Mark Taylor and the Nazis

Woden's Folk, the racist cult which reveres Hitler as a divine avatar, has a new logo. It claims that the logo was designed by someone called "Scyld".


Who is "Scyld"?


He is Mark Taylor, a man closely involved with the Steadfast Trust charity. He was, at one point, a trustee of the charity; when he was featured on ITV's Exposure, he was identified as being (alongside Tim Hawke) one of the people running the Steadfast Trust. I am unable to confirm whether or not he is presently involved with Steadfast following its deregistration by the charity commission.

The fact that Taylor is now designing logos for Nazis is still further evidence of just how racist the Steadfast Trust is.

Mark Taylor in the Exposure documentary on the Steadfast Trust.

Proof that "Scyld" is Mark Taylor

There is a member of the Anglo-Saxon Foundation forum called "Scyld Scefing". As you can see, he has repeatedly mentioned his involvement with the Steadfast Trust:

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As a side note, he is also a blatant racist who supports the BNP:

(Source)

More significantly, meanwhile, he gives his email address as wyrdart@butler-taylor.eclipse.co.uk:

(Source)

How does this connect to Mark Taylor? Well, Taylor is a painter, and he runs a website about his work called Wyrdart:

And he also runs a recruitment consultancy called Butler-Taylor, as can be seen at his LinkedIn page here. The page will require a LinkedIn account to view, but you will be able to see his profile image by entering "Mark Taylor Butler Taylor" into Google Images:

Just to emphasise that the Mark Taylor of Butler-Taylor is the same as the Mark Taylor of the Steadfast Trust, look at this news report from the old Steadfast website:

So, "Scyld Scefing" is involved with the Steadfast Trust (like Mark Taylor) and his email address combines the names of a website run by Mark Taylor and a company run Mark Taylor. Who can be possibly be, other than Mark Taylor?

And there's more. Here's an individual on Facebook called Scyld Scefing. Note that his main image refers to Steadfast, while his photo album contains paintings from Mark Taylor's Wyrdart:

And to take everything full circle, just look at the stylistic similarities between these three images - the new Woden's Folk logo, the avatar of the ASF member Scyld Scefing, and an image uploaded by the Facebook member Scyld Scefing:

And, for even more evidence, here are additional threads from the ASF tying Scyld Scefing to Mark Taylor/Wyrdart:

Scold Scefing promise a new poster available at Wyrdart.

A discussion about Wyrdart, where Scyld Scefing mentions having updated the website.

"I hope Sclyd doesn't mind you doing one with his mail-dressed warrior, too. Perhaps work the word 'Wyrdart' in, to give him credit?"

English Heritage and all that

Tim Hawke: Humourless killjoy.

I started this post a couple of months back, but then along came the Exposure: Charities Behaving Badly documentary and I got sidetracked. Just as well I waited, really, as the documentary shone a little bit of light on this particular incident from the Steadfast Trust's history...

Back in 2013, Tim Hawke (at the time a trustee of the Steadfast Trust, and - last I heard - chairman of the Ipswich English Community Group) spluttered with indignation after a trip to Battle Abbey:

The quotation - apparently one of several which decorate the Battle Abbey cafe - comes from 1066 and All That by W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman, a spoof textbook originally published in 1930 and something of a national institution ever since.

The book is filled with deliberately absurd statements to give the impression that it was written by a confused schoolchild ("John was so bad that the Pope decided to put the whole country under an Interdict, i.e. he gave orders that no one was to be born or die or marry"). The quotation about the Norman Conquest is another obvious joke: it was good that we were invaded, because afterwards we weren't invaded again. Anybody with a sense of humour can see this.

So, does Tim Hawke lack a sense of humour, or is he only pretending to be offended? After all, the Steadfast Trust is dedicated to pretending that English people are the most persecuted group in the country; it is easy to imagine Hawke and his peers rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of having something to have a good moan about.

The Steadfast Trust condemned the sign in a newsletter:

'English Heritage Offensive Wallboard 

Supporters of the Steadfast Trust brought to the attention of their charity a very offensive wallboard display on the grounds of the English Heritage site of Battle Abbey in their Café.
The Steadfast Trust has made a complaint to English Heritage after this was further confirmed by a Trustee of the charity. The contents of the complaint is provided below and we shall keep you informed of how this issue progresses. 

Dear English Heritage 

The Steadfast Trust has been made aware by a number of its supporters of a large wallboard which is publicly displayed at the onsite café at Battle Abbey. 

On it there is offensive wording concerning the after-effects of the Norman Conquest .
The wallboard proclaims "The Norman Conquest Was A Good Thing as from this time onwards England stopped being conquered and thus was able to become top nation".

It is clear that an English Heritage researcher has lifted a quote from the satirical history1066 and all that by W.C Sellar and R.J Yeatman which was written in 1930. However sensibilities change and English Heritage should be aware that this rather dated, superficial satire sits uncomfortably with todays visitors. Modern interpretations of the aftermath of the Norman invasion show us that rather than being good the wholesale destruction of English culture, loss of its king, ancient aristocracy and elite fighting force was an unimaginable catastrophe on an unprecedented scale for the surviving English population. The Steadfast Trust and its supporters would therefore request that you consider the offence and upset this wallboard has caused to those of our cultural charity (which actively promotes English Heritage and its aims), as well as to those of the general public. 

Please remove this insensitive paragraph from the wallboard. 

Yours sincerely 

Trustee Mark Taylor 

Steadfast Trust 

P.S. The Steadfast Trust would be prepared to consider offering a grant towards the funding of such re-wording . 

[...] 

Its important that we as a community do not tolerate such insulting information being imposed upon our younger generation.'

Well, at least Mark Taylor acknowledges that the sign is meant as a joke, something that Hawke appears not to have noticed. But his filibustering about how offensive he finds the sign becomes laughably hypocritical when we consider the kinds of comments that Taylor appears to have posted on YouTube under the name "Seaxwielder":

Hmmm... trying to get in on that growth industry yourself, Mark?

On 19 October 2013, the Rye and Battle Observer published a report about the sign being vandalised to read "The Norman Conquest was a Holocaust which still effects [sic] the English today":

'A PRO-SAXON movement could be behind a graffiti attack at Battle Abbey, police have said.

Two men walked into the Battle Abbey cafe on Monday afternoon with a homemade stencil. One man placed the stencil over text on the wall while the other man proceeded to spray red paint over it. The graffiti read ‘Holocaust which still affects the English today’ - referring to the Battle of Hastings. The two men then fled, heading in opposite directions.

Battle Police were called to the scene just after 4.45pm. A short time later, officers arrested a man in Mountjoy, whose hands were found to be covered in red paint. The man was questioned by police and admitted the offence.

The man, who hails from Poole in Dorset, had no previous convictions. He received a caution from Sussex Police. The second vandal has yet to be caught. English Heritage says work is underway to remove the graffiti from the history display. A spokesperson for English Heritage said:

“Unfortunately, a group of people came to Battle Abbey and sprayed the walls of the cafe with graffiti at around 4pm on Monday October 14. “English Heritage staff called the police who arrested one of them.

“We have covered the graffiti and are urgently investigating the best way to remove it from the wall which is part of our display about the history of the site. “We are helping the police with their investigations.'

Exposure revealed that Darren Clarke was one of the men responsible for this vandalism. The documentary also revealed that Clarke was involved in a later bout of vandalism at Norwich Castle Museum, and that Tim Hawke knew of his activities there.

The graffiti was celebrated by the English Shieldwall campaign group:

Atrociter, a member of Stormfront, also endorsed the vandalism, referring to the sign as "Pro Norman bollocks":

Julia "Angelcynn" Howman chimed in as well, deriding English Heritage as "Marxist":

Ah, isn't political philosophy so much simpler when you can use "Marxist" as a catch-all term for anyone you disagree with?

Tim Hawke was amongst those lending their support to the act of vandalism, sending an angry letter to an English Heritage representative:

'Back in August I informed you that Battle Abbey was displaying a terribly ignorant and offensive statement. It has come to my attention that the board displaying the following statement…‘The Norman Conquest Was A Good Thing’ has been defaced with the words ‘Holocaust which still effects the English today’ (I have attached a picture of this to the email). Sadly I must confess to having total sympathy with those who committed this act.  I do hope English Heritage has the sense to recognise the awful outrage that has been caused here by English Heritage. 

[...] 

Unless you take steps to correct your errors I do know that the kind of behaviour that took place on Monday October 14 will continue and sadly escalate to alarming levels. 

You have a large number of venerable structures throughout the nation which logically could be vandalised in protest of your actions at Battle. Windmills such as Saxtead Green Post Mill or Berney Arms Windmill could be totally destroyed through simple acts of arson and imagine the harm this would cause to our organisation were it made known that this stemmed from an Anglophobic act at Battle Abbey by English Heritage. 

You are the custodians of the English peoples heritage and by deliberately insulting our proud/tragic past with your childish controversy you risk so much, particularly when the many aggrieved can strike at any time at any place. 

I do hope you have the intellect to take my advice seriously, if not then it will be clear that you hold nothing but contempt for the English and there will be those who understand that further corruption of our historic sites by English Heritage may only be stopped through aggressive displays. This would sadden me greatly.'

[Emphasis mine.]

It sounds like something out of an old gangster film, doesn't it? Gee, ma'am, look at all those purdy windmills. Sure would be a shame if someone set fire to them...

What, exactly, was going through Hawke's mind when he wrote this? Does he seriously believe that there are "many aggrieved" who are prepared to launch an arson campaign against historical monuments because of a joke about the Battle of Hastings?

If he does believe this, then he must surely be aware that such people could only come from the Englisc nationalist movement. Hawke is a prominent figure within this subculture, so if he is truly concerned, then he would be better off trying to discourage his flock from acts of terrorism, rather than blaming English Heritage.

Finally, I will leave you with this posting from Lee Ingram's Steadfast Trust-approved English Advocates Facebook page:

...Which round about sums up my thoughts on 1066 and All That.

Exposure: How does the Steadfast Trust's response stand up?

In my previous post I summarised how the Steadfast Trust had been presented by the recent Exposure documentary. Just to recap, here is the charity's response to the programme and its accusations:

"Tim Hawke has been suspended pending an internal investigation, and Darren Clarke suspended from our supporters' list.

The Trust does not share or support the offensive views expressed, some by people unknown to the charity. We cannot be held responsible for the views, actions or political affiliations of our supporters. 

We always work within charity law and all donations are used to further our registered objectives.  The Steadfast Trust is not and never has been political in its aims and we are perplexed by the suggestion it has become the focal pint for the far right. 

Tim Hawke attended the event to identify whether it could benefit from a grant, he disliked what he saw and told trustees he would not attend in future. 

We have criteria that English Community Groups must follow. Only a fraction of groups are sanctioned by us. Tim Hawke says 'burn the mosques' was a comment on the page of one group, and he decided the trust could not be associated with it. Mark Taylor's comments on skinheads were made in jest and the event referred to did not happen."

There are two points I will give to the Steadfast Trust here.

One, the documentary was misleading in making its allegation that the Steadfast Trust is "a new focal point for the fascist far right", implying that all the old members of the BNP, the NF and the rest are now rallying around Steadfast. While the organisation has certainly picked up supporters from such groups, and it is definitely the focal point for a specific subset of the far-right (the subset which I have termed "Englisc" nationalism), it is not a major focal point for the British far-right as a whole. That is a worthwhile distinction.

Two, the documentary's presentation of Tim Hawke's "burn the mosques" discussion is suspect. It begins halfway through the conversation, with the narrator summarising what came before; we are left to take his word for it. So, it is quite plausible that Hawke's words were twisted by the documentary.

Beyond these two concerns, however, the word which I would use to describe Exposure's segment on the Steadfast Trust is "unsurprising." I have written multiple posts on this blog analysing the Steadfast Trust and its satellite groups, and time and time again I have provided evidence that the charity (former charity, now - it has been re-registered) is knowingly associating itself with racist groups. I will recap some of my findings in this post.

Mark Taylor: the man behind the Steadfast Trust?

The documentary portrays trustees Tim Hawke and Mark Taylor as the two joint leaders of the Steadfast Trust; my own research suggests that this is the case.

If so, it would be reasonable to assume that - now Hawke is suspended "pending an internal  investigation" - Mark Taylor is in charge of Steadfast. Perhaps it was Taylor who drafted the above statement, Taylor who is currently manning the Steadfast Facebook page, and possibly even Taylor who will be investigating Hawke.

Mark Taylor

So, just who is Mark Taylor and what does he stand for? Well, RationalWiki has an article on Taylor which argues that he was the owner of a now-defunct YouTube account called "Seaxwielder"; I added my own thoughts to the evidence here.

To summarise: Taylor and "Seaxwielder" are both Steadfast activists; have both lived in Kent; have both used the pseudonym "Scyld"; and are both artists. Capping it off, "Seaxwielder" linked to Taylor's website Wyrdart.co.uk on his profile:

The likelihood that Taylor was the man behind this account is definitely worth our attention when we consider the racist material posted by "Seaxwielder":

This is far stronger than the prejudice shown by Hawke in the documentary. Taylor would appear to be the more overtly racist of the two men, which makes the charity's suspension of Hawke hard to take seriously. From my point of view the suspension appears to be a case of Hawke falling on his sword so as to save the charity's reputation.

The extremist connections of the Steadfast Trust

The charity's official claim is that it did not endorse the Maldon event, and finds the fascist presence "abhorrent":

I think it is true that the Maldon meet-up was never endorsed by the Steadfast Trust - certainly, I can find no mention of it on the Steadfast website. But this is irrelevant when we consider that the charity had, on multiple other occasions, knowingly aligned itself with racists.

Consider this posting, in which it openly invites members of the ASF and Woden's Folk to a Battle Abbey event:

I've written about Woden's Folk and its founder Wulf Ingessunu at length here. It is hard to say where to start when summarising the views of this neo-Nazi cult: the more you scratch the surface, the more absurdities you find.

Briefly, they believe that Hitler was a divine avatar who fought a "holy war" against "dark forces"; that the 1980s TV series Robin of Sherwood was a divinely inspired work of prophecy; that white people did not evolve from apes, but rather have a "vegetative basis"; and that the two world wars were caused by Loki. At least one member also believes that Mars was once inhabited by an intelligent lifeform which is currently worshipped by Zionists.

The ASF (Anglo-Saxon Foundation) is rather more straightforward: it is a racist forum filled with white supremacists. Here are some typical postings by three of the forum's regular members:

Supporters of this movement will tell me that it is unfair (nay, positively anglophobic) to dismiss the entire forum because of a few objectionable posters. But a cursory glance over the board will demonstrate that these objectionable posters comprise the entire membership: even the forum's owner, Seaxan, thinks that Jews should be expelled from England.

As I demonstrated here, both Tim Hawke and Mark Taylor are members of the Anglo-Saxon Foundation - in fact, Taylor used to be one of its moderators. They are therefore well aware of the levels of racism to be found at the forum; despite this, they are perfectly willing to invite the ASF members to their events.

Darren Clarke, one of the activists spotlighted in Exposure, posts at the ASF under the name "Edmundy". The Steadfast Trust suspended him from its list of supporters in the wake of the documentary. As with the suspension of Hawke, this smacks of damage control: the Steadfast Trust openly invited members of a racist forum to its event, so it can hardly be surprised that one of those members turned out to be racist.

We can find more evidence of Steadfast colluding with the ASF in the documentary itself, although the makers did not pick up on it. Remember the sequence showing a Steadfast stall manned by Taylor and Hawke...?

Notice that one of the t-shirt designs on sale features the URL www.englisc-gateway.com. This is the address of the Anglo-Saxon Foundation. The charity was deliberately promoting Seaxan's racist forum.

Another hate group with which Steadfast has aligned itself is the Northants English Welfare Society. I examined this organisation in depth here, demonstrating that its frontman Walter Greenway is a Nazi sympathiser and rabid anti-semite. This is just one of his pro-Nazi postings:

The charity once named the Northants English Welfare Society as an organisation which "can benefit from help in the form of financial grants and advice / assistance from the Steadfast Trust". For an idea of how close Steadfast is to Greenway's racist group, just look at this joint stall:

As we can see, the racism and fascism demonstrated at the Maldon event were not some isolated occurrence. The Steadfast Trust has a proven history of knowingly aligning itself with racist groups, including outright pro-Nazi organisations.

The supporters respond

The Exposure documentary provoked the ire of Steadfast supporters even before it aired. One anonymous blogger hailed the documentary as "desperately pathetic", even though it wasn't due to be screened for another four days. A number of news websites summarised the documentary prior to its broadcast, resulting in comments such as these:

After the documentary was aired, heated discussions broke out on the Steadfast Trust's Faebook page; most of the comments have now been deleted.

At least one supporter lost faith in the charity after seeing its seedy underbelly:

Others, however, began defending the Steadfast Trust, sometimes with conspiracy theories. These two decided that the racists seen in the documentary were probably actors hired to discredit the charity:

"Æthelflæd Seaxmaiden", however, took a different tact and declared that trustee Tim Hawke is actually a plant who was deliberately sabotaging the charity. She also smugly dismissed the undercover cameraman as a "red", although quite how she can have deduced his views on economics is unclear:

The aforementioned Northants Enbglish Welfare Society chimed in with support. Ironically, this posting from a neo-Nazi group was followed by a comment from Lee Ingram arguing that the Steadfast Trust should issue a statement clarifying that Nazis aren't welcome:

Poor, naive Lee. He seems genuinely unaware that the Steadfast Trust has been deliberately inviting neo-Nazis to its events: if it took a principled stand against racists, it would lose most of its support base.

Speaking of Lee Ingram, his "English Advocates" Facebook page expressed its outrage at the affair, pleading that the Steadfast Trust is "a tiny charity... with no Government funding" - as though this means that it is somehow beyond criticism:

Note the implication that Nazi sympathisers within the English nationalist movement are part of a conspiracy. This is a curious sentiment coming from English Advocates, a page that has previously linked with approval to the openly neo-Nazi website Metapedia:

Finally, possibly the most interesting post comes from the Stormfront member Atrociter. I've written about this man before - he once claimed to have spent the day with a Steadfast trustee, indicating that he is pretty close to the charity.

He was apparently in the Maldon group shown in the documentary, and complains that Exposure never showed them joking about a white man wobbling on his bicycle being a "human sacrifice" (this, apparently, is meant to justify their hostility towards a passing mixed-race family). He also makes the reasonable point that the Islamic extremism seen in the same documentary was a graver concern than the Steadfast Trust, before unexpectedly showing his support for the fundamentalist Hindu group:

He also shows some familiarity with the undercover reporter:

Ironic that a Steadfast Trust supporter can object to the charity being associated with white supremacy... while posting at Stormfront.

In conclusion, Exposure may have represented the Steadfast Trust unfairly in some cases. In other cases, however, it was much less harsh than was deserved - think of how much mileage it could have got out of the Steadfast/Woden's Folk connection, for starters.

I'd say that while certain aspects of the documentary are questionable, it was broadly accurate as a whole. The Steadfast Trust has a history of knowingly aligning itself with neo-Nazis and similar extremists, and has now paid the price. I won't shed a tear.

In the next post in this series, I will talk about the second charity examined in the Exposure documentary: Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh.

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.