A 'keyboard warrior' from Salford who sent hundreds of 'hate filled' messages to an MP has been jailed.
Tony Eckersley, 52, 'bombarded' Birmingham MP Jess Phillips with more than 300 emails containing threatening messages and racial slurs.
Eckersley called Ms Phillips a 'c***', and a 'treasonous cow', and suggested it would be 'appropriate' for her and other MPs to be victims of a terrorist attack in the House of Commons.
He claimed they should 'suffer the same fate as thousands of British white children in being gang-raped'.
Manchester Crown Court heard that Eckersley claimed to be interested in 'the criminal elements within Islam'.
But a judge described his emails as 'diatribes punctuated with sinister threats'.
Eckersley also sent a screenshot related to Jo Cox, the MP who was murdered by an extremist.
At court Eckersley claimed he had a defence under 'freedom of expression'.
Before sentencing him to 28 months in jail, Judge Hilary Manley told him: "What you did was not remotely connected with freedom of expression.
"Sending hateful, racist and threatening communications like these is the complete opposite of democratic expression, it is deliberately calculated to frighten and silence another, and thus to shut down their freedom within a civilised society."
The judge added: "A sentence of imprisonment should also have a deterrent element, to serve as a reminder to any other self-styled keyboard warriors that the courts will not tolerate this kind of behaviour."
Eckersley received a formal warning from the police, but the judge said this only 'spurred' him on.
He then accused Ms Phillips of 'abusing her authority' and having him 'shut down, like so many other British heroes'.
Judge Manley told him: "What you do, in indulging in such a campaign, does not make you a hero and it does not protect or help a single other person.
"You are an inadequate man who cannot cope with the reality of having reached your fifties without ever really achieving much, save for acquiring some criminal convictions for violent and abusive behaviour, and a habit of drinking too much alcohol and sitting at your keyboard, venting your frustration at others who in your view have the temerity to put themselves in positions of public service and to hold views with which you do not agree."
Prosecutors told how Ms Phillips, the MP for Birmingham Yardley, received the emails from May 2019 until February last year.
Eckersley threatened Ms Phillips, Labour's shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding, saying that he would have her 'dealt with' and would 'happily suffer the consequences of making my ire felt towards' her.
The court heard the abuse had a 'profound' effect on the MP.
Eckersley, of of The Vibe, Salford, was arrested in March last year.
He pleaded guilty to an offence of putting another in fear of violence by racially aggravated harassment.
The court heard that Eckersley has written a letter of apology to the MP.
Judge Manley ordered it must not be sent to her, unless she wanted to see it with the police acting as facilitators.
The judge said Eckersley showed a 'complete and very concerning lack of insight' in the letter, describing his actions as 'fervent correspondence' of a 'less than gentlemanly flavour'.
A restraining order was passed, preventing Eckersley from contacting Ms Phillips or going within 100 metres of anywhere he believes she lives or works, except for pre-arranged visits to the Houses of Parliament with the consent of security staff.
The order will run for 10 years.
