The Anglo-Saxon Foundation: history of a racist forum

A typical posting from the Anglo-Saxon Foundation.

I've written a number of posts in the past about the Anglo-Saxon Foundation, a forum which can be summed up as England's Stormfront. Since it's become a pet subject of this blog, I've decided to put together a post with a comprehensive history of the forum and its key membership. This post will be a bit on the bloated side, but will hopefully come in handy as a reference point.

The history of the Anglo-Saxon Foundation appears to go back to an innocuous-seeming website called Saxon North. No longer active, Saxon North can be accessed via Archive.org, and we can see that it was once a straightforward website dedicated to professional graphic design. It even had a forum which was, likewise, focused on the technicality of web design. Later on the site's designs began focusing on the artwork of Anglo-Saxon England, which is a little odd for a graphic design company but not in itself suspicious.

Somewhere along the line, however, Saxon North began showing a nationalist streak. This version of the website identified itself as part of the "Saxon North Network", a cluster of sites that also included Buy-English.com and the Anglo-Saxon Foundation:

Saxon North and the Anglo-Saxon Foundation later merged:

Here is an announcement of the merger made by the owner of Saxon North. It is notable mainly for the fact that he signs his name Jamie:

The Anglo-Saxon Foundation and the (now defunct) Saxon North website were obviously close-knit, but just how close? Well, consider this discussion, which reveals that the ASF's admin "Seaxan" once used the account name "SN Admin":

Would that be "SN" for Saxon North, perhaps? Could it be that Seaxan and Jamie are the same person?

I do not know for sure. I should also mention that names have come and gone, with the Saxon North Network rebranding itself first United English Patriots and then Englisc Gateway. But one thing has remained constant: the man in charge of the Anglo-Saxon Foundation is a bigoted looney.

Let's start with this contribution he made to a conversation about the treatment of England's Jews:

For those unaware of the reference, "Longshanks" is Edward I, who tried to expel all Jews from England.

Lest anybody think that I have misinterpreted Seaxan's post, here is a comment he made in response to a video about some nutty white pride protest being removed from YouTube:

This is not the only time Seaxan has blustered about "JewTube":

This last post comes from a discussion about a clip from Family Guy that was doctored to make it look as though it predicted the Boston marathon bombings - you can read more about the subject here. Not only does Seaxan apparently believe that the people behind the Family Guy cartoon were involved with the bombing, he has managed to frame it as some sort of Jewish conspiracy.

And from YouTube to Twitter:

So, we have established that the man who runs the Anglo-Saxon Foundation is a rabid anti-Semite. But what of the other members of influence? Well...

This is an image showing a list of the forum's moderators (described as "witan", an Old English word for leader), taken around April 2013 - I will explain why I did not use a more recent image later.

Of the names listed here, "admin" appears to be an technical account rather than an actual member, while Anglo, Fox Spirit and Rob A had been inactive for some time even back when the image was taken (their last posts were in August 2011, August 2012 and November 2011 respectively). So, if we discount these people, then we are left with eight active moderators: Alda, Andy, Badger, Forstig, Guthlac, Penda, Scyld Scefing, Seaxan and Woden's Child.

So who are these people? Let's start with Andy. Here we have his curious interpretation of the film Dawn of the Planet of the Apes:

Let us move on to Badger. Here's what he has to say about issues pertaining to race and sexuality:

Up next is Forstig. Here is his sensitive and compassionate response to the Japanese earthquake of 2011:

Next, we have Penda:

For context, this was posted as part of a thread about a gay pride parade in Tbilisi being attacked, an incident which the topic starter Thodolfr referred to as a "Fag Bash". Penda has nothing to say one way or the other about this atrocity; he's too busy being offended by homosexuality and feminism.

Incidentally, Penda is the owner of a now-defunct blog called England Reborn. A Whois lookup shows that the latest incarnation of the site was registered by Neil Hodgkiss - could this be Penda?

Mark Taylor, alias Scyld Scefing.

The next member of the "witan" is Scyld Scefing, whom I touched upon here. Scyld is known in real life as Mark Taylor, owner of the website Wyrdart.co.uk and events organiser of the Steadfast Trust.

Mark "Scyld" Taylor outlines his work with the Steadfast Trust

RationalWiki has an article on Scyld/Taylor which reveals that he once owned a racist YouTube account under the name Seaxwielder:

Seaxwielder's YouTube profile; notice the link to Taylor's Wyrdart site.

Seaxwielder identifying himself as an artist (like Mark Taylor) and a Steadfast Trust activist (like Mark Taylor) and using the odd term "Britstate" (like Mark Taylor)

Seaxwielder signing his name "Scyld"

Here are some examples of racism (and general daftness) from Seaxwielder/Taylor:

Finally, we have Woden's Child. I have already written about how this man endorsed the bullying of Malorie Blackman after her views on race were misrepresented by Sky News.

Here he is merrily chortling along with someone claiming that Vlad the Impaler was the most honourable person in Romanian history because he killed Turks:

In case you are wondering what kicked off this anti-Romanian bigotry, it was a hoax story on Joshua Bonehill's notorious troll blog the Daily Bale claiming - without a scrap of evidence - that a Transylvanian-run shop in Poole had placed a notice in its window banning English customers. Like pretty much everything else on Bonehill's blog this was a complete lie (what else can you expect from a site that reported on a white man hurt in a "racist cat attack"?) but Woden's Child was simply too gullible to see through Bonehill's hoax. Woden's Chump, more like.

The shop targeted by Joshua Bonehill's hoax. Woden's Child correctly points out how odd it would be for a shop with English signage to ban English customers - but this apparently hasn't caused him to doubt the story.

As we can see, with the possible exceptions of Alda and Guthlac, the "witan" was a hive of bigotry.

Like I stated before, the screengrab showing the list of forum "witan" was taken in 2013. The reason I did not use a more recent image is that, not long afterwards, Seaxan decided to abolish the moderating team as too many of its members were inactive:

Notice how he states that "Englisc Gateway is not, and never will be a Nazi site", but rather a forum "for open discussion." Why does he feel the need to make this reassurance? We will find out soon enough...

Above, one member lists some of the people who have left, including the aforementioned Alda and Guthlac. Next, member Dave speculates as to why they left:

It would appear that they departed the forum because certain topics were making them uncomfortable. But what topics could those be…?

Teutoburg Weald comes back with an answer:

They left because they objected to discussion of "the Zionist view, and Hitler" apparently.

A later discussion elaborates further. A member calling himself Bane of Dumnonia argues that only a fraction of posts at the forum were about "Jews/Zionists or anything linked to Hitler"; when another member points out that there was an upsurge of such posts in recent months, Bane of Dumnonia admits to being largely responsible for this:

Go to FSTDT to see some examples of Bane of Dumnonia's rabid anti-Semitism.

So, I think we have our answer. The "witan" members left because the Anglo-Saxon Foundation, while always riddled with racists, had opened the doors to outright Nazis.

I have already demonstrated how bigoted the forum's moderation team was circa late 2013. The above discussion demonstrates that the forum subsequently became too bigoted even for them.

Meanwhile, the Anglo-Saxon Foundation continues to allow colossal racists into its corridors of power. Take this posting from the forum's official Facebook page:

"TW" is clearly Clive Calladine, the member known on the forum as Teutoburg Weald (his writing style somewhat gives it away). The fact that he is posting from the official Facebook page indicates that he is one of its admins.

I have already written at length about Calladine's noxious views; for just one more example, here is his comment on the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson:

The Anglo-Saxon Foundation is truly the Stormfront of England.