Britain’s ‘Biggest Nazi’ is jailed for eight-and-a-half years for founding banned fascist group National Action that ‘celebrated’ the murder of MP Jo Cox and ‘aimed to complete the work of Hitler’
- Alex Davies, 27, was sentenced at the Old Bailey in central London on Tuesday
- He became 19th member of National Action group to be convicted last month
- Davies was branded ‘terrorist hiding in plain sight’ and an ‘extremist’s extremist’
National Action co-founder Alex Davies, 27, of Swansea, South Wales, was described as a ‘terrorist hiding in plain sight’ and an ‘extremist’s extremist’. He was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years’ jail at the Old Bailey on Tuesday.
Britain’s ‘biggest Nazi’ has been jailed for eight-and-a-half years after being found guilty of belonging to banned far-right group National Action.
Alex Davies, 27, was one of the founders of the hate-filled group, which ‘celebrated’ the murder of MP Jo Cox and aimed to complete the work of Adolf Hitler, Winchester Crown Court previously heard.
He was jailed at the Old Bailey on Tuesday by Judge Mark Dennis QC, who also ordered him to spend a further year on extended licence.
The extremist, of Swansea, South Wales, told a jury that ethnic minorities should be kicked out of the UK ‘like sending asylum-seekers to Rwanda’ and that his aim was to have an ‘overwhelmingly white Britain’.
Davies, dubbed an ‘extremist’s extremist’, proudly posed for pictures giving the Nazi salute at Buchenwald death camp, where more than 56,000 people died during the Second World War.
At trial, the jury was told co-founder Ben Raymond had coined the phrase ‘white jihad’ for the group, meaning ‘white terror’, in a throwback to Nazi Germany.
Davies was the 19th group member to be convicted following his guilt verdict last month.
At sentencing today, Judge Dennis said: ‘I’m satisfied the defendant played an active and prominent role in concert with his trusted associates in trying to disguise the continued existence of the organisation in defiance of the ban.’
Addressing the defendant in the dock, he added: ‘You are an intelligent and educated young man but you have held, over a period of many years, warped and shocking prejudices.’
Neo-Nazi Alex Davies, 27, told a jury that ethnic minorities should be kicked out of the UK ‘like sending asylum-seekers to Rwanda’ and added that his aim was for an ‘overwhelmingly white Britain’ (Pictured: Davies arriving to Winchester Crown Court at the start of his trial in April)
Alex Davies proudly gives a Nazi salute alongside a convicted member of the National Action group in the execution chamber of Buchenwald concentration camp
‘Stop immigration, National Action’: A banner seized by West Midlands Police from Alex Davies’ address shows his hateful messages
Barnaby Jameson QC, prosecuting, had told the trial that the UK Government banned National Action after it had ‘terrorised’ towns across the country with its call for an ‘all-out race war’.
But he added that the group ‘never disbanded, it morphs into regional factions’.
Davies set up NS131 – which stood for National Socialist Anti-Capitalist Action and which itself was later banned by the Government – as a continuity group.
The defendant, who Mr Jameson described as a ‘terrorist hiding in plain sight’, had told the court that NS131 was not set up as a continuation of NA and had different aims and processes.
‘The defendant was an extremist’s extremist,’ Mr Jameson is reported as saying by the BBC.
Davies first came to the attention of the authorities because of his extremist views at the age of 15.
He co-founded National Action (NA) while studying philosophy at Warwick University in 2013 when he was 19 years old.
But it was four years before this that he first referred to the Prevent counter-terrorism programme, although he told his trial that he did not engage at this stage because they ‘did not contact him’.
It was with the creation of NA with co-founder Benjamin Raymond that Davies helped form an organisation that went on to ‘terrorise’ city centres up and down the country with its rallies calling for an ‘all-out race war’.
National Action soon hit the headlines after an undercover journalist infiltrated the group and exposed its fascist views calling for black, ethnic minority and Jewish people to be expelled from the UK.
Davies was flustered when he was challenged by a mother and daughter during a hate-filled protest in Bath city centre in 2016
Alex Davies, left, giving a Nazi salute alongside two other neo-Nazi activists outside the Unite union, September 2015
Publicity material and spray painting equipment found in searches of Alex Davies’ home in Swansea
Stickers seized during raid on Alex Davies home on November 3, 2016, showed that he was still involved with National Action despite it being a banned organisation
Davies was reported as telling the journalist that he did not want to say what he wanted to do to Jews ‘because it was so extreme’.
Following the publicity and a campaign on campus, Davies, the son of an engineer and a kitchen worker, was asked to leave the university and he went on to focus on his role running NA.
The group spread its ‘white Jihad’ message using social media, stickers, posters and city centre demonstrations, with one in Liverpool ending in violence following a confrontation with anti-fascist campaigners.
In court, Davies said he was ‘not suited’ to violence and denied that he supported the murder of Jews while insisting that he believed the holocaust did not happen.
But the jury was shown a photograph of him holding the NA flag and performing a Nazi salute in the execution chamber of the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany in May 2016.
Some 56,000 people – the majority of them Jewish – died in Buchenwald of torture, medical experiments and consumption during the Second World War. Over 8,000 Soviet prisoners of war were shot to death in a killing facility erected especially for that purpose.
When the Americans liberated Buchenwald in April 1945, supreme commander of the Allied Forces, Dwight D. Eisenhower, wrote: ‘Nothing has ever shocked me as much as that sight.’
National Action was founded in 2013 by Ben Raymond and Alex Davies (pictured)
Alex Davies’ graffiti saying ‘ban us so what?’ and ‘New Year, same struggle’ created on January 2 – 17 days after National Action was proscribed
National Action spread its ‘white Jihad’ message using social media, stickers and posters (Pictured: items seized during a police raid at Davies’ home in Swansea)
A poster inspired by Reservoir Dogs showing members of the National Action, with Davies as ‘The Founder’
Mr Jameson told the jury: ‘For the defendant and his cohorts, the work of Adolf Hitler was, and remains, unfinished.
‘The ‘Final Solution to the Jewish question’, to use Hitler’s words, remains to be answered by complete eradication.’
Davies said that after the ban he was involved in ‘advancing the cause of national socialism, not the cause of a continuity NA’.
And he added: ‘After proscription, all I am interested in is pursuing legal political activities.’
Earlier in the trial, asked if the repatriation of ethnic minorities would be enforced under the group’s aims, he said: ‘It would be compulsory, I imagine.
‘I imagine it would be run along the lines of the current Conservative Government and their sending asylum-seekers to Rwanda.’
He said the deportation would not be of all ethnic minorities and Jews, adding: ‘There are certain Jews that do essential jobs, just as there are black, Asian and ethnic minority people who do essential jobs, and to send them back would be doing harm to ourselves.’
Alex Davies sparring at National Action training camp in Savernake forest
National Action members giving Nazi salute in Savernake forest in December 2016
(Left) Alex Davies pictured boxing at Toothill Community Centre in Swindon with fellow NA members and (right) a logo for another group set up by Alex Davies called National Socialist Network, featuring the words – love, peace, freedom
He went on: ‘If we were to take power, our aim is to have an overwhelmingly white Britain as it more or less has been for centuries.
‘It’s only in the past 50/60/70 years we have had mass immigration, it would be to return to the status quo of before the Second World War.’
Asked if he would repatriate Jewish families with British heritage dating back ‘thousands of years’, he replied: ‘Yes, that’s how repatriation would work.’
Davies denied he is a violent person and said that training camps he attended had not been paramilitary-style training events.
He added that he had been quoting former BNP leader Nick Griffin when he sent a message to a potential recruit in April 2017 which stated: ‘We need to be smart but ready to use well-directed boots and fists, if needs be. No pacifist movement is going to go anywhere.’
Davies said that he set up NA because as a ‘national socialist’ he was ‘politically homeless’ after the BNP had ‘imploded’.
Alex Davies wearing a suit, in an image from the website of the extreme right-wing group the London Forum
Alex Davies pictured wearing sunglasses at the ‘White Man March’ in Liverpool in August 2015
Alex Davies (left) practices crossbow training in the Savernake Forest, Wiltshire, in December 2016 and (right) boxing with Mark Jones at Toothill Community Centre in Swindon in February 2017 – two months after National Action was banned
He said that he did not believe in ‘fomenting a race war’ because it would ‘create harm to my own people’. Davies said the aim of the group was to ‘bring young people into nationalism’ and to create a ‘nationalist Britain which would be a white Britain’.
He admitted that he posed carrying out a Nazi salute for a photo in the execution chamber at Buchenwald concentration camp in May 2016.
Davies said that he was ‘ashamed’ of his actions and added: ‘It was a disgraceful thing to do where people have died and desecrate their memory, whatever side of the political spectrum they may have fallen on.’
He said that he had not agreed or been involved with Twitter posts put out by NA accounts which ‘celebrated’ the murder of MP Jo Cox in June 2016.
The defendant, from Swansea, said: ‘I felt bad that she died, I feel sorry for her kids, I feel sorry for her husband.’
Davies, from Swansea, denied membership of a proscribed organisation between December 17 2016 and September 27 2017.
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