Police prosecutors are claiming not to know who Antifa are ahead of an upcoming court hearing for five nationalist activists charged over a clash with far-left extremists in the Kings Domain in Melbourne.
Thomas Sewell, Nathan Bull, Jake Crockett, Michael Nelson, and Michael Saarinen will face a contested hearing at the County Court of Victoria on December 9, after pleading guilty last month to one count of violent disorder over the incident at illegal aboriginal squatter encampment “Camp Sovereignty” on August 31, 2025.
They appeared in the same court for a directions hearing on Monday along with seven other former members of the now-disbanded National Socialist Network, who will also face court again next month.
Interview with Thomas Sewell after he faced court over his clash with Antifa at “Camp Sovereignty”.
He said police are trying to claim that the far-left group doesn’t exist, but now admit they vandalised cars.
He was also asked about an incident involving a different group and a Labor MP, and the Victorian election, and spoke out about attacks on statues and war memorials.
— N News (@NoticerNews) November 10, 2026
Victoria Police, which did not charge any of the far-left extremists involved in the clash, originally alleged the men carried out an unprovoked attack while charging Mr Sewell with 25 offences, resulting in him spending 72 days in custody on remand.
Prosecutors admit that far-left counter-protesters ran out of the squatter camp to attack March for Australia demonstrators, but have also stated “we do not know who ‘Antifa’ are”, and “there is no way for us to know whether any person is a member of ‘Antifa'”.
Antifa flags are regularly seen at protests in Melbourne, including at a free speech rally in August, and the trans-national group has been designated as a domestic terrorist organisation in the US, and is facing a similar listing in France.
Mr Sewell said while sharing an updated GiveSendGo fundraiser on Telegram on Thursday that the contest hearing could cost up to $50,000, but that he wanted the facts about the incident to be aired in court.
“This is not just about mitigating potential prison time for myself and more than a dozen other young men, this is about the truth and putting Antifa violence on the court record,” he said.
“There is a terrorist network operating in Australia, it is attacking Australians for their political views, they are destroying our cultural monuments, and they have even conducted terrorist bombings in Melbourne, and so far have been let off by activist magistrates.”
“We have been successful so far in moving the Crown to concede that a group occupying the squat camp known as camp sovereignty did run down the hill to assault patriots and attack our cars on three occasions,” the fundraiser states.
“However, the Crown are denying the existence of Antifa in general and specifically their presence at camp sovereignty’ (amongst a number of other facts).”
He made similar comments outside court on Monday, and after a previous hearing in October where he said he did not dispute that violence occurred, but said that the encampment and the aboriginal elders there were not the target.
“The police and the media have lied on what occurred on August 31st last year,” he said.
“It would not have mattered which hill those communist terrorists were occupying, we would have run up that hill, and what must be contested is this was not an attack on aboriginal people.
“The aboriginal elder that runs the squat on Kings Domain … himself has said there was a second group at the camp carrying out violence on Australian patriots on the day. We acted justifiably in defending Australians who were attacked by communist terrorists.”
Feral leftist counter-protesters bash an elderly patriot in an Australian flag shirt during the March for Australia rally in Melbourne.
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— N News (@NoticerNews) September 3, 2025
Violent far-left extremists repeatedly tried to disrupt Melbourne’s March for Australia rally yesterday but were beaten back by anti-immigration protesters. https://t.co/CA4npqJXwe
— N News (@NoticerNews) September 1, 2025
Footage from the August 31 rally shows members of Antifa and other far-left extremist groups attacking protesters throughout the day, while cars parked near Kings Domain were damaged and spraypainted.
The far-left carried out similar attacks on protesters at a rally in September last year, pelted police with rocks at another rally the following month, violently attacked patriots attending Australia Day celebrations in January, tried to disrupt a march in support of war hero Ben Roberts-Smith in April, and failed to shut down a free speech rally in August.
Left-wing extremists have also targeted right-wing populist party One Nation, calling for the death of leader Pauline Hanson at an event in Melbourne earlier this year, attacking a One Nation staffer at a festival, and assaulting a photographer at an anti-One Nation rally in Brisbane while police watched on.
In August Victoria Police announced it was looking for leftist terrorists with “anarchist and revolutionary ideologies” over an arson attack on a Melbourne defence manufacturer, and last year a “transgender” far-left extremist avoided jail despite setting off a bomb inside Melbourne’s Land Forces Expo, and was not charged with terror offences despite being caught with a stash of 28 more homemade incendiary devices in his home.
Trump officials have since warned Australia and other allies to start combating Antifa and other violent far-left groups that pose a threat of “political terrorism”, saying the threat of left-wing terror was being underestimated.
Header image: Left, video of the “Camp Sovereignty” incident (Facebook). Right, Antifa at a protest in Melbourne in August (beckonthedawn).
