I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven AM. Australia is neo Nazis performing secret mothers groups and have plans for a network of home schools for their children. When a government minister expressed concern, she was threatened, the latest in a string of threats against female politicians by neo Nazis. Now the Federal Police have praised the alarm, praising questions
about the risk of political violence. Today, Crime Reporter at the Age Sharon Grotch on the National Socialist Network's threats and weather authorities are doing enough to stop them. It's Tuesday, December night. So Sharon, can we begin by talking about this home schooling network that the NSN, the National Socialist Network says.
That it's running.
When did you first hear about this?
So the National Socialist Network Australia's biggest neo Nazi group, and they've been kind of riding a wave of infamy of late off the back of all these stunts they've been doing that include secretly organizing the March for Australia and immigration rallies.
If we do not.
Maintain our demographics, if we do not stop immigration, then our death is.
Certain and that's where their leader, Thomas Saul, was charged with assault for allegedly storming an indigenous camp afterwards and attacking counterprotesters. So it was at his bail hearing for that. Actually Saul was arguing he's a family man, his group have been running all these community events, and he led slip they were building homeschool networks.
Too far right activist revealed his educational aspirations in a court here in September, claiming his National Socialist Network is looking to expand into homeschooling.
I noticed the NSNs Mothers group have been growing a lot lately. They'll often post pictures of all the Nazi tradwives getting together with their little ones. So I thought, look, I'll take a look, and I found they've actually been building this network of family cliques, as Saul calls them,
around the country for about a year now. Saul had laid out his plans to form a school of sorts too big for the government to shut down, maybe around last year, and they've spoken a bit about it in their internal chats, some of which have been leaked to me. So Saul basically wants to create what he calls a parallel economy and a society for white people before he gets around to actually deporting all the people of color,
which the group also want to do. But experts are worried they're trying to mold their own hitless soldiers with this. I mean, one of a former Nazi recruit told me he's heard about all these second generation Nazis or kids of members joining their stunts, and I've noticed a few of them as well.
A right, okay, And so over the weekend the Victorian government spoke about this. It said that it had gone to the Education Regulator and asked it to investigate the matter. So tell me more about how the Victorian government is responding and what we're hearing then from the NSN.
Yes, So once Saul mentioned that in open court, the Victorian government decided we better take a look.
Well, I don't think there's any place for hate anywhere in this state, and particularly not in any kind of educational system.
It's also a crime to run an unregistered school. In February here the Allen government increased penalties for those who don't complied with child safety rules in other standards like that. So the NSN weren't happy to hear this said before if the government ever tried to come for their kids. That is when he'd become a terrorist and start killing people.
That's a direct quote. So then one of the government ministers, Gabrielle Williams, she was asked about this on the weekend and she said she was worried action might be needed.
These allegations will be of great interest to the Victorian Regulator and in assessing what may be going on and what action may need.
To be taken up very quickly. One of the senior nats is in the group, a guy called Jimmy and Roberts. He started targeting her online. He posted her photo on Telegram and he had a bit of a warning saying Gabrielle should be wary of the rhetoric she's engaging in. And he made a few other posts as well where he railed about the government policing white people educating their kids.
And in one of those posts he said Newton's third law might be that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, but Jimbo's first law is fuck around and find out.
Okay, And what about Thomas saw He is, as you say, he's the leader of the Edison. He was released on bail recently. What have we heard from him since then?
Yes, so he was released after all that, he's out on bail and he had a big homecoming of sorts actually the other weekend, with a record number of Nazis turning up to train with him in a Melbourne park for their monthly boxing sessions. But what caught my interest was his appearance on a show with the British White Supremacist last week. Saull vowed to make an example of his enemies in Australia that would make the murderous rampage and planned race war of Charlie Manson's cult look moderate.
And these are some of his first public comments since he was released on bail. He was on there also bragging about all the money and influence now flooding to his group as its recruitment numbers saw and unfortunately his raj they are growing and other extremists overseas are really rallying around them. That's the context of this new homeschooling headmaster I.
Guess coming up the threats to female politicians and a warning from the Federal Police sharing these threats to Minister Gariel Williams. They haven't happened in isolation. Last month, two Nazis were charged by the Australian Federal Police over threats to federal MPs. Tell me about that.
Yes, so last month was a big one for the innocent. Our papers got a tip they were going to hold a rally outside New South Wales Parliament and sure enough they turned up with their banners chanting Hitler youth slogans like blood and honor. We have since unmasked a lot of them, particularly my colleagues City Morning Herald Alegraspender was one of the first politicians really condemning that action online, and she and another female MP, Kelly Sloane. Sloan is
actually now the New South Wales Liberals new head. They both started getting threats and nasty comments for speaking out pretty quickly. One message appeared on telegram that really stood out. It was from a prominent figure in the NSN, Joel Davis. He urged his supporters to rhetorically rape a leg responder.
He was linking to her post and calling on their far right army of social media trolls to pile on and abuse her basically, but Spender reported it to the AFP and he was arrested and he's been refused bail actually, so he's still in custody.
Yesterday, an investigation undertaken by the National Security Investigations Team in New South Wales led to the arrest and charging of a thirty year old man for the offense of using a carriage service to harass a federal member of Parliament.
A day after that, another neo Nazi in Melbourne was charged for harassing Senate to Livia Thorpe. He was making threatening calls, sending emails. He even stomped on an Indigenous flag outside her office, according to police, and another man in Tamworth was charged for making threats to the Prime Minister online.
The twenty nine year old Tamworth man is accused of harassing a high office holder online, whose Seven News understands was Prime Minister Anthony Albanezi.
We don't know if that guy was a Nazi, but when police raided his house they said they found a jail blaster rifle ammo. So he's now been charged with weapons charges as well.
Right, Okay, so at this stage there's threats, there may also.
Be weapons involved.
So how big is the risk here of political violence or some sort of attack.
The AFP came out last week and with all these arrests and said, yes, these threats to politicians are becoming a big issue for them.
Threats against federal parliamentarians is a significant issue for us, and we are on the record previously talking about the year on year increase that we're seeing in relation to threats. It's at sixty three percent over the last four years, and then the financial year of twenty four to twenty five we've seen upwards of nine hundred and fifty one referrals or threats against parliamentarians.
We've reported a lot on this group having really close ties to extremists around the world, including designated terror groups
like the Base, who have recruited NSM members before. But security services always say the group has to be caught in the act of planning a terror attack to meet their threshold for being designated themselves, and designating the NSN is something the group is really worried about, as it was a strong tactic used to disband Nazi groups in places like the UK, so at the moment, obviously people
are worried. The climate is really heightened. A lot of this though for the Nazi seems to be around the theater of it being seen to bully their enemies into silence. They call it ratio in when they ratioed, callis sloan and allegor spender, claiming victory that way. They're now also trying to push into politics and try and sort of indoctrinate and recruit more members of the public under this kind of cloak of being everyday Australians with you know,
legitimate concerns about immigrations. So it is sort of hard to say how this is going, but certainly police are watching them really closely, and so is ASI.
Oh yeah, And as you say, this is all coming in the context of the NSN becoming more public, more vocal with these recruitment drives rallies. So can you tell me a bit about how you are thinking about their growth at the moment and why it's happening right now.
Well, the INNOCN has for a while now been one of the most high profile Nazi groups in the world. I hate to mention that because they love the publicity, but their numbers are huge. But they run a particularly effective active club model basically where they get these young vulnerable men in for boxing and training boot camps, camping trips and then they start with the Hitler worship. But in the past year I've noticed they've really gone into
this recruiting overdrive. Those numbers seem to be doubling, especially in Melbourne and New South Wales, and they've been pulling all kinds of stunts to hijack the national debate. I mean, you might remember they were booing during the Anzac Day dawn service. They were ambushing politicians on the federal election trail, including the Prime Minister. We revealed all of that at the time as being this coordinated push to look like
everyday Aussies. They're also seemed to be going after people with money and influence, and you know, they've recruited quite a lot of rich young men lately from pretty influential families. So they were also trying to form this neo Nazi political party. They're actually saying now that you know, at least they're claiming they've signed up the fifteen hundred members they need to re just a federal neo Nazi party, and they're really planning to go after the upcoming state
elections in New South Wales and Victoria too. They're wary of police crackdowns, because there's been a lot lately and they're trying all different kinds of tricks. They're also very emboldened by the success by the publicity they've had of late, so we've sort of hit a bit of a tipping point where it's quite hard now to ignore them. Often as journalists we don't want to give these guys oxygen.
But what they're doing, the tactics they're using are quite scary and quite effective, and they're worthy of exposing.
Do you think that they will be able to get to the point of running candidates? Does that seem likely?
Well, look, that's their plan and they certainly are giving it a crack. They've been thinking about things like preference deals. They've been thinking about, you know, how big a percentage of the vote they'd actually have to get, and they've said that they think they're best shot is in South Wales in Victoria because of their electoral rules. Their goal really is to take votes away from the Liberal Party so they can form a coalition with other far right
groups who are sympathetic to some of their views. But once you're threatening people with violence, can you really then stand in Parliament and say you're an upstanding citizen. We'll have to wait and see, but certainly people are starting to wake up and take them seriously.
Sharon, thank you so much for your time.
Thanks for having me.
Ruby.
Also in the news, there are only a few more current MPs in Federal Parliament that One Nation leader Pauline Hanson would be open to recruiting. Hanson made the comments after it was finally confirmed that Barnaby Joyce would be joining her party after his recent defection from the Nationals.
Hanson said she's opened roughly seventy branches across the country in the last couple of months, part of her expansion effort as the far right party performs historically well in the polls and the federal government will not extend the subsidy for household electricity bills. The Treasurer has confirmed a subsidy of seventy five dollars per quarter per household started in mid twenty twenty three and was extended twice due
to cost of living pressures. Charmers said it was a hard decision to scrap the discount, but it had to be done because of budget pressures. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. Thanks for listening.