By Ben Thompson
A young Neo-Nazi, who plotted the murder of a MP, will not face a retrial for his membership of a banned Neo-Nazi group.
23 year old Jack Renshaw was born in Lancashire, and had previously been involved with the English Defence League (EDL) and the British National Party (BNP). For a brief time, he’d been a student at Manchester Metropolitan University, but was asked to leave because of his far-right activism.
Renshaw said of his political journey: “I started off basically as a bit of a civic nationalist with, let’s say, slightly covert racist thoughts, and now I’m an outright racist national socialist.”
His political home would end up being National Action, a group founded in 2013 that openly identifies as racist and Neo-Nazi. The group have been a proscribed organisation under the Terrorism Act since December 2016, when it was found the organisation were using Twitter accounts to celebrate the murder of Jo Cox.
Renshaw himself was plotting to kill a MP at the time of his arrest in the summer of 2017. Thankfully, a disillusioned member of National Action told the authorities of Renshaw’s plans to murder Rosie Cooper, the MP for West Lancashire, with a machete. During the trial, it emerged that Renshaw had decided against targeting the then home secretary Amber Rudd, because he felt she would be ‘too protected’.
It has now emerged that in addition to terrorist offences, Renshaw is also being charged with child sex offences. Renshaw pleads innocent, claiming that the anti-fascist charity Hope Not Hate hacked his phone in order to implicate him in grooming underage boys. This defence was not accepted by the prosecution.
Renshaw’s history reads like a case study in radicalisation. He has a history of anti-Semitic statements, writing on his blog in 2014: “The Jew has declared war on our people and we should – and in time we will – return the favour.”
He will be sentenced for his planned terrorist plot on the 17th of May.
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