Leader of neo-Nazi Hundred Handers group unmasked in new report that also warns against far-right Patriotic Alternative

The leader of a neo-Nazi group behind numerous stickering campaigns has been unmasked.

The anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate has identified Sam Melia as the leader of Hundred Handers, an anonymous network of activists who have carried out far-right stickering campaigns across the country and worldwide over the last two years.

The stickers, which feature far-right slogans and imagery and antisemitic tropes, have been seen in cities in the UK, Europe, United States and Australia.

Mr Melia, who has reportedly supported the proscribed neo-Nazi terrorist group, National Action, is now believed to be working with Patriotic Alliance, another far-right group that was formed by Mark Collett, the former head of publicity for the British National Party (BNP), in 2019.

Mr Collett is a senior figure in the far-right in the UK. An author with almost 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, he also previously served as the chairman of the BNP’s youth division. Mr Collett is understood to have dabbled in Holocaust denial, collaborated with the infamous American antisemite David Duke, and espoused antisemitic and racist views.

According to Hope Not Hate’s report, Patriotic Alliance is “a racist far-right organisation with antisemitism at its very core. They aim to combat the ‘replacement and displacement’ of white Britons by people who ‘have no right to these lands’.” The group reportedly holds that “it is Jewish elites, particularly, who are orchestrating the ‘replacement’ of white Britons.”

Meanwhile, a neo-Nazi, David Holmes, 63, has been jailed for engaging in a racist stickering campaign in Derbyshire.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has monitored and reported on far-rightstickeringoperations, including on university campuses, for a long time, including by the Hundred Handersgroup. We continue to call on the authorities to take action against these seemingly low-level incidents, including because they are gateways into more heinous and dangerous activity.