Neo-Nazi (file)
Neo-Nazi (file)Thinkstock

The man implicated in last week’s murder of Labour MP Jo Cox appears to have been affiliated with an American white supremacist organization, an investigation by the Southern Poverty Law Center revealed.

Thomas Mair, who shot, then stabbed the 41-year old first term MP, reportedly shouted “Britain first” during the murder.

Cox, who founded the parliamentary lobbying group ‘Friends of Syria’, was an outspoken advocate for increased immigration of Syrian refugees into Great Britain.

No organizations claimed responsibility for the attack, and the nationalist Britain First political party denied any ties to Mair, suggesting that his use of the phrase “could have been a slogan, rather than a reference to our party.”

The attack came one week before a British referendum on the island nation’s future in the European Union. While the ‘Brexit’, or British exit from the EU, was gaining momentum in polling prior to Cox’s murder, support has shifted back towards the “remain” side in polls conducted since the Labour MP’s death.

Mair, a 52-year old resident of Birstall in northern England, had a long history of support for the National Alliance, a Virginia-based neo-Nazi organization founded William Luther Pierce, author of The Turner Diaries, a novel which envisions the extermination of Jews and other minority groups.

While Mair’s brother suggested he had a “history of mental illness”, invoices to the National Alliance show he maintained ties with the organization for years. Mair also purchased written material distributed by the group, including do-it-yourself guides for building firearms.

Mair was also a subscriber to the White Rhino Club’s South African Patriot magazine, The Telegraph reported.

The National Alliance advocates white separatism and opposes racial equality in America. The group’s literature regularly blasts “Jewish influences” for the decline of the white race.

In the wake of Cox’s murder, the National Alliance issued a statement denying Mair had any connection with the group “any more than any other book customer”. No condemnation of the killing was included in the statement, but the National Alliance did offer condolences to the family of the murdered MP.

Noting the Labour Party’s increasingly anti-Israel positions and the recent spate of anti-Semitic scandals, the National Alliance suggested that “race-conscious Whites in Britain should join the Labour Party.”