When looking at far-right reactions to the outcome of the latest National Action trial, I was shocked by the amount of sympathy, glorification and belittlement that I came across. “What a lad,” one 4Chan user wrote about the convicted National Action member Mikko Vehvilainen, who wanted to prepare for the coming “race war” by establishing an all-white enclave in a Welsh village. “Police found Hitler stickers in his home. Made me chuckle,” another one commented. One user even called the terrorist organisation “the only truly legit nationalist group in Britain” and another one complained that “they treat National Action like they’re the IRA, despite the fact that they have done literally nothing.”
These overtly sympathetic expressions for a group that celebrated the murder of Jo Cox, called for a “white jihad” and plotted terrorist attacks against Labour MP Rosie Cooper, should ring alarm bells. National Action is an exceptionally violent and hateful group, but it would be naive to believe that by jailing its members the threat from far-right militancy in the UK has been eroded. In the past year, sympathisers of the organisation have geared up in an attempt to normalise antisemitic, racist and anti-democratic ideologies, sometimes hiding extremely hateful messages behind ironic memes and satirical posts to escape prosecution.
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