Keys

It was a grey, piss-wet afternoon in Melbourne back in August 2025 when the penny first dropped for anyone paying attention. A mob of black-clad lads rolled up to the March for Australia rally, Union Jacks on their sleeves, balaclavas half-pulled down, and every single one of them zipped into the same black Helly Hansen rain jacket. Not some knock-off, mind you - the real deal, with that big white HH logo slapped across the chest like a calling card. Thomas Sewell, the NSN poster boy, fresh out of whatever hole he'd crawled from, was front and centre in one. Matthew Gruter too, at the Sydney parliament house circus later on. Same kit. Same vibe. The Norwegian sailing brand that built its name on oil-rig workers and yachties had just been drafted into the uniform of Australia's most vocal neo-Nazis. And the joke was on everyone else. Because here's the grift: these aren't your grandad's skinheads with shaved heads and Doc Martens screaming sieg heil for the cameras. Swastikas got banned, runes started getting side-eye from the cops, even the old 88 tattoos were drawing heat under the new hate-speech laws. So they went shopping. Helly Hansen - practical, waterproof, available in every outdoors shop from Bondi to Ballarat - perfect camouflage. The HH? Come on. H is the eighth letter of the alphabet. Heil Hitler. It's the same tired code as the number 88, except this time it's stitched on a jacket you can wear to the pub without getting nicked on sight. Plausible deniability built right in. "What, mate? I just like sailing gear." Wink wink. The initiated spot it across the street and know exactly who's who. The rest of us look like mugs. The National Socialist Network didn't invent the wheel, they just polished the dogwhistle. They'd already been playing with Norse runes and Sutton Hoo helmets to launder their image as "proud white Aussies" instead of the goose-stepping clowns they are. But the jackets gave them cohesion. A uniform without looking like they were trying too hard. Fast-forward a few months and the virus jumps the ditch. Over here in the UK, the copycats were waiting. Enter White Vanguard, the fresh neo-Nazi outfit that popped up modelling themselves directly on the Australian NSN lads. Same black uniforms, same balaclavas, same martial-arts cosplay on Telegram, and, you got it, exactly the same Helly Hansen jackets. Kai Cunningham, one of their mouthpieces, was snapped rocking one at protests in Wales, at Britain First marches, even outside Downing Street. The group venerated Sewell like some Antipodean Hitler and borrowed the kit wholesale. "HH for Heil Hitler" wasn't subtle anymore; it was the international franchise uniform. It's the same old story these pricks love to tell themselves: they're not "Nazis," they're just "noticing." The jacket lets them blend into the anti-immigration crowd without scaring off the normies. Until a half-decent journalist clocks the pattern and the whole thing unravels. Fred Perry went through it in the '60s when skinheads nicked their laurel logo. Lonsdale got the NSDA treatment in Germany. Every time, the brand ends up playing whack-a-mole with its own reputation. Helly Hansen? Norwegian through and through, they've built an empire on tough gear for people who actually go outside and do stuff - workers - not basement dwellers LARPing 1933. The owners have come out swinging against the appropriation, making it crystal clear their brand has zero tolerance for hate groups using their logo as a Nazi bat-signal. They've distanced themselves hard, the same way any decent company would. No surprise, then, to see Steve Laws, who has never had an original thought, quickly availed himself of the latest ‘my secret Nazi’ cosplay. He’s damaged every party he’s been involved in (an astonishing number) and it now seems he’s moved onto ruining reputable company’s brands as well.

🚨: NASA just dropped a full disk image of Earth taken by Artemis II 🤯