The alleged co-founder of a neo-Nazi terror group dedicated to starting a race war in Britain has been likened to the Third Reich’s propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, a court has heard.

Ben Raymond, 32, is accused of setting up the “unapologetically racist” National Action group to wage a “white jihad” and race war in Britain.

Bristol Crown Court heard the group was established in 2013 and was banned under terror legislation in 2016 – joining the likes of the IRA, Isis and al Qaida – becoming the first far-right group proscribed since the British Union of Fascists in 1940.

Barnaby Jameson QC, prosecuting, said: “Terrorists have many faces. Some are obvious. Some are not. Some are harmless-looking, educated and articulate.

“Some you could pass in the street without ever suspecting they were the founder of an organisation so extreme it was banned under the terrorism legislation.

“Some you would never suspect they were steeped in extremist and fanatical ideology. Some you would never suspect they were pre-occupied with thoughts of extreme terrorist violence.

“Some you would never suspect they were continuously scheming to advance a violent terrorist agenda.

“Some of you would never suspect Ben Raymond, the defendant in this case.

“It was the defendant who coined the description ‘white jihad’. The word ‘jihad’ is borrowed from Islamic terrorism.

“The word ‘white’ denotes the stripe of this brand of terror – neo-Nazism – ‘white terror’ with a direct throwback to Nazi Germany.

“The terror celebrated by adherents of Hitler and the architects of the Holocaust. The terror of violent ethnic cleansing.

“For the defendant and his cohorts, the work of Adolf Hitler was, and remains, unfinished. The Final Solution to the Jewish question – to use Hitler’s words – remains to be answered by complete eradication.

“The ultimate aim of this secretive group of white jihadists was all-out race war or ‘Rassenkrieg’. Members of National Action were heavily armed and aggressive. The group was small, secretive and paranoid.”

The court heard National Action was equipped with more than just “knives and attitude” and had access to rifles, a pump action shotgun, a machete, a crossbow and CS gas.

Mr Jameson told the jury Raymond was the “public face” of National Action and was careful not to stockpile weapons or carry out attacks himself.

“His jihad was fought with words and images. He was, like Joseph Goebbels of the original cabal of Nazis, the natural head of propaganda,” he said.

“He gave media interviews, setting out the group’s virulent ethnic cleansing agenda to the media with sometimes transcendental calm. Other times his message was more direct.

“The defendant had a role – pre-ban and post – in the leadership and direction of the group, in its ideology, its activism, its recruitment and its operations security also known as ‘OpSec’.

“While others dealt with the day-to-day running of the group, the defendant became its propagandist and roving ambassador, acting as a point of contact with other neo-Nazi groups in Eastern Europe, Norway and the US.”

Mr Jameson alleged that after it was outlawed in December 2016, it morphed into a new group called NS131 – National Socialist Anti-Capitalist Action – which Raymond was involved with.

He was also accused of creating images for a Midlands-based group called KKK Mafia.

Mr Jameson explained to the jury of seven men and five women the ideology of National Action was rooted in Hitler and based upon the Sturmabteilung, a Nazi paramilitary group active in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.

He said National Action was against Jews, Muslims, people of colour, Asians, anyone gay, as well as liberals.

Mr Jameson said Raymond had links to other people convicted of being members of National Action, such as soldier Mikko Vehvilainen, Alice Cutter and Mark Jones.

He said he was also linked to Jack Renshaw – who plotted the murder of MP Rosie Cooper – and Zack Davies, who attacked an Asian dentist in a supermarket with a machete.

Raymond, of Beechcroft Road, Swindon, Wiltshire, is accused of seven offences – one of membership of a proscribed organisation contrary to Section 11 of the Terrorism Act and six of possessing a document or record of use to a terrorist contrary to Section 58 of the Act.

According to the charges, the material includes documents entitled “Ethnic Cleaning Operations”, “2083 – European Declaration of Independence by Andrew Berwick”, “Homemade Detonators by Ragnar Benson”, “TM 31-210 Improvised Munitions Handbook”, “Homemade Molotov Cocktail” and “Cluster Bomb”.

The trial continues.

The year is 1933 and Hitler’s rise to power is imminent. Days earlier and the Nazis had exploited the burning of the Reichstag, home of the German parliament, for votes.

Armed security forces patrolled public buildings. On the streets,  Sturmabteilung (SA) ‘brown shirts’ had their violence legitimised by decree. Political violence and intimidation, however, did not grant Hitler his parliamentary majority. The March 5 elections gave the Nazi Party 43.9 per cent of the vote and 288 parliament seats out 647.

On March 10, 1933, Dr Michael Siegel visited a Munich police station on behalf a client. Dr Siegel was one of roughly 4,000 Jewish lawyers in Germany. They held senior positions in the court system, bar association and justice ministry. In 1933, racist laws pushed saw many lose their jobs. The indignity of this discrimination was was compounded by further arrests and violence.

Dr Siegel had entered a Munich police station on behalf of Max Uhlfelder, the Jewish owner of a large city-centre store. Nazi Party members had taken positions of office in Munich a day earlier. Heinrich Himmler, the SS commander, now commanded the Police Authority. The Swastika flew atop public buildings. Nazi paramilitaries had smashed Mr Uhlhelder’s shop windows and deported him to Dachau concentration camp.

Instead of listening to Dr Siegel’s complaint, the police assaulted him. SA ‘brown shirts’ had perforated Dr Siegel’s eardrum. The force of their punches had broken several teeth. They had cut his trousers from the knee down.

Dr Siegel was then made to walk the streets of Munich bloody and barefooted. Surrounded by ranks of SA paramilitaries, Dr Siegel wore a sign that read: “I will never again complain to the police”.

Some debate the actual wording of the sign. Dr Siegel had told his children that it read: “Ich bin Jude aber ich will mich nie mehr bei der Polizei Beschweren”(I am a Jew but I will never again complain to the Police).

Heinrich Sanden, the photojournalist who immortalised this humiliation, disagreed. Dr Siegel soon became an international symbol of the antisemitic persecution in Germany. He did not learn of the photo until the 1970s.

Despite the growing climate of antisemitic violence and discrimination, Dr Siegel and his family remained in Munich. He had passport revoked in 1934 and reinstated in 1935. Local farmers warned Dr Spiegel about the impending Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938. He fled to Luxembourg and returned some weeks later, only to lose his legal license. Few Germans protested this flagrant discrimination.

At the start of 1939, the Siegel family left their home and found other accommodation. Their new ground floor served as an emergency synagogue,  the Nazis had razed the city’s main synagogue. Dr Siegel’s 18-year-old son Peter and 14-year-old daughter Beate soon emigrated to England.

Dr Siegel and his wife Mathilde sought asylum in Peru but were rejected. In a remarkable stroke of luck, a student teaching Dr Siegel Spanish was a nephew of the Peruvian Minister of the Interior.

The arduous road to Peru began in 1940. They travelled through Lithuania, Siberia, Russia and Japan before arriving in Peru. Dr Siegel took up work in a Lima bookstore. In the post-war years, he worked to establish an embassy for the Federal Republic of Germany in Peru’s capital, Lima. He soon became the Rabbi of the German-Jewish community in Lima. By 1953, Dr Siegel could again practise law in Germany, despite the geographical difference.

Dr Siegel helped German Jewish refugees in Peru and other parts of Latin America.

In 1971, at the age of 89, he received the Grand Cross of Merit of the German Republic ‘in recognition of his exceptional services to the state and people’. He accepted the award on behalf of all German Jews in Lima.

In spite of his growing age, Dr Siegel never stopped pursuing restitution cases. He died in 1979 at the age of 96.

Dr Siegel never forgot the ordeal he faced in Munich. In  a 1987 article, The Association of Jewish Refugees retold the story of Dr Siegel’s life and journey to Peru.

The authors, H.P. Sinclair and M.B. Green, wrote that Dr Michael Siegel had one thought in his mind: ‘I shall survive you all’. And he did. But according to Sinclair and Green, he bore no grudge against the German people. For he had known “too many decent ones for that“.

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