The wicked dilemma we face in confronting Sydney’s neo-Nazis

Sixty neo-Nazis in black fatigues with nothing better to do on a Saturday morning set out to achieve two things when they stood shoulder to shoulder for a photo outside Australia’s oldest parliament.

One was to snub their noses at NSW Police, who approved their hate-filled antisemitic rally. The second was to gain as much publicity as they could to fuel an ambitious membership drive. The National Socialist Network, and its emerging political wing White Australia, pulled off both.

The now-infamous demonstration on the steps of NSW Parliament presents a wicked problem for police, politicians and, of course, the media. It creates an impossible balancing act between ignoring a nasty mob that thrives on attention while also acknowledging that angry young men are increasingly prepared to show their faces publicly as members of a white supremacy group.

The latter, disturbing reality, cannot be overlooked. These young, disenfranchised white males are a legitimate threat to social harmony.

“Modern neo-Nazis crave attention and publicity,” the nation’s spy chief Mike Burgess said only last week. “It gives them credibility and helps with recruitment. They see journalists as ‘useful idiots’ in this regard, and they celebrate even the most critical coverage because it inevitably leads to a surge in membership applications.”

Just as Burgess predicted, Jack Eltis, a 28-year-old Sydney air-conditioner mechanic who is leader of the NSW branch of White Australia, boasted of the coverage his Saturday rally attracted.

On his Telegram account, Eltis – the understudy to now-jailed Thomas Sewell (the national head of the NSN) – gleefully posted on Tuesday: “NSW upper house talking about us all afternoon and absolutely seething and hysterical stating that our Form 1 was very sophisticated and seething that it was irrefutable and we didn’t break any laws.”

The Form 1 Eltis referred to is a document that has attracted significant interest since Saturday. Eltis lodged that form, as is required for any demonstration that might block roads, with NSW Police within the required time. It was sophisticated (the description used by Labor MP and barrister Stephen Lawrence in the upper house) and clearly written with the guidance of a lawyer.

Police sought legal advice on that form, which laid out clearly that White Australia would be unfurling a banner saying “Abolish the Jewish lobby”. The form also stressed that there would be “no prior advertising to the general public, nor public attendance”. Organisers would, according to the document, “maintain a peaceful atmosphere”.

The advice to police was that there were no grounds to challenge the legality of the rally in court. Whether the name White Australia raised red flags with key officers in the police force, including Deputy Commissioner Peter Thurtrell, is unclear but what did become quickly apparent was that a decision was made to keep the most powerful figures in the state, the premier and the police commissioner, in the dark about the rally until after the event.

The question is why. One reasonable theory is that the police did not want to give these neo-Nazis the attention they desperately desired. This could explain why a near-identical White Australia rally took place on June 22, again on the steps of Parliament House, with no fanfare.

At that demonstration, the neo-Nazis held a banner calling for an “end to immigration”. As they did on Saturday, the black-clad group posed for a photo (which was later shared on their social media channels) and left Macquarie Street. The only difference was that the June rally went unnoticed.

This time, after media inquiries from this masthead, Premier Chris Minns hurriedly called a press conference with Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon. The pair, rightly, denounced White Australia, their ideology and their intentions.

The focus and attention on White Australia, which wants to sign up the required 750 members so it can register as a political party in NSW ahead of the 2027 election, has only increased since then. Minns and Lanyon have been peppered with questions as to why police, security and senior parliamentary figures knew about the rally ahead of time, but they did not.

Again, in a police quest to keep the rally as uneventful as it was in June, was it a calculated decision to shield Minns and Lanyon from a politically fraught situation? If this was the case, the best intentions failed. The premier has been forced to speak about neo-Nazis every day since Saturday.

And since then, Minns has proposed new laws, likely to be pushed through in the final sitting weeks of parliament, which could ban such phrases as “blood and honour” – chanted at the Saturday rally – which invokes the Hitler Youth movement.

Minns has also confirmed the government will reintroduce legislation to allow police to disperse protesters outside places of worship. This would be a tightening of similar laws struck down in the Supreme Court last month. Within just four days, White Australia has become a well-known force.

Burgess, who delivered his sobering speech to the Lowy Institute last week, lamented that the members of the NSN like to jokingly thank the media for any free promotion. “At the same time, though, its ideology and its provocative, offensive and high-profile actions are antithetical to social cohesion,” he told the Sydney think tank.

And this is the dilemma facing lawmakers, police and media. Do we ignore the neo-Nazis as we would a petulant child and hope their anger peters out? Or has that moment passed us by?

And if we do ignore them, do we risk them mobilising behind our backs – and they become that political force they want to be.

Alexandra Smith is state political editor.

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