A former Ukip member who posted violent racist, antisemitic and Islamophobic propaganda online and collected the means for making bombs has been jailed for 18 years.
Dean Morrice had ball bearings, pipes and instructions for an improvised explosive device (IED) by the time his home was raided last year, and the judge at Kingston crown court said it was “fortunate” that police arrested him when they did.
“You have described yourself as a patriot. You are not a patriot, you are a dangerous neo-Nazi, your bigotry and hatred is abhorrent to the overwhelming majority in this country,” Judge Peter Lodder said.
He said it was clear that Morrice revered those responsible for massacres in New Zealand and Norway and the bombing of a US government building Oklahoma, and had attempted to “fool” the jury into thinking he was a caring family man.
Morrice, 34, of Paulton, near Bristol, who worked for a time for the army, was convicted last week of 10 counts related to terrorism and explosives, all of which he denied.
He ran a Telegram channel that prosecutors said had “unapologetically, unambiguously pumped out” neo-Nazi propaganda that encouraged the killing of people of colour and Jewish people.
A previous hearing was told that Morrice had made a video of himself strumming along on a guitar to footage of the 2019 Christchurch terror attacks.
Lodder said Morrice had shown no remorse. “You attempted to fool the jury into thinking that you are a family-orientated, caring man who was simply trying to find friends. In the witness box you cried as you spoke of missing your own children.
“Yet you revelled in the Christchurch mosque massacre in which children as young as three years old were murdered, and glorified Brevijk who slaughtered more than 30 children in Norway.”
The judge instructed that the custodial element of a 23-year sentence should be 18 years.