- Far-right videos made by a British teen were viewed by two men who went on to commit mass shootings.
- Daniel Harris, 19, has been sentenced to 11 and a half years over the videos.
A British teenager has been sentenced over far-right videos that might have helped inspire two US mass shooters.
Daniel Harris, 19, has been sentenced to 11 and a half years in a young offender institution after he published a "stream of rightwing terrorist bile" from a bedroom at his grandfather's house in Derbyshire, the judge said during his sentencing Friday, per The Guardian.
These videos called for the "total extermination of subhumans," Manchester crown court heard, the BBC reported and glorified various far-right killers, including Anders Breivik. Some of the videos also provided instructions on how to commit similar atrocities.
The court previously heard that his videos had been viewed by two men who went on to commit mass murders in the US last year.
Payton Gendron, the then-18-year-old mass shooter who killed 10 Black people in Buffalo, New York, last May, was known to have watched Harris' videos.
The Buffalo shooter commented on a video made by Harris about the perpetrator behind the 2019 mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, The Guardian reported.
An unknown user commented: "This video has moved me. I was on the fence, now I am committed to my race."
The Buffalo shooter responded: "You are not alone my friend."
During Harris' trial, his videos were also linked to Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, accused of killing five people at a mass shooting in an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado last November.
"What they did was truly appalling, but what they did was no more than what you intended others to do by publishing this material online," Judge Field KC said during his sentencing on Friday.
Field added that Harris's videos were "sophisticated, well-made and slickly produced and were not obviously the product of a 17- or 18-year-old".
The judge referenced the Buffalo shooter, commenting that there was "evidence that others have acted on or been assisted by your encouragement to carry out racist attacks. I have in mind the encouragement related to Payton Gendron before he carried out his shooting in Buffalo state, New York."
"This indicates that the videos you produced had had some influence on a young man, who I note was a similar age to you, who went out and shot ten Black people dead in Buffalo."
Harris was found guilty of five counts of encouraging terrorism and another count of his trying to build a semi-automatic gun using a 3D printer, per The Guardian.
Detective Inspector Chris Brett from Counter-Terrorism Policing in the East Midlands said Harris was behind "a concerted effort to generate a following and influence people," the BBC reported.
"Harris was ultimately deemed not to have been groomed, rather, his provocative words and inflammatory films were potentially radicalizing others."