The fascist group Patriotic Alternative (PA) has suffered a major split, spearheaded by Kenny Smith, the group’s former National Admin officer.
On the back of mounting frustrations with the PA leadership, Smith has quickly launched the “Homeland Party”, with the support of most of PA’s appointed officers across Britain and six of its Regional Organisers.
Smith, a former BNP organiser based in the Isle of Skye, has also taken with him most of PA’s Scottish branch, which was among PA’s most active and hardline. HOPE not hate predicted in 2021 that PA Scotland, which had a strong independent streak, may be at the heart of a future schism. While the Homeland Party is a UK-wide organisation, Scotland is undoubtedly a key region of strength at present.
Homeland will attempt to distance itself from PA’s toxic reputation, but its hateful membership and style activism will be the same as PA – including its focus on “community politics”.
As we reveal below, some of the ex-PA activists who have now joined Homeland had already been making furtive efforts to influence local politics, with at least one activist managing to be co-opted onto a community council without revealing his political affiliation.
The new group also intends to continue its attempts to infiltrate local communities, in particular by piggybacking on local campaigns against accommodation being used to temporarily house asylum seekers. This includes in Erskine, Renfrewshire, where the ex-PA activists – now with Homeland – continue to present themselves merely as citizens who share similar concerns to the residents.
This could not be further from the truth.
For example, the former PA activist and now key Homeland figure who uses the pseudonym “Gordon Freeman”, wrote an open letter to Erskine residents in which he tried to inoculate them against the accusations of racism and extremism attached to the group, suggesting that the terms are thrown around recklessly:
You, like us, will be called all the names under the sun for daring to voice concerns about having these people dumped on your doorstep. We are called these names as well, because we, like you, also voice our concerns […] Don’t give in to name calling, don’t worry if they call you “racist” for putting your own people, your own family, first.”
Apparently seeing no irony in asking others not to worry about being called racist whilst remaining anonymous himself, HOPE not hate can reveal that “Gordon Freeman” is in fact David Gardner, a factory worker and former soldier from Forfar, Angus, where he serves as the treasurer of Forfar Community Council.
Gardner gained some valuable publicity for PA in August 2022 when he orchestrated the installation of a huge “White Lives Matter” banner on a prominent location in Dundee as part of the group’s annual Indigenous People’s Day stunt.
Despite his disingenuous outreach efforts to the residents of Erskine, Gardner privately admits that the majority of people – or “normies” as he describes them – utterly reject his hateful views. When members of a far-right Telegram chat were coordinating a campaign of abuse against a white Youtuber for having a black boyfriend, Gardner dismissed the idea that such harrassment could be counterproductive:
“If it makes one normie person stop and think, then thats a good thing. The rest of them are probably never going to come round to our way of thinking anyway. Some of our people are pretty far gone remember. Its not about convincing them all, thats impossible.”
Gardner has further elaborated on his real “concerns”:
“If we didnt have jews running the porn industry, charging interest on loans, diverting taxes to israel, letting in thousands of non Whites to White nations etc etc etc then who is going to do any of that? If the jew doesnt do it with their holocaust myth to protect them, then no one else really does. If we removed the jewish people in those power positions, there is no route for this evil power to seep in White people”
Telegram post, 27 September 2022
Another key activist at the Erskine demonstrations is Derek Aire (AKA Doctor), an anonymous online Nazi and former PA activist whose identity HOPE not hate can reveal for the first time.
A freelance camera operator from Alexandria, West Dunbartonshire, Aire has helped with filming at the Erskine demonstrations and other PA events. However, he has kept his identity secret for fear it would cost him his day job filming at high-profile events like the annual Scottish National Party (SNP) conferences and the COP26 summit in Glasgow.
Using the pseudonym “Brian Gordon”, Aire has been actively promoting Erskine demos in Facebook groups, telling local residents that “we’re all on the same side here”. But what side is Derek Aire on?
“The Jews are fucking scum. They are hellbent on destroying us. How any Nationalist who isnt a civnat f*g doesnt know this is staggering.”
Telegram post, 12 March 2020
Aire has laid out his beliefs at length in a number of different Nazi Telegram chats: He believes that “Hitler was right”, that African people are a different species, that Jews should be deported from the UK. He has said that his Nazi obsession forced him to “chat with my wife about it all with some of the shit I watch. She’s like, why are you watching stuff on the holocaust again. Lol”
In February this year, Aire was excited by the growth in anti-migrant demonstrations, celebrating that even “regular normies” were getting involved:
“Seems like even regular normies are slowly breaking free from the Jew-spell they’ve been under. Protests against the migrant invasion are growing both in Britain and in Ireland.”
Telegram post, 28 February 2023
His shock at the involvement of “normies” stems from his often-expressed belief that, in his own words, normal Brits are gullible, lower-than-vermin people whose deaths wouldn’t bother him at all:
“Just so blackpilled how fuckin gullible normies are.”
“Sure commies are vermin, but in some ways they’re better than normies”
“Fucking normies. I wont be that upset if most of them do die tbh. fuck them”
A common theme of anti-migrant demonstrations like those in Erskine is the idea that women and children are threatened by the presence of asylum seekers in their towns. However, one former PA activist who has attended the Erskine demos appears to believe that residents should worry about hosting the far right on the same grounds.
This, at least, is the implication of the words of Douglas Close (AKA Johnny Alba), a longtime activist who has been associated with a variety of extreme Nazi groups over the years, including the National Front, Misanthropic Division and the now-banned terror group National Action.
HOPE not hate has previously reported examples of the sickening Nazi ideology that Close adheres to, such as suggesting a mother and child should be sent to the gas chambers because the child’s father was black:
“Onto the train and into the showers for you and your simian”
Telegram post, 5 September 2019
Or his suggestion, in May 2020, that he and his fellow Nazis should try to infect ethnic minorities with COVID-19:
“Indeed..we should organise mass infection..get some infected fluid spread through some ethnic shops”
Telegram post, 19 May 2020
But when discussing his acquaintance Jack Renshaw, the former NA member convicted of child sex offences in 2018 – and who is currently behind bars for a plot to behead an MP – Close had an interesting comment to make on the prevalence of such people in the British far right. Describing him as “an intelligent if odd lad”, Close admitted that:
“There have been a few in the UK of late who when raided had cp [“child porn”]..some have tried claim was big state set up..I think a lot of very odd people just seem be attracted nationalism for some reason”
Telegram post, 24 August 2019
Despite his apparent belief that the far right has a serious problem with attracting paedophiles to its ranks, Close joined PA and had regularly written for the group’s website before moving over to Homeland this year.
Scott Conner of Glasgow is another key member of Homeland, and among those who have been the most damning about Patriotic Alternative since the schism. Echoing criticisms of other Homeland members, he argues that “Mark [Collett] is more concerned with his streams and personal profile than he is about PA”, and that PA’s focus going forward will be limited to “baking competitions and video game streams.”
Like all PA & Homeland activists, Conner attempts to conceal his his hatred when talking to non-Nazis. While privately professing his belief that “Big banks and the Jew owns the United States”, Conner admits that he tries to use coded language when propagandising to others; he says that he “criticise[s] the Jewish institutions with out naming the Jew when talking to normies” because “we’re in no position to fight the Jew at the moment.”
He also carries a deep hatred of black people, who he describes as being “naturally very hostile towards other groups, Mentally retarded and are overly emotional. N*gger is gonna n*g.” Similarly, he privately expresses the desire to ethnically-cleanse the UK of Muslims:
“I’d definitely repatriate the majority of Muslims in the UK”.
Telegram post, 7 June 2019
These examples are all taken from just the former-PA, now-Homeland members who have been involved in the Erskine protests. But the extreme racism, violent fantasies and vitriol towards “normies” are all representative of the wider online Nazi community that the membership of both groups is drawn from.
There is no local community anywhere in the UK that shares values with the fascists of PA or Homeland Party. There is no city or village in the UK where a majority of people fantasise murdering mixed-race babies, or believe it is right to abuse people simply for having mixed-race relationships.
Whatever the repercussions of this latest schism on the far right, HOPE not hate will continue to expose the hateful poison at the heart of Homeland and Patriotic Alternative.
HOPE not hate reveals two more extremist candidates from Reform UK, in the latest of a string of embarrassments for the party UPDATE: Just hours…
