The mentally ill and the stupid are very easy for extremist groups of all kinds to recruit. Some of them are readily receptive to any sort of ideology that seems to give them a structure of belief or a friendship group or a purpose.
Mentally ill and more than a little stupid is probably the best combination of words I can think of right now to describe the 21 year old neo-Nazi who managed to get caught out in a police / MI5 sting when he tried to purchase weapons for a terror attack. He’s obviously mentally ill if he thinks that carrying out a terror attack is the right thing to do and he’s obviously stupid for putting together a plan like this after mouthing off online.
GB News said:
“Alfie Coleman, 21, has been found guilty at the Old Bailey for planning a mass gun attack after being caught by M15 in an undercover sting.
The supermarket worker from Great Notley, Essex, was arrested after a sting carried out by MI5 in a Morrisons' car park.”
The GB News reporter went on to describe some of Coleman’s history including consuming radical far right and extremist content since he was 14 and becoming mentally ill during lockdown.
It appears that Coleman may have got increasingly active and maybe more violent with his rhetoric in online conversations and it was at that point MI5, the Security Service, started to take an interest in him. I suspect that Coleman started mouthing off about what he would do for ‘the cause’ and that took him from the ‘easily ignorable Green ink nutter’ classification into someone who needed to be targeted.
GB News added:
“The case came to a head on the morning of September 29, 2023, when MI5's "highly sophisticated operation" reached its conclusion in a Morrisons car park in Stratford, east London.
Coleman, then 19 and working at Tesco, had unknowingly arranged to purchase a Makarov pistol, five magazines and 200 rounds of ammunition from an undercover police officer. “
GB News continued:
“He admitted attempting to obtain a firearm and ammunition but denied intending to carry out a terrorist attack.
Coleman had also previously pleaded guilty to possessing ten documents containing information useful to terrorists, including material on weaponry and bomb-making.
The 21-year-old was remanded in custody following the verdict and is due to be sentenced on July 8.”
I suspect that this, mostly self radicalised, nutter will get a lengthy prison sentence and that’s correct as from my reading of the story it might have been a question of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’ he had gone kinetic in support of his beliefs or to get revenge on coworkers etc.
This man is mentally ill enough to get on board with the jackboot licking Hitler worshippers and stupid enough to say and do things that got him rounded up.
Link
GB New story on the lonely, mentally ill neo-Nazi.
https://www.gbnews.com/news/alfie-coleman-neo-nazi-guilty-mass-gun-attack-mi5