White Stag Athletics Club: Yorkshire man who 'glorifies and idolises' Hitler set up club to train extremists

Prosecutors said Ashley Podsiad-Sharp, 42, was the founder of the White Stag Athletics Club and created a channel for the group on the messaging app Telegram, calling himself "Sarge".

Denise Breen-Lawton, prosecuting, told Sheffield Crown Court: "The defendant is a racist, homophobic, neo-Nazi terrorist. That is the prosecution case. 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 said Podsiad-Sharp, of Cudworth, Barnsley, trained "like a soldier" and kept himself fit for the "coming conflict", as set out in a publication in his possession called the White Resistance Manual. The prosecutor detailed how this publication contains information on how to kill people, use various weapons, build bombs and evade detection by the police.

And she explained to the court how the manual opens with a white supremacist mantra, calling for armed resistance to the "threat to the white race" from Jews and non-white people. She said the document was found on a laptop in Podsiad-Sharp's dining room and is "clearly a terrorist manual".

Ms Breen-Lawton told the jury of six men and six women: "He says he has no idea how that document ended up on his laptop and he just cannot explain it."

But the prosecutor said this was "utter nonsense" as it was securely stored in an encrypted "virtual safe" which was protected by passwords Podsiad-Sharp eventually provided to the police.

She said it was also copied to another hard drive and uploaded to file-sharing site Dropbox.

Ms Breen-Lawton said extreme right-wing texts were found in the defendant's home, including a copy of Hitler's manifesto Mein Kampf. Knives, an axe and a bow and arrow were also seized.

She said Podsiad-Sharp posted selfies taken in the gym with "Hitler emojis" covering his face, and the Pin on his phone spelt out the word Hitler.

The prosecutor told the jury: "You may think the fact he had an emoji of Hitler's face in the first place speaks volumes.”

She described how potential members of the White Stag Athletics Club were vetted with a questionnaire which included inquiries like "what do you believe happened in the Holocaust" and "what do you envisage victory to look like?".

Ms Breen-Lawton said Podsiad-Sharp "lived and breathed these Nazi and racist views" and added: "The defendant, you may think, was living his life in the way set out in the manual."

Podsiad-Sharp denies disseminating a terrorist document and another of possession of a document containing information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.

The first charge relates to him posting a link on his White Stag Athletics Club Telegram channel to the music of Mr Bond - a rapper who has been jailed in Austria after publishing versions of popular tunes overlaid with extreme right-wing, racist lyrics.

The prosecutor said the defendant accepts posting the link to the songs but claims they are simply "comedic parodies" which are no more offensive or provocative than "mainstream rap music or other art forms".

She told the jury that this suggestion "in itself demonstrates his true views - racist and terrorist views".

Ms Breen-Lawton singled-out one of these songs - a version of the tune Power Level - which was played by murderer Stephan Balliet as he live-streamed the Halle Synagogue shootings in Germany in 2019.

She said: "It shows, contrary to the defendant's suggestion, these sorts of songs do motivate terrorist attacks by right-wing extremists."

The prosecutor told the jury the defendant "waged a war-of-words which encourages others to do the acts, to do the dirty work".

The trial was adjourned until Tuesday.