A mum and her “Hannah Hitler” daughter have been jailed after awful posts online featuring racism, anti-semitism and pro-Hitler sentiments – as well as offensive memes
A neo-Nazi mum and her daughter have been jailed after flooding their social media with racist, antisemitic rants and shocking pro-Hitler posts.
Shirley and Hannah Craughwell have been jailed for a trifecta of extremist racist, anti-Semitic and transphobic posts on social media.
The pair shared that “Hitler was trying to save us” and “The need for a new holocaust is never more urgent than now.” because according to them, anyone who isn’t white is “a different species”.
The daughter, Hannah Craughwell, aged 27, posted to her online audience. In one of her posts she called the jewish race “the devil’s children” to a platform where she went by the snappy title of ‘Hannah Hitler’.
Many of Hannah Hitler’s opinions were shared, such as a meme she found picturing Gordon Ramsay shouting at Hitler with the words, “put them back in the oven” layered over the image, as well as a collection of racist and transphobic videos dotted throughout her social media.
Shirley Craughwell, the mother, from Galashiels, Scottish Borders, was sentenced to a 20 month custodial term backdated to November 27.
The sheriff also sentenced the daughter, and the mother of two was jailed for 16 months. It was noted that Hannah had made “racist, anti-Semitic, transphobic and homophobic” comments throughout her online platforms and had also been distributing “highly inflammatory” leaflets to the public.
The sheriff summarised their comments as “deeply disturbing” continuing, he said: “You espoused conspiracy theories about white genocide and spoke repeatedly about your admiration of Adolf Hitler and other Nazis and called for another Holocaust.
“However your messages were not just offensive, they are violent and threatening in relation to people of the Jewish faith.”
Shirley also posted a video of a young child in which she had taught the child the Nazi salute, and encouraged them to perform it for her video, which was then posted online. The sheriff said that this was a “significant aggravation”.
Shirley Craughwell’s lawyer, Simon Collins, emphasised that his client was a grandmother and explained that Craughwell has “a long involvement in conspiracy theories leading her to act on them.” He continued by explaining that she’d experienced isolation during the Covid period and now expresses remorse and “accepts responsibility” for those she had offended.
Richard Soutar, Hannah’s Lawyer presented a similar story. He explained that Hannah had, too, been socially isolated, and “gone down a wormhole” on the internet which was emphasised by her poor mental health at the time.
The court had also been told that police received intelligence last year in May, which resulted in a house raid of the pair and the discovery of an extremist channel which Shirley had been contributing to on Telegram.
Prosecutor, Mr David Gallagher said the material which was used on here was an array of social media slang like ‘88’ – an online term for ‘Heil Hitler’ and misused emojis, manipulated to take the shape of the Nazi salute.
On top of this Shirley made bold claims like she is a “proud racist” and “we must unite as a race”, “the borders are flooded by ni**ers” and “the police are run by Judean”. As well as this she had a pseudonym account where she published links and memes for more racist content on facebook.
This content of Shirley’s was used to circulate material in support of alt-right group Highland Division, a breakaway from the white nationalist organisation Patriotic Alternative.