HOPE not hate exposes Aryan Front, an extreme neo-Nazi cell that split from White Vanguard last month. While tiny, the new group is aligned to a militant white supremacist cult and poses a violent threat.
Earlier this week, HOPE not hate told the inside story of White Vanguard (WV), a neo-Nazi group that broke apart last month. Long-standing tensions culminated in a mass walkout after the arrest of co-leader Kai Cunningham. Anger at the leadership for its bungled handling of the arrest has left WV half the size and without control of its own website.
Now, HOPE not hate can reveal that 11 of WV’s most hardline former activists have regrouped under a new banner — Aryan Front — in order to push an even more militant form of Nazism. Aligned to the Creativity Movement, the group aims to wage a “Racial Holy War”, targeting “left-wing activists in the field” and promising “victory or death”.
The main force behind Aryan Front is an extremist known as “Hail”, previously of WV’s Northern branch. The violence-obsessed activist has used dozens of social media accounts to make threats about the “Day of the Rope” to various journalists and politicians.
Another key figure is Alex Hill, formerly a high-ranking member of WV. Hill was a member of Britain First’s security team as recently as last May. The Gillingham-based roofer also appears on a male escort website, charging £65 an hour for “a night to enjoy and remember”.
Aryan Front’s ideology is drawn from the Creativity Movement, a militant white supremacist cult established in the US in 1973. Regarding Hitler as “the greatest leader the White Race has ever produced”, Creativity coined the battle cry “RaHoWa!”, an abbreviation of “Racial Holy War”:
RAHOWA! […] We gird for total war against the Jews and the rest of the goddamned mud races of the world – politically, militantly, financially, morally and religiously. In fact, we regard it as the heart of our religious creed, and as the most sacred credo of all. We regard it as a holy war to the finish – a racial holy war. Rahowa! is INEVITABLE. It is the Ultimate and Only solution.
– Creativity founder Ben Klassen, 1987
The cult has been linked to a number of racist murders, terror plots and a spree killing in the US. The leader (or “Pontifex Maximus”) Matt Hale was sentenced to 40 years for soliciting the murder of a judge in 2005.
The cult has previously gained a handful of followers in the UK under the Merseyside-based “Reverend” James Costello (AKA James Mac), who was previously linked to the neo-Nazi terror group National Action and more recently Patriotic Alternative. Costello was sentenced to five years in 2023 for 19 race hate offences relating to his ownership and promotion of the Creativity Movement’s website. Costello has no known links to Aryan Front.
Now, Aryan Front has established a small presence on social media through which it pushes Creativity propaganda, and has opened recruitment to “lads who are willing to fight for whiteness”.
Online, the group has targeted public figures it considers to be “perpetrating white replacement”, posting a poorly-rendered AI image of politicians, journalists, judges and more moderate far-right figures, followed by a video of Nazi rallies.
While Aryan Front is extremely fringe, it represents a significant escalation from WV and a violent threat.
Prefer to listen? Click the play button to hear the audio version. Harry Shukman Reform UK is staffed by oddballs and enigmas, but none odder…
