Midlands man who posted ‘torrent’ of racist and homophobic abuse on X is jailed

A man who was referred to the Prevent anti-terror programme four times has been jailed for two years after using social media to post a “torrent of vile abuse” against migrants, Jews and black people.

Thomas Webster, 29, used Substack and social media platform X to post antisemitic, homophobic and racist “vitriol” over a period of almost a year between September 2024 and 2025, Warwick Crown Court heard on Monday.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said Webster was a member of far-right group Patriotic Alternative and had boasted about discriminating against non-white people through his work at HMRC, a role he was dismissed from in February 2025.

Sentencing Webster to two years in prison after he earlier admitted 10 counts of publishing written material to stir up racial hatred and two counts of publishing material to threaten based on religion or sexual orientation, Judge Anthony Potter told the defendant he had been given “umpteen opportunities” to consider the impact of his actions.

Prosecution counsel Jamie Scott told the sentencing hearing that Webster, of Yew Tree Close, Lapworth in Warwickshire, ran five X accounts during the year-long period when the offences took place, returning under different guises each time his accounts were deleted to share racist and offensive posts.

Despite the “persistent and vile” nature of the posts, which targeted Jews, migrants, black people and Pakistanis and also claimed homosexuality should be punished by “public live executions and torture”, the maximum amount of followers he had on any of his accounts was 165, the court heard.

Referencing migrants in an X post on January 10 last year, Webster said: “Deporting is counter effective and weak, killing them is proper action.”

In a Substack post in June last year, Webster responded to another user’s post about migrants to say: “When the time is right, we just simply kill, torture and execute them all.”

Webster also posted “grotesque” racist memes and gifs including a double-barrelled shotgun being loaded.

Responding to an X post about migrant hotels, Webster said in July 2025: “I would prepare for murder and prison time, I am serious. These invaders must face our repressed Anglo-Saxon savagery.”

Mr Scott said Webster’s appearance in a documentary about far-right activists in early 2025 prompted his fourth referral to the Prevent programme and a police investigation into his online activities and he was arrested in September last year.

He was first referred to the anti-terror programme in 2017 because of associations with a far-right group and was cautioned by police in September 2019 and referred to the programme again after posting that “war would be raised” against Muslims.

A third referral was made in March 2021 but in July 2024, he shouted racial abuse from a car at a “stranger on the roadside”, for which he was offered a victim awareness course.

Mr Scott said: “On each occasion when confronted by police, he has appeared remorseful in recognising the incorrectness of his attitude.

“That has developed in the … Prevent referral reports which police have access to and which conclude with this: despite the positiveness Mr Webster has shown in meetings, engagement has been disingenuous.”

Mr Scott said the messages posted repeated threats of violence, were publicly available on the internet and “did amount to encouragement to threaten life”.

The barrister added that in some of Webster’s posts, which referenced issues such as the war in Gaza and the Epping migrant hotel protests, he was “deliberately inflaming sensitive issues”.

Defending Webster, Susan Guest said the language used in the posts was “abhorrent” and she would make no attempt to minimise the “seriousness or deeply offensive nature” of the offending.

She said Webster acknowledged his previous engagement with Prevent was “superficial at best” and that he has an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis as well as difficulties with anxiety and social isolation.

She said: “He does describe becoming increasingly isolated and spending substantial time online … His views were reinforced, not challenged.

“He almost lived in a bubble, immersed in an online community that reinforced his views.

“It was only when faced with court that the bubble popped.”

Judge Potter accepted Webster’s diagnosis made him more socially withdrawn but said it has not impaired his ability to understand his actions.

He said: “It may increase your vulnerability to outside influences, but it does not impair your ability to understand the consequences of what you say or do.

“You have not appeared before the courts, but you have not lived a blameless life.

“You have not appeared before the courts because of the frequent opportunities you have been given to reflect upon your actions and the consequences of your actions.”

The judge said it was “depressing” that Webster had been referred to Prevent for a second time just two years after his first referral and that a pattern of behaviour where he showed “apparent remorse” for what he did to avoid police action started.

He said: “When you began in 2025 to post the vitriol we have all had to listen to, you had been given umpteen opportunities to consider the impact of your actions.

“There were 12 offences over a period of almost a year, posting on the internet, primarily X, material that was hostile to those with other religious views … and to a large range of individuals who you perceived as being hostile to the interests of Britons.

“They offended you because their skin colour was different to yours.

“Mercifully, it seems through a combination of a lack of interest in your posts and the impact of the authorities policing the different usernames you were using, you didn’t have very many followers.

“These posts, persistent and vile though they were, didn’t come to the attention of as many individuals as you may have hoped.”

Webster’s arrest would have been the opportunity to tell police what he had done if he were “truly remorseful”, the judge said, but instead he remained silent.

He said: “If there had been a sea change, one might have expected you to have expressed revulsion and set out what you had done proactively to seek help for the isolation you were feeling and temptation to post a torrent of vile abuse that had been spewing from your keyboard.”

Judge Potter said he would be failing in his public duty if he did not send Webster to prison.

He added: “When it comes to you, talk is very cheap and has allowed you to escalate your offending and propagate the most harmful views and sentiments that could be read by any member of society.”

Webster was ordered to spend no more than half of his two-year sentence in prison before he could be released on licence.

Frank Ferguson, chief Crown prosecutor for the CPS Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Division, said: “Thomas Webster was vehement in his hatred of people whose race or sexuality did not fit with his extremist ideals.

“He continually published distressing, offensive and violent statements with the intention to make others hate those he was attacking and to cause them fear.

“This is a serious crime and those who promote, encourage or condone violence against others will be prosecuted.”