After being found guilty of belonging to the proscribed far-right group National Action, Britain’s ‘greatest Nazi’ has been sentenced to eight and a half years in prison.
Alex Davies, 27, was one of the hate-filled group’s founders, according to Winchester Crown Court, who ‘celebrated’ the murder of MP Jo Cox and sought to finish Adolf Hitler’s job.
Judge Mark Dennis QC sentenced him to a year in prison and ordered him to serve the rest of his sentence on extended licence at the Old Bailey on Tuesday.
The Swansea, South Wales-based extremist told a jury that ethnic minorities should be expelled from the UK “like sending asylum seekers to Rwanda,” and that his goal was to create a “overwhelmingly white Britain.”
Davies, termed an “extreme extremist,” gleefully posed for photographs giving the Nazi salute at Buchenwald, a concentration camp where over 56,000 people died during WWII.
The jury was informed at trial that co-founder Ben Raymond developed the slogan ‘white jihad,’ which means ‘white terror,’ as a nod to Nazi Germany.
Following his guilty verdict last month, Davies became the 19th member of the group to be convicted.
‘I’m satisfied the defendant took an active and prominent role in cooperation with his trusted allies in trying to mask the continued existence of the organization in defiance of the ban,’ Judge Dennis said at his sentencing today.
‘You are a brilliant and educated young man, but you have harbored, over a period of many years, distorted and appalling biases,’ he continued to the defendant in the dock.
The prosecutor, Barnaby Jameson QC, told the court that National Action was outlawed by the UK government after it ‘terrorized’ cities across the country with its call for a ‘all-out racial war.’
However, he went on to say that the group “never disintegrated” and that it “morphs into regional groups.”
As a continuation group, Davies founded NS131, which stood for National Socialist Anti-Capitalist Action and was later banned by the government.
The defendant, whom Mr Jameson characterized as a “terrorist in plain sight,” told the court that NS131 was not a continuation of NA and that its goals and operations were distinct.
Mr Jameson is quoted by the BBC as saying, ‘The defendant was an extremist’s extremist.’
Davies was initially brought to the authorities’ attention when he was 15 years old because of his radical ideas.
In 2013, when he was 19 years old, he co-founded National Action (NA) while studying philosophy at Warwick University.
He initially mentioned the Prevent counter-terrorism program four years prior, though he told his trial that he did not participate at that time because they ‘did not approach him.’
Davies was instrumental in the founding of NA alongside co-founder Benjamin Raymond, an organization that went on to ‘terrorize’ city centers around the country with rallies calling for a ‘all-out race war.’
After an undercover journalist infiltrated the organisation and exposed its fascist ideas calling for the expulsion of black, ethnic minority, and Jewish people from the UK, National Action quickly made headlines.
Davies is said to have told the journalist that he didn’t want to express what he wanted to do to Jews because it was “too severe.”
Davies, the son of an engineer and a kitchen worker, was asked to leave the institution after the publicity and a campus campaign, and he went on to focus on his career as NA’s CEO.
The group used social media, stickers, banners, and city center marches to disseminate its ‘white Jihad’ message, with one in Liverpool culminating in violence after a clash with anti-fascist demonstrators.
Davies said in court that he was “not suited” to violence and that he did not advocate the murder of Jews, while maintaining that he did not believe the Holocaust occurred.
However, the jury was shown an image of him in May 2016 in the death chamber of the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany, carrying the NA flag and saluting the Nazis.
During WWII, 56,000 people, the bulk of whom were Jews, died in Buchenwald as a result of torture, medical experiments, and consumption. In a killing center built specifically for that purpose, almost 8,000 Soviet prisoners of war were shot to death.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied Forces, remarked after the Americans liberated Buchenwald in April 1945, “Nothing has ever startled me as profoundly as that sight.”
‘The job of Adolf Hitler was, and remains, unfinished for the defendant and his associates,’ Mr Jameson told the jury.
‘To adopt Hitler’s terms, the ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Question’ continues to be solved by complete annihilation.’
After the suspension, Davies said he was “advancing the cause of national socialism, not the cause of a continuous NA.”
‘All I’m interested in after proscription is pursuing legitimate political activity,’ he added.
‘It would be required, I imagine,’ he added earlier in the trial when asked if the repatriation of ethnic minorities would be enforced under the group’s goals.
‘I imagine it would operate similarly to the current Conservative government’s policy of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda.’
He stated that not all ethnic minorities and Jews will be deported, adding, “There are those Jews who do critical tasks, just as there are certain black, Asian, and ethnic minority individuals who do essential jobs, and to send them back would be harming ourselves.”
‘If we were to get power, our goal would be to create a mainly white Britain, as it has been for generations,’ he continued.
‘Mass immigration has only occurred in the last 50/60/70 years; to return to the status quo before to WWII would be unthinkable.’
When asked if he would return Jewish families with ‘thousands of years’ of British ancestry, he said, ‘Yes, that’s how repatriation would operate.’
Davies denied being a violent person and said that the training camps he attended were not paramilitary in nature.
He went on to say that when he sent a message to a possible recruit in April 2017, he was imitating former BNP leader Nick Griffin, who said: ‘We need to be smart but ready to employ well-directed boots and fists, if necessary.’ There will be no peaceful movement in the future.’
Davies stated that he founded NA because he was “politically homeless” as a “national socialist” after the BNP was “imploded.”
He stated that ‘fomenting a racial conflict’ was not something he believed in since it would ‘bring harm to my own people.’ The group’s goal, according to Davies, is to ‘draw young people into nationalism’ and to create a ‘nationalist Britain that is a white Britain.’
In May 2016, he admitted to posing with a Nazi salute in the execution chamber at Buchenwald concentration camp for a photo.
‘It was a horrible thing to do where people have died and insult their memory, whichever side of the political spectrum they may have landed on,’ Davies said, adding that he was ‘ashamed’ of his conduct.
He stated that he did not agree with or participate in NA accounts’ Twitter messages that ‘celebrated’ the death of MP Jo Cox in June 2016.
‘I felt horrible that she died, I feel sad for her kids, I feel sorry for her husband,’ the defendant, from Swansea, said.
Between December 17th, 2016 and September 27th, 2017, Davies, a Swansea resident, denied membership in a proscribed organization.