AARON PATRICK: Melbourne neo-nazi Thomas Sewell goes national confronting Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan

For a few years now, the small group of researchers monitoring Australian far-right groups have warned about violent threats brewing against female political leaders.

On Tuesday morning, their fears came a step closer when Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan was targeted by Australia’s highest-profile neo-nazi, Thomas Sewell, at a press conference in West Melbourne.

The 32-year-old labourer, who said he encountered the Premier by accident while walking to court, got into a shoving match with two of her bodyguards when they blocked him from approaching her. As Ms Allan stared, Sewell said several times “get your hands off me” to the guards, who were wearing civilian clothes and were likely to be Victorian police officers.

After the brief confrontation, the guards and Sewell separated, allowing him to make a brief speech to journalists and camera crews about protest rights. “You’re a coward and we’re going to take our country back from politicians like you,” he said as Ms Allan silently walked away with one of her backbenchers.

Afterwards the Premier issued a written statement declaring she was “undeterred” and proud “nazis oppose me and my government”.

Arrested

Sewell was not arrested at the scene and a few hours later a police spokesperson said no complaint had been received. But that afternoon, as Sewell left the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court, where he is the defendant in another case, about 25 police officers wearing bullet-proof vests arrested him and two other men on the court steps.

Sewell had earlier, almost in the same place, given journalists interviews in which he made criticisms of big business and government similar to those used by Germany’s Nazi Party in in the 1930s. “When people like me take power, these people are going to be punished for the crimes they have committed against the Australian people,” he said.

The day’s events, while adding to his serious legal problems, generated what the extremist has long sought: a budding national profile that will help him build a fascist-like political movement dedicated to advancing white superiority.

‘Escalation’

A former soldier, the Melbourne-based Sewell received national media coverage on Sunday when he and a small group of black-clad supporters hijacked an anti-immigration march in Melbourne. It was exactly the kind of attention sought by the National Socialist Network, who was already notorious in his home state for protests against Jews, Aborigines and transgender people.

One expert on extremist groups said Tuesday’s behaviour was designed to generate attention that could help the National Socialists recruit more young men alienated from mainstream society. “They are trying to capitalise on the spotlight they obtained on Sunday,” said Imogen Richards, a Deakin University lecturer. “It’s a pattern of escalation.”

Sewell has been tracked by an anti-fascist group known as the White Rose Society for years. Last March, in an online discussion on the X social media site, Sewell stated that he had advised sympathetic activists in the United States and Europe over the previous four years and helped establish about two dozen neo-nazi groups.

“He is also unapologetically a neo-nazi and does not shy from the ‘Jewish Question’, openly praising Adolf Hitler and National Socialism,” the group wrote.

Warning

Last year the White Rose Society raised concerns that online harassment of prominent women could turn violent, and cited the murder of Labour British MP Joanne Cox in 2016 by a young fascist fascinated by nazism.

“We are extremely concerned about the potential for an attack on an Australian politician,” the group wrote. “We consider female politicians who are Indigenous and Muslim particularly at risk.”

Experts also assume Sewell’s group is being monitored by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, or ASIO, which warned in February that groups like his would engage in “provocative, offensive and increasingly high-profile acts” to generate publicity. The greatest threat, though, is from people on the fringes of extremist groups inspired to engage in terrorism, ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess said.

The day before confronting the Premier, on Monday, Sewell was in court fighting charges that he intimidated a policeman and breached personal safety intervention orders issued to protect the policeman and a relative. Sewell allegedly posted about them on Rumble, a video hosting website popular with the far right. The case was delayed two weeks because something happened to one of the police’s witnesses over the weekend.

On Sunday after the March for Australia event Sewell and a group of followers stormed an Aboriginal protest encampment in the Kings Domain in central Melbourne, according to footage posted online. The arrest of Sewell and two others on Tuesday afternoon was over the violence at what has been called Camp Sovereignty, the police told reporters.

Inside the court, Sewell and his supporters became involved in a confrontation by two unidentified men, which was broken up by police.

Soft justice

Ironically, Sewell has benefited from a criminal justice system that his organisation regards as too soft on immigrants and other minority groups.

In 2022 he was convicted of assaulting a security guard at Nine Entertainment Co’s offices in Melbourne, where he went to complain about his portrayal on the A Current Affair television show. He was sentenced to community service.

The following year he was convicted of violent disorder for attacking hikers who stumbled across a National Socialists training camp in Victoria’s Grampians. On bail over the Nine assault, Sewell and his men smashed the hikers’ car windows and took a phone that had been used to film them, the court heard.

Sewell was originally charged with armed robbery, robbery, theft, criminal damage, affray, assault with a weapon, violent disorder, assault and committing an offence while on bail. Those charges were dropped in exchange for the guilty plea and he was immediately released from remand.

On early Tuesday afternoon a petition on Change.org to deport the New Zealand-born Sewell had been signed about 3500 times. The government can revoke the citizenship of foreign-born people who have been convicted of serious offences or committed terrorism, the organisers said.