‘Fanatical’ neo-Nazi known as ‘Charlie Big Potatoes’ was training white nationalists for a race war

Kristofer Kearney told followers he wanted to recruit ‘people who are willing to die for this cause’, Lizzie Dearden writes

Kristofer Kearney, known as Charlie Big Potatoes, was jailed for four years and eight months (Metropolitan Police)

“I want a cult, I want fanatics, people who are willing to die for this cause,” Kristopher Kearney told his 1,600 followers in a voice message. “That's the level of commitment I want and expect, we want a hardcore group of people who know exactly what they want.”

What they wanted was to fight for a white Britain, and Kearney was the go-to man across UK fascist movements for physical training.

Better known online as Charlie Big Potatoes, or sometimes General Zod, the 38-year-old father was a member of the neo-Nazi terrorist group National Action before it was banned by the government in 2016.

Just over two years later, counter-terror police stopped him at an airport and asked for the password to his three mobile phones.

Kearney refused and swiftly moved to Spain with his wife and three children, failing to attend court after being prosecuted under the Terrorism Act for failing to provide the requested information.

A warrant was issued for his arrest while Kearney remained on the run in Alicante, but instead of keeping a low-profile he started to build his own online following.

He began appearing on influential far-right podcasts as Charlie Big Potatoes and was a frequent poster in extremist Telegram groups used by British, American and international neo-Nazis.

In January 2021 he set up a channel called Fascist Fitness, which encouraged extremists to “meet other like-minded people on a journey of self-improvement”.

It garnered more than 5,000 followers, with Kearney posting numerous videos of training tips, as well as violent footage and hateful memes about non-white people, women, Jews and the LGBT community.

Members would proudly share topless photos of themselves, often with their faces hidden by photos of Adolf Hitler, swastikas or other neo-Nazi symbols.

Kearney also aligned himself with the growing white nationalist group Patriotic Alternative, and was tasked with organising its regional fitness clubs – but he did not stop his own activities.

Kearney was an associate of the Patriotic Alternative group, seen protesting against an asylum seeker hotel (PA)

In the end, it was his personal posts on the Charlie Big Potatoes Telegram Channel that saw him prosecuted, and sentenced on Friday to four years and eight months in prison for disseminating terrorist propaganda.

He was caught after the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorism command worked with Spain’s national police to track Kearney down and arrest him near his home last March, extraditing him months later.

The case sparked panic among British fascists, with the leader of Patriotic Alternative issuing a warning to followers in April.

A lengthy statement on Telegram said the group “completely disavows” violence and was committed only to “peaceful democratic change”.

“This case should serve as a warning to all those using any online platform or social network as to the dangers of doing so under new government ‘anti-terror’ legislation,” it added.

“We urge all those within the nationalist community to exercise caution when interacting online.”

Kearney had used his Charlie Big Potatoes Telegram group, which was set up in November 2020, to share terrorist manifestos, bomb-making instructions and other violent material.

Many photos and videos supported the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which inspired the 2019 New Zealand mosque shootings and other international terror attacks.

It claims white people are being deliberately killed or displaced by non-whites in Britain and other Western nations, and Kearney wrote to his followers: “The great replacement is real.”

The great replacement theory supported by Kearney inspired terror attacks including the murder of 51 Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand (Getty Images)

In January 2021, and again in March that year, he posted what prosecutors called a “curated selection” of documents including manifestos written by far-right terrorists and fascist ideologues as well as Holocaust denial and conspiracy theories.

Some contained bomb manuals and weapons advice, and many called for violence and the acceleration of a race war hoped to re-establish white power.

Kearney wrote to followers that the texts should be an inspiration, personally recommending Hitler’s book Mein Kampf and the accelerationist manual Siege.

He pleaded guilty to disseminating the material but claimed he did not intend to encourage terror attacks, and could only be deemed “reckless”.

Judge Richard Marks KC examined his defence in a rare “trial of issue”, finding: “Whilst I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that his entire agenda and intention was not throughout to encourage acts of terrorism, I conclude from the nature, extent and volume of the material posted that, such was his fanaticism in achieving his stated objectives, that he was prepared and intended, at least in part for that to happen, if that is what it took.”

When giving evidence to London’s Old Bailey in May, Kearney described himself as a nationalist and a British fascist, freely proclaiming his intention to increase the “indigenous” population of the UK.

When pressed by the judge on whether British-born Black people were part of that group, Kearney became evasive, as he did when grilled on the contents of the terrorist manifestos and texts he shared.

Kearney forced a ‘trial of issue’ by claiming he did not intend to encourage terrorism (Jonathan Brady/PA) (PA Archive)

A ruling by Judge Marks said Kearney claimed “he had not read 99 per cent of the publications and had no idea that any of them encouraged the use of violence”, and that he “didn’t know where he found” the library of documents.

When shown a video he had shared showing a far-right activist saying that “once we Europeans turn violent we destroy entire civilizations, we decimate continents we wipe out races”, the defendant said he “probably watched it but didn’t remember it”.

He had a harder time explaining his own voice messages, including the August 2021 post calling for “people who are willing to die for this cause”.

Kearney denied the statement was extreme or controversial, telling the court he was referring to a “cultural” war and “not a fight in a physical sense”.

But Judge Marks said he repeatedly shared “material that depicted violence as an inevitability or threatened and encouraged violence in the context of the battle against white genocide”.

Sentencing him on Friday, the judge told Kearney: “You were fervent and fanatical about your beliefs, which you had clearly honed over many years and played a central part in your life … I do not accept your claims that you were completely ignorant of just about everything in the material that advocated violence.”

Kearney was jailed for four years and eight months, and given a two-year extended licence. But the court heard he will serve the sentence in Spain, where his family still lives and are mourning the loss of his 15-month-old son in a tragic accident last month.

A defence lawyer said Kearney was a “shadow” of the man he had been at the start of the case, but the judge found he was still a “dangerous” offender.

Commander Dominic Murphy, who leads the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command, said: “Kearney brazenly posted abhorrent extremist material online, advertising it to hundreds of people who followed his account. He may have thought that, being in Spain, he could act with impunity. He was wrong.”