A talented artist was the “Joseph Goebbels” of the violent neo-Nazi group National Action and continued to be a leading light in the organisation after it was banned by the UK government, a jury has been told.
Ben Raymond, 32, from Swindon in Wiltshire, was one of the founders of NA, whose members hoarded machetes, swords, ice picks, firearms and even a crossbow powerful enough to bring down an elephant, Bristol crown court was told.
Raymond allegedly acted as a “roving ambassador” for the group, which is said to have had links with far-right groups in eastern Europe, Norway and the US and was formed with the aim of beginning a race war.
He was also allegedly a close associate of an NA member who planned to kill the Labour MP Rosie Cooper and was in close contact with a man called Zack Davies shortly before he attacked an Asian dentist in a supermarket in north Wales with a machete.
Barnaby Jameson QC, prosecuting, said Raymond was a “public face” of NA and was careful not to stockpile weapons himself or carry out physical attacks.
“His jihad was fought with words and images,” said Jameson. “He was, like Joseph Goebbels of the original cabal of Nazis, the natural head of propaganda.
“He gave media interviews, setting out the group’s virulent ethnic cleansing agenda to the media with sometimes transcendental calm.”
Founded in 2013 when Raymond was a student, NA was, Jameson said, “racist, antisemitic and aggressive”, a “white jihadist” group the like of which had not been seen in the UK since the British Union of Fascists, which was banned in 1940.
The group was small, secretive and paranoid, the jury was told, communicating using cryptic messaging systems, some of which self-destructed, and organised paramilitary training such as mixed martial arts and fighting with knives.
NA was banned in December 2016, the court heard, the first far-right group to be proscribed since the second world war, joining organisations such as the IRA and al-Qaida.
But Jameson said Raymond and others flouted the ban with NA “morphing” into cells that continued to operate underground. After the ban another leader emailed fellow members: “We are shedding one skin for another … These are exciting times.”
Groups that emerged after the ban included the TripleK Mafia, which was based in the Midlands, one in the north-west called Revenge, and Scottish Dawn, the court was told. Raymond used his artistic skills to create the TripleK logos, it is claimed.
Raymond denies being a member of a proscribed organisation and possessing material likely to be useful for a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, including information on the making of molotov cocktails.
The trial continues.
