Patriotic Alternative: Uniting the Fascist Right?

Simon Murdoch - 17 08 20

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Key Takeaways

Patriotic Alternative is a fascist, antisemitic white nationalist organisation launched in Britain in September 2019. Its founder is Mark Collett, formerly director of publicity for the British National Party and one of the UK’s most notorious fascist figures.

While small and too extreme to ever garner mainstream success, Patriotic Alternative have quickly become one of the most important fascist organisations currently active in the UK.

Patriotic Alternative have managed to attract a number of far-right social media influencers from the post-organisational online far-right to become active in a more traditional organisation.

Despite being very new Patriotic Alternative have already been hampered by infighting and division.

On 9 August 2020, International Indigenous People’s Day, images were uploaded of activists displaying the phrase ‘White Lives Matter’ from across the UK and some from abroad. The campaign was organised by Patriotic Alternative (PA), an antisemitic, white nationalist group created in 2019 by Mark Collett, former Head of Publicity for the British National Party.

Designed to bait opposition into covering the actions in outrage so to gain free publicity, PA hoped to get the phrase trending on social media and have their images picked-up by the mainstream media. Though achieving neither of these, the group managed to exaggerate their size and support to the wider fascist scene, boosting their morale and partially unifying this long splintered, ageing and ailing extreme faction of the British far right.

While the threat from PA should not be exaggerated, their seeming ability to unite elements of the disparate and decentralised online fascist scene with traditional far-right activists into a more orthodox organisation makes the group one to watch. To this end, our new report examines the group and their extremist beliefs, profiles its leaders and a member with an extreme past, considers their possible trajectory and the infighting that is already hampering them.

The main findings of the report:

PA is a fascist, antisemitic white nationalist organisation launched in Britain in September 2019.
Its founder is Mark Collett, formerly director of publicity for the British National Party and one of the UK’s most notorious fascist figures.
The group’s private social media are awash with extreme racism, Holocaust denial and open veneration of fascism.
While small and too extreme to ever garner mainstream success they have quickly become one of the most important fascist organisations currently active in the UK.
They have attracted activists previously involved in more ‘moderate’ far right movements, such as previous supporters of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (AKA Tommy Robinson).
In a short space of time they have managed to begin to unite elements of the notoriously splintered and fractured UK fascist scene, and even attracted a former activist of the neo-Nazi group National Action, which has since been proscribed under anti-terror legislation.
They have managed to attract a number of far-right social media influencers from the post-organisational online far-right to become active in a more traditional organisation.
Despite being very new they have already been hampered by infighting and division.