Britain’s new terror threat: worst ‘loners’ and ‘misfits’ who became radicalised online
21 January 2025, 21:31 | Updated: 21 January 2025, 23:28
Keir Starmer has warned of a new breed of terrorist emerging in the UK made up of violent 'loners and misfits' - here are some of the worst offenders to have been radicalised online.
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Britain faces a new threat of terrorism from "extreme violence carried out by loners, misfits, young men in their bedrooms," Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said.
He said that the violence seen in the Southport attack was a new form of terrorism committed by ‘loners and misfits’ who were "sometimes inspired by traditional terrorist groups, but fixated on ‘extreme violence… for its own sake."
Sir Keir continued: "I do think it's new. You've seen versions of it in America with some of the mass shootings in schools.
"But that is my concern, that is my thinking that this is a new threat - individualised extreme violence, obsessive, often following online viewing of material from all sorts of different sources."
Sadly, Britain has seen a number of offenders that were radicalised on the internet, or used it to plan their horrific attacks.
Jake Davison - 'incel' mass shooter
Jake Davison killed his own mother, Maxine Chapman, before shooting four more people in the infamous attack in 2021.
He went on to kill Sophie Martyn, 3 and her father Lee Martyn, aged 43. He then shot Stephen Washington, aged 59, in Linear Park, before shooting Kate Shepherd, 66, who was rushed to hospital and later died.
Davison then took his own life.
The killer was heavily influenced by online 'incel' (involuntary celibacy) culture, which features extreme misogyny. 'Incels' are typically men who express hostility and extreme resentment towards those who are sexually active, particularly women.
CCTV footage shows Jake Davison's whereabouts before fatal Plymouth shooting
The killer appeared to post on a YouTube account under the name Professor Waffle just weeks before the massacre about how he was "beaten down" and "defeated by life".
His channel was subscribed to gun-related accounts and another named Incel TV, which features content the incel subculture, although in one of his videos Davison said he "wouldn't clarify myself as an incel".
In another clip, he discusses missing out on a teenage romance and refers to "Chads", an incel community term for good-looking men who attract women.
And in another video, Davison says: "I know it's a movie but I like to think sometimes I'm the Terminator or something. Despite reaching almost total system failure he keeps trying to accomplish his mission."
Much like Radukabanu, Davison had been reported to the Government's counter-terrorism Prevent programme by his own mother months before he applied for a shotgun licence.
The Home Secretary has announced that there will be a public inquiry into how Southport child-killer Axel Rudakubana "came to be so dangerous" and why Prevent "failed to identify the terrible risk" he posed to others, after he was reported to the programme several times.
Read more: 'Incels encourage each other to do exactly what Jake Davison has done'
Ali Harbi Ali
Ali was found guilty of murdering MP Sir David Amess in a frenzied knife attack at a constituency surgery in October 2021.
Ali told the Old Bailey trial he had no regrets about the murder, defending his actions by saying Sir David deserved to die as a result of voting in Parliament for air strikes on Syria in 2014 and 2015.
He sent a manifesto on WhatsApp to family and friends seeking to justify his actions around the time of the attack, telling Sir David he was "sorry" before plunging the knife into him, causing the politician to scream.
London-born Ali had become self-radicalised in 2014, going on to drop out of university, abandoning ambitions for a career in medicine.
Ali came from an influential Somali family and said he had a childhood "full of love and care", considered travelling to Syria to fight but by 2019 opted for an attack in Britain.
In a police interview, he spoke calmly about his terror plot and admitted allegiance to so-called Islamic State.
He reportedly learned how to use a knife from watching IS videos online, and wanted to die as a martyr, assuming the police would shoot him.
Read more: Dramatic bodycam footage shows moment police swoop on Sir David Amess murder suspect
Callum Ulysses Parslow
Parslow, a Nazi fanatic, was jailed for life after stabbing an asylum seeker in the chest and hand in a 'protest' against small boat crossings.
He produced his own “terrorist manifesto” before the attack and had Adolf Hitler’s signature tattooed on his left arm.
He was found guilty of attempted murder after stabbing Nahom Hagos near the Pear Tree Inn near Worcester as a "protest" against small-boat crossings.
Parslow, who denied attempted murder but admitted wounding, told jurors he made a four-and-a-half-mile journey to the rural hotel to stab "one of the Channel migrants" because he was "angry and frustrated" at small boat crossings.
Following his attack, the white supremacist attempted to share his “manifesto” with Tommy Robinson, also tagging prominent politicians including Sir Keir Starmer, Rishi Sunak, Nigel Farage and Suella Braverman.
In the far-right 'manifesto', Parslow railed against the so-called “evil enemies of nature and of England who he believes are “the Jews, the Marxists and the Globalists.”
Prosecutor Tom Storey KC told the court Parslow clearly intended to publish his manifesto given the slew of media outlets and politicians he had tagged on X, formerly known as Twitter.
These included Laurence Fox, Nick Griffin, Donald Trump, Lee Anderson, Liz Truss, Michael Gove, Lord David Cameron, Richard Tice and Boris Johnson.
Raiding his apartment, police found a second knife, an axe, a metal baseball bat, an armband bearing a swastika, copies of Mein Kampf and a Nazi medallion.
Nasen Saadi
Saadi was found guilty of murdering 34-year-old Amie Gray on Bournemouth beach, as well as the attempted murder of her wife Leanne Miles.
The criminology student reportedly asked his lecturers a series of questions about defences for murder which led one of them to ask him: "You're not planning a murder are you?"
At the time of his sentencing, the court heard Saadi was "fascinated" with knives and had bought six blades from websites, with several found at his aunt's house where he was living as well as at his parents' home.
Suggesting a motive for the attack, Sarah Jones KC, prosecuting, said: "This defendant seems to have wanted to know what it would be like to take life, perhaps he wanted to know what it would be like to make women feel afraid, perhaps he thought it would make him feel powerful, make him interesting to others.
"Perhaps he just couldn't bear to see people engaged in a happy, normal social interaction and he decided to lash out, to hurt, to butcher."
She added that the previous evening, Saadi had gone to see the movie The Strangers - Chapter 1 and describing the plot, she said: "The male and female leads are both stabbed - the male dies and the female survives.
"It suggests doesn't it, that the defendant gravitated to what he likes to watch or sought inspiration or encouragement from what he saw."
