Homeland Insecurity: UK’s largest fascist party splits

As sure as the rising sun, bitter public recriminations have once again broken out among the UK’s fascist fringe.

A rebel faction in the Homeland Party, Britain’s largest fascist political party, has demanded the ejection of its fractious chairman Kenny Smith and led an exodus of the party membership.

A few short months ago, Homeland was triumphant, its membership soaring to over 1,300 following aggressive recruitment drives online. However, as we have previously highlighted, its attempt to recruit widely whilst retaining its core supporters was always likely to cause issues.

Homeland’s euphemistic language, and Smith’s habit of telling potential recruits what they want to hear, has led to disjointed and often contradictory understandings of the group’s purpose. Meanwhile, most of its members are inexperienced youngsters who have been radicalised online and are clearly unsuited to serious party politics. 

These fault lines became unignorable when Homeland lost its four most-followed X influencers within a two-month period. In April, Steve Laws and Sam Wilkes (AKA Zoomer Historian), who represent the party’s most extreme and chronically online tendencies, quit in homophobic outrage following the fleeting appointment of an organiser with an LGBT+ background.

Next, the oddball Pete North resigned in May, having become widely reviled within the party for criticising its endemic antisemitism. The following month Alexander Bramham, a uniquely moderate figure, left to rejoin the Tories, complaining of a “cult-like” mentality and rampant extremism whilst being relentlessly hounded by party homophobes on X.

The most recent row exploded last Thursday as a group of party officials, led by former treasurer and Welsh regional organiser Jerome O’Reilly and Norfolk organiser Kai Stephens, listed their grievances and demands in a public letter.

Party Monster

The letter, signed by 82 members and officers, blasted the party’s despotic leadership and habitual backbiting, labelling Smith “volatile, paranoid, and ideologically inconsistent”. The attacks became even more personal in a subsequent audio stream hosted by Laws, O’Reilly claiming that Smith has “an alcohol problem” and that: 

“he gets absolutely smashed and wrecked at every single party event, especially when he’s abroad. And it is embarrassing, because there are pictures and videos of him on the floor outside of McDonald’s”.

The letter also listed organisational inefficiencies, structural failings and strategic errors, among them Smith’s expensive habit of wooing foreign politicians instead of supporting his own activists, a trend we have previously highlighted. It also recounted perceived ideological compromise – especially the supposed softening of its homophobia and antisemitism – as well as an internal “snitch” culture, attacks on Laws and Wilkes, the “total disaster” of Pete North and much else.

A wave of resignations has followed, including Stephens’ Norfolk branch sidekick Billy Green and Callum Barker, who has received recent national media attention for his role in a series of anti-migrant protests in Epping, Essex. Barker, who was first exposed by HOPE not hate in 2023, seems to have received little practical support from the leadership during the Epping protests, with Smith jetting off to Europe once again as local tensions peaked.

Most of the group’s dysfunctional media team has followed Stephens out the door, some complaining of Alec Cave, Homelands’s national media officer who was once seen as a potential future leader. Ryan Read, for example, claimed that “without a script [Cave] couldn’t string a sentence together“, and that most of the party’s output is “clearly written by AI with almost no human intervention”.

Another well-known resignation is “You Kipper”, a Mosleyite propagandist and formerly one of Homeland’s most effective recruiters. The pseudonymous activist is notable for having his videos promoted by the Christchurch killer two days before he massacred 51 Muslims in 2019. 

The party has responded by savaging the ringleaders, dubbing Stephens “a troubled young man who acts on impulse with little regard for others”, O’Reilly as “less than competent” and Wilkes as “an immature online commentator hiding behind a pseudonym”. They also claimed that Wilkes “pushes a hard line he will not follow himself”, referring to the fact that for all his rhetoric about the “demographic replacement” of “native” Brits, Wilkes brought his Latvian spouse and children to the UK. HOPE not hate exposed this hypocrisy, along with Wilkes’ identity, earlier in the year.

These attacks backfired and alienated yet more members, most notably Connor Marlow, a Fulford parish councillor and former regional organiser of Homeland’s flagship West Midlands branch, who tweeted “This is a disgusting smear. I’m ashamed of you”, before being kicked out of the party. His account has since been deleted.

What next?

The split is not yet fatal. Most of Homeland’s secretive National Council, who are themselves committed fascists, remain loyal to Smith.

This includes South West regional organiser Mike Lynton, who has been touted as a possible replacement for Smith. Lynton, who we first exposed in 2019, has previously declared himself a “NatSoc” – National Socialist – and hung a British Union of Fascists flag outside his house. Nonetheless, he is considered by many to be more credible than the current chairman.

The fiasco has, however, fully derailed Homeland’s online momentum. X is now dominated by a large and noisy community of critics, and Laws and Wilkes, unshackled by any concern for “optics” (i.e. appearing sane to the public), are hoping to capitalise. Laws is poised to launch his pressure group “Remigration Now” at the end of the month, and Wilkes has postulated that openly neo-Nazi outfits in the mould of the Australian National Socialist Network “will be the future of White politics”.

Meanwhile, the pair have praised the increasingly racist messaging of Rupert Lowe MP and his Reform UK splinter group, Restore Britain. Laws has dubbed it the “best option” for achieving his desired ethnic cleansing and Barker has already signed up, with other splitters likely to follow. 

A few may trickle towards existing neo-Nazi outfits, such as Patriotic Alternative, the group from which Homeland split in 2023. However, for all the opprobrium swirling around Smith, most seem to agree that he’s still not *quite* as bad as Mark Collett.