Experts sound warning over ‘strategic’ move as neo-Nazi group National Socialist Network disbands due to hate laws

While most Australians spent Australia Day 2026 with friends and family, anti-Semitic speeches, neo-Nazi clashes and terror scares unfolded across the country. The incidents have underscored expert warnings that while Australia’s largest neo-Nazi group may be disbanding, far-right ideology and youth recruitment remain a serious threat. The National Socialist Network (NSN) announced it would shut down ahead of new federal hate laws, but experts have cautioned this move may be more calculated than genuine. Researchers from the White Rose Society Australia, an anti-fascist research collective, said the disbanding should be viewed as strategic rather than a retreat from extremist ideology. “Through their connections to groups like National Action in the UK, leadership in the NSN are aware that you can’t be cute with legislation like this,” the group told NewsWire. “The disbanding is genuine, but we understand their intention is to start a completely new political party that will likely include many of the same people, but perhaps not the same leadership team.” Monash University Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation director David Slucki also said it was unlikely the NSN would simply disband because of a change in laws. “Perhaps they’ve recognised the need to employ a different strategy in light of the new laws, but I would expect they’ll reappear with different stripes but the same hatred,” Professor Slucki told NewsWire. “That may indeed be part of their strategy, to anticipate the impact of the new laws while they regroup,” he added, noting that disbanding could make extremist activity harder to detect. The White Rose said the timing of the announcement was deliberate, allowing the NSN to dismantle its formal structures before the laws came into effect. “They’ve decided to disband now to make sure they’ve sorted out the logistics … they have an online infrastructure to shut down, ABNs to cancel etc.” Their warnings came as Australia Day protests and counter-rallies exposed the continued presence of organised racism and anti-Semitism on the streets. In Sydney, police charged Brandan Koschel, 31, after an allegedly anti-Semitic address at an anti-immigration March for Australia rally, where he is accused of calling Jewish people the “greatest enemy”. A Sydney court was told Mr Koschel referenced NSN leaders Joel Davis and Thomas Sewell in his speech and told the crowd “heil White Australia”. Mr Koschel allegedly referenced and breached the newly passed hate laws during the address, with a police prosecutor later describing the conduct as brazen. In Melbourne, police in riot gear intervened in confrontations between Invasion Day marchers and a smaller anti-immigration group, with officers investigating racist abuse and an alleged Nazi salute. The unrest followed the passage of the federal Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill 2026, which introduces severe penalties for hate-related offences, including up to 15 years’ jail for directing or recruiting for designated hate groups. The legislation was rushed through parliament earlier this month, drawing criticism from civil liberties groups but prompting the NSN to announce its disbandment. While the NSN’s public-facing organisation may disappear, both White Rose Society Australia and Professor Slucki warned that the broader movement and its recruitment efforts remained a serious concern, particularly for teenagers and young adults. “Teenagers and young people are still one of the key recruitment targets for neo-Nazis here,” White Rose said. “Recruiting people at or before the cusp of adulthood can affect the course of their whole adult life. These young men, in turn, are far more effective at recruiting slightly younger men and boys, and they turn into a sort of peer mentor for them to guide them deeper into the movement and effectively lay out the steps to make Neo-Nazism their whole lives.” Professor Slucki echoed this concern, emphasising the need to adopt a “whole-of-society approach to dealing with these forms of hatred” and understand what leads young people to the “allure of the far-right”. “What are the resentments, fears, and anxieties that these organisations have so successfully tapped into? What kinds of interventions can we design and implement at the local level to help steer young men away from the predators of the far right and other extremist ideologies and groups?” he said. White Rose said the NSN’s disbanding would disrupt their strategy of grooming and mentoring young recruits into the movement but warned that the underlying recruitment pipelines, including online contacts and peer networks, remained intact. They outlined a range of methods used to reach young people, particularly online and in informal social settings, including contacting “sympathetic commenters on TikTok”, approaching teenagers in public and adding them on Snapchat, and even meeting young people through gaming platforms such as Roblox. “Use of racist memes and names helps identify ‘like-minded’ users,” White Rose said. It also warned that so-called “racism lite” content, as well as careless media coverage, could unintentionally aid recruitment. “Thoughtless reporting on the NSN and its ‘actions’ also leads to recruitment; media regurgitating NSN members’ quotes verbatim or republishing their propaganda, including all of their contact details,” the group said. While the federal government’s new laws could make it easier to ban extremist organisations and impose harsh penalties for membership, recruitment, funding or support, the White Rose Society said it remained unclear how effective the legislation would be in disrupting extremist activity long term. Professor Slucki added that “they will always find loopholes”, whether it’s incorporating “different symbols, slogans or language”. “This type of extremism is slippery and malleable,” he said. “It crosses borders and generations. Laws can help make it more difficult for them to organise and to spread their hatred, but they will find loopholes and we will need to continue to be vigilant against the threat they pose.” They also warned of a potential unintended consequence of the NSN’s collapse: the loss of visibility over highly radicalised individuals. “The risk is that they will continue to find new ways to peddle hatred,” Professor Slucki said. “The behaviour of these groups already constitutes forms of intimidation and harassment, so I expect they’ll continue to find new ways to do so.” Despite the new laws being prompted by the Bondi terror attack that killed 15 people at a Jewish Hanukkah event, White Rose said the incident had not significantly altered the NSN’s trajectory. “The Bondi attack didn’t have a huge impact on the NSN in the way that something like the Lindt cafe siege had on the extreme right-wing scene 11 years ago,” the group said. It said this was partly because the victims were Jewish, meaning the group couldn’t easily pretend to care or express sympathy without contradicting their extremist, anti-Semitic ideology. White Rose said genuinely protecting young people from extremism would require far more than banning organisations. It called for funding for community-based deradicalisation programs, support groups for families of radicalised people, and “effective” anti-racist and respectful relationships programs in schools. It also warned that broader social conditions were fuelling radicalisation. “On a higher level, to be a young person in today’s society can seem like a pretty hopeless affair,” the group said. “Without correcting that fact, people are always going to look to easy answers. “Albo (Prime Minister Anthony Albanese) and Sussan (Opposition Leader Sussan Ley) may not be up to the job of fixing society to this extent.”