National Action accused 'probably biggest Nazi of the lot' - claim

A man accused of creating a continuity faction of a banned fascist group was "probably the biggest Nazi of the lot", a court has heard.

Alex Davies, 27, from Swansea, is accused of being a member of National Action (NA), after it was banned in December 2016.

Barnaby Jameson, prosecuting, told Winchester Crown Court that NA "never disbanded, it morphs into regional factions".

Mr Davies denies the charge.

Mr Jameson told the court Mr Davies set up NS131, which stood for National Socialist Anti-Capitalist Action, which followed NA in being banned by the UK government.

Mr Jameson said this was a "continuity faction" of NA covering the southern part of the country.

He said: "If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, there's a racing certainty it is, in fact, a duck.

"The same name, National Socialist Anti-Capitalist Action (NS131), take out the three middle words and you are left with a big clue: National Action.

"The group was expanding and recruiting, what became NS131 was one of the skins worn by continuity factions of National Action."

He added a ban meant nothing to Mr Davies, who he called a "terrorist hiding in plain sight".

Mr Jameson said NA and NS131 used the same colours, encrypted internet provider and ideology - a throwback to Nazi Germany - as well as the same leader, and regional structure.

He added: "Who was at the centre of all this? The founder, the galvaniser, the recruiter, one Alex Davies of Swansea. He was probably the biggest Nazi of the lot."

Mr Jameson continued: "The defendant was an extremist's extremist.

"This was an individual who had his first contact with counter-extremist authorities when he was 15 or 16 - those organising the Prevent project.

"And when in contact he sets up an organisation (NA) in 2013 concerned with the revolutionary overthrow of the democratic order."

He added that Davies later said to an undercover reporter that he did not want to say what he wanted to do to Jews "because it was so extreme".

He continued that Davies was "an individual who went on tour to Germany to Buchenwald to give the Nazi salute in the execution chamber that was a flagrant and provocative breach of German law."

He added that NA was judged by an expert to be "so extreme you can't go any further".

Mr Davies has told the court that NS131 was not set up as a continuation of NA and had different aims and processes.

He said that he was "exercising his democratic rights" after the ban and he was involved in "advancing the cause of national socialism, not the cause of a continuity NA".

The trial continues.