‘Neo-Nazi’ politics student accused of 12 terror offences called for ‘racial holy war’, court hears

A university student allegedly wrote ‘we did not finish the job’ in regard to the Holocaust on an extreme right-wing website, a court has heard.

Andrew Dymock, 23, wrote articles on the now banned group System Resistance Network’s (SRN) website in 2017 and received donations for the organisation, the Old Bailey was told.

The defendant, from Bath in Somerset, is on trial on 15 charges, including 12 terrorism-related alleged offences, all of which he has denied.

On the second day of his trial, prosecutor Jocelyn Ledward alleged Dymock published an anti-Semitic article on the SRN website in October 2017, while he was studying politics at Aberystwyth University in Wales.

In an article called ‘The truth about the Holocaust’, Dymock allegedly wrote: ‘The only guilt felt by the Germanic race in regard to the Holocaust should be that we did not finish the job.

‘Far too many people are getting caught up on debating the death toll of the Holocaust as if it matters at all… the issue is not the given death toll, the issue is that the death toll was not of the entire Jewish race.’

The article continued to describe Jewish people as ‘a cancer on this earth’ which ‘must be eradicated in its entirety’, the jury heard.

Ms Ledward told the court: ‘The article is clear in its encouragement of the eradication of Jewish people.

‘Such encouragement constitutes encouragement to commit acts of terrorism.’

Ms Ledward said material from a USB and laptop found in Dymock’s bedroom and on an iPhone seized by police when they arrested him ‘mirrored content on the website’, and the PayPal account which received donations was linked to Dymock’s bank account.

She told the court SRN’s Twitter account, which allegedly referred to homosexual people as ‘degenerate scum’ in some tweets, was set up using Dymock’s phone number.

The account was also used to post a ‘threatening’ six-minute video showing SRN members plastering posters of a Nazi holding a noose over Southampton Pride adverts in the city centre ahead of an event in August 2017, the barrister said.

Ms Ledward said the video ‘provides a clear and strong indication as to the group’s extreme homophobic mindset, and the sort of tactics employed by the group in order to stir up hatred in local communities’.

She added: ‘(Dymock) seeks to dehumanise those groups in the eyes of the reader and incite hatred against them.

‘As promotional material and propaganda, he seeks to recruit others to his vision of a race war against those he denigrates and dehumanises.

‘His messages seek to create or add to the tension between groups within society.’

The jury was also shown videos allegedly found on Dymock’s memory stick, including one showing two men burning a gay pride rainbow flag, along with Israel, EU and US flags with the caption ‘support your local Nazis’.

Photographs found on the USB also included one showing a pumpkin with a swastika carved into the side, and others showing alleged members of the SRN doing a Nazi salute, made anonymous with skull images superimposed over their faces.

The court previously heard that SRN, which was proscribed in 2020, was one of a small number of organisations which filled a ‘dubious gap’ left following the proscription of far-right group National Action.

Dymock, who appeared in court wearing a blue blazer and black face covering, claims he was ‘set up’ by others, and that material linking him to content on the SRN website and Twitter account was ‘planted in his possession without his knowledge’, the prosecution said.

He denies five charges of encouraging terrorism, two of funding terrorism, stirring up racial hatred and hatred based on sexual orientation, four counts of disseminating terrorist publications, possessing a terrorist document and possessing racially inflammatory material.

A video on the SRN website railed against the ‘LGBTQPEDO’ community and featured a poster of a man performing a Nazi salute holding a noose over his shoulder and calls to ‘protect children from degenerate scum’.

‘There is no specific charge which relates to this video,’ the prosecutor said.

‘But its inclusion on the website provides a clear and strong indication as to the group’s extreme homophobic mindset, and the sort of tactics employed by the group in order to stir up hatred in local communities.

‘It is also relevant because of the white poster featured in the video and apparently stickered around Southampton – which is the subject of a separate count,’ said Ms Ledward.

However, in a prepared statement to the police, Dymock claimed to be a member of the LGBT community and is bisexual.

The statement said: ‘I don’t have extremist beliefs. I am a politics student and I am interested in modern nationalism.

‘I am doing a dissertation on this which I have been researching for the past year.

‘I would be offended if someone called me a Nazi.

‘Mein Kampf and Siege are for my research.

‘In fact, I am bisexual but lean towards being homosexual, in direct conflict with Nazism.’

Ms Ledward said: ‘The prosecution’s case is that Mr Dymock’s self-described sexual orientation appears to have been somewhat more complicated, and perhaps to have changed over time as AD became more deeply involved with the extreme right-wing, and depending upon his audience.’

Dymock went on to describe the Nazis as ‘not far right’ but ‘authoritarian centre-right’ claiming the genocide of Jewish was ‘outside the political spectrum’.

He claimed to be a Vedic, a form of Hinduism, and claimed he used the Swastika for religious and not Nazi purposes.

Dymock said that his tattoos were pagan rather than far-right inspired and called a photo of him doing the Sieg Heil salute as a ‘joke’.

Any connection to the far-right groups, he claimed, was in order to conduct research for his dissertation on the rise of nationalism.

The trial continues.