Royal Navy promoted submariner who joined far-right group Patriotic Alternative
Reports have surfaced that a submariner from the Royal Navy was promoted by his superiors even though the Ministry of Defence knew of his connection to far-right groups.
Kenneth McCourt was already known to be a part of the Identitarian movement – a network of dozens of regional branches of far-right activists who are strongly opposed to migration into Europe – when he was promoted to the rank of petty officer as a weapons engineering technician submariner.
The Identitarian movement is known to have promoted the “Great Replacement Theory”, an antisemitic far-right conspiracy theory that claims that Jews are the secret masterminds behind a planned “invasion” of non-white immigrants into western countries with the aim of making white people a minority to further an insidious, but largely unclear, agenda.
It has been reported that the movement’s UK branch, Generation Identity UK, of which Mr McCourt was a member, was expelled from the wider pan-European Identitarian network for inviting Colin Robertson (also known as video content creator Millennial Woes), who has said that “antisemitism is hard to resist” and that “there are problems with the Jewish people”.
However, it has now been revealed that Mr McCourt had joined the far-right group Patriotic Alternative only three months prior to his promotion.
Patriotic Alternative is a UK-based group headed by the former leader of the youth wing of the BNP, Mark Collett. Mr Collett is reported to have dabbled in Holocaust denial, is regularly heard as a guest on the radio show of the former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard, David Duke, and has described the Holocaust as “an instrument of white guilt”.
The group is known for its efforts to recruit youth to its white nationalist ideology. Previously, the far-right group published an online “alternative” home school curriculum condemned as “poison” and “hateful” and attempted to recruit children as young as twelve through livestreaming events on YouTube, according to The Times.
Mr McCourt identified himself as a member of Patriotic Alternative on the social media platform Telegram, where he is also alleged to have used the “echo”, or “triple parentheses”, a tool used to identify someone as Jewish.
Concerns have previously been raised over the alleged increase in neo-Nazi content on Telegram and last year, we reported that members of Patriotic Alternative used Telegram to share antisemitic conspiracy theories and images glorifying Hitler.
A spokesperson for the Royal Navy said that “Those who engage in extremist activities are fully investigated and suitable measures are implemented. It would be inappropriate to comment on specific allegations.”
Campaign Against Antisemitism advocates for zero tolerance of antisemitism in public life, and closely monitors the far-right, which remains a dangerous threat to the Jewish community and other minority groups.
