Another HnH campaign descends into farce as Polish AntiFa condemns Morphett article

Chaos is surrounding Hope not Hate's latest campaign against a Polish politician on a speaking tour of the UK.

Robert Winnicki is the President of the Młodzież Wszechpolska, or All Polish Youth Movement, MW. HnH blagger Carl Morphett (aka Simon Cressy) is the author of HnH's piece, which accuses Winnicki of everything short of child sacrifice.

The comments threads are particularly interesting. They start with simply mocking 'retards', the 'mentally handicapped' and the 'brain-damaged': all fairly normal stuff for Hope not Hate supporters so far:

A new touch - even for Hope not Hate - is the implicit racism in this one but of course you can't be racist if you're a Hope not Hate supporter, can you?

However, their already ropey campaign descended further into farce when several Polish supporters of Hope not Hate - including prominent anti-racists - accused Morphett of using discredited media reports and distorting the facts surrounding Winnicki and his MW movement. After initially deleting posts which called into doubt the veracity of the article, they then resorted to simply reposting the same media reports they used as sources, while denying that the broadcasters concerned had apologised for them

A cursory glance at the number of 'likes' under the stories shows what HnH's own supporters thought of such rubbish.
So what was the original comment that Hope not Hate removed? A rather damning critique of their own story which exposed it as being largely rubbish and propaganda put out by Winnicki's political opponents:

To those of us in the UK, Hope not Hate's refusal to correct glaring errors is nothing new for we see them as the propaganda machine they are. That the article smacks of anti-Polish racism is beyond doubt - as a primarily Catholic country it is hated by the hard left for (a) throwing off the shackles of the Communism HnH so adores and (b) daring to have moral values which do not equate to Hope not Hate's own, ie they don't tell enough lies and aren't keen on homosexuals.

The final word must go however to an exchange between London Antifascists and Hope not Hate. The former had asked on behalf of several Polish members for the article to be removed or amended. Hope not Hate showed their usual solidarity:

With friends like Hope not Hate, who needs enemies?

Its not just the BNP which lines allies pockets - HnH do the same

Hope not Hate have gone on the offensive against the BNP this morning with an attack on Nick Griffin. Here at Nope, not Hope, we're not interested in the BNP, and in no way support them. But there was one comment of interest. In the HnH article posted by Matthew Collins - himself a former BNP thug - they say:

"Moving swiftly on, Walker then claimed that after years of far-right activity, Griffin has made "virtually nothing" from his time in the far-right. Some BNP ex-members may wish to remind Adam of the extension on Griffin's home paid for by the BNP and the fact that he managed to get almost his entire family on the party pay roll doing jobs that members used to do voluntarily."

Which we found interesting when compared to the invoices submitted to the Electoral Commission for the 2010 General Election by Hope not Hate. This was of course before HnH split from the Searchlight organisation - at the time, Nick Lowles was the HnH campaign director rather than its owner.

Included in the invoices was one from a company called Taxinform Ltd for £2,300.00, which covered "subediting and checking election newspapers and leaflets, General Election 2010". We were rather more surprised to discover that the company has only 2 shares issued, both to Sonia Gable, while she and her husband Gerry were the director and company secretary respectively. Taxinform is listed as a tax advisory service. We will restrain ourselves from publishing the full details of the company, which are in any case a matter of public record. Sonia and Gerry Gable were the founders of Searchlight, of which in 2010 Hope not Hate was a part, and were also its owners. We assume that checking leaflets was something which used to be done voluntarily, or at least as a part of their jobs before they found themselves awash with money from the Daily Mirror. And speaking of the Daily Mirror......

..... there was Ros Wynne-Jones, who doubled up her salary as a senior leader writer for the Daily Mirror - which funds Hope not Hate - by invoicing Hope not Hate for £6,500.00 with no details of what it was for other than 'Hope not Hate 2010'. Nice work if you can get it. Her day job paid her to write stories about Hope not Hate for the Mirror, while Hope not Hate paid her to write stories about them in the Mirror. Talk about having your cake and eating it!

So, I'm sure as a result of Nick Lowles' largesse, both the Gables and Ms Wynne-Jones could also afford substantial extensions on their houses too. It just seems that the closer you look at Hope not Hate's finances, the more similar to the BNPs they appear. Certainly it would appear that their friends benefit financially for jobs which in the case of both the Gables and Ms Wynne-Jones would seem to form a part of their job in any case. Is this like Griffin, getting friends and relatives "on the party pay roll doing jobs that members used to do voluntarily?". Why is it we are not surprised by the hypocrisy? Why attack Griffin for something which Hope not Hate regularly do themselves?

We have much more to say about HnH's finances including a major funding scandal, so please stay tuned over the next month or so!

No more 'foreigner only' shifts - what will HnH make of such reverse racism?

I've just noticed an article in the Guardian's online edition. The Labour Party is - to prevent exploitation of migrants - about to announce a policy to prevent employers having 'foreigner only'  factory shifts.

Yes, you did read that right.

"Current practices exploit foreign workers, keep UK nationals out of work and drive wages down," says Yvette Cooper.

I suppose it's one way of not dealing with an immigration system beyond the control of parliament. And since when did Labour believe any of that: can UKIP really have wrought a Damascene conversion on even Mrs Ed Balls?

Not entirely, as one of the proposals is to allow local authorities to enforce the minimum wage. Fine, but whose minimum wage? If they're hired in Portugal on Latvian contracts, and therefore Latvian minimum wage, they'll earn Euro 286.22/month in the UK perfectly legally compared with the UK minimum wage of around £1,000/month. In attempting to evade debate on the mechanics of immigration which they can't control, they have walked into another EU laid minefield. Ms Cooper appears unable to grasp this.

Still, we can't wait to see what Hope not Hate's take on the requirement to hire token 'white, British' workers in order to evade the legislation will be.

A request - Please spread the HnH Googlebomb!

We thought we'd make a quick request to our many regular readers.

Everybody can help with this, whether you've got a blog, a website or just your Facebook page.

Can you post the following link somewhere on it:

Hope not Hate

Just copy the link and paste it somewhere, and please encourage others to do the same. Needless to say, it doesn't go to Hope not Hate, but to this blog. It is known as a 'Googlebomb', as it confuses Google's search ranking system, and will help this blog to appear in Hope not Hate's search results.

Please also don't forget to sign up to Hope not Hate's Facebook page - remembering to ensure they appear in your newsfeed - and then mark their posts as 'Spam' using the pull down arrow next to their postings.

Both of these will help ensure that HnH will have to waste funds promoting their own page that they would otherwise use to attack legitimate, non-racist political parties such as UKIP.

The last time we posted such advice, it prompted a complaint from HnH as it means less money in Nick Lowles' pocket, so it is having some effect. It was, of course, a rather hypocritical complaint, as HnH do this to our Facebook page and have done it since it was founded.

Thanks for your help!

HnH's own supporters agree with Bloom and oppose burning of books

Evidence of the widening gap between Hope not Hate and their own supporters continues to emerge in the comments following HnH's latest articles.

On Friday, Nick Lowles blog featured an article on former UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom's new book, "A guinea a minute" which was ripped off without attribution from the Huffington Post UK. Entitled 'Godfrey Bloom's best quotes from 'A guinea a minute', HuffPo contributor Asa Bennett had managed to whittle the book down to reveal the very best.

Designed as a piece to elicit mockery of Bloom whose trenchant views are already widely known, the responses from Hope not Hate supporters were revealing when it was posted on their Facebook page. Just 5 people 'liked' the article, while 6 commented upon it. Of the 6 comments, 4 were supportive, including a comment by one of the 'likers'. They said:

 

 

There was yet more disappointment for Lowles and his motley crew as the comments thread also developed on the story we covered a couple of days ago on his enthusiasm for overcoming political opponents by simply burning their books in best National Socialist style. While some agreed with HnH's desire for the censorship of opposing political views no matter how absurd or easily disproved, the vast majority of comments showed that HnH's support is hardly foursquare behind them, while many noted the closeness between Lowles position and that of Goebbels, as we noted in our article: that banning books is just one step away from burning them.

 

 

 

It is worth noting that these are not messages from people who appear to be supporters of the far-right or of holocaust denial. Rather these are people who seem to be waking up to the agenda behind Hope not Hate's words and actions. Increasingly comments are appearing beneath their articles which should give any organisation a reason to pause for thought, although that is unlikely to happen with Hope not Hate. A more likely cause of action will be the disabling of the comments threads, or an even heavier handed censorship of what is posted. They already remove anything which appears to be written by persons whom they consider 'far-right'. It is one thing to remove the comments of political opponents, but could Lowles and Hope not Hate be forced to start removing the comments of their own supporters to hide the growing uneasiness within the ranks? It can not be long coming. After all, no dictatorship can survive for long once it permits internal dissent.

When will HnH point their fingers and call Cllr Hiqab Jama racist?

There was an interesting story on the Bristol 247 news site yesterday - Immigrants ‘can do more to integrate into British culture’

It carried the news that "Bristol’s first Somali councillor has said immigrant families could do more to integrate themselves into British culture to help the battle against racism". The article went on to say:

Cllr Hibaq Jama -
Lucky not to have been called
'racist' by HnH

"Bristol’s first Somali councillor has said immigrant families could do more to integrate themselves into British culture to help the battle against racism.

Cllr Hibaq Jama, who came to Britain with her family when she was two years old as a refugee fleeing civil war in her country, said immigration was a threat to British culture if it was “a threat in the minds of British people”.

She said she had found real fears over immigration while campaigning in her Lawrence Hill ward, one of the poorest areas in the South West and with a large, white, working class community.

The debate over immigration needed to be broader, she added, to ask how immigrants and refugees could accommodate themselves more into the communities they enter."

This was just the day after Hope not Hate featured UKIP Croydon leader Peter Staveley in an article reprinted from the Croydon Advertiser which could barely contain its contempt in reporting Mr Staveley as saying:

UKIP's Peter Staveley - not allowed
to say what Cllr Jama does

""I'm not particularly uncomfortable but what I am uncomfortable about is when immigrants come into the country and do not properly integrate themselves into the community....

"By definition those people who have come to this country to better themselves are not integrating properly with the community because they can't speak the language.

"If too many people come from the same country too quickly then quite naturally they would tend to live and work with their colleagues rather than getting to know the people who were there before.


Now, I don't know about you, but to us, it would appear that Mr Staveley and Cllr Jama are saying exactly the same thing, particularly when you read Cllr Jama's full comments in the article linked above.

Meanwhile, in Croydon,

"Nero Ughwujabo, chief executive of Croydon Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) Forum, accused him of "talking rubbish""

What is doubly remarkable is that Councillor Jama was speaking at an event in Bristol commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Bristol Bus Boycott, where the general public boycotted Bristol's buses in protest at the bus company's refusal to hire black or Asian crews. It is revealing that not only did Hope not Hate fail to even mention such a landmark event in race relations on their web- or Facebook pages, but they were also conspicuously not invited to attend the event and had no official presence there. Is there any clearer proof of their slide into irrelevancy? Or will they, in the interests of anti-racism, point there fingers at Cllr Jama tomorrow and demand she apologise for her racism?

When Goebbels' words fit Hope not Hate's actions, you know they've abandoned argument for suppression

Hope not Hate are publicising an article by 'The Kernel' online magazine concerning their investigation into books sold by Amazon (and others) entitled "New Amazon Shame: Holocaust Denial".

Much could be written about The Kernel and its publisher Milo Yiannopoulos (formerly known as Milo Wagner), although beyond the unpaid bills, legal actions, poor humour and public misogynistic comments the basic facts of the article appear correct, even if the title gives the impression that it is

Milo Wagner - like HnH, supports the
freedom so say what he agrees with only.

just Amazon, and just holocaust denial.

In fact, it transpires the Amazon and Barnes & Noble amongst others sell books which cover such topics as holocaust denial but extend further into the realms of anti-Semitism. Written in an appropriate tone of outraged self-righteousness, the article draws as its penultimate conclusion,

"Anti-semitism is also being more widely observed in mainstream commentators and Left-wing public intellectuals. Against this backdrop, it is appallingly lax of Amazon to stock material that gives succour to extremists, agitators and fantasists and which promotes anti-semitic pseudo-history."

We assume by the presence of the article on Hope not Hate's website and FB page that these are sentiments with which they agree: that they wish to shut down rather than defeat by debate any opposing views is hardly fresh news. What it represents is further proof of how HnH are simply abandoning the main purpose of their existence: the education of people about racism and how it is wrong. When they say on their website that "We try to build relationships, give confidence to those who dislike racism and empower communities to provide a more positive alternative to the politics of despair. We both challenge the myths and lies put out by the BNP and their ilk and also positively mobilise those people who are opposed to racism.", they neglect to mention that they hope to achieve this not by education or argument, but by banning anything which opposes their view, and damn the consequences for free speech.

This has of course been tried once before, when it was said,

" It is to this end that we want to educate you. As a young person, to already have the courage to face the pitiless glare..... this is the task of this young generation. And thus you do well in this midnight hour to commit to the flames the evil spirit of the past."

Which I think it is fair to say sums up their view pretty well. That is hardly surprising, as it comes from a speech by Josef Goebbels to students in Berlin ahead of the Nazi book burnings of May 1933.

One of the delicious ironies of free speech is that if you believe in it, you find yourself arguing in favour of the rights of some pretty unpleasant causes to have their views heard. However, we do so confident that they can be defeated not by banning them and making their proponents martyrs, but by logical argument and the simple truths of reality.

There is an absurdity here which appears to be in Hope not Hate's blind-spot. In this instance, we are talking about a handful of books out of the 600,000+ titles carried by Amazon. In addition to the thousands of books available from the same source which disprove the content of this handful, we also have contemporaneous newsreel footage, millions of pages of testimony from hundreds of war crimes trials, and the recorded memories of tens of thousands of survivors, witnesses and participants. It is not difficult to prove the factual errors in the work of holocaust deniers, so why should we seek to ban their books in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence?

There is of course a supreme irony in this which the hypocrites at Hope not Hate can not see - at the same time they applaud the Kernel for advocating Goebbels like censorship, they are also running a campaign complaining that the government's new lobbying legislation would gag them on the front of their website.

Goodwin's left-tinted spectacles can't see the wood for the trees

Hope not Hate yesterday passed on an article which appeared in the 'New Statesman' magazine written by academic and self-proclaimed expert on the far-right Matthew Goodwin.

In it, Goodwin recycles some of his pet theories, liberally sprinkled with all sorts of errors. Take this for instance, where he attacks Tory MEP Daniel Hannan for claiming the BNP is a far-left group:

"The latter is a common mistake by right-wingers who overlook the fact that while far right groups often advocate left-wing economic policies, they only do so to protect the native racial group, not a social class. Race and ancestry are paramount; everything else is secondary."

Is Goodwin really suggesting that racism and socialism are mutually exclusive? Such simplistic dismissals sound convincing until one thinks of the racism inherent in Stalin's Russia - against Jews, against Cossacks and against Ukrainians - or the effects of a National Socialist Workers Party on Germany. Or perhaps killing off foreigners is acceptable to Nottingham Trent University so long as it in the interests of class solidarity?

Goodwin goes on to say, "But it is also a deliberate ploy by some on the centre-right to distance themselves from their more extreme ideological cousins who live two doors down, on the same street. In this respect, Hannan follows the likes of Charles Moore who claimed the EDL is non-violent, and Andrew Gilligan who, after Woolwich, tried to dismiss a documented rise in attacks against Muslims following the attack. Both were proved wrong."

Were they? By whom? Hope not Hate - who are currently flogging Goodwin's latest tract on their website (foreword by Nick Lowles) even though it is available free elsewhere - certainly disagreed, but they are hardly independent arbiters. The figures of course were provided by TellMAMA, who subsequently lost their central government funding because they were found to have fiddled their figures. The whole tone of his denial of left-wing racism is not an argument: it is simply contradiction designed to turn the argument back on those who made it while overlooking an inconvenient truth - that an organisation with which he sympathises was found to have lied and distorted the truth, and he failed to notice.

Goodwin goes on to defend himself from those who dare denigrate his research and suggest he is a rabidly Marxist anti-fascist - "Moreover, fanatical anti-fascists would find it difficult if not impossible to survive in higher education, where our papers and grant applications are routinely reviewed by other academics and research councils, all of whom have little time for anything other than objective, independent and rigorous research."

Which all sounds lovely and even handed to anyone without experience of academia, particularly academia centred on social sciences, where the world is viewed through left-tinted spectacles. Indeed, Goodwin's own university, Nottingham Trent, has a chair founded and funded by the European Commission - a Jean Monnet position - whose continued funding is contingent upon research proving the need for 'ever closer union' and 'more Europe'. Such is the academic rigour applied to those who espouse the causes of the new left.

Goodwin is of course wheeled out on a regular basis to make objective, academic comments which mainly focus on attempting to link UKIP and the BNP. His prediction earlier this year - during a 

debate with Guido Fawkes on Twitter - about the number of seats UKIP would gain in local council elections was as laughably inaccurate as his predictions ahead of European Elections that UKIP was about to collapse - in 2003, and again in 2009.

We have no doubt about Goodwin's qualifications, nor the sincerity of his beliefs, and yet it would seem that he is destined to go through his entire career without understanding the general populace. All of his research hinges essentially on his mystification about why people would vote for parties which he - and the establishment and political elite - would describe variously as either populist or 'far-right' as he admits in the New Statesman article:

"One question that guides some of my research is why, despite European history, do some people continue to support the far-right, which is particularly puzzling in Britain where citizens often list opposition to fascism as a defining characteristic of their national identity."

Goodwin may never have been a member of the Labour Party or of an anti-fascist organisation, but it is inescapable that his politics are not only notably 'left-centric', but tinged by the sort of wooly thinking that affects academics whose jobs have never been seriously threatened by immigration. Journalists, TV news anchors, academic researchers, lawyers, accountants, politicians - they are immune to its effects, because immigrants tend not to be any of these things or, if they are, English is generally not a first language for them, which severely limits their impact. Because of his own lack of personal contact with immigrants, he makes the assumption that the effects of immigration are spread evenly across all layers of society when in fact it is bottom heavy in jobs and trades where language is not a prime consideration: the blue-collar work of tradesmen, shop, bar and restaurant work, care work etc. Such thinking is a much more solid indicator of his class than his upper-middle class occupation: no true member of the proletariat would make such a fundamental error, for it is down here at the bottom of the social scale where we pay the bill for successive government's trendy, inclusive open borders policy.

It is not Goodwin's fault, of course. Like most nice, middle class lads of his type, he has been comfortably insulated from the reality of life in the UK for many years, beavering away in his analyses of what he terms the 'far-right', attempting to link them to UKIP, and mixing almost exclusively with the Nick Lowles of this world. In such achingly trendy and politically correct circles, life centres around dreaming up ever more anodyne phrases to pigeonhole people by colour. BME, or Black/Ethnic Minority, is the current favourite - woe betide anyone who simply says 'black', while those who utter the word 'coloured' - as an octogenarian UKIP councillor discovered last month - are immediately strung Mussolini-like from the nearest lamp-post.

There is something really rather sad about an academic with so tenuous a grasp on what life is like outside his cloistered halls. As my long departed grandmother would have said of Mr Goodwin, "Plenty of book sense, but no common sense".

'Faggot', 'chav', 'retard' and calls to violence all acceptable to HnH - just make sure the EDL are the target.

One again, Hope not Hate was setting new standards of hypocrisy over the EDL demo in Bradford yesterday.

Perhaps the most remarkable event after HnH attacked UKIP member Andy Lovie for daring to talk with a former BNP activist on Facebook was HnH Campaign Director and owner Nick Lowles re-tweeting former EDL deputy leader Kevin Carroll's tweet despite publicly questioning the sincerity of his resignation just the previous day:

 

Still, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, right? No need to get hung up by the same standards he applies to everybody else, where a similar re-tweet would see them marked as violent fascists. Can we look forward to an expose of Nick Lowles contacts with fascists by Carl Morphett? Let's not forget that HnH attacked this blog and our Facebook page for having people associated with the far-right as 'likers'!

 

Still, it would be a shame to leave the double standards there. After the HnH 'campaign' - a single letter - to prevent the 'Beloved of Allah' conference at the Edmonton Islamic Centre in London last week because of its open homophobia, Hope not Hate were still more than happy to allow homophobic comments on their Facebook page so long as the EDL were the target:

 

 

Tahair's comment is still there now almost 24 hours later, although several messages by EDL supporters have been removed, so we can only assume that homophobia is OK by HnH so long as the EDL are the target. If only the 'Beloved of Allah' organisers had known, they could still have had their conference just so long as they made clear it was only the EDL they were bashing because of their sexuality!

 

And bashing it would have been. While Hope not Hate regularly uses posts on other's Facebook walls as 'proof' that they are violent, far-right thugs, they are not so keen to police their own Facebook, where the EDL were the subject of several threats of violence. Not a surprise really, given the closeness of HnH and their UAF boot boy allies, but it rather puts their sanctimonious hectoring of others into perspective:

 

But that is not the end of it, because several HnH supporters were advocating that people should piss on the EDL:

 

 

There were some decent people around, but sadly they were in the minority by a considerable distance. And their calls for the HnH admin to delete comments which amounted to incitement to violence were simply ignored:

 

 

For the only messages which were removed were those from EDL supporters. You can't beat a good bit of censorship, can you? But then with Hope not Hate being run - and supported by - largely nice, middle class students, it is fair enough that they show their appreciation for and understanding of the working class: HnH is just a Labour front organisation nowadays, and Labour has nothing but contempt for the working man:

 

 

There were people who thought this show of class solidarity were wrong, but they were clearly in the minority, if you look at the number of 'likes' their comments garnered:

 

 

But of course poor old Angus misses the point - HnH is 'elitist' and comfortably middle class in a 'New Labour' and 'Progress' sort of way, and will only get more so now that Lord Ashcroft shares common cause with them. Still, such hypocrisy should not stand in the way of the work which pays best, ie attacking UKIP. After having a go at UKIP press officer Alexandra Phillips a couple of weeks ago for daring to mention the word 'spaz', even if it was in jest, the use of insults directed towards the mentally handicapped is just fine so long as the EDL are the target -

 

 

So as we can see, calling people 'retards' is officially approved by Hope not Hate on their Facebook pages just so long as the EDL or anybody else deemed far-right is the target, and on the condition that it is accompanied by some acceptably trendy, right-on left wing student politics sound bites. A few simplistic phrases of Labour ideology makes any taunt acceptable and certainly won't upset the 'tards, as Nick, Ruth and Carl like to call 'em!

 

Still, as the Hope not Hate team try and make their efforts appear a success, their own posting from the IBT - written by Mark Piggot, as Timor Moon is presumably still in prison for his assault on UKIP activists in London - states

 

"However, there seemed little danger from today's soggy turn-out, which was estimated at just 200.A rival anti-fascist counter-demo by "We are Bradford" attracted even fewer people."

 



Hardly the 'resounding success' claimed by Hope not Hate, who themselves conceded that there were between 350 and 750 EDL marchers present. #We Are The Many seems like just a distant joke now. #We Are The Not So Many seems more appropriate.

All in all, what a strange day. We have Nick Lowles and Hope not Hate retweeting messages from Kevin Carroll with approval, deleting messages from EDL supporters and yet approving of calls for violence against the EDL - not to mention pissing on them. We have the working class described as 'brain dead chavs', while the EDL are called 'faggots' and 'retards' with the tacit approval of the HnH admin team.

Once again - because HnH may not grasp such a simple point - we at this blog do not support the EDL. Our mission is to expose Hope not Hate's hypocrisy - something which should have been done years ago. So here you have it - it's official - Hope not Hate support misogyny, homophobia, violence and the use of the word 'retard' while retweeting messages from the far-right, and that's ok. God help anyone else who does it though, for their finger is ever ready to point and hurl the usual insults.

Hope not Hate's actions define them as more fascist than their opponents

A comment by Andy Lovie on my Facebook recently set me to thinking more widely about Hope not Hate's tactics with respect to UKIP.

For those of you who don't recall, Mr Lovie was 'outed' by Hope not Hate in cleverly written piece which implied far more than it actually said in order to avoid libel action. Mr Lovie's supposed crime was that he appeared on the BNP's leaked membership list from 2009.

Andy Lovie - dared to speak to a
former BNP activist

Now, I don't know Mr Lovie personally - he is a Facebook friend whose posts I view occasionally, but that is it. I can't say that I've ever seen him post anything which could be considered either racist or fascist: I've only ever seen from him the sort of thing one would expect a middle-ranking UKIP activist and sometime branch officer to post. His interests are wide-ranging, and he shows a genuine concern for the world.

I don't know if Mr Lovie was ever a member of the BNP. Yes, his name appears on their list and is marked 'activist'. And yet Lancaster Unity, in a commentary on the lists at the time they first appeared, clearly stated that

"Some of the additions to the list are as recent as September of this year, indicating that some of the members listed - though how many is anyone's guess - are not in fact members at all."

While even Wikileaks, who first published it stated

"It should not be assumed that every person with a BNP membership number is a current member of the BNP," the site says. "For instance, journalists and opponents have sometimes joined the BNP to obtain information about it."
This is certainly true, not least because there are at least 6 names which are not real people at all, and whose addresses are fronts for either the UAF (2) or Hope not Hate/Searchlight (4). There are probably more whom we are not familiar with. Mr Lovie categorically denies having been a member of the BNP, and does not know how his name came to appear on their list. He would not be the only person caught in such a situation.

Hope not Hate did allow Mr Lovie a 'right of reply', but then heavily annotated his response to ensure

Carl Morphett - regularly associates with
former BNP activists

that it lacked continuity and that their point of view would prevail. As if to prove their case, they accuse Mr Lovie of discussing the matter online with a former BNP activist, Steve Thompson. The fact that the author Simon Cressy (more properly Carl Morphett) regularly speaks to former far-right thug and HnH employee Matthew Collins is an irony not mentioned, and is hardly proof that Cressy/Morphett is himself of the far-right.

Sadly for Mr Lovie, he is just the latest victim in a long line of UKIP personnel subjected to these intimidatory tactics. We recently saw a UKIP councillor paraded across Hope not Hate's pages: his crime? He was in hospital and missed a council tax payment by 4 days - the council subsequently summonsed him for non-payment. We have seen a prospective UKIP candidate's wife's career threatened by a local union official if her husband dared to stand for UKIP.

We can also add to this mix the hacking of UKIP member's social media and e-mail accounts, the photoshopping of screen grabs and the repeated jumping on out of context or poorly phrased quotes from largely elderly UKIP members.

The point? It is quite straightforward. It is using the tactics of Nazi Germany to intimidate people into not sticking their heads above the parapet and supporting or standing for UKIP. As thriller writer John Lescroarts said, “The essence of fascism is to make laws forbidding everything and then enforce them selectively against your enemies.” - which seems to fit Hope not Hate rather well.

Thus we see nothing about Labour racism, so ably demonstrated by the formerly ruling group on Harrow council, and yet god help an aged UKIP councillor who - respectfully but mistakenly - uses the word 'coloured'. We see Mr Lovie crucified because his name appears on a list which even their allies deem inaccurate in an article written by a close associate of a former NF thug. We see a UKIP councillor who was mistakenly summoned smeared, while there is no mention of the hundreds of Labour councillors who don't just miss a payment but refuse to pay their council tax at all - see our Facebook page for details.

If anyone can imagine a closer fit for Lescroarts quote than Hope not Hate, we have yet to see it.

Car crash blogging as HnH consumed by jealousy and hate

Hope not Hate have spent the morning writing a blog post on Nigel Farage, UKIP's leader, and his past statements on Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants after controls are removed at the beginning of next year.

It has not been a good week for Hope not Hate. After finding themselves overshadowed by the 

Nigel Farage (l) with fellow UKIP MEPs
Stuart Agnew and Derek Clark

Quilliam Foundation over the departure of Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carroll from the EDL, most of their postings have been directed to mocking the sincerity of any of the parties involved. Quilliam, whose receipt of money from the public purse dwarves Hope not Hate's publicly funded handouts, have long been a target of animosity for the hard left from which Hope not Hate and the UAF draw the majority of their support, not least because it dares to actually educate and act, rather than propagandise and stir up hatred.

Thus we see the unedifying spectacle of Hope not Hate's jealousy breaking out unashamedly on their assorted blogs, switching between wistful envy, jealous mockery and, ironically, outright hate.

Part of HnH's angst is because while they focussed on UKIP, they took their eye off of the EDL and have consequently been left looking rather foolish. Their claims of 'inside intelligence' from the far-right did them little good when they were forced to admit they'd learned of Robinson & Carroll's EDL resignations from normal media outlets. So much for the actions of their own tame Nazi, HnH head of intelligence Matthew Collins.

Then there are the results of last nights local by-elections across the UK. Despite the best efforts of Hope not Hate, UKIP again polled well above their opinion poll levels gaining a seat in Haverhill with 43.4%, and polling 20% in South Staffordshire, 17.6% in Selby, 18.5% in Salford, 23.2% in Barnsley and 9.4% & 9.2% in Manchester and West Lancs respectively.

Today's tack therefore is to attack the mainstream media for daring to give Farage and UKIP a platform - one which is increasingly denied to Hope not Hate as the past week accelerates their slide into irrelevancy.

With righteous indignation in full flow, they demand evidence for assertions that there will be a flood of Romanian criminals and deny with some pretty evasive statistics that Romanian gangs are responsible for any more crime than any other ethnic group. And this just a couple of months after banker's associations and the City of London police stated clearly and uncategorically that Romanian gangs were responsible for 90% of the UK's ATM fraud at cash machines.

It also ignores figures from February this year which demonstrated that up to a third of Romanians living in the UK had been arrested for criminal offences - over 27,000 out of a total of 84,000.

Neither of these figures were produced by or at the behest of UKIP, a fact which HnH deliberately overlook.

The week has further demonstrated not only Hope not Hate's irrelevancy to the current political debate, but has highlighted their own failures. While the Quilliam Foundation is prepared to tackle not just the far-right but also Muslim extremism, Hope not Hate's efforts on the latter amount to little more than tokenism: we discussed last week their latest anti-Islamist 'campaign', which they jumped on board of late, and which consisted of HnH owner Nick Lowles writing a single letter and making one blog post.

Their failure is demonstrated neatly by the anti-Farage article attacking the media. Despite the air of authority with which it is written, it fails to tackle inconvenient facts like those regarding Romanian crime above. While asking what to do about the '4,000 doctors and nurses' - actually medical workers would be more appropriate, for the vast majority are care assistants - and 7,000 Romanian students, it fails to address or even mention the 27,000+ Romanian arrests. It is all very well quoting the Romanian ambassador to the UK saying how wonderful and law abiding Romanian expatriates are, but he is hardly an unbiased source, and his comments fail take into account the criminality figures.

And so we see Lowles and his crew retreat into the sort of Stalinist hyperbole and myth from which they came as they attempt to salvage a working and relevant organisation from what is increasingly becoming a car crash in slow motion. Their campaign against the EDL looks decidedly shaky as that organisation appears set to collapse into chaos, while their campaign against UKIP seems to be driving more voters to UKIP than the reverse as the ordinary working class recognise the truths that HnH refuse to see.

Self-preservation more important than fighting homophobia - HnH's official position

Yesterday evening saw Hope not Hate proclaim the success of their latest 'campaign', this one to stop a conference in Edmonton, North London called 'Beloved of Allah'. Their objection was that the conference was homophobic and incited hate against the gay community. On Nick Lowles blog, he

When it comes to campaigns, money is more
important than principle - Nick Lowles

wrote:

"Last week I blogged about a conference being held in London, scheduled for this weekend.

Entitled, ‘Beloved to Allah’, the conference agenda featured several Homophobic hate preachers. The one day conference was due to be held at the Edmonton Islamic Centre (Sunday 6^th October).

I am pleased to announce that after a campaign by HOPE not hate and other partners the Centre has cancelled the event. We understand that this may be the first time an event of this type has been cancelled.

HOPE not hate believe it is important to be consistent in our opposition to hate speech. Just as we would speak out against right-wing homophobes, so too must we voice our opposition to those in any community or faith who vocalise violence and even death against others."

 

So how does this campaign compare to others run by Hope not Hate? The original blog posting amounted to just 550 words posted the previous Friday, and of these, just 176 words were devoted to actually addressing the rally itself. The remaining 374 words were biographies of three of the speakers, none of whom had said anything not said by a huge number of radical Imams - previously which had been ignored by Hope not Hate, as detailed in our earlier blog postings. In fact, such views remain commonplace not just within the Islamic faith, but within Christian groups too, such as the Roman Catholic church, which also takes a pretty dim view of homosexuality. Can we look forward to HnH's forthcoming anti-Catholic campaign?

So how serious was this campaign? Lowles wrote, "HOPE not hate believes that this is unacceptable. We will be writing to the Centre to outline our concerns about these rabidly anti-gay views and to ask them if such individuals are 'right' to be speaking in their building.". And that was it.

Of course, Hope not Hate don't normally care what hate speech is being peddled by the radical: they didn't bother with Anjem Choudhary's Islamic Emergency Defence group: Mohammed al-Arefe and Sheikh Yasser al-Habib barely caused a ripple: and music festivals run by a rapist in the form of Martin Smith are actively promoted.

Still, perhaps there was a call to arms to fight such homophobic prejudice on their front page? Perhaps not. As the screen grab below shows, the 'Beloved of Allah' meeting wasn't even worthy of a front page caption and graphic. Instead, Hope not Hate were continuing to fight for their right to work for the Labour Party by gagging its opposition

Yesterday's HnH front page shows no sign of any 'campaigns' apart from those designed to keep
the money rolling into Hope not Hate's coffers

No. Far more important was their campaign to evade government regulation to allow them to participate in elections without the bother of having to be accountable to the voters, and the need to tout for more donations. The only campaign which truly matters is their 'Purple Rain' campaign designed to blunt the rise of UKIP. Talk of 'campaigns' which on closer examination consist solely of Nick Lowles writing a letter are there simply to keep up the pretence of even-handedness.

Compare this with the campaign waged by HnH just a few months ago designed to keep Pam Spencer and Robert Geller out of the UK - while ignoring the arrival of al-Arefe and al-Habib - and the hypocrisy requires no further words from us.

The text Gawain Towler should have sent to keep Hope not Hate happy

There was much outrage on Hope not Hate yesterday as UKIP Press Officer Gawain Towler dared to describe journalist Kiran Randhawa as "a female journalist (of some form of ethnic extraction)" - the full text was:

“James, my fault but I told the Standard that Nigel would be arriving at approx. 10.30 this morning. They have called and I expect a snapper and a female journalist (of some form of ethnic extraction) at Piccadilly. Am sorry”

 When trying to describe a stranger being met in a public location, we had some difficulty seeing what
was being objected to. A picture of Ms Randhawa can be found to the left. She is undoubtedly - as near as we can tell without conducting biological tests - a female, definitely a journalist, and she certainly appears to be of ethnic extraction. We couldn't be precise as to which ethnicity. Mr Towler told the Evening Standard the "descriptive" phrase was meant to help his colleague identify the reporter of whose descent he was unsure after speaking to her by telephone. However, to keep Hope not Hate happy, we have rewritten Mr Towler's text message so it is more inclusive:

"James, my fault but I told the Standard that Nigel would be arriving at approx. 10.30 this morning. They have called and I expect a snapper and a female journalist at Piccadilly. You won't have any difficulty spotting a couple with a camera there, so no further description is required. Am sorry."

Sadly, that still made reference to gender, so I tried again:

"James, my fault but I told the Standard that Nigel would be arriving at approx. 10.30 this morning. They have called and you need to meet two people at Piccadilly. One is a journalist. Am Sorry".

I accept that may be a little vague, so I tried again, but full-on with the inclusivity bit:

"James, my fault but I told the Standard that Nigel would be arriving at approx. 10.30 this morning. They have called and I expect a snapper and a journalist whose family may have originated from the Indian sub-continent, but possibly more widely from the continent of Asia. Perhaps even Fiji, although I think there are quite a lot of people with Indian names in South Africa too, so maybe from there. I don't think she's from further north in Africa than that, if that's the continent her family originated from, although maybe Zimbabwe. I think it's more Indian though, as there's a town in Uttar Pradesh called Randhawa - it looks like the most likely candidate. Randhawa is also a clan of the Jat tribe of India and Pakistan. So if you look out for someone with a camera standing next to somebody whose appearance looks as if their family may once have come from India (or Bangladesh, or Pakistan), or possibly Asia, and maybe even Africa no further north than Zimbabwe (although maybe Kenya), but whose ancestors probably came from a village in Uttar Pradesh, then you won't go far wrong. If in doubt, just ask them what tribe they're from. Hope that's clear? I Googled it, but couldn't pin it down closer than that. Am sorry. Oh, and it could be a man or a woman, but it would be gender stereotyping to say which. Kiran is a gender neutral name in Sanskrit, but it does mean 'ray', as in 'ray-' or 'beam of light'. Hope that helps. Oh, at Piccadilly. Don't text back, my battery has gone flat and my phone has no memory left."

So there we go. Perfectly clear. Surely no-one could be offended by that?

Next week: Gawain Towler gets into trouble for describing Nick Lowles as "a thin white bloke with glasses", thereby excluding the possibility that he could be of some ethnic extraction.