The Steadfast Trust loses the plot

The saga of the Steadfast Trust continues...

The organisation was deregistered by the Charity Commission early last year, although it may well have died even without this occurring. One of its supporters, Darren Clarke, has said as much on Facebook:

Still, it seems that somebody involved with the Steadfast Trust is willing to keep at it, and the website has been given a recent overhaul. Oddly, the charity's official Facebook page still hasn't been updated since April 2015, with bewildered bigots leaving comments asking what has happened. This suggests that the organisation has undergone a change in management, and whoever is running the shop now does not have access to the Facebook page.


Bizarre rantings

Whatever else can beside about the original Steadfast Trust, the articles on its website were at least competently written. The same cannot beside of the new version: the writing here can be charitably described as green ink.

Here is how the site summarises the Steadfast Trust's 2015 woes: with a slideshow of World War II photos.

The site's second news report carries on in a similar vein. It begins with conspiracy theory:

This time around, the Steadfast Trust's opponents are directly compared to Nazis:

Seems a bit rich from an organisation that has previously associated with known neo-Nazi groups.

This gallery also contains a picture showing a policeman chasing a group of naked preadolescent boys. How the Steadfast Trust could feel that a photograph of naked children would be an appropriate thing to post is beyond me, and I have taken the liberty of censoring it:

In another slideshow, the new Steadfast Trust offers a distinctly pro-Christian slant - something which was not noticeable with the previous version of the charity. The site still acknowledges that practitioners of "English paganism" make up a significant portion of the Steadfast Trust's support base, however:

The new Steadfast appears also to be pushing an Atlanticist line. Here, it claims that the pilgrims who settled in America "did so because they want[ed] to live in England as a state of being":

Whoever put these slideshows together has certainly been busy. Too bad they didn't take the time to actually make their arguments coherent. I mean, look at this stuff:

Outside of slideshows, the site is also home to this unreadably garbled rant about race relations in contemporary Britain:

AND finally in pursuit of the old British State and Empire policy of DIVIDE ET IMPERA:- 

(a) That phrase “Black British” may be officially treated by institutions of the UK state including the Charity Commission as referring to an ethnic group that is to be afforded all the rights and privileges in law accorded to people of an ethnic or nation group.  This is to be so even though the UK State, including acting by the Commission for Equality and Human Rights, officially recognises the phrase “Black British” to  be referring to skin colour group – a group formed of people having a black skin colour whilst in the possession of British citizenship. 

(b). That persons who are mixed or multi in origin must stay in the mixed or multi census group in which they can be put according to skin colour and/or race mix and as such  cannot be members, let alone 100% members, of any other ethnic or nation group on the census form. 

(c) That brown and yellow people are to be preferentially treated by never labelling them as such. 

And these are just some of the God awful legal implications of the Charity Commission decision to remove The Steadfast Trust from the Charity Register. 

We know – yes this really is an “you what?” moment  and it begs the questions -” Is it meant to produce schizophrenia?”.  Was it meant to put a poison pill into inter communal relations?.   Was the purpose to wipe out of existence the indigenous communities of the UK  by the stroke of a civil servant’s pen.  Well you decide the answer to all these questions!. 

The burden of having all this garbage sorted out has fallen on The Steadfast Trust; an organisation that has an income of less than £10,000 a year – that is below the level of which an individual is considered wealthy enough to pay taxation.  The burden has fallen on an organisation, The Steadfast Trust, that has been intentional vilified in the public domain as being extremist far right, racist, national socialist (Nazi), white nationalist, etc etc etc.

To top off the weirdness, the Steadfast Trust has adopted the Broadway number "The Impossible Dream" as its theme song.


A Change of Location

Significantly, the organisation appears to have relocated its office during the last year. The earlier version of the Steadfast Trust website gave an Macclesfield-based address, while the new one claims to be located in Stratford-upon-Avon. Furthermore, I looked up the Whois information on the site and found that the provided address for the registrant is in Bury; I do not remember this being the case beforehand.

I looked up the Bury address and found that it belongs to a company called SVM Consultants, which was formed on April 2015. This is a very obscure company with almost no Internet presence. CheckCompany lists its officers as being Stephen and Valerie Morris, but beyond that the only relevant information I could find about it is that it is credited with running a Wordpress blog called England In My Heart:

For reasons of privacy, I blocked out part of the address to be on the safe side.

From here, we can find out exactly who is behind SVM by looking at the comments on the blog's "about" page:

Stephen Morris is a Bury-based English Democrat who stood in the 2015 election. I have not previously come across his name in connection with the Steadfast Trust, but given that its website is registered to his business address, it seems safe to say that he is involved with the current version of the organisation.

But whoever is in charge right now, there is a blatantly obvious flaw with how the Steadfast Trust is now presenting itself: nothing it says makes a lick of sense. It cannot hope to attract supporters with this kind of foaming-at-the-mouth gibberish, and so this development looks less like a revival and more like a last gasp.

Woden's Folk and mental illness

Wulf Ingessunu

Woden's Folk has been a recurring topic on this blog for a while. Founded by a man who calls himself Wulf Ingessunu, the cult has a number of bizarre beliefs - such as its insistence that a line of dialogue from a 1980s TV series is an "ancient prophecy", or its claim that Hitler is a divine avatar. But exactly what is it that drove Ingessunu to these outlandish notions?

I now have a pretty good idea of the answer to that question.

Wulf has been active on his blog lately. "Woden's Folk - The Year to Come" is a typically garbled post which starts by raving about "the Coming of The Man to Come - The Avenging God" before going on to quote dialogue from the film The 13th Warrior; it is inexplicably illustrated with a 1934 Latvian propaganda poster and clipart of some wheat.
More interestingly, however, he recently posted this statement:

When I went through the Shamanic Initiation back in the spring of 1997 I was watching the TV with my family and could at one point see letters moving across the screen, letters which no-one else could see! Over and over I said that I could see 'subliminal' letters but no-one else could see them. They were very much like the above 'Occult Symbols' which are a Masonic Alphabet.

What Wulf is describing here is clearly a hallucination. The NHS has a list of more likely causes for this "shamanic" occurrence:

• taking illicit drugs or alcohol
• a mental illness such as schizophrenia or dementia
• a progressive neurological condition such as Alzheimer's disease or Parkinson's disease
• loss of vision caused by a condition such as macular degeneration – this is known as Charles Bonnet syndrome

Wulf's post abut his hallucination made it to FSTDT, where it received a very intriguing reply from an anonymous poster:

I agree with what this Grand-Master is saying, he appeals to the Englisc-Folk, and everyone who is right-thinking has seen the secret Masonic codes lurking on TV. I am a proud member of Woden's Folk, and I am not Wulf Ingessunu who is brilliant, has mystic powers and he is the avatar of Woden, thus he is Woden. His words are divine law. 

I have to deal with my friends, who have been tricked by the shadow that clouds most of the Englisc, who have not Awaked yet. They like branding me as a trans-woman in denial, how daft. Yes, I do want to be a woman, but then, doesn't everyone? 

Most men long to be women, as a result of the mind being exposed to the Dark-Forces that threaten to stop Woden's Folk, who have Awaked to their True Role in stopping the evil from growing any stronger. Also, I want to get rid of the more bigoted parts of Woden's Folk, who belong to the shadows. They disgrace Woden's Folk. 

I've tried to tell Wulf Himself not to talk to them, but he never listens. How hard can't it be for Woden Himself to spot these Occult-Nazis? This must be part of a cunning plan by Wulf who is Woden's Avatar. 

So mote it be. This is the truth. What do you think of it?

Now, we should consider the possibility that this person is a troll. If they are sincere, however, then they clearly have some sort of mental disorder. Sadly, they have fallen under the sway of Wulf Ingessunu, a man who has his own untreated issues and is in no position whatsoever to provide guidance to any similarly troubled individuals. Both people need professional help, not mystical hocus-pocus about Woden.

For more evidence of Ingessunu's mental health issues, consider this post from his Guerrilla Survivalism blog:

Water - this is a product that is today sold to us through our water-authorities; it is filthy water purified by chemicals such as chlorine, and added is fluoride which helps our teeth - we are told! It is dead-water that contains no Life-Energy because it comes through pipes and through the tap. This can only be understood when we consider how water flows in the natural world - it flows through water-courses which create movements of water and vortices which swirl one way and the other, a movement that energises the water. These water-courses are the earth's veins, arteries (rivers), and blood-vessels (steams and brooks), which carry the Earth's Blood (water) around the Earth. 

Wulf follows this gibberish with advice on how to restore "life-energy" to water:

As for tap-water, some of these 'energisers' are nothing more that methods of 'spinning' the water in a vortex-movement, using left and right spins alternatively, just as water moves along a river or stream. If this is so then the most simple way would be to fill a bottle with filtered tap-water and then spin the water round one way, emptying the bottle into a glass jug. Then the water would be put back into the bottle, spun the other way, and emptied into the jug again. The water in the bottle would empty in a spiralling vortex fashion emulating the natural flow of water. This could be done Nine Times one way and then Nine times the other way. 

Wulf's paranoia about unclean and "dead" water, and his nonsensical belief that water takes on special properties when swirled back and forth nine times, suggests obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Take a look at some of the OCD symptoms listed in Fundamentals - A Guide for Parents, Teachers and Carers on Mental Health and Self-Esteem by Lynn Crilly and Natasha Devon:

• Fear of being contaminated by germs or dirt, or of contaminating others
• Excessive focus on religious or moral ideas
• Order and symmetry - the idea that all physical objects must line up “just so
• Special attention to something considered lucky or unlucky ("superstitions")
• Praying or engagin in rituals triggered by religious fear to an excessive extent.

Wulf Ingessunu's absurd ritualistic behaviour and obsession with perceived contamination certainly overlaps with these symptoms.

With this in mind, let us take a look at some of the other members of Woden's Folk. Look at this discussion from a now-defunct forum, in which Woden's Folk cultist Paul Young claims to be in personal contact with invisible entities:

In addition to the Aesir gods, my Hearth recognize and relate to a wide variety of spiritual beings or 'wights'. These include the Norns - who are three female entities who weave the web of wyrd - and the Disir - who are female ancestral spirits attached to a tribe, family, or individual. we also work with 'hidden folk' such as elves, brownies, dwarves and etins (giants and other not so pleasant folk). They interact with the landwights who occupy features of the landscape such as streams, mountains, forests or fields. Having a relationship with landwights is an important feature of in our religion and outdoor rituals we carry out only proceed until the permission of landwights is sought and obtained.

Does Young actually believe that these elves and giants are talking to him? Can he hear their voices? If so, he should pay attention to the advice offered at Mentalhealthcare.org.uk:

Researchers have estimated that up to 90 per cent of people who have schizophrenia and up to 80 per cent of people who have bipolar disorder or psychotic depression hear voices either talking to them, or talking about them. 

Voice-hearing experiences are very individual. People may hear just one voice, or two or more voices, and the voices may be speaking at a normal level, or they may be whispering or shouting. The voices may say individual words or sentences, or have detailed conversations – with each other or with the voice-hearer. Someone may hear the same voice or the same voices regularly – each voice may have its own distinct qualities and characteristics, including a name. 

[...] 

Voices can also be noisy, strident, annoying and disturbing. Sometimes they are persuasive, or demanding, telling a hearer what to do – these are called 'command' voices. 

People who are unwell sometimes feel they have no control over the voices they hear, and may be very frightened and distressed by them. They may believe the voices are powerful and will harm them if they do not do as they say.

Wulf, if you are reading this article, please seek help. You are not "awakened", you have not undergone a "shamanic initiation", you have succumbed to mental illness. There is no "Woden", there is only a voice in your head. Your followers have not "heard the call of the blood", they have heard auditory hallucinations. Convincing them that they are a divine elect will do nothing but harm. These people need help, not hocus-pocus.


UPDATE: Wulf Ingessunu has replied to this post, although his response has done little to sway me. He confirms my suspicion that the aforementioned posting from FSTDT is a troll, rather than a genuine Woden's Folk member, but he says nothing about Paul Young's claims that elves are talking to him.

Ingessunu's defence rests on the bizarre notion that conventional psychiatry  has no bearing on him because he has a "Germanic Psyche":

The problem is that today's psychiatry, psychoanalysis or psychotherapy is based upon Sigmund Freud rather than upon Carl Gustav Jung, the latter having a far better understanding of the Germanic Psyche - i.e. the Germanic Gods. Thus, any form of 'diagnosis' through psychiatry, psychoanalysis or any other 'psycho' that 'Maggie' would like to quote in regard to these likely causes comes through in a form that is not suited to the knowledge of the Germanic Psyche. I am not suggesting that 'Maggie' is not an expert in her field but that expertise may not be right in regard to the Germanic Psyche.

He also complain that "We on the so-called 'Far-Right' are always accused of being 'a loner' or having 'childhood problems' that make us believe what we do". I didn't mention anything about childhood problems in this post - the fact that Wulf felt the need to bring this topic up in his rebuttal suggests that it is a sensitive topic to him.

Another comment that seems to have particularly bothered Wulf is my suggestion that he has unchecked issues. He apparently responded by obsessively looking up the word "issue" in the dictionary, which would only reaffirm my suspicions:

I have been through various English Dictionaries to find what the word 'issue' really means, and not one of them comes up with the answer 'problems', which is what is clearly meant in this statement. The modern usage of the word 'issue' is typical of the people who have influence in the 'Progressive Society'. One meaning of the word is 'topic of interest' so maybe that is what you mean Maggie....'What do you think?'

Commenting on the list of OCD symptoms identified by Crilly and Devon, Wulf dismisses the authors by claiming that "these people are what is termed 'Cultural Marxists' who cleverly promote Marxist Communism through destroying all genius amongst our Folk, and by attacking those who do not conform to the material economic society."

Wulf also restates his absurd belief that swirling water around in a glass gives it "Life-Force":

Since this part of the attack was about what I said about the water supplies I will explain to Maggie what I meant, since she (he) clearly does not understand. The water that comes through our taps is 'dead water' unlike the water that comes from a spring or well etc. The suggestion that I made was not based so much upon 'magic' as such, but when you spin the water around it collects air, and since air is the medium for the Life-Force then it collects Life-Force. (Quantum Science or Aryan Science recognises this in terms of what scientists call Zero-Point Energy; Materialistic Science cannot do so because only the material world is recognised).

Not everyone is convinced by this claim, however:

At the start of this post I mentioned that Wulf Ingessunu had, without explanation, quoted dialogue from the film The 13th Warrior on his blog. When responding to me, he made the bizarre decision to do it again, this time claiming that the lines were "chanted by the Angel of Death":

Except that, as I have already demonstrated, this song was not "chanted by the Angel of Death", it was made up for a film. It does have a loose historical model, but this was spoken by a slave-girl shortly before she was sacrificed to Odin - not "the Angel of Death".

Is Wulf Ingessunu trying to tell us that he has heard this "Angel of Death" reciting the above piece of movie dialogue? If so, this is clearly another auditory hallucination.

English Advocates plan to strip ethnic minorities of their rights

English Advocates - a Facebook page run by Lee Ingram - has started a new campaign. It hopes to ensure that all ethnic minority citizens will be barred from holding positions of authority in England, and that anyone who stands in the way of this movement will be arrested.

The Advocates believe themselves to have solid legal grounds for this endeavour, using a quotation from the Bill of Rights 1688 as a basis:

In their rush to justify their racist agenda, however, the English Advocates have grossly misrepresented the document in question.

Here is the relevant passage in full:

New Oaths of Allegiance, &c.
And that the Oathes hereafter mentioned be taken by all Persons of whome the Oathes of Allegiance and Supremacy might be required by Law instead of them And that the said Oathes of Allegiance and Supremacy be abrogated. 

Allegiance.
I A B doe sincerely promise and sweare That I will be faithfull and beare true Allegiance to their Majestyes King William and Queene Mary Soe helpe me God. 

Supremacy.
I A B doe sweare That I doe from my Heart Abhorr, Detest and Abjure as Impious and Hereticall this damnable Doctrine and Position That Princes Excommunicated or Deprived by the Pope or any Authority of the See of Rome may be deposed or murdered by their Subjects or any other whatsoever. And I doe declare That noe Forreigne Prince Person Prelate, State or Potentate hath or ought to have any Jurisdiction Power Superiority Preeminence or Authoritie Ecclesiasticall or Spirituall within this Realme Soe helpe me God.

So, what the Advocates are quoting is part of a pair of oaths. Oaths are binding only to people who actually make them, and the Bill of Rights does not specify who is required to make these oaths.

In this day and age, of course, nobody is required to make either of these oaths - the fact that one of them mentions William III and Mary II indicates just how outdated this section of the Bill of Rights is. These oaths are historical artifacts, nothing more.

This is not the only fatal flaw in the English Advocates' plan. Notice that the second oath refers specifically to positions of religious authority; this is evident even in the section quoted by Ingram and company, who are apparently unaware of what the word "ecclesiastical" means.

As anybody with any knowledge of English history will tell you, the Bill of Rights was drafted at a time of great strife between Catholics and Protestants. The reference to "noe Forreigne Prince Person Prelate, State or Potentate" is not directed at immigrants or descendants of immigrants living in England, but rather to individuals and bodies based in foreign countries - it is an obvious allusion to the Roman Catholic Church.

Lee Ingram, the man behind English Advocates.

To recap, Lee Ingram and his comrades are making three fatal errors in their reading of this document:

1: That the oaths are legally binding to everyone in the country, even those who have not actually made them;
2: That "foreign" refers to ancestry, rather than geographic location;
3: That the second oath covers all positions of authority, rather than merely religious authority.

Nice try, Lee. But while the replies to your post demonstrate that your followers have fallen for your misrepresentation of the Bill of Rights, not everyone is quite so gullible. Any legal expert would laugh their socks off if you came to them with this nonsense.

This is not the first time that Ingram has expressed interest in removing the rights of ethnic minorities.  Take a look at these posts he made at the now-defunct Cross of St. George forum back in 2007 (the thread is archived here):

The article he links to, with obvious approval, is hosted on the white supremacist website Heretical Press. Written by Kenneth McKilliam, a Nazi sympathiser who was closely involved with the BNP during its early days, the article argues that Jews should not be allowed to hold positions of authority in Britain:

Being prohibited aliens by the Edict of Expulsion Jews have no right to sit in our houses of parliament, nor on our local government councils. They have no right to be in the judiciary nor to hold office in the executive of government nor in the police force. All purported laws and purported acts of parliament in which Jews have taken part in the voting are illegal, unconstitutional: null and void. 

Stripping ethnic minority groups of their rights, it would seem, is a cause dear to Lee Ingram's heart.

The failure of the Steadfast Trust's English Community Groups

Late last year I wrote a post with a rundown of the various English Community Groups that had been set up at the behest of the Steadfast Trust. With this organisation currently on ice, we should not be surprised that its ECGs are in pretty poor shape themselves:

The Ipswich ECG appears not have made any moves since 6 January.

The Portsmouth ECG seems to have frozen up a week before its Ipswich cousin.

The Southampton ECG - a group so obscure that I didn't even know it existed when I wrote my last rundown - let out its death rattle at the same time.

The Essex ECG,  I believe, closed its doors in late 2014.

The Dorset ECG merged into the English Volunteer Force, a not-particularly-significant EDL splinter group.

The Northants English Welfare Society is still active - but it seems unlikely to attract widespread support, given that its frontman Walter Greenway is an unabashed Nazi sympathiser. Incidentally, "Walter Greenway" is a pseudonym, and the man in question also appears to go under the name "Gamlegorm the White". I am unsure what his real name is, but a short while back I received hits from someone searching for "ragnar northants english welfare society", "gamelegorm the white walter greenway" and "walter greenway northants english welfare stephen osborne". Make of that what you will.

 A typical posting from the Northants English Welfare Society.

Recently, however, there has been one more nail in the coffin: ECGL.org, the official website of the Leicester ECG, has closed down as a result of its domain expiring on 17 September.
For a bit of background, the ECGL - the most prominent of the ECGs - was founded on 2011. In March last year it announced that it would rebrand as a nationwide group called English Advocates.

This is where things get a little fiddly. The ECGL Facebook page changed its name to English Advocates and the group's Youtube channel rebranded as "Ethnic English", but the ECGL website remained and the old group was, officially, still active. Ingram (or one of his cohorts) even restarted its Facebook presence as a separate page.

But that second ECGL Facebook page closed as well. Now, with the closure of the website, all that is left of the English Community Group Leicester is the English Advocates page - which is basically just Lee Ingram ranting:

Lee Ingram argues that living in England is as bad as living in war-torn Syria.

I took the opportunity to archive the ECGL website just before it went down. Of particular interest is the photo gallery, where I found this image...

Hmm, wonder what those papers they're distributing could be about...?

Well, it just so happens that the site offered a closer look:

Now, what does that stack of fliers on the left say...?

Ah, yes. Woden's Folk.

For those unfamiliar, Woden's Folk is a neo-Nazi cult that believes Hitler to have been an avatar of the god Woden. The cult is eagerly awaiting the return of Woden/Hitler, in the belief that he will save the Aryan race from the dark forces of Judaism. Lee Ingram and his pals, for reasons of their own, felt that this cult was worth promoting.

If you're reading this, Lee, please don't insult my intelligence by claiming that you were unaware of the cult's neo-Nazi beliefs at the time. We're talking about a group with "Woden" in its name. That alone should have been more than enough to set off alarm bells.

The Steadfast Trust's English Community Groups were meant to represent ordinary English folk. Instead, they ended up as magnets for neo-Nazis. Had anyone voiced these concerns at the beginning of the project, they would doubtless have been dismissed as Anglophobes. However, as history has shown, those concerns turned out to be entirely valid.

Of course, the failure of the English Community Groups is just one of many casualties in the short history of Englisc nationalism. My report on the impending demise of the Anglo-Saxon Foundation turned out to be overoptimistic - the forum's domain was renewed for another year - but we need only take a quick look around the movement to find numerous other groups that have bitten the dust. English Shieldwall? Dead. Englisc Resistance? Dead. Steadfast journal? Dead.

Englisc nationalism will never gain a foothold amongst the English. Simple as that.

Englisc Resistance

I decided to make a post about a racist Facebook page called Englisc Resistance, partly because I've seen a degree of misinformation about it being spread in antifascist circles. During the course of my research, however, the page closed down - although you can see an archive of it here. The Englisc nationalist movement can notch up yet another casualty...

As far as I can tell, the first significant mention of Englisc Resistance in an antifascist context is in this Vice article from September 12 2014, which briefly namechecks it as one of multiple "small but likeminded ethnic English groups".

Three days later Vice.com published an article by a different author, about a protest that was attended by members of far-right groups; "From the flags, it looked like it included the National Front (NF) and someone from the Englisc Resistance (that is the correct spelling)", states the article. This comment is illustrated with a photo showing the flags referred to:

This is where things have started to become distorted. The author appears to be working on the assumption that the symbol on the left-hand flag, showing a white dragon, a stylised swastika/fylfot and the slogan "Englisc - We Fear No Foe", is associated specifically with Englisc Resistance. This is presumably because both use the antiquated spelling "Englisc".

What the author seems unaware of is that Englisc Resistance is one part of a larger movement which also includes the Anglo-Saxon Foundation, the Steadfast Trust and other groups. Multiple people within this movement - which I have termed Englisc nationalism - have used the logo in question; for example, the Anglo-Saxon Foundation member Wodensson has it as his forum avatar:

I've also noticed a variation of the symbol, with St. George's Cross instead of a swastika, being used by some of the slightly less extreme nationalist groups:

A few months after the Vice.com articles went up, the Bristol Antifascists blog ran a list of various far-right groups. Influenced by Vice's work, this list includes Englisc Resistance in relation to the "Fear No Foe' swastika logo:

The description beneath the photo actually fits Englisc nationalism as a whole - the blog is confusing Englisc Resistance with the wider movement to which it belongs. The reference to burning crosses in forests is clearly derived from the first Vice article, which covers an unspecified nationalist group engaging in this activity but gives no indication that Englisc Resistance was responsible.

The following month, Brighton Antifascists published a list of far-right symbols which identifies the "Fear No Foe" swastika as the logo of Englisc Resistance:

 

I believe the man in this photograph to be Piers Mellor, who briefly appeared in the Exposure: Charities Behaving Badly talking about his involvement in the BNP, British Movement and National Front. Here is Mellor's response to the above snippet:

To give Mellor his due, I believe that he's entirely right in this tweet.

Having - hopefully - cleared up some misconceptions about Englisc Resistance, let's take a look at exactly what the people behind this now-defunct Facebook page stand for...
To start with, ER engaged in the tried-and-true Englisc nationalist practice of referring to non-white people as "orcs" and gloating over their deaths:

Despite being ostensibly focused on England r ather than the southern USA, the page showed a strange fascination with the Confederate flag. The first of these images is my favourite, making a nonsensical relation between the losing side of the American Civil War and the Anglo-Saxon festival of Eostre:

There are flags which Englisc Resistance was less keen on, however - such as the rainbow flag of gay rights:

In this post, Englisc Resistance republished an antisemitic cartoon from Der Sturmer:

In July the group posted a set of photos from a military exhibition; I did some digging and found that these images come from the War and Peace Revival in Kent. Predictably, English Resistance focused on the Nazi exhibits:

Englisc Resistance also appreciated this display of Ku Klux Klan memorabilia:

Who was behind Englisc Resistance? Well, the page was rather secretive on this front. Just look at the crudely scrawled-out faces in these photographs:

(Incidentally, the last of these images is from a Woden's Folk event at Avebury - more photos from the occasion can be seen in this video)

I couldn't help but notice that all three photos appear to show the same person. Each time the subject shares a similar build and, in two of them, even wears the same coat. So who is this mystery man?

Well, looking closely at the second image, I spotted something awfully familiar about that half-shaved haircut. He reminded me of Darren Clarke, one of the Steadfast Trust supporters seen in the Exposure: Charities Behaving Badly documentary. Here's a comparison:

I then compared the other two photos of the Englisc Resistance mystery man with one of Darren Clarke, taken at a March for England event:

Yup. I think we have our man.

Who is Darren Clarke? Well, when I first mentioned him on this blog, he was just another racist in the Englisc nationalist movement. He then went on to become the secretary of the Ipswich English Community Group. Not long afterwards he became an unlikely TV star when he turned up in the undercover footage seen in the Exposure documentary. I later demonstrated that Clarke was almost certainly the author of the book White Wyrm Rising: A Journey into Modern English Nationalism; in the same post, I provided strong evidence that Clarke is also the identity of the Stormfront member "Atrociter".

There is further evidence tying Clarke to Englisc Resistance. He was a regular poster in the page's comments section; here he is, showing his support for the Confederate flag:

Like many in the Englisc nationalist movement, Clarke likes to paint himself as an ordinary Englishman. But how many ordinary Englishmen feel such a passionate commitment to the cause of the Confederate States? How many would literally fly the flag for a neo-Nazi cult, as Clarke appears to be doing in the photo of the Woden's Folk gathering?

I will be keeping an eye out for Englisc Resistance in case it turns up again in a different form...

S. A. Swaffington is a plagiarist

The self-published novelist S. A. Swaffington (aka Ryan West) has become something of a recurring topic on this blog. Back in April I wrote a post about his history as a neo-Nazi propagandist, demonstrating in the process that he had been using a sockpuppet account to praise his own work on Amazon; his less-than-eloquent response to this was to call me a racist paedophile.

Now, the saga continues: I have evidence that S. A. Swaffington is a plagiarist.

Look at the cover of Swaffington's latest novel, Hengist & Horsa: The Wrath of the Gods (in case he alters the cover, I've archived the Amazon page here):

Something seemed fishy to me. The illustration's nice, but the design is very amateurish - he's just clumsily slapped some Arial text over the picture. This made me wonder who provided the illustration, and whether or not they approved of its usage here.

Turns out that Swaffington did a pretty rotten job of covering his tracks. Within a few minutes I was able to trace the source of the image: it is a piece of publicity art for a computer game called Mount & Blade, developed by a Turkish company called TaleWorlds:

Incidentally, the warriors depicted are not Anglo-Saxons; they are apparently "Nords", a fictional Viking-like tribe invented by the developers of the game which takes place in an imaginary world called Calradia. It is amusing that Swaffington - a supposed historian - has confused an historical people with a fantasy tribe from a video game, but this kind of thing is fairly common in the Englisc nationalist movement: see here, here and here for other examples.

I also noticed this promotional image on Swaffington's Facebook page:

This, too, originates from Mount & Blade:

I decided to take a look through Swaffington's past work and see if I could identify any more plagiarism. I was not disappointed.

In 2012 Swaffington published a book entitled Anglo-Saxon Trolls, Wights, Faeries, Orcs & Other Supernatural Creatures. This is no longer available on Amazon, but still has a page on Goodreads:

The cover image is obviously stolen from Gnomes, a 1976 book by the Dutch team of Poortvliet and Huygen. My library has a copy, so I was able to scan the relevant portion:

Swaffington appears to have later republished his book with a new title and cover:

This time, the cover illustration was... erm... borrowed from the cover to Robin Bates' book How Beowulf can Save America (I believe that the illustrator is Chris Kelb):

Then we have an earlier book in Swaffington's Hengist & Horsa series, The Scourge of the Gods. Swaffington has since changed the cover, but the original cover design can be seen on Goodreads:

Swaffington seems to be very proud of this cover art, as he has it as his Twitter avatar:

This time, the image comes from an artist who is known on DeviantArt as "Arrsistable" (and is, incidentally, an American - funny how this patriotic English author has relied so much on the work of foreign artists):

Seriously, did Swaffington actually believe that nobody would notice any of this?