![]() Its entire membership consisted of children. A new neo-Nazi group led by a 15-year-old from Derby emerged last year. View image in fullscreen Sara Khan, the government’s lead commissioner for countering extremism Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The GuardianĪt least 17 children, some as young as 14, have been arrested on terrorism charges over the past 18 months. His swift journey from lonely adolescent to UK leader of the Feuerkrieg Division is disquieting not for its uniqueness but for its part in a growing pattern. Only 13 when he downloaded a bomb-making manual, the teenager subsequently became the leader of the UK arm of a banned neo-Nazi terrorist group that glorified individuals responsible for racist mass murder. Last week, the youngest person in the UK to commit a terrorism offence was sentenced. One British far-right group has even started pushing an alternative white-supremacist school curriculum for lockdown learning. A surge of online extremism and disinformation has arrived at a time of lockdown-induced isolation, loneliness and home-schooling, creating what police call a “perfect storm”. The worry is that John’s contemporaries won’t either. ![]() Now I know the posts were all fake, but the 15-year-old me didn’t bother to fact-check.” “Posts of homeless British soldiers were set against Muslim families being given free homes. John became increasingly radicalised by an online barrage of far-right disinformation. ![]()
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