An Andrew Tate insider is helping Australian Nazis recruit teens

5 days ago 15

A close friend of misogynist influencer Andrew Tate is part of an aggressive recruitment drive to draw rich and isolated teenagers into the ranks of Australia’s neo-Nazis.

An investigation by this masthead has found that a key member of the National Socialist Network (NSN) is one of Tate’s close associates – and that the Nazi organisation is now using Tate-style propaganda videos to target vulnerable young men.

This masthead has obtained leaked communications, observed secret neo-Nazi meetings, and interviewed former members and families of those in the NSN to gain new insight into its recruiting playbook as neo-Nazi numbers climb around the country.

Those close to the group, and experts who track neo-Nazis in Australia, say that the NSN is increasingly targeting young men with access to money and influence as it seeks to boost its numbers and resources in the face of recent police crackdowns. Several young men from rich families have been brought into the fold recently, as have more ex-soldiers.

But the revelation that a key member of Tate’s inner circle has now joined the neo-Nazi group marks a dangerous escalation in tactics, experts say.

“There’s still this idea that they’re all uneducated Romper Stompers,” says political violence researcher Dr Imogen Richards of Deakin University. “Historically, neo-Nazis have recruited from disadvantage, but the NSN here have a different model.

“They’re deliberately cultivating elites. And now they’re using misogyny very explicitly as a recruiting tool.”

Porn stars, private jets and neo-Nazis

Among the NSN recruits recently unmasked by this masthead is porn star-turned-sex coach Stirling Cooper, who has been spotted at neo-Nazi training camps alongside teens and posing with the group’s flag.

But the Australian (whose real name is Nigel Clifford) is also part of Tate’s inner circle. A close friend and staunch defender of both Andrew and his brother Tristan, Cooper has regularly been pictured with the pair – on private jets smoking cigars and partying in exotic locales.

Neo-Nazi leadership are now telling followers to buy Cooper’s “sexual domination” courses to learn “how to make a white woman submit”.

Cooper was one of the “generals” in suits and sports cars who helped promote Tate’s exclusive “War Room”, where, for thousands of dollars a year, Tate’s top acolytes would learn the British-American influencer’s secret to getting rich.

Part of Tate’s secret, police allege, was luring women into sex work online in order to bankroll men in the War Room, and Andrew and Tristan Tate now face charges across multiple countries of rape, sex trafficking, and forming a criminal gang to enslave women. The Tates deny any wrongdoing, and Cooper and other men in the War Room have not been charged.

Footage, photos and insider accounts place Cooper at key neo-Nazi meetings in Australia in recent months, including in Western Australia alongside NSN leader Thomas Sewell and white supremacist Blair Cottrell, and at the group’s “national conference” in Victoria.

Sitrling Cooper (third from left) and others pose with the neo-Nazi flag created by Thomas Sewell.

Although Cooper’s public views on women are not as extreme as Tate’s, he has been using Tate’s “affiliate marketing” blueprint to artificially flood social media with videos promoting his own sex courses (as well as a line of erectile supplements). The tactic – in which followers are paid commissions to edit and distribute his content in their feeds or on copycat accounts – caused Tate’s reach to hit millions (and thousands of paying subscribers) within months.

The NSN, which charges its acolytes to join, has recently opened its propaganda archives for supporters to spread its content in a similar way, without the commission. Cooper, Tate and NSN affiliate videos have all used a similar “fashwave” (fascist-wave) style of editing popular with the far right, and accounts posting them analysed by this masthead appeared to be run by young men.

TikTok is now flooded with NSN propaganda clips, says anti-fascist research group The White Rose Society.

One teenager says he joined the NSN “looking for a family” after surviving domestic violence as a kid and coming across “Nazi edits” on TikTok.

“They kinda had the same image as Tate of working out, the masculinity,” says the teen, who has since left the group.

He was drawn to the NSN’s “active club” model that promises a similar self-improvement route as “manosphere” influencers such as former kickboxer Tate, joining their fitness boot camps, camping trips and boxing matches.

“Within a few weeks of vetting, I was in,” says the former recruit. “At training, meetings, at ‘book club’ where they all read Mein Kampf. It was like grooming. And they started asking us all to make those videos too.”

Richards says this kind of extremist propaganda can be addictive, offering followers new buy-in with the group.

Young NSN member Michael “Mickle” Nelson has boasted of introducing Nazi TikTok and Fortnite dances into the group’s filmed stunts to “captivate the youth”. Some “NSN hype edits” have even been reposted by fringe politicians such as Senator Ralph Babet, Nelson has gloated. (Babet did not answer questions about why he posted one recent NSN video of their brawl with counter-protesters at an anti-immigration rally.)

Meanwhile, key NSN figure Joel Davis recently told his followers online: “Discussing Adolf Hitler with normies has literally never been this easy. I think they’ve been seeing the TikTok edits, lads.”

Last week, Davis also urged followers to post clips from his show with white supremacist Blair Cottrell. “That’s how Andrew Tate blew up,” Davis said. “He paid, like Romanians, $8 an hour to show his clips all over the internet and boom. So it’s a tried-and-true method.”

Cooper, who has hundreds of thousands of followers online, heavily promoted the August March for Australia rallies – which were secretly run by the NSN. Two former members say Cooper has donated money to those in the NSN and appeared close to leadership at meetings he attended.

Cooper did not respond to questions and multiple attempts by this masthead to contact him.

But in recent days, the “manosphere” influencer has posted online defending the NSN’s actions, sharing articles by its aligned news site, The Noticer, and floating the idea of running a charity boxing match between the neo-Nazi group and left-wing protesters.

Stirling Cooper (left) posted a picture of himself in September with far-right influencers Hugo Lennon (centre) and Elijah Schaffer.

As this masthead revealed links between anti-immigration influencer Hugo Lennon and the NSN last month, Cooper shared a photograph of himself with Lennon, along with a far-right American vlogger who took part in the January 6 capital riot and has also associated with the neo-Nazi group. The photo was captioned: “Exciting times ahead.”

Clipboards and car parks

Australia’s biggest neo-Nazi group is in recruiting overdrive. Analysis by this masthead and The White Rose Society suggests more than 100 new members have joined the NSN in the past year. “It’s more than we’ve seen before,” say White Rose researchers. “Some meet-ups have hit record numbers.”

All those new faces are what allowed the group to send so many “undercover Nazis” into the March for Australia rallies around the country on August 31, as revealed by this masthead, to control the crowd and antagonise counterprotesters. They tried the stunt again to a smaller degree at the second march on October 19.

But the main show this time was after the rally – when prospective recruits were sent directly to neo-Nazi vetting meetings held at secret locations around the country.

This masthead discovered the location of the Melbourne meeting in an inner-north car park and observed about 10 people run through ID checks with senior neo-Nazis holding clipboards, including convicted criminal Jimeone Roberts. Recruits were then given a second location to attend a “political seminar” introducing supporters to the NSN.

Jimeone Roberts (front, with clipboard) and other neo-Nazis ran a secret vetting session for prospective members in a north-west Melbourne car park on October 19 after the March for Australia rallies.

White Rose researchers say rallies have always been the NSN’s key recruiting ground – their numbers also swelled after pandemic-era anti-lockdown protests, and key leaders themselves met at far-right rallies down the years.

But, with many members – including Sewell – now facing serious charges for a string of violent assaults, NSN leaders have spoken of recruiting “younger” of late and looking to gain funding and legitimacy by starting a neo-Nazi political party.

Parents of young men in the NSN, who did not wish to be identified for safety reasons, said they felt Sewell had exploited their children’s mental health, social isolation, or underlying conditions to build what he has called his “army of autistics”.

“His thinking is so black and white, I’m worried what he could be persuaded to do,” said one parent, of their son. “It’s like there’s two of him. There’s the part that goes off as their soldier, and there’s my son who knows right from wrong. And that’s who I’m holding onto.”

In a video to followers earlier this year, Sewell claimed to have “recruited hundreds of autistic teenagers”. New-Zealand-born Sewell served two years in the army and has spoken of taking traumatised teens under his wing to “toughen them up”. He used to work with some of the state’s most vulnerable children for his job in residential care.

“Still, they don’t really care about us,” said one former member who called the group violent and “hypersexual”.

Some families said their sons had found neo-Nazis on gaming platforms, or incel forums (which promote hatred of women). For others, it was at their local gym.

But experts say the NSN’s reach has grown to the point where they no longer have to actively recruit. After stumbling across a TikTok video, recruits can then be funnelled to their local chapters for vetting by the NSN’s dedicated Telegram bot.

While the group has ties to proscribed international terror groups such as Combat 18, the Proud Boys, Atomwaffen Division and The Base, the NSN itself has not been banned in Australia.

“Get a white domestic slave”

How Stirling Cooper the self-described “retired and repenting porn star” joined the ranks of Australia’s neo-Nazis is unclear. According to his website, he studied chemistry at university in Western Australia and worked as a pharmaceutical research scientist before moving to Miami. These days, he is increasingly based back home in Australia, or else driving his Ferrari through the twisting streets of Marbella, Spain – a favourite tax haven of gangsters and oligarchs.

Stirling Cooper, pictured here with Tristan Tate (right), has repeatedly defended the Tate brothers after their arrest on sex trafficking charges.

Since the Tates’ numerous arrests, Cooper has continued to defend the brothers and mix with their same circle of friends, often speaking of helping to carry out their plans, and discussing the Tates’ mission to get rich “running webcam models” with them on livestreams.

Chat logs from a closed group within Tate’s War Room, first leaked to the BBC and obtained by this masthead, further reveal Cooper’s apparent involvement. As early as June 2021, Tristan Tate had named Cooper and a mutual friend as collaborators in his webcam “mission”. The group, the Tates made clear, was an elite “PHD – or Pimpin’ Hoes Degree” to help men make money by grooming women into online sex work on the site OnlyFans.

Later, when Tristan told the chat how he regularly culled women from his “harem” who weren’t providing cash or status, an account linked to Cooper agreed. “I’ve become more ruthless with cutting women off if I’m only getting sex and nothing else,” it stated.

Stirling Cooper (second from left) has appeared with Andrew Tate (in sunglasses) and influencer Justin Waller on the Fresh and Fit podcast, co-hosted by Myron Gaines (left), which has been criticised for platforming antisemitic views.

Further messages sent by the account detail Cooper’s interactions with a woman he said he was planning to put “on OnlyFans/Cam”, in which she thanked him for “beating the brat out of me”. In one exchange, Cooper questioned why the woman had been on another man’s yacht, writing: “If a mafia bosses [sic] girl was on someone’s boat, do you not think someone would get shot in the head?”

Cooper went on to detail for the other men in the War Room how he trained women, whom the group refer to as dragons, to believe their value lay in their “servitude”.

In the same chat, among the sea of sexist memes and pictures of guns, one teenage member celebrated getting their learner’s driving permit.

Leaked chat-logs from closed neo-Nazi Telegram groups in Australia obtained by this masthead reveal the NSN has also used grooming tactics on women to “test” their tolerance for Nazism. In an NSN chat that ran until February, members shared tips for “training” their partners to accept more and more racist views. One wrote his “current testing with [girlfriend]” had taken her “from TV-multyculty enjoyer to ‘it’s OK to be white’ in three days”.

In a recent livestream, the NSN’s Joel Davis ranted about “race traitors” dating non-white women because they “don’t know how to make a white woman submit”, telling followers: “Watch your Stirling Cooper videos, get skills and get a white domestic slave if that’s your thing.”

Online, Cooper’s videos echo Tate’s focus on controlling and “disciplining” women, and he has blamed perceived societal ills on women getting the right to vote.

In leaked videos from inside Tate’s “university”, Cooper and Tate discuss how to isolate women from their family and friends. Cooper asks Tate to talk about “restrictions and the boundaries you put on a woman in terms of who she can talk to, where she can go”.

Meanwhile, Tate has been flirting with Nazism himself lately – questioning the Holocaust, performing Nazi salutes, spreading the false conspiracy of white replacement theory, even supporting white supremacist Tommy Robinson.

Yet, despite the NSN’s longstanding ban on women joining the group, neo-Nazis say they’re now “throwing [women] a bone”. In the spirit of their recent recruiting drive, Davis invited women to the October 19 seminars so they could get involved “beyond just breeding”.

“Sew us some Australian flags,” he suggested.

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.

Read Entire Article