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Throughout much of 2025, Australia’s disparate and fragmented far right — from its populist party leaders to its extremist fringes — teemed at the edges of society and long-simmering tensions, stoking division and, seemingly, gaining ground and legitimacy.
It was a year in which neo-Nazis brushed shoulders with “ordinary mums and dads” at rallies targeting migrants, weeks before an Australian senator promoted the white nationalist concept of ‘remigration’, a form of ethnic cleansing.
Now, on the cusp of a new year, Australia is grappling with more social unrest in the aftermath of one of the deadliest acts of mass violence in decades: the Bondi Beach terror attack, in which 15 people were killed while attending a Jewish gathering on the first day of Hanukkah.
Police have linked the alleged perpetrators to the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) group, and there is nothing to suggest the attack itself had any connection to the far-right. But it has already added to a charged, politicised atmosphere in which the grief and anger felt across large sections of the community is being channelled by some into broader debates.

Amidst the ongoing rise of far-right movements seeking legitimacy and a foothold in mainstream discourse, it is crucial to reflect on the events of 2025 and strategize on preventing an increase in hate in 2026.

On August 31st, numerous protests erupted nationwide as thousands voiced their opposition to what they termed a government policy of “mass migration.” Protesters claimed that immigration had deteriorated their quality of life, demanding a reduction in the number of immigrants accepted into the country.

The demonstrations, which saw the unsettling presence of neo-Nazi groups, faced widespread denunciation from politicians and community leaders both before and after they took place.

Some were likely spurred on by social media posts shared in the lead-up to the event, claiming more than 1,500 migrants were arriving in Australia each day — a figure challenged by the Australian Bureau of Statistics and debunked by AAP’s FactCheck service.
Other baseless claims centred around the white supremacist ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory — the debunked notion that white populations are deliberately being ‘replaced’ through processes such as migration.
It’s a theory that was promoted by Brenton Tarrant — the far-right and white nationalist Australian extremist who killed 51 people at two mosques during the 2019 Christchurch massacre.
At several of the so-called “March for Australia” rallies held this year, attendees waving or draped in Australian flags stood shoulder to shoulder with men wearing all black — the uniform of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Network (NSN).
In several cities, the NSN — which is not the first or only white nationalist or far-right extremist group in Australia, but arguably the most recognisable — was present at the rallies and played a key role in their organisation, promotion and execution.
Leader Thomas Sewell was a ‘keynote’ speaker at the Melbourne event, addressing thousands of people, while other NSN members spoke at the Sydney rally.
Later that day, Sewell and others from the NSN allegedly stormed Camp Sovereignty — a sacred Indigenous protest site — attacking women and elderly people and destroying property.
Sewell and two other men were arrested days later in connection with the alleged incident. He was charged with dozens of offences, including violent disorder and assault, and spent more than two months in remand before being released on bail.

“This is a key component of the Network’s broader strategy to ‘mainstream’ and grow its influence by targeting issues that resonate with a wider audience,” stated an observer.

In some protest footage from the day, there is visible tension and pushback by other rally participants to the NSN members present, accusing the neo-Nazis of “hijacking” their cause.
“There’s always going to be that element that’s going to take it a little too far, unfortunately,” one protester in Melbourne told SBS News at the 31 August rally. “Most of us don’t stand with them.”
But many at the rallies did stand with them — physically and, at least in some part, ideologically — which has had a profound impact on members of Australia’s multicultural community.
Indian community leaders told SBS News in the lead-up to the rallies that they had urged members of their communities to stay inside for their safety, describing the demonstrations as an “attack on our Australian multicultural society”.
The NSN’s involvement was calculated. Last month, Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) director-general Mike Burgess said the NSN had identified an opportunity to raise its profile with the marches.
“It strategically and opportunistically exploited the organisers’ complaints about immigration and the cost of living,” Burgess said during a lecture for the Lowy Institute in Sydney.

Mike Burgess, the director-general of ASIO, noted that the National Socialist Network (NSN) saw the “March for Australia” rallies as an opportunity to enhance its visibility. Source: AAP / Darren England

A large crowd of people, many of whom are holding Australian flags.

ASIO director-general Mike Burgess said the NSN had identified an opportunity to raise its profile with the “March for Australia” rallies. Source: AAP / Darren England

Those rallies — some of which erupted into violence (including against counter-protesters), rage and racism — were flashpoints of a year in which, having long bubbled underneath Australia’s surface, the far right resurged. How were these groups able to gain so much traction?

For one, they were legitimised through the presence of multiple members of Australia’s parliament; from populist and right-wing parties, some of which also experienced a surge in popularity this year.
Pauline Hanson was present at one March for Australia rally, as was fellow One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts.

Queensland MP Bob Katter addressed a march in Townsville, briefly speaking through a black megaphone covered in white rune markings — ancient Norse mythology symbols co-opted to represent white supremacy — that was held by another man next to him.

The NSN had several similar megaphones at other protests, and a member boasted that Katter was “on the NSN rune megaphone” on Telegram.

Katter distanced himself from the group afterwards, later telling the Guardian that it was pushed in front of him, he pushed it away, and he didn’t know it had any “nasty connotations”.

Co-opting mainstream issues

Lise Waldek is a senior lecturer at the Department of Security Studies and Criminology at Macquarie University.
She says the far-right has been able to effectively co-opt social issues with “emotional resonance” such as unemployment and housing in their efforts to make their views mainstream.
That ‘mainstreaming’ process, she says, has been an objective of the far right in advancing its mission to end liberal democracy and trigger an “eruption of violence” against racial minorities, LGBTIQ+ people and others.

“They’re trying to shift what is an acceptable conversation, what is acceptable policy,” Waldek says.

Are we comfortable with people doing Nazi salutes? Are we comfortable with the growth of Islamophobia?

“They’re trying to shift those norms so that eventually they take power from within and then — most importantly — pull it down,” Waldek says.
Jordan McSwiney, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy at the University of Canberra, who researches far-right politics, says the neo-Nazi section of the broader Australian far right is the largest, most organised and visible it’s been in years.
“It’s got increased street presence, it’s got a growing community network,” he tells SBS News.

It’s also taken steps to form a political party under the name White Australia, a move Race Discrimination commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman says appears to be a “clear indication of far-right extremism attempting to be mainstream and legitimate”.

A manwearing a black jacket, white shirt and blue tie speaking against a wall.

Australia’s Race Discrimination commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman says there have been clear indications of far-right extremists “attempting to be mainstream and legitimate”. Source: AAP / Mick Tsikas

Last month, one of the group’s leaders said the party had surpassed the minimum 1,500 enrolled members required by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) as part of its registration process.

The AEC has said it has no scope under the legislation to block registration based on issues such as a group’s ideology, concerns from law enforcement, or individual members with criminal convictions (which multiple members have or are facing).
The NSN has taken steps to soften its language as the group has pushed further into the public eye, belying the extreme racism and goals of ethnic cleansing at the heart of the organisation.

McSwiney notes that while many of the March for Australia rallies were organised in large part by members of the NSN, alongside lead organiser, the pseudonymous ‘Bec Freedom’, it could never have been openly promoted with the group’s logos and would not have attracted as many people.

A website set up to promote the rallies originally included the term ‘remigration’ — a European white nationalist concept of ethnic cleansing involving the mass deportation of non-white populations from Western countries. That term was deleted shortly afterwards.
“So they dress neo-Nazism up in the language of ‘mass immigration’, and ‘we’re concerned about Australian culture and our way of life’, as a kind of rhetorical softening,” McSwiney says.
“March for Australia was an attempt to use the cover of the broader sort of anti-immigration movement — of which not everyone’s a Nazi, obviously — to go out and mask off, as it were. It also, of course, afforded them a great recruitment opportunity.”

McSwiney says it’s “absurd” that Sewell was able to speak to thousands of people on a podium.

Thomas Sewell speaking to a large crowd in Melbourne.

Neo-Nazi Thomas Sewell spoke to thousands of people during the March for Australia rallies in August. Source: Getty / Ye Myo Khant/SOPA Images/LightRocket

Weeks later, Roberts went on to use the phrase ‘remigration’ during a talk, something McSwiney says was met with glee from the neo-Nazis.

“They were like, ‘Holy s- -t, I never thought they’d actually use our words. This is so good. We’re winning.’ So that was a terrible development,” he says.

Extremism legitimised by politicians

While fringe and extremist groups captured attention this year, far-right ideas also crept steadily into more mainstream politics — and vice versa.
Hanson’s populist, far-right One Nation doubled its numbers in the Senate — from two to four — at this year’s election, as the Coalition suffered one of its worst-ever results.
Nearly three decades since it was first established, the party — whose policies include deporting tens of thousands of “illegal migrants”, slashing immigration levels, refusing entry to migrants from countries that foster “extremist ideologies”, and withdrawing from the United Nations Refugee Convention — has experienced a swing in opinion polls.
Polling by Redbridge last month indicated the party would have 18 per cent of the primary vote if an election were held.
The apparent rise in the party’s popularity comes even as, late last month, Hanson reprised her 2017 stunt by wearing a burqa on the Senate floor after a failed attempt to introduce a draft bill to ban the Muslim garment in federal parliament.
A woman wearing a burqa in parliament.

Pauline Hanson’s burqa stunt last month was widely condemned. Source: AAP / Mick Tsikas

The Senate chamber was suspended for 90 minutes, and Hanson was formally censured and given a week’s suspension from the Senate, amid condemnation from Labor government figures, Muslim senators Fatima Payman and Mehreen Faruqi, the Greens, and conservative politician Matt Canavan.

“The people will judge me at the next election,” Hanson vowed.

McSwiney says — whether it’s in parliament or on the streets — there are “no consequences for being racist”.

“Even in terms of institutional or reputational damage, it seems at this point,” McSwiney says.
The far right has also made strides globally. In Germany, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party — which Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has classified as an extremist organisation — achieved its best result ever in the 2025 federal election, with about 20 per cent of the vote.

In the United Kingdom, Nigel Farage’s far-right Reform UK party has made significant inroads into Britain’s political landscape this year — polling above the ruling Labour Party as well as the Conservatives.

Rallies allowed to proceed unchecked

The March for Australia rallies were not the only time neo-Nazis showed their faces in public this year.
On 8 November, in a rally that lasted roughly 20 minutes, around 60 members of the NSN amassed outside NSW Parliament House.
The group’s members, who attended the rally, this time with faces showing in broad daylight — in contrast to the masks and balaclavas worn at late-night marches throughout the year — wore windbreakers sporting the logo of Helly Hansen, a Norwegian clothing brand worn by far-right extremists for its initials HH — which neo-Nazis use to represent ‘Heil Hitler’.
They held a banner that called to abolish the “Jewish lobby”, expressed antisemitic and nationalist rhetoric with megaphones, condemned multiculturalism and repeated a Hitler Youth chant.
The rally was authorised as the group — under the name White Australia — had submitted a ‘Form 1’ more than a week before it took place, notifying police of their planned assembly. It went unchallenged by NSW Police and was not prohibited by the court, giving the protest’s organisers and participants certain legal protections.
Less than two weeks later, the NSW government said it would seek to amend the Crimes Act to ban public displays of Nazi ideology performed “without reasonable excuse”.
One of the men, a South African national named Matthew Gruter, who was among the group calling to “abolish the Jewish lobby”, left the country after his visa was cancelled by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke.

“The hate these fascists feel for Jews is the same hate they show for First Nations Australians, Muslims, queer people and many others,” Jewish Council of Australia executive officer Max Kaiser told SBS News last month.

It’s pretty outrageous that it was allowed to take place.

“But this is a wider problem. They’re going to keep doing these sorts of pop-up stunts wherever they can, and that’s the aim — to get media attention, to outreach people, to drive more people to their cause. It’s a serious societal issue that we need to tackle.”
In the wake of the rally, NSW Premier Chris Minns said it was “likely the case” that police needed more legislative powers to stop “this kind of naked racism and hatred on Sydney streets”.

A move towards greater police authority and legislative powers has frequently been the response from governments in confronting hatred this year. In NSW, hate speech laws were introduced in August that made it a criminal offence to deliberately incite racial hatred in public.

Earlier in the year, federal hate crime laws in response to antisemitic violence were toughened to increase maximum penalties for the display of Nazi symbols, the Nazi salute and prohibited terrorist organisation symbols, and impose mandatory minimum sentences for such offences.

Balancing anti-hate speech against anti-protest laws

After last month’s rally in NSW, activists and legal experts pushed back on a suggestion by Minns it going ahead could be used to justify anti-protest laws.
Human Rights Law Centre senior lawyer Arif Hussein told SBS News at the time: “Rather than making another knee-jerk law and order response, Minns should be focused on coming up with a real plan to combat the far right and neo-Nazi organising in his state.”
This week, a NSW government plan to effectively ban protests when there was a “terrorism designation” — restricting groups from lodging a Form 1 to seek authorisation — was also met with backlash, as Minns said pro-Palestinian protests were “unleashing forces in our community that are not being contained”.
Kaiser says moves to limit democratic freedom in response to “antisemitic stunts”, like the NSN rally last month, are counterproductive and will likely cause more harm than good, and that rather than giving police more power, the group called for united action to combat the far-right and the racism it breeds.

“I think we should be clear that what the National Socialist Network is doing is not a protest,” he says.

It’s very clearly hate speech, and very clearly provocative, and should be unlawful.

“Whereas protests, and particularly protest movements in support of [other issues including] Palestinian human rights, often bear the brunt of this law and order.”

While Australia has proscribed several foreign neo-Nazi groups designated as terrorist organisations — such as the UK-based Sonnenkrieg Division, US-based Atomwaffen Division, global group The Base and decentralised online network Terrorgram — it has not done so for any domestic ones.

The NSN, for instance, has not been found to have met the legal threshold required, involving evidence of actively planning or advocating for a terror attack.
Mario Peucker is an associate professor and principal research fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Industries and Liveable Cities at Victoria University and has extensively researched far-right political movements.
“Violence is a grey area because there’s rhetorical violence, there’s incitement to violence. We interpret that in the current debate about banning or proscribing the NSN is a debate that revolves around this,” Peucker says.

“They haven’t done a violent terrorist attack, but are they indirectly inciting or encouraging it?”

White nationalism ‘not a foreign concept’ in Australia

It’s possible the far right have been able to make ground, in part, because of broader anti-immigration sentiment arising from historical racism in Australia.
‘White Australia’, after all, was also the policy that for decades explicitly aimed to prevent people from non-white backgrounds from immigrating to Australia.

Last month, Nationals leader David Littleproud condemned the rally outside NSW Parliament House, saying that the participants were “trying to import hate from overseas” and that Australia was “better than” such behaviour.

But Peucker points out: “Nationalism is the founding principle of the country.”
“The problem with the political discourse about the far-right is that we locate it at the extreme end, as a fringe movement,” he says.
“Clearly, neo-Nazi groups are that fringe movement. But if we start addressing the problem of the far right, then we are a bit late. The problem starts in the mainstream, in the centre of society, historically, but also contemporarily. White nationalism is not a foreign concept to Australia.”
Peucker argues that Australians often struggle to find the language to discuss racism and white supremacy directly — placing issues of “social cohesion” on one end of the spectrum, with violent extremism on the other.
“We ignore the fact that this is a slippery slope, or at least there’s a susceptibility in the broader society that neo-Nazis can easily tap into. And we have no tools to protect that because we don’t acknowledge it [underlying racism],” he says.
McSwiney agrees that Australia has been unable to grapple with its racist past, including acts of terror.

“There’s no ownership or even memory,” he says, of the fact that Australia produced the deadliest far-right terrorist since Norwegian neo-Nazi Anders Breivik, in Brenton Tarrant.

A group of protesters walking down a street carrying a sign that reads "Stop Immigration".

Experts say neo-Nazis exploited issues around immigration with the March for Australia rallies. Source: AAP / Joel Carrett

“That is something that Australia consistently refuses, I think, in terms of both government, but also a collective discourse in media, to really take any ownership of,” McSwiney says.

He says this “collective amnesia” is to Australia’s detriment when it comes to trying to address the rise of the far right.

“The five-year anniversary of the attack came by last year, and by my count, only one federal parliamentarian made any acknowledgement of it. I think that is quite a damning indicator of the kind of amnesia and the lack of willingness to take seriously and reflect upon what this means,” he says.

What can be done?

Kaiser says it’s a “terrifying moment” in Australia, and that the lurch to the right feels more present after the Bondi massacre, with certain groups co-opting the tragedy to spout Islamophobic, anti-Palestinian and anti-immigration sentiments in its wake.
On an individual level, Kaiser says the best thing people can do right now is to challenge racism in all its forms, wherever they see it.
More structurally, Sivaraman says a whole-of-government, whole-of-society approach to tackle racism is needed — something advocated in the Human Rights Commission’s National Anti-Racism Framework, which was tabled in parliament last year but has not yet been endorsed or funded.

But even with the far-right at its most visible, Waldek says Australia is “seemingly more resilient” to its ideology than many other countries, and that it’s important to keep in mind that there are MPs calling out racism, and that Australia has voted two successive Labor governments.

McSwiney adds that while the White Australia party is likely to register, they’re “almost certainly going to have zero electoral impact”, citing previous far-right parties that have had limited success.
And while the “most significant mass mobilisation of the far right in Australia since 2015” is a “startling development”, he says there already appears to be a “downward trajectory” in the number of rally participants since August, and that the movement remains fractured, not unified.
“The success of the far-right, none of it’s inevitable.
“It’s a product of how government, media, civil society respond.”
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