Antisemitism, Nazi sympathies and bad optics: this is the latest in a series of articles in which we shine a light on the Homeland Party’s core activists by region. See our exposé on Homeland’s West Midlands branch here.
The Homeland Party is a new political party that splintered from Patriotic Alternative, the UK’s most active fascist group, in April 2023.
Homeland attempts to downplay its extreme politics and encourages activists to infiltrate parish and community councils, the lowest tier of local government, in order to build experience and support. Having recently registered as a political party, the group is now eyeing the local elections in May.
Despite its attempts to establish a “a squeaky clean media image”, most of Homeland’s activists share the same fascistic and highly antisemitic worldview as PA. We have previously exposed the group’s officials for having made Hitler salutes, praising Nazi Germany, using extreme racial slurs and much else.
The Scottish branch had been among PA’s most active and hardline but defected to Homeland almost wholesale, forming the bedrock of the new organisation.
Some former PA activists have defected to more openly nazi outfits, including Active Club Scotland, and the geographic spread of the region means that activists are often isolated. Nonetheless, Scotland remains an area of high output for Homeland and is also home to three of the group’s community councillors, who are outlined in turn below.
The Scottish branch is run by Simon Crane, a West Lothian-based landlord who sits on East Calder and District Community Council.
A former member of the anti-LGBT+ Scottish Family Party, Crane has attempted to establish himself as a far-right social media personality since 2017, producing video and blog content under the pseudonym “Si Borg”. This included dubbing over the Queen’s Speech with racist and anti-vaccine messages and hosting a series of streams with British nazis.
Crane went on to co-host the official PA Talk podcast alongside Kristofer Kearney (AKA Charlie Big Potatoes), a former member of the now-banned nazi terror group National Action (NA), who is currently serving a four-year, eight-month sentence for terror-related offences. Jamie Brown, who is now also a Homeland community councillor, would eventually replace Kearney as regular co-host.
Guests on the show include the Australian nazi and serial criminal Blair Cottrell, the influential American antisemite Kevin MacDonald and Tony Martin, the hapless leader of the UK’s National Front.
In his conversation with MacDonald, Crane read out loud one of the author’s own quotes:
“[Crane quoting MacDonald]: antisemitism, rather than being an irrational hatred of Jews, is actually a logical reaction to Jewish success. In other words, the NSDAP, like many other antisemites, were only antisemites because they were countering a genuine Jewish threat to their own well-being.
PA Talk, 26 October 2021
“[Crane]: I don’t know how to frame this properly – are we sort of to blame for Jewish people being overrepresented and essentially in charge of the West? Does some of the blame here lay on us for allowing them to get themselves into these positions?”
He has elsewhere stated that Jewish people are engaged in a “long slow game” to establish control in various countries:
Crane continued the show – rebranded “HomeTalk” – after the formation of Homeland, until it was discontinued due to poor viewing figures. He has since refocused on short form video content.
He has also discussed his techniques for “red pilling normies” (radicalising normal people). For example, on 16 May 2019 he wrote:
“My tip for red pilling normies is to start by telling who I’m talking to that any minority group I speak of it’s “not all” of them I’m critising […] If you lump everyone in the group together then there’s a strong chance your prey will dismiss everything you say because “wazzi who owns the chip shop is sound , so your talking pish “
Telegram post, 16 May 2019
“After telling them about the dangerous and influential minorities in other groups ask them at what point the silent majorities in those groups will tolerate there nonsense.. “Wazzi maybe a good guy but he won’t bat an eyelid if Sharia law was introduced” ..”
Crane also spearheaded an attempt to co-opt a series of protests against a local asylum accommodation site in Erskine, Renfrewshire. One repeat attendee was Scott Cowan, leader of the fascist combat group Active Club Scotland (ACS). Peter Stewart, another ACS member and former National Action activist, also attended at least one protest.
David Gardner is a key Homeland activist and the current treasurer of Forfar Community Council. He operated under the pseudonym “Gordon Freeman” until his identity was exposed by HOPE not hate in May 2023.
Gardner has made his conspiratorial worldview clear in a series of anti-Jewish posts in September 2022, including:
“the jews occupy ALL the positions of influence pretty much, all the positions that can cause Whites problems anyway. If we removed them from those positions, the problem for Whites reduces dramatically”
Telegram posts, 19 September 2022
In another:
“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, 19 September 2022
The same month, he posted a graphic portraying pornography as the tool of a Jewish conspiracy:
He has also repeatedly praised Nazi Germany. For example, he wrote via his now-deleted Twitter account:
“Churchill and the Allies won. Yay!
Now we have trans children, mass black migration into the UK, a debt based economy, White guilt pushed everywhere, lbgt propaganda in our schools, an obesity epidemic and our infrastructure crumbling.
All things NS [National Socialist] Germany wouldnt have allowed”
Twitter post, 26 January 2023
The following month:
“The tightening state control of 1930s Germany was for the benefit of the state and the ethnic Germans. The moral degeneracy of the Weimar was taken care of by having more state control. The state also incentivised its own people to learn, stay fit and breed with that control.”
Twitter post, 10 February 2023
He has made other similar statements.
Jamie Brown is Chair of Invergowrie and Kingoodie Community Council near Dundee.
Earlier this month, we exposed his history of extreme antisemitism and other forms of racism, leading to his suspension from the Royal Mail.
For example, in December 2020, he described the author Ayn Rand as “k*ke scum” and in October 2021 wrote:
“The 3rd reich had nothing but respect for classic European culture. They destroyed subversive Communist filth, they burned down Magnus Hirschfields sex change institute and the disgusting nonsense they found within. You’re complaining about that?”
Telegram post, 26 October 2021
He also said of Edward I, who issued the Edict of Expulsion that banished all Jewish people from England: “I’m conflicted on Longshanks. Yes he was the Hammer of the Scots but he also expelled a certain tribe”.
You can read more about Brown here.
Another key activist in Dundee is James Munro (AKA Son of Burgundy). Alongside Crane and Brown, Munro was also a regular co-host of the group’s official public broadcast, “HomeTalk”, before its discontinuation.
Munro was exposed by HOPE not hate and The Ferret in October 2023 for his past in the Scottish Nationalist Society (SNS), a tiny but extreme nazi group.
Munro and other members of the SNS – which initially formed under the name “Scottish National Socialists” – posed while making nazi salutes and attended street demos organised by the fascist Scottish Defence League (SDL).
Former SDL activist Robert Bisset (AKA Paul Elliot), from Edinburgh, was also photographed marching with Munro while holding an SNS flag in March 2019. Bisset has similarly moved through PA and into Homeland Scotland.
Following the exposé, Homeland has dismissed SNS as a “cranky little group”, and Munro remains active in the party.
You can read more about Munro and Bisset here.
Kenneth McCourt, from the Greater Glasgow area, was appointed Homeland’s National Media Officer after joining last year.
In August 2019, HOPE not hate exposed McCourt as an active member of Generation Identity UK, a far-right youth movement that promoted a form of racial segregation, while also an employee of the Royal Navy.
He was permitted to remain in the Navy without being disciplined, until we exposed him again in July 2022 as an active member of PA, finally resulting in his sacking.
Like many other current and former PA activists, McCourt was active in fascist fitness groups, posting pictures of his physique to The Judgement Zone group on Telegram, to which he also forwarded a video of a man firing a 3D printed gun.
He also had the nazi numeric slogan “1488” printed on his trainers. 14 refers to the white supremacist 14 Words slogan, whereas 88 stands for “Heil Hitler” (H being the 8th letter of the alphabet).
McCourt was also active in the anti-migrant campaign in Erskine, posing with the National Action-linked PA activists Sam Melia and James Costello at one such protest. Both are currently serving years-long prison sentences for hate crime-related offences.
Simon MacGilp from Nairn, near Inverness, is another former PA activist to jump ship to Homeland.
During his time at PA, MacGilp repeatedly collaborated with fellow Northeast Scotland activist Hadden Adam months after The Ferret released images of Adam posing with weapons and nazi memorabilia. Adam would go on to form the openly nazi Highland Division.
Under the online names “14Ways” and “FourteenSteel” – a reference to the “14 Words” slogan – MacGilp wrote positively of Nazi Germany:
“the books burned by the National Socialists were transgender propaganda ect by the likes of Magnus Hirschfeld; look him up.”
Twitter post, 29 December 2022
A month later:
“The SNP are not National Socialists. The SNP’s policies are aimed at destroying the people, not raising them up.”
16 January 2023
He elsewhere posted the memes featuring the antisemitic “Happy Merchant” caricature and much else.
For more information on the Homeland Party, read our report: The Fascist Fringe: Patriotic Alternative and its Splinter Groups
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