The alleged leader of a white nationalist organisation displayed a picture of Adolf Hitler and Third Reich posters in his home, a court has heard.
Sam Melia is accused of running the far-right network Hundred-Handers from his home in Pudsey, Leeds, and faces two public order charges: stirring up racial hatred by publishing written material and intentionally encouraging or assisting the commission of an offence.
Leeds crown court heard the charges related to racist stickers Melia allegedly designed and produced between 2019 and 2021, which he had then posted in public places around his community and encouraged thousands of online followers to imitate. They bore slogans such as “Reject white guilt”, “Nationalism is nurture”, “We will be a minority in our homeland by 2066” and “Diversity – designed to fail, built to replace”.
Melia, 33, was described by the prosecutor, Tom Storey, as “media-savvy” in his running of Hundred-Handers, and “also careful to ensure that actions taken in support of what are ultimately racially offensive perspectives are somehow dressed up in a veneer of legitimacy”.
However, police had found stickers on his computer, featuring “overtly racist” messages including “Mass immigration is white genocide”, “Second-generation? Third? Fourth? You have to go back”, “There is a war on whites” and “They seek conquest not asylum”, the jury was told.
Police had also found a book by Oswald Mosley on his bedside table and a poster of him in his living room, the court heard.
On Telegram, where Hundred-Handers had 3,500 followers, the court was told Melia had used racist slurs about black, Asian and Jewish people.
On one occasion he had written about how he was going to “plaster” his home town of Pudsey with stickers the night before a Black Lives Matter march.
Another time, the prosecutor said, Melia wrote that before a March Against Racism in nearby Otley, he was going to go out “heavy-handed with stickers” before later posting a photograph showing a sticker on a lamp-post in front of the Otley and Yeadon Labour party offices, which read “Mass immigration is white genocide”.
These were “all ultimately driven by a racist motivation”, the court heard.
The Hundred-Handers group, named after giant creatures from Greek mythology with 100 arms, was described in court as “anonymous, meaning that nobody involved needed to know anyone else’s identity; this was clearly a means by which the defendant sought to protect both himself, and others, from any potential investigation”. It was active in the UK and a number of other parts of the world, the court heard.
During the investigation, the court heard how police found half a dozen country-specific types of stickers among the files on Melia’s computer, including slogans in Spanish and Italian.
The stickers also contained a wealth of anti-BBC, anti-lockdown and anti-mask messages relating to the Covid-19 pandemic, including: “Live in fear, it makes you easier to control.”
The trial continues.
