Domestic terrorismJo Cox’s killer is a neo-Nazi with ties to U.S., South African White supremacist groups

Thomas Mair, the 52-year old Briton who on Thursday killed Jo Cox, the Labor MP, was a neo-Nazi with ties to U.S. and South African White supremacist groups.

Special police units searching the house where he lived have found samples of Nazi regalia and far-right literature.

The Telegraph reports that Mair has also purchased books from a U.S.-based neo-Nazi group, including manuals on how to build homemade guns and explosives. The police found a manual in his home on how to make a homemade pistol.

Mair mail-ordered the books and manuals from National Vanguard Books in Hillsboro, West Virginia. The bookstore is owned by the National Alliance, which advocates the creation of an all-white homeland and the eradication of Jewish people.

In addition to the instructional manuals on home-made explosives and munitions, Mair also purchased the book Ich Kämpfe, an illustrated handbook issued to members of the Nazi party in 1942.

The Telegraph notes that Mair was a subscriber to SA Patriot, a South African magazine published by White Rhino Club, a pro-apartheid group. The club describes the magazine’s editorial stance as being opposed to “multicultural societies” and “expansionist Islam.”

The National Alliance was founded in 1974 by William Pierce, a neo-Nazi activist. It is a successor organization to the National Youth Alliance, which was founded in the late 1960s to support the segregationist policies of Alabama governor George Wallace. Pierce, who died in 2002, wrote The Turner Diaries, which was the inspiration for Timothy McVeigh, who carried out the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people.