlyFans. Later, when Tristan told the chat how he regularly culled women from his “harem” who weren’t providing cash or status, an account linked to Cooper agreed. “I’ve become more ruthless with cutting women off if I’m only getting sex and nothing else,” it stated. Further messages sent by the account detail Cooper’s interactions with a woman he said he was planning to put “on OnlyFans/Cam”, in which she thanked him for “beating the brat out of me”. In one exchange, Cooper questioned why the woman had been on another man’s yacht, writing: “If a mafia bosses [sic] girl was on someone’s boat, do you not think someone would get shot in the head?” Cooper went on to detail for the other men in the War Room how he trained women, whom the group refer to as dragons, to believe their value lay in their “servitude”. In the same chat, among the sea of sexist memes and pictures of guns, one teenage member celebrated getting their learner’s driving permit. Leaked chat-logs from closed neo-Nazi Telegram groups in Australia obtained by this masthead reveal the NSN has also used grooming tactics on women to “test” their tolerance for Nazism. In an NSN chat that ran until February, members shared tips for “training” their partners to accept more and more racist views. One wrote his “current testing with [girlfriend]” had taken her “from TV-multyculty enjoyer to ‘it’s OK to be white’ in three days”. In a recent livestream, the NSN’s Joel Davis ranted about “race traitors” dating non-white women because they “don’t know how to make a white woman submit”, telling followers: “Watch your Stirling Cooper videos, get skills and get a white domestic slave if that’s your thing.” Online, Cooper’s videos echo Tate’s focus on controlling and “disciplining” women, and he has blamed perceived societal ills on women getting the right to vote. In leaked videos from inside Tate’s “university”, Cooper and Tate discuss how to isolate women from their family and friends. Cooper asks Tate to talk about “restrictions and the boundaries you put on a woman in terms of who she can talk to, where she can go”. Meanwhile, Tate has been flirting with Nazism himself lately – questioning the Holocaust, performing Nazi salutes, spreading the false conspiracy of white replacement theory, even supporting white supremacist Tommy Robinson. Yet, despite the NSN’s longstanding ban on women joining the group, neo-Nazis say they’re now “throwing [women] a bone”. In the spirit of their recent recruiting drive, Davis invited women to the October 19 seminars so they could get involved “beyond just breeding”. “Sew us some Australian flags,” he suggested. Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.
