High Judge of the Queen's Court, Nigel Sweeney, who presided over David Copeland's trial, had this to say about what led Copeland to carry out his terrorist attack, which inspired Thomas Mayer to begin with. Quote, to start, he treated the thought as a joke, but he couldn't get it out of his head. The thought became stronger. He woke up one day and decided he was going to do it. That's how this happened with David Copeland, who's been an inspirational force of right-wing terrorism in the UK. It started out with jokes.