System Resistance Network

System Resistance Network (SRN) was a neo-Nazi group in the United Kingdom that began distributing posters and publishing a website in 2017, after the Home Office had proscribed National Action under the Terrorism Act 2000 in December 2016. It was not named in any proscription order until February 24, 2020, when the Home Office made the Proscribed Organisations (Name Change) Order 2020, article 2 of which provides that "System Resistance Network, being a name not specified in Schedule 2 to the Terrorism Act 2000 (proscribed organisations), is to be treated as another name for National Action".¹

Appearance in 2017

The BBC reported that in the summer of 2017 racist and homophobic propaganda posters bearing the logo of a new group began to appear in cities throughout the United Kingdom, and that SRN also appeared online with a website and social media accounts. The BBC tracked its street activity, found at least ten cities targeted, "from Dundee to Southampton, Newport to Cambridge", and attributed this to a requirement that aspiring members prove themselves by covering their local areas with propaganda.²

The monitoring organisation Tell MAMA wrote on September 28, 2017 that the group was "a neo-Nazi movement born from the ashes of the short-lived Vanguard Britannia". The same article states that Hampshire Constabulary was investigating the distribution of its homophobic leaflets in the Southampton area in August 2017, that users of other fascist forums had praised the group, and that it asked supporters to use the Tutanota encrypted email service, as National Action and its aliases did.³ The article also records that Home Secretary Amber Rudd had extended the National Action ban to Scottish Dawn and the group NS131 (National Socialist Anti-Capitalist Action) by an order made on September 26 and laid on September 28, 2017. System Resistance Network was not in that order.³

Propaganda

Tell MAMA recorded that the SRN website carried writings by James Mason, a blog post eulogising William Luther Pierce, and posters including one adapting the phrase "Hitler Was Right" and one captioned "Stop The Faggots".³ The Middlebury Institute's Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism (Middlebury Institute CTEC) states that Dymock wrote online soon after the group's creation that SRN was "focused on building a group of loyal men, true to the cause of national socialism and establishing the fascist state through revolution", and that on the SRN website he wrote that "every stabbing, bombing, shooting further plays into our hands".⁴

At the 2021 trial of Andrew Dymock the prosecutor, Jocelyn Ledward, told the jury that an SRN article headed "truth about the Holocaust" was "clear in its encouragement of the eradication of Jewish people" and that an article headed "hail victory" stated that a "racial holy war is inevitable". The court heard that the SRN Twitter account linked to a terrorist publication glorifying the murder of the member of Parliament Jo Cox, and that Dymock sought and received donations through a PayPal account created for the SRN website.⁵

Andrew Dymock and the split

CTEC states that Dymock, then a student at Aberystwyth University, established System Resistance Network in 2017, and that its members expelled him about a year later after he promoted satanist views drawn from the Order of Nine Angles; it states that he then founded Sonnenkrieg Division.⁴ The BBC reported that one SRN leader used the alias Blitz, that suggestions that Blitz was a known figure from National Action were contradicted by the information the BBC found, and that Blitz split from SRN in spring 2018 after a row over his adherence to Satanism and created Sonnenkrieg Division.² The Home Office described Sonnenkrieg Division in the explanatory memorandum to its 2020 proscription order as "formed in March 2018 as a splinter group of System Resistance Network (an alias of the proscribed group National Action)".⁶

The Counter Extremism Project states that Dymock and the Sonnenkrieg Division member Oskar Dunn-Koczorowski formerly belonged to System Resistance Network.⁷ CTEC states that two Sonnenkrieg Division members, Dunn-Koczorowski and Michael Szewczuk, were arrested in December 2018 and imprisoned in June 2019, Szewczuk for four years and three months and Dunn-Koczorowski under an 18-month detention and training order.⁴ In an analysis published in February 2020 the BBC's Daniel De Simone wrote that Sonnenkrieg Division "emerged from a split in the System Resistance Network" and that both groups "were small when at their height and have been severely disrupted since", to the extent that some may question whether the move was necessary.⁸

The BBC reported that Dymock was first arrested at Gatwick Airport in June 2018 on his way to the United States with luggage containing extreme right-wing items and books, that he was exposed by the BBC as the founder of Sonnenkrieg Division in December 2018, that he was arrested the next day and that he was charged with 15 offences the following year.²⁵

Dymock trial, 2021

Dymock was tried at the Old Bailey in 2021. The charges related to a period in 2017 and 2018 when he was alleged to have controlled the SRN website and Twitter account. He denied the charges. In police interviews he denied being a neo-Nazi and denied responsibility for the accounts, said that material on his devices must have been planted by others or that he had a reasonable excuse for holding it, and told detectives: "I am bisexual but lean towards being homosexual, in direct conflict with Nazism".⁵ The Algemeiner, citing the BBC, reported that he told the court that a former girlfriend who had failed to recruit him to National Action had framed him.⁹ The BBC reported that he blamed a conspiracy involving neo-Nazis, the police and unknown men, and that the jury rejected the account.²

The jury convicted him of five counts of encouraging terrorism, two of fundraising for terrorism, four of disseminating terrorist publications, and one count each of possessing a terrorist document, stirring up racial hatred and hatred on grounds of sexual orientation, and possessing racially inflammatory material. In July 2021 Judge Mark Dennis sentenced him to seven years in prison with a further three years on extended licence, saying, "It is clear you were a leader and not a follower."⁹

Name change order, 2020

The Home Secretary, Priti Patel, announced on February 24, 2020 that orders had been laid to proscribe Sonnenkrieg Division and to recognise System Resistance Network as an alias of National Action. The announcement followed a meeting of the Proscription Review Group, which brings together police and other partners.¹⁰ The Name Change Order was signed at 8.45 a.m. that day by James Brokenshire, Minister of State at the Home Office, and came into force on the day after it was laid before Parliament, February 25, 2020.¹

The explanatory memorandum states that the order breached the 21-day convention because delay "would alert the organisation to the impending change to the law that would result in it being recognised as 'System Resistance Network', and may result in pre-emptive action by the organisation's members designed to circumvent the provisions of TACT and/or the criminal law". It adds that the order "will also assist in any prosecutions that may be brought since the Order will remove the need for the prosecuting authorities, in addition to making out the offence in question, to have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that 'System Resistance Network' is one and the same as National Action."¹¹

The memorandum sets out the test under section 3(6) of the Terrorism Act 2000: credible evidence that the ideology, aims and methods of the groups are essentially the same, that their leaders or key individuals are the same or materially the same people, and that their members are the same or generally so. It records that this was the thirteenth order made under that power and the second in respect of National Action, that no consultation was undertaken, and that no impact assessment was prepared.¹¹ The Order that proscribed Sonnenkrieg Division was made on February 27, 2020 and came into force on the following day.¹² The Home Office list of proscribed groups carries "System Resistance Network (SRN)" under its entry for National Action. The same entry records that an order of September 2017 provides that "Scottish Dawn" and "NS131 (National Socialist Anti-Capitalist Action)" are treated as alternative names for National Action, and that the order of February 2020 does the same for System Resistance Network.¹³ The group's website and accounts therefore operated for a little over two years after the September 2017 orders that omitted it.³¹³