Teen gets 11 years in prison for neo-Nazi videos that inspired racist Buffalo shooting

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Daniel John Harris. Photo via erbyshire.police

A British teenager has been sentenced to 11.5 years behind bars for creating heavily referenced racist content by the neo-Nazi who went live murdering black people in a Buffalo grocery store.

Daniel John Harris, 19, will spend the next decade behind bars for creating neo-Nazi video propaganda that pushed for terrorism. Harris and his work have been referenced at least seven times by the gunman who live-streamed killing ten people in a grocery store mass shooting in May 2022. It has also been alleged that the man who fired into a Colorado gay nightclub, killing five and wounding 17, consumed them.

Harris was arrested on May 16, 2022, two days after the Buffalo attack, and was convicted in December. He was sentenced last weekend. This is further evidence of the transnational and deadly nature of the modern white supremacist movement and how difficult it can be for law enforcement.

Harris’ videos were directly referenced by the Buffalo mass murderer in the lengthy diary he kept in the days leading up to the mass shooting. At one point in the shooter’s online diary, he wrote “Shout out to (online name of Harris) thank you for your service.”

Authorities said Harris knew of the deadly impact he had.

“The threat he posed became such that we had to act to ensure the safety of the general public. The reference to one of his videos in the prelude to the Buffalo attack is a good example of this,” said Detective Terrorism Inspector Chris Brett. “Harris could see the reaction his videos were getting. wasn’t a game, it was a concerted effort to generate a following and influence people.

Police alleged that Harris also attempted to use a 3D printer to print parts in a “gross attempt” to create a handgun.

Parts printed by Harris to make a 3D weapon. Photo via Derbyshire Police.

Experts have long raised the alarm about an international network of propagandists trying to radicalize and spur people to action.

“Harris’ arrest shows the international nature of the violent far-right online, particularly the subset of individuals who glorify attackers such as the Christchurch terrorist,” said analyst Joshua Fisher-Birch. extreme right at the Counter-Extremism Project. VICE News. “While many of these people fear carrying out attacks in their area, they are also part of this online community that seeks to encourage violence in other places in the name of white supremacy.”

Fisher-Birch told VICE News there have been similar cases of online propagandists being arrested and charged for their work trying to inspire far-right extremists around the world. For example, in November 2022, a Slovak man was sentenced to six years for his involvement in terrorism and was, as Fisher-Birch puts it, “a significant player within the accelerationist neo-Nazi international online community and disseminated useful information for committing terrorist acts”. attacks. Neo-Nazi terrorist groups like The Base and Atomwaffen have had members from cells located in North America, Europe, Scandinavia and Australia.

“The problem is that all over the world there are individuals who subscribe to the same or similar conspiracy theories and ideologies and feel that they have the same group of enemies and either want to take violent action against them , either encouraging or facilitating others to do so,” Fisher-Birch said.

Vestiges of Harris’s online footprint can still be found, with many of her videos remaining available on video streaming platforms that trump lax moderation as a selling point. Videos he has created include a feature length video celebrating the Christchurch shooter, as well as anti-vaccine and COVID conspiracy videos. The last video he made celebrates the Buffalo murders. An account associated with the Buffalo shooter on a neo-Nazi video platform liked only one video and it was one where Harris explicitly called for the killing of “sub-humans”.

At sentencing, the judge hearing the case described Harris as a “very dangerous” young man who created “despicable” work, and that “what (the killers) did was nothing more than you wanted others to do”.

“You intended to encourage terrorism, and clearly what was being encouraged was lethal, racist and anti-Semitic violence, as well as violence against the gay community,” Judge Patrick Field KC said, according to the BBC.

Police in the UK have aggressively investigated and charged online neo-Nazis connected to networks such as the one described above. Many young men, like Harris, are teenagers, a trend recently described by some experts as “extremely alarming.” Brett said “it’s no secret that across the country we’re seeing more and more young people hitting the counter-terrorism radar, especially those who hold far-right views.”

“Not only did he create and share offensive posts and videos, but he also tried (and failed) to make a gun,” Brett said. “While not all individuals have the means to act on their lyrics, in the online space they can easily spread to inspire others who do.”

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