A father has been jailed for more than four years after he used social media to try and recruit a “battalion” of followers to kill non-whites when he became radicalised after his wife left him.
Tygue Crowther, 36, from Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire used his account on Twitter, now X, to encourage attacks between October 2023 and June 2024 before it was shut down.
He also shared far-right bomb-making manuals on the Telegram social media site and circulated pictures of neo-Nazi stickers in a playground in his local area.
John Greaney, prosecuting, told Newcastle Crown Court many of the posts “voiced or implied support for the eradication of immigrants and non-whites”.
He added: “The posts also included video material showing graphic clips of attacks on non-whites and glorifying violence against non-whites at the hands of neo-Nazi thugs.”
His posts gathered “significant engagement”, including expressions of support from followers.
Crowther was also “actively seeking” to establish and develop a group he called the ‘United Whites Battalion’ (UWB), which he referred to in his X profile and his posts on X.
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His posts were available to a wide audience at a time when “tensions over immigration and race relations were acute, as evidenced by responses from like-minded devotees of the extreme far-right doctrine,” Mr Greaney said.
The profile page of the account stated he was a “British, National Socialist, Accelerationist” and added: “No to immigration or multiculturalism. British people need to take action against the vermin entering our country.”
National Socialism was the ideology of the Nazi Party, and far-right accelerationism is a doctrine which seeks to encourage a race war by conducting terrorist attacks.
The main image was of a soldier wearing a skull facemask associated with the far-right while performing a Nazi salute against a backdrop of a rising sun, also linked to the far-right.
The profile picture had an octopus with a swastika image.
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The octopus has become an antisemitic meme representing Jewish people controlling the world.
The title had a Union flag and stated: “Join UWB today”.
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There was also a reference to the numbers 1488 in the biography, a code for a white supremacist slogan, and the words Heil Hitler.
Crowther claimed to a probation officer that he had been “preyed on by people on the far-right” after becoming “lonely, isolated and bored” when his wife left him in June 2019.
Judge Nathan Adams said he had “encouraged violence endangering life” by posting graphic videos glorifying violence on non-whites and supporting neo-Nazis.
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“He put into the public domain offensive videos, and the duration was extensive and without filter,” he added.
“He was undoubtedly depressed and suicidal, but there is no clear link between that and his offending, and he appears to have been in a depressed state many years before.”
Detective Chief Superintendent James Dunkerley, head of Counter-Terrorism Policing North East, said: “Those that seek to divide our communities through sharing extremist material will be identified and brought to justice.”
