Warning: This blog contains descriptions of obscene material, sexual harassment and racial slurs
Last month, HOPE not hate (HNH) exposed a new research unit collecting information on its perceived enemies.
Fronted by Ashley Dean Smith, a former member of the fascist Homeland Party, the group claims to have already collected information on more than 10,000 “ideological enemies, fifth columnists and subversive types” – mostly Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) officials in both public and private organisations.
Smith’s team of “list builders” – which communicates via the messaging app Signal, and appears to include two teenagers – aims to publish information on left-wing activists on a new website. There are indications that the group has attempted to acquire data-collection tools as well as tracking and analytics software in order to monitor the digital footprint of those it targets.
Now, we shine a light on the extreme political leanings and online histories of figures involved in the group.
The scheme is the latest concocted by Smith, who styles himself as a self-help/sales guru and has cycled through a number of business and political ventures.
Smith, from Great Wyrley, South Staffordshire, is a former Conservative parish councillor who worked on Gavin Williamson’s 2019 parliamentary campaign. He has since described himself as a “blood and soil Ethnonationalist” and spent nine months as an active member of Homeland. He quit the fascist party during a wave of resignations this summer, complaining that his “business plan” had been ignored by the leadership.
He has attempted to remake himself as a YouTuber, releasing a lengthy monologue in which he claims the “Zoomer generation” will “enact righteous fury and vengeance on all of those who have chosen the path of harm against our people”.
Among Smith’s various schemes is “The Crusade”, which he has vaunted as “the foundation of a new elite class”. The project appears to consist of a small Telegram group in which Smith and his associates post a mixture of sales advice and self-help PDFs alongside far-right material, including Holocaust denial.
One member of The Crusade who is also present in the private chat group of Smith’s new research unit is Bleu Grannell (AKA Bleu Harley), from Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, who has posted extreme antisemitism on both X and Telegram:
Joining Smith in this enterprise is Michael Reiners, a trained barrister who has more recently pitched himself as a social media personality. He was announced as a member of the advisory board of Great British PAC, though his name no longer appears on the group’s website.
Reiners presents himself as an intellectual critic of modern Britain, analysing immigration and free speech issues for online publications including The Critic, Conservative Home and the Daily Sceptic, and was listed as a speaker at the most recent Traditional Britain Group conference in October.
However, HOPE not hate has learned that Reiners has also used a pseudonymous account under the name “Moby” as an outlet for racism and sexualised misogyny.
Running themes in Reiners’ posts on the “Moby” account – which has since been deleted – include urination and the degradation of women. Reiners posted AI-generated images of female users of X, occasionally in school uniforms, and posted demands that they show their breasts or urinate.
For example, one image shows representations of the “Moby” character and another X user “MI5” — who appears to be an associate of Reiners from his home county of Lincolnshire — forcing a pregnant woman to mop up and drink yellow liquid from the floor at gunpoint. Another depicts the two men forcing a young-looking female character to urinate while crying.
He also directed posts of a sexual nature towards women whose politics might be seen to broadly align with Reiners’ own, including Jess Gill of the Women’s Safety Initiative (WSI) and the TalkTV presenter and ex-Brexit Party MEP Alex Phillips.
While Reiners greeted the launch of the WSI positively on his public account, calling the group’s anti-immigration stance the “the women’s issue of our time”, he used his anonymous account to refer to one photo of group members as a “minge update” and described an apparent fantasy of being urinated on by teenagers in response to another.
Reiners has also expressed racist and homophobic views under his online alias. For example, he has repeatedly called for the deportation of up to 15 million non-white citizens, or “browns” in his terminology:
In one comment, posted in reply to Steve Reed MP, he claimed that politicians would be “punished severely” if they did not commit ethnic cleansing; in another he called for a third of the electorate to lose the right to vote, and then suggested that “Global Brown” — his term for non-white people — to be “dealt with in exciting new ways”.
“You’re talking about browns. Deport 15 million of them instantly or we will make sure you are all punished severely“
Tweet from the YeOldeMoby account on 30 April 2025
HOPE not hate has identified another member of the Signal group, who goes by the pseudonym “Orlunu” or “Orluntwo” as Alex Davies, a native of Jersey, Channel Islands. Davies has used the same username and profile picture on different platforms going back over ten years.
On a site devoted to My Little Pony fanfiction in 2014, an individual with the same name and profile picture wrote a number of sexual “fan-fiction” stories set within the programme, some of which involved incest and rape between characters that are canonically considered children within the narrative of the show.
On Discord, he repeatedly expressed his appreciation of “loli” anime, an abbreviated form of “lolita” that indicates sexualised child-like characters. There is no indication that Smith, Reiners or other group members are aware of Davies’ activity on these platforms.
Under his current X/Twitter account, Davies continues to promote extreme racism. In one recent post he suggested that Hitler would be his preferred leader, and his username contains an acronym used by the extreme right for “Total N*****r Death”.
Worryingly, the group’s internal Signal chat also includes children. HOPE not hate has identified two members of the group that are under the age of 16, both of whom have expressed extreme political views on X/Twitter.
HOPE not hate will continue to monitor the situation and provide updates on the workings of this unit and its membership.
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…
