Exclusive: In leaked videos, Lads Society founder explains aim to encourage men to join by posing as a fitness group before exposing radical aims

This article is more than 10 months old

This article is more than 10 months old

In a series of leaked videos the leader of an extremist white nationalist group has revealed his aim is to attract members from mainstream society under the guise of a men’s fitness club, while secretly harbouring an explicitly white supremacist agenda.

The plans include the ambition to create a series of “Anglo-European” enclaves in Australian cities, based on a deliberately segregated Afrikaner town in South Africa.

Internal videos from the Lads Society seen by Guardian Australia also show the group’s founder, Tom Sewell, telling members they had been born “just in time” for a coming “race war” and discussing the group’s aim to encourage the “speed and ferocity of the decay” of society.

Formed in 2017 by members of the now-defunct far-right group the United Patriots Front, the Lads Society has chapters in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Its members have been linked with plans to branch stack the NSW Young Nationals, and earlier this year Sewell also claimed he tried unsuccessfully to recruit the alleged Christchurch gunman.

Outwardly, the Lads Society has often sought to present itself as a community group and gym focused on physical fitness. Its website says the group encourages “individual improvement, and work[ing] to build a stronger community”.

But as Sewell explains in the videos, the Lads Society is merely a “place-holder” aimed at encouraging “normies” to join before it eventually transforms into an explicitly white nationalist organisation which “advocates for the interests of the Anglo-European Australian”.

“It doesn’t matter how extreme or how radical we are inside our own circles, we need to maintain this really good public presence,” he says in one video.

Over a series of undated videos shot on selfie-mode with his phone, Sewell lays out his long-term plan for the group, concedes there was “a level of entry-ism as to what was going on with the Nats” and also chides members for over-eating and complaining about the $50 a month Lads Society fee.

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Most disturbing, though, is his repeated reference to a plan to establish “Anglo-European” only suburbs in Australian cities, based explicitly on the whites-only town of Orania in South Africa.

The group, Sewell says, plans to first “build a network of like-minded people”, before using its clubhouses as a “staging point” to begin “colonising suburbs” by “centralis[ing] within a fiscal [sic] space in our cities via businesses, gyms, cafes, clubhouses”.

“The Lads Society is merely a placeholder,” he says in one video.

“The point of starting this up is to create a network of young men, where we can sit down and organise the building of a physical community group, a group that advocates for the interests of the Anglo-European Australian.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tom Sewell says the Lads Society plans to use its clubhouses as a ‘staging point’ to begin ‘colonising suburbs’. Photograph: YouTube

In other videos, he floats the idea of a separate “collectivist farming” commune in a rural area, saying “the early stages of fascism” will “look quite communistic”, and says the group may seek to run political candidates.

“The only purpose in the future as a senator or an MP [is to] ensure the interests of our future community group, which will be a fifth column,” he says.

“It’s not our country any more, they’re not our institutions any more, it’s not our government any more.

In its annual report, Asio said that 'extreme rightwing groups in Australia are more cohesive and organised than they have been in previous years'.

“As wider society continues to decay we [will] encourage the speed and ferocity of the decay, we [will] politically represent ourselves and our interests, we [will] bleed the old beast dry, taking from it all its useful people, its resources and health until all that is left in what used to be Australia is a dying carcass weak and crippled by its own hypocrisy.”

While there is no time-stamp on the videos and no suggestion the Lads Society have actually executed any of their plans, it paints a troubling picture of the group’s ambition amid increasing concern among security agencies about the role of far-right organisations in fomenting violent extremism.

In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald in May, Sewell said the group did not condone violence “at this stage” but that “if you make the peaceful alternative impossible, you leave only the other option”.

In October the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation warned that activity among extreme rightwing groups in Australia has increased in recent years and will remain an “enduring threat”.

In its annual report, Asio said that “extreme rightwing groups in Australia are more cohesive and organised than they have been in previous years”.

“The rightwing extremist attacks in Christchurch on 15 March 2019 demonstrate that it takes only a single individual to embrace and act on a violent extremist ideology to have a global impact,” the report stated.

“Any future extreme rightwing-inspired attack in Australia would most likely be low capability and conducted by a lone actor or small group, although a sophisticated weapons attack is possible.”

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In the videos, Sewell betrays an obsession with the group’s “optics”, saying they needed to use “normie speak”, including exploiting issues such as the so-called “African gangs” problem propagated by mainstream politicians, including Peter Dutton, to drive interest in the group.

“We can touch on things like the Sudanese gang problem and all this sort of stuff and drive normies into our organisation,” he says.

“The masses of our movement is not going to be the super red-pilled, the super JQ-aware, Stormfront, 1488 blokes. The masses of our movement is the disgruntled white, young male population [who] want to be part of something bigger than themselves and are somewhat aware of this racial displacement and the failures of this multi-culty system and state.”

JQ stands for the “Jewish Question”, while Stormfront was one of the oldest and largest neo-nazi sites on the internet described by the anti-hate group Southern Poverty Law Center as the “murder capital of the internet”. The phrase 1488 is a common shorthand expression used by white supremacists referring to the “14 words” and Heil Hitler.

The New Zealand-born Sewell has long been associated with the far right in Australia, and was Blair Cottrell’s deputy in the United Patriots Front.

Though now a more peripheral figure in the Lads Society, Cottrell also features in some of the leaked videos mocking far-right figure Avi Yemini, talking about the size of his quadricep muscles and discussing plans to distribute “it’s OK to be white” posters in the suburb of Moorabbin in Victoria.