Speaking on a webinar in February, Sewell told his followers they were being smashed by authorities, hit by raids and tangled up in expensive litigation under new state laws outlawing Nazi symbols and salutes. Forming a political party was “the only way we’re going to be protected” from serious jail time, in his view.

“Our plan ultimately is to challenge the swastika by incorporating it in some capacity into our organisation,” he said. “Then it is political communication.”

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While the National Socialist Network might be “deluded in thinking they can get a Nazi elected”, researchers at the White Rose Society say “you just have to look at the way [some] mainstream conservatives” have latched onto the Shrine booing stunt, to question Welcome to Country ceremonies, “to get a preview of how a Nazi political campaign will be used to push the Overton window”, referring to efforts to bring extreme views into the mainstream.

Far from deflating their party launch, researcher Dr Kaz Ross expects the publicity from the stunt will boost it. “They’re eating One Nation’s lunch,” she said. “And they’re growing.”

The AEC has limited grounds to knock back an application if the Nazi group meets all the requirements because the agency has to stay apolitical. It could rule that a party name is “obscene”, for example, but only along very narrow grounds that experts say the group’s planned name is unlikely to trigger. Objections lodged by the public and other parties also face narrow criteria to block them.

Sewell told followers the group would form an alliance with other small parties to the right of the Liberals to “get our numbers”. But he predicted that within a decade or so, the Nazi party will have “crushed” them, including One Nation, with the exception of the MAGA-inspired Libertarians, who will “agree with a lot of our policies”.

Jordan McSwiney, who researches the far right in Australia, expects if the group does clear its 1500 membership hurdle, it will be approved as a registered party. But standing up candidates to drive real political change is unlikely to be their main game.

Other white supremacist micro parties have gained (and sometimes lost) registration down the years as their numbers have waned, but without much political success, he said. The United Patriots Front, fronted by white supremacist Blair Cottrell of Sewell’s former club the Lads Society, missed the deadline to register their party “Fortitude” in 2016 and soon after dissolved.

The new class of neo-Nazi was “the most active, visible and organised they’ve ever been” in Australia, McSwiney said. “But they’ve always said the white revolution cannot be achieved through political action. The system has to be overthrown.”

Neo-Nazis have been documented recruiting aggressively among young men and boys, and training in combat and weapons, as they plot building a racist new world order from their suburban homes and gyms.

Appearing in court just days apart earlier this month, both Sewell and two of his associates, Joel Davis and Jimeone Roberts, argued they should have their charges thrown out (or bail conditions lifted, in Sewell’s case) because they were acting in accordance with their white-Australia movement, which was currently “forming a political party”. They were unsuccessful.

Sewell, who has already been convicted of multiple violent offences, was unable to join his fellow neo-Nazis at the shrine on Friday. But he released a pre-recorded video branding himself as a defender of core Australian values on Telegram, staged outside the shrine. Recent communications by the group mentioning the new political party have similarly dropped overt Nazi phrases and branding.

“We are on the precipice of growing a mass movement,” Sewell has told followers, as he steps up calls for donations, not just members. “The next stage of the project is finally ripe enough to begin.”

“They’ll be strategic about this,” McSwiney said. Forming an official party will mean divulging information they have closely guarded, such as finances. But a registered party will give them another, less extreme arm to hold up as the face of the movement, even as their radical activism continues behind masks and encrypted apps.

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The National Socialist Network already has its own propaganda arm. And its demonstrations are often “exclusively” chronicled by The Noticer, a new far-right online news site that also reports on crimes committed by immigrants and features opinion pieces from some of the more prominent neo-Nazis.

Analysis by this masthead found its website is registered via the same proxy as the National Socialist Network’s new political website.

Sewell himself has urged his followers to promote The Noticer, saying a “narrative that can counter mainstream bullshit [is] literally one of our biggest weapons”.

The Noticer did not answer questions on its ownership or funding but denied the National Socialist Network was running the site – though it also said membership in the neo-Nazi group would not disqualify someone from the outlet’s operations.

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Investigations by this masthead have uncovered links between local neo-Nazis and designated terror organisations such as The Base and Combat 18, as well as bikies and prison gangs. But despite public warnings and scrutiny by ASIO, the National Socialist Network itself has yet to be banned.

“We’ve done very well to not be designated,” Sewell has told followers, saying the group had learnt from the “persecution” of fascist groups outlawed in the UK and the US in recent years. Still, he said, the authorities have “turned up the heat on us, which means we have to outmanoeuvre them”.

The plan could potentially divide the group, though, with hardliners unhappy with toned-down flags and demonstrations, or dropping the “National Socialist” term publicly (the formal name of Nazism).

Sewell has told followers it is necessary to play “the sneaky Nazi” to build a political community. “Now all the people that are to the right of centre are defending us, even though we’re open Nazis,” he claimed. “Saying, ‘oh, yeah, but they’re not actually Nazis’ … They’re saying, ‘Hey, we know you’re Nazis. Can you just rebrand Nazism a little bit differently?’ ”

While neo-Nazi groups see the polarisation of politics under US President Donald Trump as ideal recruiting conditions, Roose says in Australia the backlash to Trump could actually hurt their political plans.

“None of this is inevitable,” McSwiney added. “The Nazis can only get so far by themselves. A lot comes down to whether people take them seriously as threats, or treat them as a circus.”

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