Jack Renshaw (terrorist)

Jack Andrew Renshaw is a spokesperson for the neo-Nazi National Action. He is a former economics and politics student at Manchester Metropolitan University and a former organiser for the BNP's youth wing, BNP Youth.

Early life

Renshaw was born in Ormskirk and was raised in Skelmersdale "for the earliest part of my life". As a child, Renshaw moved to Blackpool and later became involved with the English Defence League (EDL), aged 15. Through the EDL, Renshaw was "involved with the 'Justice for Charlene Downes' cause", and met the British National Party (BNP) and its leader Nick Griffin at one of the memorials. Renshaw had previously been disillusioned with the EDL after he found Israeli flags and gay pride flags on prominent display during their marches, and lamented that EDL leader Tommy Robinson was supporting "dark faces" being within the crowd. Renshaw joined the BNP at age 15 against his parents' wishes.

While an economic and politics student at the Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) in September 2013, Renshaw became the face of BNP Youth. In an interview with student newspaper The Tab, claimed to have "had ethnic minority flatmates and some homosexuals" during his stay at university. Four years after joining BNP Youth, Renshaw decided to dedicate himself entirely to party campaigning, saying "I spend a lot of days canvassing when I should have been studying". He was eventually forced to leave MMU in September 2015 following a university investigation regarding his incitement to racial hatred.

Renshaw wishes to bring back National Service and has previously said that he wished to join the Army when he left university. He has an uncompromising attitude towards the War on Drugs, saying that "drug dealers should be hung from the nearest lamppost ... [lethal injection execution] would cost too much money for the taxpayer". Renshaw's application for the BNP to gain Student Union recognition was rejected by the union; Renshaw and the BNP Youth organised in protest at this decision. He views the British Royal Family as "Jewish vermin", "in the pockets of the Rothschilds" and believed that "the lot of them should hang".

BNP Youth Organiser

As an organiser in BNP Youth, the youth wing of the British National Party, Renshaw appeared in a much-derided 2014 video titled "BNP Youth Fight Back" (since deleted from YouTube) which railed against "cultural Marxism", "militant homosexuals", "heartless Zionists", "political correctness", Islam, immigration, multiculturalism, Doreen Lawrence and other perceived societal ills and a perceived eradication of British identity. Writing for the Left Foot Forward, Mark Gardner noted, "At times the language and targets, 'Zionists', 'neo-Cons', 'capitalists', 'globalisation', resemble the modern extremes of far-Left, Islamist and (especially) New Age ideology. There is, however, nothing modern about BNP antisemitism, not even when they swap the word 'Zionist' for the word 'Jew' ... It is a very serious antisemitism that blames Jews for nothing less than the destruction of European nations. This is not neo-Nazism, it is old original Nazism, echoing Mein Kampf and Der Steurmer [sic]. In public broadcasts the party still targets Muslims for ugly racism, but within its own circles the deeper antisemitic ideology is resurrected." Renshaw himself claims that Nick Griffin encouraged "radicalism" within the BNP while not wanting to be directly associated with it, saying that the BNP Youth video was more anti-Semitic at first, and that it was the BNP's media editor who removed references to Jews outright. Griffin disliked this decision, saying that "the parts about the Jews should have been kept in the video", according to Renshaw.

In another BNP TV video Spreading Truth to Youth, Jack Renshaw spoke out against "banksters" such as the Rothschild family (a familiar anti-Semitic trope) and claims that allegations of the BNP's racism and fascism are "Talmudic". In another such video, Nationalism not Globalism, Renshaw claims that the European Union is part of a preliminary "global New World Order" in order for the Rothschilds to allegedly bind the globe via trillions of pounds of debt. He also blames "capitalists", "financial institutions" and "cultural Marxists" for "trying to mongrelise the races of the planet".

A few months later, Renshaw wrote on Facebook for his pet Labrador Derek to not "challenge my principles" by "licking the penises of other male dogs". Renshaw was opposed to his dog's perceived homosexuality. He has since stated that "the status about my dog was a joke. I have learnt my lesson, that's all I can say".

Anti-Jewish protest

In May 2015, far-right blogger Joshua Bonehill-Paine planned an protest in Golders Green, the heartland of London's Jewish community. Bonehill launches an "appeal against the Jewification of Britain ... [and the] occupation force of approximately 50,000 Jews" in the area. Mike Freer, the local Conservative MP, called for the march to be banned, stating, "The rally is not about free speech but a deliberate attempt to provoke tension and anti-Semitism." More than 3,000 people signed a change.org petition for it to be banned, although Jewish groups such as the Community Security Trust and the Board of Deputies of British Jews had mixed responses to the demonstration.

Renshaw had a falling out with the event's organiser Eddie Stampton and did not attend as one of the speakers at the event was Jewish.

Spokesperson for National Action

During a Yorkshire Forum event in 2015, Renshaw called for Jews to be "eradicated". As the spokesman for National Action, a far-right organisation within the United Kingdom, Renshaw said that he was sympathetic to Adolf Hitler:

Hitler was right in many senses but you know where he was wrong? He showed mercy to people who did not deserve mercy ... As nationalists we need to learn from the mistakes of the national socialists and we need to realise that, no, you do not show the Jew mercy.

Renshaw is facing a criminal investigation by the West Yorkshire Police over the remarks, and National Action itself risks being a proscribed terrorist organisation follow its conduct after the murder of Jo Cox and its support for her murderer Thomas Mair.

Additionally, the Crown Prosecution Service is separately considering whether to charge Renshaw with inciting racial hatred over comments made at a public demonstration in Blackpool in March 2016, organised by the North West Infidels. In front of police officers and surrounded by a group of masked men, Renshaw described Jews as "parasites", claimed that white people were "a superior race" and stated that the UK took the "wrong side" in the Second World War by fighting the Nazis "who were there to remove Jewry from Europe once and for all". "When the time comes," he said, antifascists will "be in the chambers.... and we'll execute them".

Dave Rich, of the Community Security Trust, which represents the Jewish community on matters of antisemitism, said, "Anybody who is inciting hatred and violence of that kind needs to be dealt with fully by the law. Actions don't come from nowhere." Nick Lowles of Hope Not Hate criticised perceived double standards in the justice system, saying were such words to be uttered by an Islamist extremist, they would have been arrested. The CPS so far has taken no action over Renshaw's comments.

In March 2016, the Liverpool Echo claimed that Renshaw was part of a group of neo-Nazi North West Infidels and National Action protestors in Liverpool. Posting under the Twitter name Jack Albion, he posted "[Shit], bricks, glass bottles etcetera - still we come back. We don't fight for ourselves but for an idea. #WR #Liverpool #NationalAction".

Other activities

"Hang Jews" post

The Jewish Telegraph revealed in 2014 that Renshaw had labelled Jews a "disease" on his blog, saying,

World Jewry is the disease, whilst its product ideologies are just the symptoms. ... Beat the symptoms and they’ll return or be replaced – but – beat the disease and you’ll eradicate the symptoms. The Jew aims to bastardise and mongrelise our race through Multiracialism and Multiculturalism ... The Jew has declared war on our people and we should – and in time we will – return the favour.

— Jack Renshaw, "Renshaw's Corner" (15 December 2014)

Renshaw had also previously supported hanging all Jews as part of a genocide, saying on his blog,

Britain, and indeed the whole of Europe, is waking up to the Jew once again. The new generation of nationalist is pointing the finger to the old enemy, and it is about time too! When our time comes, the Jewish elite and the Judeophile traitors who were used as their puppets will be put on trial – if found guilty, they will get the sentence that is deemed appropriate – for me that is hanging.

— Jack Renshaw, "Renshaw's Corner" (November 2015)

National Strike Force

In 2014, Renshaw was photographed outside Manchester University's John Rylands Library on behalf of a new far-right group, the National Strike Force. The National Strike Force distributed 60 Greggs hot drinks vouchers to 12 "white British males" who were homeless. The Strike Force does not issue food to non-whites, and Renshaw himself has refused to give food to a "Romanian gypsy".

See also

• Mark Collett