As we can exclusively reveal, frequent Breitbart contributor Jack Hadfield acts as an administrator of the right-wing “free speech” Facebook group the Young Right Society (YRS), which is frequently awash with appalling racist and ‘alt-right’ content.

Hadfield has authored over 200 articles for the far-right news outlet Breitbart, itself accused of pandering to the white nationalist alt-right.

Membership of the secret group has included open fascists and nazis, well-known alt-right figures such as Scottish vlogger Colin Robertson (aka Millennial Woes), alongside Conservative Party activists and UKIP youth leader Jamie Ross McKenzie.

The group’s moderator, Michael Brooks – who wrote that he was “14 and 88” (an infamous white supremacist slogan) – has been pictured posing with several politicians, including Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg and a grinning Nigel Farage.

Alarmingly Brooks was even snapped alongside Prime Minister Theresa May at the Conservative Party conference last month.

Just three weeks later a YRS contingent – including Brooks – attended the October conference of the far-right Traditional Britain Group (TBG), at which Martin Sellner, Austrian leader of the racist Identitarian movement, announced the launch of its UK branch.

YRS has also held other social events in London, Belfast and Manchester.

Fascism on display

YRS is billed as “a place for those who are on the Right (basically anything right of centre) to discuss politics, philosophy, and general Right-wing stuff with as little censorship or government intervention as possible”.

Whilst the group’s membership (of around 200 people) includes those with more moderate views, there is a large and vocal contingent of open racists active in YRS, including several who have been appointed to managing roles (as admins or moderators) in the group alongside Hadfield.

Posts include jokes about the Holocaust, antisemitic conspiracy theories, celebrations of British wartime fascist leader Oswald Mosley, and jokes about Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s practice of murdering political dissidents by dropping them from helicopters (a common gag among alt-right adherents).

One poster described Jo Cox, the Labour MP murdered by nazi extremist Thomas Mair, as “a virtue-signalling, more-progressive-than-thou cunt”, with commenter Lorcan Maneely – who has been photographed with Hadfield – writing below “I don’t care if traitors die”.

Some members even wrote supportively of Scottish Dawn, a group that has been outlawed as a faction of the banned neo-nazi group National Action (NA). Chris Ram, a London-based alt-right organiser, shared an article from Noose, a National Action-linked webzine.

Meanwhile, Cian Jones, who provides security for the racial-nationalist London Forum, posted the prison letter of Lawrence Burns, a National Action member currently behind bars for inciting racial hatred, which was described by Jones as “inspiring”.

Michael Brooks

Group moderator Michael Brooks was snapped at the Conservative Party conference in October in close proximity to PM May and her husband Philip. He has also been photographed posing with former UKIP leader Nigel Farage and Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg.

This is worrying in light of his activity on the group. For example, Brooks posted a graph showing a supposed increase in the population of sub-Saharan Africa with the caption “Planet of the Apes isn’t science fiction, it’s a warning“.

In another post he wrote “There is a riot happening in Dalston in North East London. In this thread we discuss the ethnicities and theories as to why they are biologically destined to engage in this behaviour :^)”.

The group’s moderator Michael Brooks wrote that he was “14 and 88”, an infamous white supremacist slogan

He also wrote that the idea of a “white identitarian, paramilitary organisation known as the “white shirts” sounds kinda cool, even if it is larpy“, and posted supportively of the first of Richard Spencer’s torchlight marches in Charlottesville Virginia, USA in May.

Brooks also suggested changing the YRS group banner to Nazi iconography in order to “weed out the weak and keep normies away” (to which Hadfield replied “Swastikas are unbritish m8. You’ve got the right aesthetic but it’s too autistic”).

Conversely, elsewhere on the group he wrote “you fucking right wing faggots need to knock off the nazi/ethnonat stuff. It drives off Civics who I keep adding and are open to nationalistm [sic]”, going on to claim that “I am 14 and 88, but even I know optics and recruiting normies”.

Brooks also claimed that he attended a Loyalist bonfire in Belfast in July along with far-right content creators Lauren Southern and Brittany Pettibone. YRS admin Philip Donaghy is featured in a video of the event, filmed by web journalist Tim Pool.

HOPE not hate was unable to contact Michael Brooks for comment.

Other members have included Tom Cormack, a leader of the tiny but hardline racist group British Imperative (BI). Hadfield himself claimed that he finds “NatSocs” (National Socialists) “autistic”.

Group admin Donaghy, who at one point posted an article from the nazi website Daily Stormer, suggested members use the code words “Knigr” or “Fgit” to in place of traditional slurs in order to avoid detection by Facebook.

Jack Hadfield

Hadfield began writing for Breitbart after he refused to attend “consent classes” as a student at Warwick University in October 2015. He now contributes primarily to the Tech section of the website.

As one of four group admins – alongside James Hart, Philip Donaghy and Phillip Campbell – Hadfield is able to moderate the group’s content and ban people from the page.

However, while largely refraining from posting gutter racism himself, he appears highly concerned with maintaining the group’s secrecy rather than any real effort to clamp down on the foul hatred prevalent within YRS.

Hadfield wrote that “group security is paramount to allow discussion of all ideas, even if you find those ideas abhorrent or even disgusting. Please challenge those who disagree with you, instead of posting their opinions for all and sunder to see“.

However, elsewhere Hadfield described YRS as “a Fascist-Juggalo group with traditionalism interest”, claiming that “we tolerate other ideologies but make no mistake if you don’t like it, you know where the door is”.

Hadfield also posted the work of Italian “traditionalist” philosopher Julius Evola, who idolised Hitler’s murderous SS and was admired by Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, with the caption “Got me some good new summer reading”. The book was published by Arktos, the central publisher of the racist alt-right.

Jack Hadfield did not respond to a request for comment.

Dressed up racism

While Hadfield has rejected ethno-nationalism (a belief that nations should be ethnically homogenous, a favoured ideology of the alt-right), group members regularly discussed the merits of racial or ethno-nationalism versus civic nationalism, often posting polls to gauge the opinion of members.

In one poll, 47% of respondents claimed they considered themselves “ethnic nationalists”, more than any other category. In another, 90% of respondents voted in favour of ethno-nationalism being accepted as “part and parcel” of YRS.

Posts include jokes about the Holocaust, antisemitic conspiracy theories, celebrations of British wartime fascist leader Oswald Mosley, and jokes about Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s practice of murdering political dissidents by dropping them from helicopters (a common gag among the alt-right)

Another poll revealed 72% agreeing with the claim that the “disparity between the average IQs of different races” was caused primarily by genetic factors. An additional poll showed 72% agreeing that a “racially diverse society is undesirable“.

Over half (53%) of YRS poll respondents claimed that giving women the right to vote was “a mistake” and 78% voted positively when Michael Brooks posed the question “would you unironically support the immediate liquidation of all communists, communists organisations and enablers of communist subversives”.

UKIP

Jamie Ross McKenzie, Chairman of UKIP’s Young Independence (YI) youth group, has also been active in the YRS group, using it to promote UKIP leadership candidate John Rees-Evans and to respond to enquiries about the state of UKIP’s youth movement.

McKenzie also chipped in on debate about the merits of civic nationalism versus ethnic nationalism, writing that he considered himself a “patriot” rather than a nationalist. Alt-right vlogger Colin Robertson (aka Millennial Woes) pointed out that the two shared five mutual Facebook friends.

McKenzie has previously come under fire for failing to manage the racist and sexist trolling prevalent on UKIP’s YI Facebook group.

Meetings

The group has also organised a number of offline meetings in London, Manchester and Belfast.

Meetings have been attended by Brooks, Chris Ram and Paul Griffin, a Canadian-born far-right activist.

Under the pseudonym “Francis Soulie” Griffin helped organise Legion MAC, a far-right “survival camp” including street-fighting training, in March. Griffin’s partner Sorcha Ní Bhuaigh, who has attended meetings of the extreme right London Forum with Griffin, has also attended the YRS socials.

YRS members Brooks, Ram, Bhuaigh, Donaghy and Griffin attended the October 2017 conference of the TBG alongside popular far-right commentator Brittany Pettibone.

Outpouring of hate

Below are just a few examples of the hatred expressed on YRS.

We wonder what Breitbart has to say about one of its frequent writers running a group with such vile and extreme content?