Member of banned group denies continuing cause
A MEMBER of a banned neo-nazi organisation denies setting up a new group to continue the cause of the original, a court has heard.
Alex Davies, 27 from Swansea, is on trial accused of being a member of the proscribed organisation National Action (NA) after it was banned on December 16, 2016.
Barnaby Jameson QC, prosecuting, told the trial at Winchester Crown Court that the UK Government banned the group after it had “terrorised” towns across the country with its call for an “all-out race war”.
The group also “celebrated” the murder of MP Jo Cox in June 2016.
Members of the group had amassed an arsenal of weapons and dressed as paramilitaries for demonstrations which featured antisemitic speeches and calls for “traitors to be gassed”, Mr Jameson said.
Following the ban, Davies set up a “continuity” group, NS131, which stood for National Socialist Anti-capitalist Action and was itself later banned by the Government, Mr Jameson said.
The court heard that in January 2017, Davies was involved in organising the offshoot organisation which was initially to be called Southern Activist Network, but was later named NS131.
Benjamin Newton, defending, told the court that Davies had not intended to carry on National Action following its proscription.
He said: “Mr Davies’s case is that it was a separate organisation, not a continuation.”
Expert witness Professor Matthew Feldman, a historian and political scientist, told the court that banning an organisation could lead to it becoming more extreme.
He said this could lead to groups becoming more violent and taking part in paramilitary and weapons training.
He also described how National Action had “popularised” the term “white jihad”, which the court heard was first coined by the Daily Mail in 2013.
Prof Feldman said: “It was popularised by National Action – by taking the word jihad and placing the word white in front of it suggests a commitment to death.”
He added that there was a distinction between fascist and neo-nazi groups.
He said: “There is a very clear dividing line between fascists and Nazis, there are some groups who are keen to separate themselves from images such as swastikas and Hitler because of the stigma of war and genocide.”
Davies denies membership of a proscribed organisation between December 17, 2016 and September 27, 2017 and the trial continues.