Sitting on the back deck of his home on the Victorian border town of Barnawartha, his outline blurred by bong smoke, a petty criminal and martial arts instructor is discussing the idea of taking over Australia’s largest neo-Nazi group.

Jarrad “Jaz” Searby, a convicted criminal and gym owner, was until May the head of an Australian chapter of the right-wing extremist group Proud Boys.

The group, which became infamous for bolstering Donald Trump and provoking confrontations in Black Lives Matter protests and the Capitol invasion, and which has been designated a terrorist organisation in Canada, has always stopped short of identifying itself as neo-Nazi. It has publicly disavowed anti-Semitism and its founder described it as “Western chauvinist”, “anti-political correctness” and “anti-white guilt”.

Now Searby is explaining how things really work.

Talking to an infiltrator working deep inside the neo-Nazi National Socialist Network, Searby said his now-defunct chapter of the Proud Boys had been set up as a front, funnelling young men from the suburbs and towns of Australia through martial arts training, through “anti-white guilt”, then on to full-fledged neo-Nazism.

Once in, those recruits become part of a linked network of domestic and international groups considered by counter-terrorism authorities to be far more dangerous than the Proud Boys. Secret recordings revealed last week by The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes show that inside that network operated a cult-like breeding ground for extremism, with groups ready to split off, splinter and form new cells if one was banned or a key leader jailed.

The investigations have also, for the first time, revealed the identity of the secretive leaders involved in a wave of extremist recruiting across Australia.

Dangerous liaisons

In August this year, in a report for the US military’s Combating Terrorism Centre, extremist researchers Mathew Kriner and John Lewis describe how some factions of the US Proud Boys “acted as a ‘gateway’ for even more extreme groups”, including international neo-Nazi terror group The Base.

The report also observed how the “tactics” used by some Proud Boys to “evade detection and maintain plausible deniability” about their support for political violence and neo-Nazism would “outlive” the group and be adopted by offshoots and splinter groups. Missing, though, was direct evidence.

Enter “Jaz” Searby.

The resident of a small red brick house in the border town of Barnawartha near the Murray River, Searby is opening up to an undercover agent assisting The Age, the Herald and 60 Minutes. Months earlier, the agent successfully infiltrated the National Socialist Network’s Racism HQ in Melbourne. Now, as his last assignment, the mole has peeled off from the group for several meetings with Searby, whose importance, he feels, is growing.

“You know they ban any, like, they ban Nazis from the [Proud Boys] club … you know if you start to ask Jewish questions or something like that in the Proud Boys they will basically just try to kick you out,” Searby explained, unaware he was being recorded.

Searby, 37, has been introduced to the mole by Tom Sewell as one of the NSN’s key allies. He was one of four of the Proud Boys’ Victorian leaders but, growing angry at the group’s public disavowal of neo-Nazism and white supremacy, he’d decided to leave after using its brand to gain a band of several dozen followers.

His unkempt appearance and face tattoos are a stark contrast to Sewell’s army haircut and anti-drugs persona, but it was clear the two had struck an accord.

“Tom’s obviously, he was at the f---in far end of the scale [of racism], and you know me being more central was you know, I was with the Proud Boys, I had planned to be a gateway to Tom,” Searby explains. “I was going to funnel people in that direction, you know basically funnel people to do their own research, but we would generally lead them in that direction anyway.”

Searby was in touch with the then US leader of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, who praised Searby for a video posted online.

But it was his talent as a martial arts instructor that reminded Sewell’s right-hand man, Jacob Hersant, of one of the most dangerous neo-Nazis in Europe, Russia’s Denis Nikitin.

The founder of extremist clothing and MMA brand White Rex, Nikitin has been banned from entering several European countries. In a 2018 interview, he explained White Rex was a tool to promote his white supremacist ideology: “If we kill one immigrant every day, that’s 365 immigrants in a year. But tens of thousands more will come anyway … So now we fight for minds, not on the street, but on social media.”

Nikitin was already an inspiration to the National Socialist Network (NSN) and Hersant disclosed on a hidden camera that the NSN had introduced Searby to him.

“He is a really good dude,” Hersant said of the Russian. “I got him into contact with Jaz and they just see eye to eye coz they are both interested in the MMA stuff,” Hersant told the mole.

Another senior NSN member explained that if Searby replicated Nikitin’s MMA neo-Nazi network, it could give the NSN an offshoot operation that counter-terror authorities could not easily ban.

“It is just a good way of sort of like protecting ourselves as well. If our organisation gets proscribed as a terror group, you know Jaz can still operate, because he is not affiliated, he can still operate as a gym, just an MMA gym.”

Proscription is no idle fear. The leaders of the joint parliamentary security committee this week agreed, across the political aisle, that the National Socialist Network should be considered for banning.

After Searby’s introduction to Nikitin, the Australian hosted the Russian on a video podcast, praising him for starting “white boy fight clubs”.

“There is [sic] not many men left in the West willing to fight for what they believe,” Searby told Nikitin. “I’m a big fan … The people here in Australia will be inspired to see you standing up.”

Leadership spill

By April this year, Searby’s role inside the National Socialist Network was growing. Sewell revealed in the secret recordings that he had directed Searby to offer the group’s financial support to an Albury-Wodonga teenager and alleged neo-Nazi facing terrorism charges.

“Jaz and his mate have been knocking on the [alleged terrorist’s mother’s] door every day. I found his address, but she hasn’t been home,” Sewell was recorded saying. Sewell had explained it was the NSN’s duty to contribute to his bail fund. “He is one of our boys .... We spread and share the risk. That’s how it works.”

By late April, Searby had agreed to start training neo-Nazis, travelling to Melbourne to teach MMA to National Socialist Network recruits. When Sewell was remanded in custody on May 13 over an alleged assault – a charge which he is contesting – Hersant, the group’s interim leader, asked Searby to lead the fight training sessions that Sewell usually oversaw.

He agreed, but Searby also spied an opportunity.

While Searby had publicly called for authorities to “free Tom Sewell”, he was privately scathing of the NSN’s unquestioning support for its leader.

“Everyone is saying Tom is a political prisoner – I’m saying you can’t f---ing say that because once it comes out that Tom’s done something wrong, if he has, we are all going to look like f---ing idiots.”

Hersant, Searby said, was also too weak to lead the NSN.

Away from the NSN base, Searby confided in the undercover agent that, with Sewell in jail and the membership splintering, Searby could make his own play at becoming leader.

“I know all eyes are on me at the moment and I need to make the right decision.”

In early August, Hersant was still promoting himself as NSN leader, but he too is now facing assault charges. Sources say Searby is now a core member of the NSN’s leadership cell and increasingly looking to take control of the white supremacist movement in Australia’s south-east.

If Searby and Sewell had developed their own recruiting model, they were not alone. Sewell’s NSN was partnering with group’s other than the Proud Boys. And Searby was not the only committed extremist with overseas links and big ambitions.

The recruiters

Among Australia’s top national security figures, the director-general of ASIO, Mike Burgess, keeps a closer eye than anyone else on the neo-Nazi movement. What he sees disturbs him.

“This is spread across every state and territory and it’s regional and rural, as well as capital cities. So it’s truly national and they communicate effectively through their messaging apps,” Burgess says. They are organised as “a coalition of small groups,” they talk about “splitting themselves to hide”, and they are furiously networking with international extremists.

“That’s my only problem with Jacob … he is definitely very smart, but he’s a very soft kid … I’m not going to follow a 22-year-old ... And I know, I coached them, I watched them fight.”

“It’s the online community that allows them to connect with other like-minded people, have access to hateful ideologies, and go into forums, very dark places, where they can encourage acts of violence, or be encouraged for acts of violence,” Burgess says.

Before he was remanded, Sewell had strong contacts with senior Australian figures in the violent, UK-founded extremist group Combat 18. The members of the group (whose number, 18, is an alphanumeric code for Adolf Hitler’s initials: 1=A and 8=H) are spread across Europe and have been charged with multiple murders and serious acts of political violence. In 2019, the group was designated a terror organisation in Canada.

Senior Victorian Combat 18 member Daniel Newman is the liaison between the NSN and a violent skinhead prison gang that has vowed to protect group members in Victorian jails.

One of Combat 18’s former UK regional leaders, Nigel Bromage, who now works to deradicalise neo-Nazis, says word of the NSN’s networking success has spread to Britain. He’s spoken to British extremists in awe of their “brothers” in Australia.

Bromage, who years after fleeing the group carries the shame of the violence he inflicted on its behalf, warns that the allegiance between the NSN and Combat 18 is disturbing.

“They’ve (UK neo-Nazis) spoken about the growing Australian far right. And they are ... passing [on] good-practice rules for each organisation,” says Bromage.

An Australian Combat 18 encrypted chat room accessed by this masthead with the help of researchers in the White Rose Society, shows that shortly after Sewell was sent to prison to await his court case, Combat 18 was working to lure the NSN’s recruits, as well as those from another NSN feeder group, Antipodean Resistance (AR), over to the international group.

“He was in the AR/ NSN till we woke him up,” a Combat 18 member says in one thread obtained, describing a budding neo-Nazi he claims to have recruited.

Combat 18 is not the only violent overseas group expanding into Australia. In late 2019, American terror organisation The Base appointed its first Australian leader to oversee a recruitment drive. This Australian goes by the online alias “Volkskrieger” and his identity has been one of the best-kept secrets in Australia’s far right.

Unmasking Volkskrieger

The Base gained global notoriety in December 2019 when the FBI arrested several of its members for plotting violent hate crimes. In Canada and Britain the white supremacist group has been banned as a terror organisation for inspiring members to train with weapons and bring about a race war.

In Australia, it has also caused national headlines after revelations in March that it sought to recruit young men, including teenagers, who claimed to have been inspired or impressed by Brenton Tarrant’s massacre of Muslims at prayer in Christchurch, New Zealand.

A data leak from The Base in 2020 revealed its most important Australian leader was Volkskrieger – “people’s warrior” in German – who was putting up propaganda posters in Perth. The posters announced that The Base had set up shop in Australia: “We are here.”

By mid-2020, Volkskrieger had recruited at least five Australians. One of them was a Perth man using the alias “James Jameson” who boasted of his access to weapons and fondness for the Christchurch terrorist. But Jameson was also sloppy online, leaving a trail of clues confirming his identity as a 38-year-old Combat 18 member called James Greig who has previously faced weapons and drugs charges. Greig is of intense interest to national security agencies, including for purchasing equipment that could be used to make a bomb, although official sources have said there is no evidence suggesting he poses any imminent threat.

The recordings also suggest Volkskrieger is extremely security-conscious, giving away no biographical details and questioning how the group deals with informers and police.

But he still let slip a critical detail. He had joined a Perth group, the Society of Western Australian Nationalists (SWAN), a spin-off of one of the extremist organisations founded by Sewell. Volkskrieger told The Base’s US cell he was using his membership of this group to identify other young men to recruit.

If some Australian neo-Nazis are recruiting and expanding their movement by linking up extremist cells across the nation and overseas, not everyone approves. Members of Perth’s neo-Nazi sceneangry at Volkskrieger’s perceived betrayal, as well as other confidential sources who requested anonymity, identified Volkskrieger as Matthew Golos, a 23-year-old tradesman from the working-class Perth suburb of Ballajura.

Golos lives in a nondescript home with his parents and younger brother, who is still in high school. He didn’t respond to multiple attempts to contact him. Friends and relatives declined to comment.

In response to questions about Golos and SWAN, the federal police said in a statement that its counter-terror teams “are aware of this matter” and late last year raided “individuals connected to the Society of Western Australia Nationalists (SWAN)” seeking to disrupt the group. The AFP said the raids were sparked by concerns “some individuals were agitating for the group to transition to a more aggressive posture”, there was no immediate threat to public safety and no further details could be made public.

Photos of Golos in his high school years reveal a handsome teen, smiling at parties alongside friends and playing local football. There is no hint of his dark side in these images. But Jason Wilson from the US Southern Poverty Law Centre, who is the global expert on The Base, says recruiters such as Volkskrieger were intent on “trying to recruit and radicalise young men, and guide them towards acts of violence”.

“Some of the members have joined when they’re 15 or 16. And by the time they hit 19 or 20, they’re at the point of no return.”

There is nothing about Golos in the public domain that suggests he was The Base’s Australian point man, no hint of the man running between neo-Nazi cells and fielding calls from senior American hate merchants while holding down a job as a Perth tradesman.

The AFP says its raids in Perth last year had a “disruptive” effect. But given Golos is not answering questions, it’s hard to know whether he’s still on his journey of hate.