Canberra, Australia - Australia on Thursday added the U.S.-based far-right extremist group National Socialist Order and planned to add the entirety of the Hamas group to its list of outlawed terrorist organizations.

The National Socialist Order, previously named Atomwaffen Division, joins terrorist groups Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and Hurras al-Din in being added to the list, Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said.

Hamas’ military wing, Hamas’ Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, has been listed as a terrorist organization since 2003.

The National Socialist Order (NSO), a neo-Nazi white supremacist group formed in the United States in 2018, was listed in December and the British-based Sonnenkrieg Division was listed in August. The NSO advocates a global “race war” and the collapse of democratic societies. This brings the number of outlawed groups to 28.

Mike Burgess, director general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, Australia’s main domestic spy agency, said last week that pandemic restrictions in Australia had sent online radicalization “into overdrive” in recent years as isolated people spent more time online.

The percentage of new counter-terrorism investigations involving minors had increased from to less than 3% to 15% in only a few years, Burgess said.
-AP