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An extremist who made anti-semitic comments and shared Hitler imagery online has been jailed for four years.

Lawrence Burns, 26, had earlier been found guilty of two charges of inciting racial hatred in a string of provocative Facebook posts in 2014.

He was also prosecuted for making a racist speech at a memorial demonstration for American white supremacist leader David Lane.

In the speech, which was later shared online via YouTube, Burns was heard to refer to Jews as “parasites” that wanted to create a “mongrelised race”.

Burns, of Coldham’s Lane, Cambridge, was charged with the two offences on January 22 last year and found guilty in December.

A judge at Peterborough Crown Court today ruled that he should serve a total of four years in prison for his offences.

(Image: Keith Jones)

During the trial it was alleged that Burns commented on a YouTube video that he wanted to “hang the black race”, while also sharing Adolf Hitler artwork.

Jurors were shown screenshots of hundreds of Facebook posts that Burns had written under a different name.

In one post, Burns is alleged to have written that black children were born with a “horrible” nature and were mean to animals.

He is also reported to have written: “The white race is the only race that can boost evolution. The rest of the other races must be eliminated.”

Prosecutor Mark Weekes earlier summarised Burns’s extreme views to the court. He said: “This is a young man who is an extremist and has expressed racist views, particularly towards the Jewish and Afro-Caribbean community.

“On his public Facebook account, which has more than 90 friends, he expressed some of the vilest and most offensive sentiments possible.

“Many of the posts are abusive and insulting towards Jews, who he refers to as ‘sub human animals’ and contain offensive words.”

Mr Weekes added that in a post on August 28, 2014, Burns accused white women of “mating with race-mixing filth” and on September 1, 2014, compared Jews to “maggots in a decaying body” who are “hijacking the genes of a superior white race”.

Adrian Davis, who defended Burns during the course of the trial, said Burns had mistakenly thought his Facebook account was set up to keep his posts private.

He said someone seeking to incite racial hatred would seek the largest possible audience, whereas Burns had set out to do the “very opposite, but messed it up”.

Mr Davis said Burns was a “rash young man” who had never intended his words to be read by a wide audience.