Former Labour party members have regularly attended meetings with far-right extremists to discuss and spread antisemitic conspiracy theories, an undercover investigation has found. The probe by Hope Not Hate and the Community Security Trust monitored the group Keep Talking over three years.
Covert recordings captured James Thring, an infamous antisemite linked to former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke, speaking at a London meeting. Thring claimed that no deaths were recorded at Auschwitz, where 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were systematically murdered.
Among attendees were suspended Labour supporters including Elleanne Green, founder of the secret Facebook group Palestine Live, which hosted Holocaust denial and 9/11 conspiracy theories. Jeremy Corbyn and other senior Labour figures had been members of that group.
Other participants included Peter Gregson, expelled from the GMB union and suspended by Labour over antisemitic allegations, and Gill Kaffash, whose Labour membership was rejected for promoting Holocaust revisionism. Holocaust denier Alison Chabloz, convicted of antisemitism in 2018, also attended.
Nick Lowles of Hope Not Hate warned that conspiracy theories amplified online could spread into mainstream politics and cause real-world harm, citing the Hanau gunman's manifesto containing antisemitic and Islamophobic theories.
