Ashley Podsiad-Sharp, 42, allegedly founded the White Stag Athletics Club and created a channel for the organisation on the messaging app Telegram under the alias “Sarge”. Thursday in Sheffield Crown Court, prosecutor Denise Breen-Lawton stated, “The defendant is a racist, homophobic, neo-Nazi terrorist. This is the prosecution’s position.
“He glorifies and idolises Adolf Hitler and everything that the Nazi movement stood for and is still standing for.”
Ms Breen-Lawton added: “The defendant hates Jews, hates people of colour, hates homosexuals and he believes in the supremacy of the white man.”
She stated that Podsiad-Sharp trained “like a soldier” and remained physically fit for the “coming conflict,” as outlined in the White Resistance Manual in his possession. The prosecutor described how this publication contains instructions on how to murder people, employ various weapons, construct explosives, and elude police detection.
Ms. Breen-Lawton explained to the court how the manual begins with a white supremacist mantra urging armed resistance to the “threat to the white race” posed by Jews and non-white individuals.
She stated that the document discovered on Podsiad-Sharp’s laptop in the dining room is “clearly a terrorist manual.” Ms. Breen-Lawton stated to the jury of six men and six women, “He claims he has no idea how the document ended up on his laptop and he cannot explain how it got there.”
The prosecutor, however, stated that this was “utter nonsense” because the information was stored securely in an encrypted “virtual safe” protected by passwords that Podsiad-Sharp eventually provided to the authorities.
She also stated that the file was duplicated to another hard drive and uploaded to the file-sharing website Dropbox.
Ms. Breen-Lawton stated that radical right-wing texts, including a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, were discovered in the defendant’s residence. Additionally, knives, a machete, and a bow and arrow were seized. She claimed that Podsiad-Sharp posted gym photographs with ‘Hitler emoticons’ concealing his face, and that the Pin on his phone spelt out the word Hitler.
The prosecutor told the jury, “You may believe that the mere presence of a Hitler emoji speaks volumes.”
She described how potential White Stag Athletics Club members were screened with a questionnaire that included questions such as “what do you believe happened during the Holocaust?” and “what does victory look like to you?”
Ms. Breen-Lawton stated that Podsiad-Sharp “lived and breathed these Nazi and racist views” and added, “You may believe that the defendant was living his life according to the manual.”
Podsiad-Sharp, of Cudworth, Barnsley, denies the charges of disseminating a terrorist document and possessing a document containing information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing a terrorist act.
The first allegation stems from his posting a link to Mr. Bond’s music on his White Stag Athletics Club Telegram channel. Mr. Bond is an Austrian rapper who has been imprisoned for publishing versions of popular songs with radical right-wing and bigoted lyrics. The prosecutor stated that the defendant acknowledges posting the link to the songs, but argues that they are merely “comedic parodies” that are no more objectionable or provocative than “mainstream rap music or other art forms.”
She told the jury that this statement “in and of itself demonstrates his racist and terrorist views.”
Ms. Breen-Lawton singled out one of these tracks, a version of the tune Power Level, which was played by the perpetrator of the 2019 Halle Synagogue massacres in Germany, Stephan Balliet, during his livestream.
She stated, “It demonstrates, contrary to the defendant’s assertion, that these types of songs do in fact motivate right-wing extremists to commit terrorist attacks.” The prosecutor told the jury that the defendant “engaged in a war of words that encourages others to carry out the acts and dirty work.”
The trial was adjourned until Tuesday, May 9.
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