The following is a Special Extended Insight
Content warning: racial and antisemitic slurs.
Manifesto and Tweets give insight into a far-right loner who sought to start a revolution with an attack on an asylum hotel.
This Insight analyses the manifesto, social media and internet use of a terrorist who targeted migrants who were housed in a local hotel, drawn from evidence presented in court. It highlights a number of issues around the way extreme far-right individuals are handled by local police and the way those who speak loudly on social media can also go on to launch violent attacks.
The attack on the Pear Tree Inn in Hindlip, Worcestershire, occurred on 2 April 2024, four months before the outbreak of violence at a hotel in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, used by asylum seekers following the Southport killings on 29 July 2024.
The author covered Parslow’s trial at Leicester Crown Court between 8 October and 25 October 2024. Quotes from his social media and from the manifesto are from material presented in court, unless otherwise stated. Parslow’s own words are from his evidence in court.
Facts
Callum Ulysses Parslow worked as a computer programmer for an automotive diecast manufacturer in Worcester until he decided to hand in his notice and embark on an odyssey around historical sites in Britain. This ended when he launched a terrorist attack on an asylum seeker at the Pear Tree Country Inn.
His six-week tour included Lincoln, York and Darlington; Hereford, Salisbury and Dover; London, Edinburgh, Belfast and Dublin.
Photographs showed him visiting numerous cathedrals and castles, as well as Stone Henge, The Mary Rose, and the Harry Potter Studios.
He returned to his flat above a vegetarian cafe in Bromyard Terrace, not far from the middle of Worcester, at the end of March 2024. By Tuesday, 2 April, he was putting into action a plan to launch a knife attack at a hotel five miles away.
The Pear Tree Inn in Hindlip was a popular wedding venue that had been turned over to house migrants for three years but was now undergoing repairs to re-open for guests. His victim, a former resident, was there by chance to visit the manager and borrow a bicycle.
Parslow made his way to the hotel restaurant, where he approached Nahom Hagos, an Eritrean asylum seeker, and asked where he was from before going to the toilet and emerging with a knife.
The folding weapon cost him $1,000 from a specialist knifemaker in the US. He ordered it over the Internet and had it delivered by UPS.
After stabbing his victim twice in the chest, Parslow chased him into the car park with the knife in his hand before Hagos managed to return to the reception area and lock the door.
Hagos was rushed to hospital in a van by workers who were refurbishing the hotel. On the way, they spotted Parslow on a nearby towpath and called the police. Hagos was found to have an 8cm wound in his left chest area, but the knife had not penetrated any of his vital organs.
Parlsow was detained on the Worcester and Birmingham canal, holding his phone and with his hands covered in blood, about to send a far-right manifesto out on the X social media platform.
Parslow would have posted his manifesto from the towpath, but he had tagged too many people. They included far-right activists Tommy Robinson – real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – Paul Golding, Nick Griffin and actor Laurence Fox.
He also sought to tag politicians, including Nigel Farage, Richard Tice, and Lee Anderson of the Reform Party; Donald Trump, now the US President; Conservative politicians Suella Braverman, Liz Truss, Michael Gove, David Cameron, Rishi Sunak, and Boris Johnson; and Kier Starmer, now the Prime Minister.
That manifesto, a series of tweets and Parslow’s own words give an insight into the mixture of grievances, conspiracy theories and far-right ideology that motivated the attack.
Background
Parslow was born Callum Blake-O’Brien and attended Hereford Sixth Form, where he studied maths, physics, law, psychology and medieval and renaissance history. He retained that interest in history, he told his trial.
In February 2018, he was jailed for 30 months for offences of stalking and sending offensive communications against 13 different women using false Facebook accounts, the trial was told.
Thereafter, he moved to the Midlands and changed his name, but in December 2023, he was arrested for similar offences against a black female presenter on the GB News channel.
He targeted Mercy Muroki with “grossly offensive” messages of a sexual and racist nature, using Instagram and Facebook.
When he was arrested for the second stalking offence, Parslow told police he was “full of anger and resentment and not very good talking to women.”
He did not feel his comments were as bad as other material available on the internet and described it as “free discussion.”
Following his arrest on the second stalking allegation, Parslow resigned from his job.
On 31 January 2024, the management company at his flat gave him notice that his tenancy was being terminated, as a result of a racist note that he left on a communal door. He agreed to leave the premises by 3 April, prompting his nationwide tour.
Outside work, Parslow did not socialise with anyone, he said.
“I have no social support, no friends, I don’t talk to my family,” he told his trial.
“I would sleep in the day and go to work at night. At the weekend, I would stick to the same schedule.”
He played a video game called CyberPunk. He would eat steaks and then fast for 24 hours.
After his arrest on terrorism charges, Parslow was diagnosed with high-functioning autism.
A psychologist found he was unable to tell “how others feel, or how he is being perceived, though [he] believes himself generally agreeable and well-intended to others.”
Social Media
Parslow chose the Pear Tree Inn after finding a map of hotels housing asylum seekers on the X social media site and seeing a video on a podcast called the Lotus Eaters in which one of the presenters had driven to the hotel on two occasions.
X had allowed Parslow to broadcast racist insults over a significant period under the name CyberPunkNazi.
When that was eventually shut down, he opened another X account, this time paying for a blue tick to promote his tweets.
Named IAmButAGardener, he stated: “I am Arthur; I am Alfred; I am Newton; I am Nelson; I am the Heart & Soul of England: the Sword, the Cannon, the Apple, the Oak.” This account also no longer exists.
Figure 1: Parslow’s since removed X account. Credit Gardham/CTPWM.
On X he frequently referred to people using racial slurs, and ranted about Britain and Europe being overtaken by members of non-white races.
In one tweet shown in court, he asserted, “Brenton Tarrant is a hero”, ridding “Middle-Earth of the invading orc armies”, a reference to the Christchurch killer who murdered 51 people at two mosques in New Zealand. Orcs are evil and brutish characters in the Lord of the Rings, seeking to overtake the fictional world.
In another, he wrote: “Our jewpuppet overlords will continue importing hundreds of millions of violent [n-word] this century alone,” an example of the far-right “great replacement” conspiracy theory.
Some of his tweets advocated the use of violence against immigrants, including one in which he stated: “If we don’t make a public example of these [n-word], it’s only going to get worse. England is f**ked unless we do something now while we still have the numbers.”
He tweeted about “hotels being used to accommodate the invaders”, explaining in court that he was referring to “the people who come across the English Channel in dinghies illegally entering the United Kingdom.”
In response to a message about “illegal immigrants” in a Britania Hotel, he tweeted, “Open the door with a knife in your hand and shout at them. If they attack you it’s fair game.”
He referred to a video by Klaus Schwab, a conspiracy that sees the World Economic Forum as a front for Jewish businessmen.
“They have successfully penetrated the cabinets of western democracies,” he commented in one tweet.
In one post on X, he said that Nazis were “purging Judaism and communism from the face of the earth”, but in court, he denied being a fascist. He claimed that he had a swastika armband because he was “in the process of making a fancy dress costume.” Parslow also had a tattoo of Adolf Hitler’s signature on his arm and posted a picture of it on X.
Figure 2: Parslow’s tattoo of Adolf Hitler’s signature. Credit Gardham/CTPWM.
Two days before he launched his attack, a user on X who reported Parslow’s posts received an official response from the social network saying his account had “not broken our safety policies.”
Building a Library
Beginning in early 2022, Parslow began buying books online, accumulating around 200 that he described in court as a “microcosm of my life.”
“I had an intense interest in certain topics and then moved on to another topic,” he added.
However, he did not have time to read them all because he had attention deficit disorder and got “distracted by the internet,” he said.
He was a fan of Lord of the Rings but added: “I have watched the films more than read the books.”
The books included books on the Hundred Years’ War, the Wars of the Roses, Sir Walter Raleigh, the Duke of Wellington, Captain Cook, Admiral Lord Nelson and Winston Churchill.
Among the authors Parslow admired were the travel writer Bill Bryson, but he also had two books by the anti-immigration activist Robinson and three books by the right-wing writer Douglas Murray, including one titled “Islamophilia, a very metropolitan malady.”
“He is a proliferous [sic] author. I am interested in the way he thinks, he is very inciteful and makes a lot of good points,” Parslow said.
He had also paid £765.45 for a 1920s US edition of “The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion”, a notorious antisemitic conspiracy theory from 1903.
Other books included “The International Jew, the world’s foremost problem”, a compilation of antisemitic writing by Henry Ford, the industrialist.
“He was pretty much the Elon Musk of his time and I was interested in his ideas of the political situation of the early 20th century,” Parslow said.
Parslow also had Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk, the owner of the X social media site.
Along with an electronic version of Mein Kampf, Parslow had two physical copies of the book.
“I am interested in history, this is an important historical text,” he said. “This is part of wide-ranging intellectual curiosity. I am a student of totalitarian philosophy.”
Parslow also had Nigel Farage face masks and a Nigel Farage t-shirt.
“He talks a lot of sense, he gives a respectable voice to the majority of people who disagree with mass migration into this country,” he said.
Internet Use
Files found on Parslow’s phone included Brenton Tarrant’s manifesto, the Great Replacement, and a Declaration of European Independence, the manifesto of Anders Breivik, a Norwegian neo-Nazi terrorist who killed 77 people in 2011.
There was also “Path of Gods, a handbook for the 21st century fascist” by the Russian extremist group Iron March and “Path of the Gods”, a far-right novel depicting the end of civilisation through mass immigration.
Also in the file, marked “manifestos”, was a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
Parslow also used an email address with the name Lord Adolph Reborn, saying it would appear when he posted comments on YouTube “to annoy them, to troll them.”
On 13 December 2023, West Mercia police searched Parslow’s flat in relation to a complaint that he had sent racist and sexually explicit messages and videos over Instagram and Facebook.
They seized his phone, laptop, a medallion bearing a swastika, two rings with a swastika and a Nazi black sun emblem and four far-right texts, including two copies of Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
It is understood that Parslow was subsequently referred to Counter-Terrorism Policing West Midlands who referred him to the Prevent de-radicalisation programme, but he was not offered any intervention.
In the weeks before the attack, Parslow had conducted online searches on his phone for “Islamic terror in UK”, “UK migrant landing spots”, “RMC refugee and migrant centre” – a reference to a charity offering support for migrants – and “Thistle Express Swindon migrants” – a reference to another hotel used by asylum seekers.
His searches also included one for Jo Cox, the MP who was killed in a far-right terrorist attack outside her constituency office in West Yorkshire in 2016.
Parslow also searched for “Finsbury Park attack”, in which Darren Osborne drove at worshippers outside a mosque in North London in 2017, killing one, and for Brenton Tarrant, along with “14 words” – a reference to a far-right slogan.
He also looked up “human artery diagram”, “worst places to get stabbed”, and “are neck wounds always lethal?”
On his phone, he searched for “life imprisonment in England and Wales”, “murder”, and “lying in wait.” He also viewed an online link to a map that purported to show the locations of all hotels in England which were being used to house asylum seekers.
Among the photographs on his phone was one he had taken of himself in a mirror, performing the Nazi salute. There were also images of a museum display showing a number of items of Nazi memorabilia. His phone screensaver was an image of Nazi soldiers holding their hands over a swastika, with a black sun symbol above them.
Figure 3: Images of Nazi memorabilia recovered from Parslow’s phone. Credit Gardham/CTPWM.
After Parslow was arrested, police found a knife with a curved blade in a sheath, an axe, a metal baseball bat, and a red armband bearing a swastika.
Parslow said he had an “interest in prepping”, explaining that he had bought the “doomsday axe” at the end of 2023, for “the event of civilisation collapsing.”
“Civilisations have a tendency to collapse given enough time, whether from climatological events or societal collapse and the times we live in, every single country is dependent on another,” Parslow said.
“I didn’t think it would be a certainty, I’m not one of those mad people that think it is round the corner but it is something that could happen.”
Manifesto
Parslow started writing his manifesto on 25 January 2024 and completed it during his countrywide tour on 17 March. He then transferred it to his phone and updated it on the morning of the attack.
Explaining the document to the jury, Parslow said he was “trying to bring the issue of immigration to the forefront of the national debate.”
“That is my world view,” he added. “I wanted to get my voice heard.”
At the start of the document, which ran to over 1,000 words, he declared: “I just did my duty to England. They will call me a terrorist, they will call me an extremist: I am neither. I am but a gardener tending to the great garden of England.”
“I removed the weeds; I exterminated the harmful, invasive species; I allowed the ecosystem of England to flourish just that little bit more.”
Parslow employed a mixture of far-right racist imagery, standard right-wing tropes such as climate change denial, and paranoid theories about government control.
He wrote of “the evil enemies of nature and of England”, listing them as “the Jews, the Marxists and the Globalists” who “worship the unholy trinity” of Black Rock, Pfizer and Raytheon – referring to the asset management company, pharmaceuticals firm and defence contractor.
He employed white supremacist and “great replacement” theories – always using a capital letter for white and a lowercase one for Jews – along with misogynistic, homophobic and even anti-vegetarian statements.
He complained that the country was ruled by “woke, oikophobic jewpuppets” – oikophobic being a term used by the conservative philosopher Roger Scruton to describe the denigration of one’s own culture.
In the long list of complaints, he included “demonising masculinity” and “attacking white nuclear families” by “contaminating our youth with gender confusion and queer indoctrination.”
“The state” – by which he meant “the Jews” – was to be “the de facto parent of every child”, and they were “encouraging white women to be alcoholic sluts and to have as many abortions as possible.”
He blamed his three “enemies” for “actively facilitating Muslims and Africans to disproportionately gang rape, torture and traumatise white women and children.”
Parslow complained about a “multicultural (white genocide) agenda” and the need to demonstrate contrition for “white guilt and white privilege.”
He included opposition to diversity and inclusion and the complaint that black people were treated more favourably than white people, known as “two-tier policing.”
There was also a complaint about “frightful Marxist pseudoscience” in the form of “hyperbolic climate hysteria and exaggerated pandemics.”
He said those “will be used as excuses for indefinite climate/health lockdowns and 15-minute cities” – a complaint based on the use of low-traffic neighbourhoods and encouraging the use of public transport.
The manifesto also included a series of conspiracy theories around government control, using a metaphor from JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings about the “dysgenic legions of Mordor.”
The “enemies” were creating “artificial food and energy shortages, by feeding us detrimental soy products, seed oils, chemicals and insects.”
They were “making us live in hideous concrete pods, by supressing wages, GDP per capita and living standards, by inflating away our savings.”
Among a multitude of claims that the state was trying to control the population was the concept that it was trying to abolish money and replace it with “fiat currency, fractional reserve banking, Jewish control of finance, and CBDCs, [central bank digital currencies].”
Parslow used 100 words to list the titles of Lord Nelson who was “no longer with us to protect our Channel from the navies of evil,” a reference to the “small boats” crisis of immigrants arriving by dinghies.
He claimed that people were subject to “psyops” – psychological operations – and “military tactics.”
Employing his gardening metaphor again, he described an “Anglocentric Eden” and warned of “imported demons” seeking to “ransack your garden.”
At the end of his list, Parslow conceded: “I will spend the rest of my life in a conventional prison,” but added: “You, dear reader, will spend the rest of yours in a global one.”
Parslow claimed that there were “literally millions of young Englishmen who envy me for my actions today” and issued a rallying cry in which he returned to his Lord of the Rings metaphor, saying: “It’s up to you to prevent England being transformed into a province of global Mordor.”
“Arise hurtle towards glory,” he added.
Then there was a call for violence in the form of “Albion’s vengeance” and “Britannia’s wrath.”
Reflecting on his own historical tour, he invited his readers to venture into “stained glassed territories” like a “terrastral” Herakles, an apparent attempt to appear classically educated.
The penultimate line was again from Lord of the Rings: “There’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.”
The final words were a quote from the Bible: “Christ is King” and the Latin words “Lux Coeli Dux Noster”, which, he told his trial, meant “the light of heaven guides us.”
At the end of the document, he included a long list of 214 handles on the X-social media site that he intended to tag when he posted the document online.
Defence
Parslow described himself as an “anti-communist” and attempted to claim he was not racist, saying he only used the term [n-word] to refer to a “criminal element.”
However, when asked about his use of the term “Jew puppet”, Parslow said: “That’s people in positions of institutional power, be it private or public, meaning they are corrupt, they take money. They take money from Jewish individuals to do the things they want them to do.”
Tom Storey KC, prosecuting, accused Parslow of a “classic statement” of the far-right “Great Replacement theory.”
“Yes if you extrapolate the events of today, that’s what’s happening,” he replied.
“You believe that the white race will eventually be eradicated and that is being orchestrated by Jews?” Mr Storey asked.
“A small number of wealthy Jewish individuals who own corporations and banks,” Parslow replied.
He told the jury, “Generally speaking, people come here and bring their own culture with them, and we don’t just…” He paused and added, “The cultures they bring aren’t necessarily in line with our own values.”
“Why did you feel the need to stab someone?” Mr Storey asked.
“I was angry I wanted to inflict harm on an economic migrant,” Parslow replied. “I am angry that they are here they take away valuable resources.
“I thought it would get in the news if one was attacked, or if one was attacked and died.”
He told the jury his “document” was “self-aggrandising and showboating” using a “botanic metaphor,” adding, “I tend to use poetic language, metaphors, and exaggeration, and this is merely an example of this.”
Figure 4: CCTV from central Worcester as Parslow set off for his attack. Credit Gardham/CTPWM.
Parslow pleaded guilty to causing grievous bodily harm but denied attempted murder.
He claimed he wanted to be arrested because he was being evicted from his flat and could not find other accommodation. However, the jury rejected this version.
In January, Mr Justice Dove jailed Parslow for life, setting a minimum term of 22 years and eight months. The judge said it was a case in which a life sentence must be imposed, and it was not possible to say when Parslow might “cease to be dangerous.”
Policy
The case highlights some of the narratives that circulate among far-right extremists who mix grievances against asylum seekers and the accommodation provided to them, with more extreme conspiracies and a move towards violence.
Parslow’s racist, antisemitic and anti-globalist narrative included support for Nazism with its national socialist narrative of standing up for the working man against the power of a government elite.
Parslow also demonstrated extreme misogynistic language, both in online communications and in the language in his manifesto, along with elements of hyper-masculine narratives.
The manifesto demonstrates a cross-over with less extreme right-of-centre narratives such as opposition to diversity and inclusion, ‘climate hysteria’ and 15-minute cities.
However, mixed with that were extreme conspiracy theories about government control, a ‘cashless society’ and manufactured emergencies such as pandemics and food shortages.
All these theories combined with a desire to return to a perceived ‘golden age’ of British nationalism and mixed with an obsession with violent ideology, spilling over into near-fatal violence.
The case also highlights the ability to spread racist messages on the X social media site.
The Parslow repeatedly used the n-word and spread antisemitic conspiracy theories. It is telling that he was not only using the site on a day-to-day basis but had decided it would be the best way to disseminate his manifesto.
X did eventually shut down one of his accounts but a second remained operational. Expressing racial hatred is a crime in the UK, but the platform’s enforcement of the law and response to a complaint appears to have fallen short. Having stepped back from what the platform considered an over-zealous approach to moderation, it is important that racist and violent language should still be appropriately handled.
At the end of July, the site allowed the spreading of grievances and false rumours in the wake of the Southport riots, which were directed at migrants and asylum hotels after the killing of three schoolgirls in Southport by a UK-born teenager.
The protestors widely shared a list of solicitors’ firms handling asylum cases on the site. However, the site also enabled counter-protestors to mobilise, which, alongside a heavy police presence, defused the riots.
Parslow had been arrested for online abuse using Facebook and Instagram, which was reported to police. Despite seizing his electronic devices and physical exhibits that demonstrated his extreme right-wing ideology, counter-terrorism police were unable to identify his short journey from an online agitator to a violent terrorist.
GNET is moving away from publishing words or images that reinforce racist themes. As a result, the term “n-word” has been used as a substitute in this Insight.
Duncan Gardham is an expert in terrorism and violent extremism having written extensively on the subject since 2001, covering Islamists, the far-right and other ideologies for major UK publications and acting as an analyst for broadcasters and documentary-makers in the UK and US. He has also delivered lectures for academic institutions, think-tanks and government.