The Australian government appears to be behind the mass banning of Australian nationalist channels from Telegram, just weeks after a similar ban-wave on X.
Jacob Hersant, the leader of right-wing activist group the National Socialist Network (NSN), had his personal channel deleted late on Thursday night, along with almost all of the organisation’s national and state chapter channels.
Earlier this month Mr Hersant was banned from X without explanation, along with White Australia leader Thomas Sewell, prominent activists Blair Cottrell and Joel Davis, and at least 12 other accounts affiliated with the NSN.
Mr Hersant and Mr Davis said on Friday that they suspect the Australian government is behind the bans and believe the censorship crackdown is a response to their growing membership numbers following a year of high-profile protests.
“First I was banned from X, along with all of the accounts associated with organised Australian National Socialism,” Mr Hersant said in a short video on Friday.
“Now I’ve also been banned from Telegram. Not in the normal way of being banned from the Apple and Google stores, but by having my whole account wiped off the platform, along with some, but not all, of the accounts associated with the Australian movement.
“It’s certain that this censorship is not coming from the platforms themselves, but is being directed by the Australian government because they fear our influence.”
Mr Hersant said he was moving to free speech platform Gab, and thanked founder Andrew Torba for his commitment to freedom of expression.
Mr Davis, whose channel was last year “app banned” by Telegram, meaning it cannot be viewed from the version of the application downloaded from Apple and Google, said: “I’ve never seen anything like this on telegram before. The only plausible explanation is Australian government pressure.”
Our Australian users are reporting a surge in censorship from other platforms this week. These other platforms are capitulating and banning Australian citizens at the direction of the Australian government. Gab, as an American company, has a well-documented and public history of… https://t.co/77kYeZPZAf
— Andrew Torba (@BasedTorba) February 21, 2025
Mr Hersant, Mr Davis and Mr Sewell are all currently challenging or planning to challenge charges related to their political activity, and will argue their implied right to political communication under the constitution is being violated.
Also on Friday Mr Torba revealed that his platform had on Thursday night received a demand from the Australian government to provide user data about “offensive” posts about Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese but that he had refused to comply.
He later wrote: “Our Australian users are reporting a surge in censorship from other platforms this week. These other platforms are capitulating and banning Australian citizens at the direction of the Australian government.
“Gab, as an American company, has a well-documented and public history of rejecting foreign government demands to censor speech protected by U.S. law. We refuse to bow to tyrannical and dystopian foreign regulations that infringe on free speech.
“We welcome the citizens of Australia to speak freely on our platform.”
Telegram founder Pavel Durov was arrested in France in August last year, and a month later the platform announced it would hand over users’ IP addresses and phone numbers in response to “valid legal requests” from governments around the world.
Header image: Left, Jacob Hersant. Right, his banned channel (Telegram).
