Two members of far-right Generation Identity group ‘serving in royal navy’

Two alleged far-right extremists were able to join the royal navy in spite of their white nationalist views, it has been claimed.

The men are accused of being active in the UK branch of Generation Identity, a pan-European group which spreads a conspiracy theory that motivated the alleged Christchurch mosque attacker in New Zealand.

An undercover informant for the campaign group Hope Not Hate claimed the men had served together in Plymouth and one was to become a sonar engineer on a nuclear submarine.

A sailor with his name was pictured standing guard outside Windsor Castle as part of a recent royal navy photography competition.

“It became apparent that they were apparently not alone in their views,” said the informant, Ben van der Merwe. “One boasted that some officers on his base were also racist. Political correctness, he claimed, had only reached the highest rungs of the navy, and consequently they had sent down diversity officers to fix the issues with the lower ranks.”

Mr Van der Merwe said he was shocked that “two members of a group with such dangerous links, and whose openly-stated end-goal is the ethnic cleansing of Europe, could serve in the royal navy, one of them aboard a nuclear submarine”.

The Independent understands that both men are under investigation by the navy’s internal security department and could face court martial if the allegations are proven.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence said: “It would be inappropriate to comment specifically on these allegations, but any extremist ideology is completely at odds with the values of our armed forces. We take allegations of this nature very seriously and would always carry out investigations into such matters when they are made against service personnel.”

The allegations emerged months after a British army soldier who vowed he would “die committed to the white race” was jailed for being a member of the National Action neo-Nazi terrorist group.

When police raided Lance Corporal Mikko Vehvilainen’s accommodation in Sennybridge Camp, Powys, they found swastika flags, Nazi memorabilia, CDs of Third Reich music and stockpiles of knives, guns and other weaponry.

Through his work as an army trainer, he tried to bring what he called “committed Nazis” over to National Action, introducing at least three soldiers to encrypted chat groups including one called “Triple K Mafia”, his trial heard.

One of his recruits was acquitted of terror offences but was discharged from the army, while Vehvilainen claimed his camp contained “a good group of fully committed men with our beliefs”.

He added: “We also have other contacts on other bases and a lot of people are slightly sympathetic to our ideas. We also have good opportunities to get more equipment, uniforms etc.”

Hope Not Hate’s report said a small number of former National Action members had been associating with Generation Identity, amid infighting over the “Jewish question”.

Mr Van der Merwe said European leaders of Generation Identity were angered by the UK branch’s decision to invite an antisemitic conspiracy theorist to its annual conference in July.

“We in the European community of Identitarian movements distance ourselves from the current GI [Generation Identity] UK leadership’s decision to organise a conference in the name of GI with participants from alt-right YouTubers, whose positions do not represent us,” said tweets from the Austrian and Italian branches in July.

Since the row, prominent members of the group formerly known as Generation Identity UK have changed their public affiliation to the “Identitarian Movement”.

Recent public stunts include mock executions of anti-racist activists by Generation Identity members dressed as Isis fighters.

The group’s European leadership has publicly disassociated itself from antisemitism and framed its version of the white genocide conspiracy theory known as the “Great Replacement” as legitimate concern over the alleged cultural and ethnic “replacement” of “indigenous Europeans”.

“Great Replacement” was used as the title of an online manifesto published by Brenton Tarrant, who is on trial in New Zealand for the massacre of 51 Muslims in the city of Christchurch earlier this year.

This manifesto has been cited as an inspiration for other mass murderers, including the El Paso and Poway shooters. A man launched an alleged terror attack in the UK a day after the massacre.

The leader of Generation Identity’s Austrian branch, Martin Sellner, is being investigated over donations from Tarrant and email conversations they shared.

He has been excluded from the UK on public security grounds and was refused entry to Britain last year over Generation Identity’s “promotion of anti-Islamic and anti-immigration narratives”.

Ben Jones, the leader of what he now calls the Identitarian Movement UK, claimed the group was “free of violent tendencies and has never committed any violent acts”.

Speaking in a video to supporters, he threatened to sue Mr Van der Merwe and accused him of “scaremongering and attempting to mislead the British public”.

Vowing that the group would continue to “peacefully raise awareness of what we call the Great Replacement”, he added: “Certain people associated with our organisation serve in the navy and indeed, on submarines.”