‘Head of propaganda’ for anti-LGBT+ neo-Nazi terrorist group jailed after ‘grooming’ young people for ‘extreme racial violence’
Ben Raymond, co-founder of the neo-Nazi terrorist group National Action. (BBC)
The co-founder and “head of propaganda” for the anti-LGBT+ neo-Nazi terrorist group National Action has been jailed after promoting “extreme racial violence” to young people.
In 2013, Ben Raymond, 32, co-founded National Action, a neo-Nazi group described as “virulently racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic” by the Home Office.
He later became “head of propaganda” for the group, which was banned in 2016 under the Terrorism Act 2000, making it the first far-right group to be proscribed since the Second World War.
After the terrorist group was proscribed, Raymond helped the organisation mutate in a new group called “NS131 – National Socialist Anti-Capitalist Action”, according to the Press Association.
At Bristol crown court, Raymond was found guilty by a jury of being a member of the banned terrorist group, as well as of two counts of possessing a document or record of use to a terrorist.
The documents were “2083 – European Declaration of Independence” by Anders Breivik, a far-right Norwegian terrorist, and released on the same day that he committed the deadliest mass shooting in history, and “Homemade Detonators” by Ragnar Benson. He was acquitted on four similar charges.
Judge Christopher Parker QC handed Raymond an extended 10-year sentence, including two years on licence, and he will be monitored for 15 years under the notification requirements of the Terrorism Act.
He must serve a minimum of five years and four months behind bars before he will be up for parole.
Sentencing Raymond, Parker said that he had used propaganda materials to recruit and “groom” young people.
“You intended that the material should be used in order to recruit new members, and specifically new young members,” he said.
“It is clear this propaganda material was aimed at these young people. In effect, these young people were at risk of being groomed by your material to commit acts of extreme racial violence [with] which National Action no doubt had sympathy.”
In 2015, Raymond was interviewed by the BBC for a programme called Radicals: The Proud Racist.
In the interview he said that an “ideal Britain should be a white Britain”, and said he was a “comfortable racist”. He also described National Action as “Nazis and proud”, and said Hitler was a “role model”.
