Some Social Media tips for combatting Hope not Hate

We noticed a few months ago that many of our Facebook posts were being marked as spam - we can see such things in the page administration section. We also had a pretty good idea of who was doing this and why.

Some genuine, Hope not Hate spam

The 'why' is quite straightforward. Since Facebook introduced 'sponsored posts', messages posted by pages do not go to all subscribers, but only to a percentage. This ensures that to get maximum reach, you have to 'pony up' and pay Facebook. For what they call 'organic' reach, ie non-paid, the number of page 'likers' who get to see it depends on the record of your page in the past, and the more negative reactions you have had, ie 'hide from page', 'mark as spam' etc, the fewer people see it.

The 'who' is equally obvious. Hope not Hate are terrified that their organisation has outlived its original purpose - the far right is beaten, and it is now targeting a party supported by hundreds of thousands if not millions of former Labour voters. The last thing they want is their hypocrisy put under the magnifying glass.

So, here's an idea. If you want to hit Hope not Hate where it hurts then follow these simple steps:

1.  'like' their page
2. when you have done so, put your mouse over the 'Liked' button on their page, and a drop down menu will appear.
3. Select 'Get Notifications' from the menu
4. When Hope not Hate stories appear in your news feed, you will notice a line above the post with a small down arrow
5. Click the down arrow, and then select 'I don't want to see this'
6. This brings up another menu - select 'Its spam'
7. You then get another menu - select 'Its just a spammy post'

The effect of enough people doing this will be to minimise the number of people who get to see Hope not Hate's hypocritical rubbish, most of which contains appeals for funds and is genuine spam anyway. To continue to get organic reach, Nick Lowles will have to put his hand in his pocket and pay.

By the way, if you want to be sure you see all of our posts, be sure to follow steps 1 to 3 above - 'get notifications' ensures you will know when we post!!

Please feel free to share this far and wide.

Beating women - fine when done by Hope not Hate's allies

Hope not Hate's gloating over a fight at the Young Independence ball last Thursday night has become somewhat muted lately when it was revealed that the man who bravely attacked a young woman, punching her, pulling her hair and calling her a 'fascist', was none other than Hope not Hate commentator Timur Moon.



Alex Nixon, left, and Timur Moon, the 36 year old who thinks
punching young women and pulling their hair is ok, so long as
he also calls them 'fascist'.

Mr Moon began assaulting guests after being told that it was a private function at which journalists were not welcome. In fairness, Mr Moon barely qualifies as a journalist, but striking a young woman and then having to be restrained until police arrives is hardly dignified behaviour. Still, it is what we have come to expect from Hope not Hate and their associates. No doubt the NUJ will investigate the circumstances closely, and then stand up for women by doing nothing.

Quite why 36 year old Mr Moon, who has a track record of poorly researched articles on the far-right, felt that he qualified either as young or as an independent has not been disclosed, although the recent closeness between Hope not Hate, UAF and Lord Ashcroft's dirty tricks department may provide some indication. Ahead of May's local elections, HnH and the Tories were peddling such headline grabbing news stories as Young Independence members 'dancing stupidly'. We should all count ourselves lucky that our fathers haven't ended up on the front page of the Sun if that is now a noteworthy event.

Still, Moon's crass articles still appear all over Hope not Hate's website. Apparently, it makes no difference if one of their own is likely to be convicted of a criminal offence, even where the crime at hand is gate-crashing a party and punching a young woman. We can only assume that these things are only bad when their opponents do them - another Hope not Hate case of 'do as we say, not as we do'. After all, their own Director of Intelligence (sic) Matthew Collins boasts of his days spent 'Paki bashing' as a member of the BNP in his recently published book (available from bargain buckets everywhere, price £0.25), but apparently he is not a reformed character in a way any former BNP members not involved in Hope not Hate can never be.

It would be a shame to forget the UAF in all this too - for all their talk of equality, rape appears fine. As Martin Smith discovered, a penchant for sexually assaulting young women does not mean giving up your far-left sinecure, organising music festivals to give yourself access to even more young women.

Hope not Hate - seeking the exclusive right to decide who is gagged in British politics

The government is trying to find a way to regulate lobbyists, and its current attempt is the Transparency of Lobbying, non-Party campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill. I think we can all agree that its provisions do not match the aims of what the government was trying to achieve.

Hope not Hate are also campaigning against the Bill. They have produced the following graphic to aid their campaign

As Hope not Hate say on their website,

"Under these new proposals every organisation which seeks to influence public opinion, in the 12 months before the General Election – either directly or as a consequence of its actions – will now be covered. This will include charities, think tanks, trade associations and even blogs and websites.
The amount an organisation can spend is being drastically cut yet the scope of costs which have to be accounted for – such as staff time – has dramatically widened. Indeed, the restrictions on third parties are now far more extensive than those on political parties."

In some respects, Hope not Hate have missed the point - third parties should be subject to tighter scrutiny than political parties for a very simple reason. Parties are accountable to the voters through the ballot box. Third Parties like Hope not Hate are accountable only to their funders; in Hope not Hate's case these are the large trades unions and the Labour Party.

The irony of the situation is almost wonderful to behold. For many years, Hope not Hate has gone out of its way to gag those it deems to be 'far-right'. As if that wasn't bad enough for the political process, we are now seeing their aim turned not on the far-right, but on UKIP - simply because their funders are frightened of them, and have no clue how to stop the party's rise. Intimidation of candidates, fraudulent claims about public statements backed up by photoshopped internet comments, fake social media profiles: a whole panoply of tricks which would shame a Murdoch newspaper and which do nothing but drag the whole political process into the gutter.

Hope not Hate are right. This legislation is bad for freedom of speech and democracy, and should not enter the statute book. What they can't seem to grasp is that it is the actions of groups such as theirs which has made people think it is necessary, and even as they campaign - and raise funds to keep their now pointless organisation afloat - they are still attempting to gag their political opponents. To quote a Central American revolutionary, Jose Marti,

"Liberty is the right of every man to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy"

Sadly, Hope not Hate would rather its supporters merely chanted 'Four legs good, two legs better' at every opportunity. The freedom of speech they argue for is the freedom to censor what their opponents think.

What Channel 4 think UKIPs conference brochure should look like....

Another lungful of HnH hypocrisy

Hope not Hate this evening posted the story which has appeared in the Guardian newspaper which attempts to suggest that there is something wrong with UKIP accepting a £25,000 donation from e-cigarette firm Pillbox 38 because UKIP has consistently voted against EU legislation which would outlaw their products. UKIP has always been against legislation which interferes with personal choice on both smoking and smoking replacement products. Hope not Hate's comment was 'is it me, or is this slightly dodgy'. The £25k represents less than 20% of UKIPs total donations.

Meanwhile, the same release of donor information showed that the Labour Party (who fund Hope not Hate) received over £2.4 million from the Trade Union movement (who also fund Hope not Hate). The trades unions have opposed the austerity drive by the current government which seeks to reduce state spending and, as a consequence, state employment, and Labour has voted in line with the trades unions wishes in Parliament. The £2.4m represented 77% of Labour's total donations.

Strangely, Hope not Hate have no comment to make on how dodgy this is, but as they receive money from both sides, that's hardly surprising. Just another dose of HnH hypocrisy.

Hope not Hate's take on democracy - shut down the opposing argument by name-calling

Hope not Hate are busy salivating over a series of comments which they claim prove UKIP to be 'misogynist'.

The carpet in their offices must be positively wet with all the dribbling, as last week they focussed on comments by UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom relating to aid being sent to 'Bongo Bongo Land'.

While attacking Bloom's comments, they naturally failed to address any substance within his comments, particularly as details came to light of aid to India and Nigeria (who have their own space programs) and F/18 fighters to Pakistan (as we continue to scrap our own fighter aircraft). Naturally, had any of Hope not Hate's armchair warriors actually travelled to areas which receive aid, they might have had a better perspective, but as most of their experience is gleaned from pages from the 'Guardian' newspaper it can hardly be expected that they know what they are talking about.

Today, they are up in arms over comments made by UKIP Treasurer Stuart Wheeler and UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom during a debate at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London on the subject of plans to impose a quota on the number of women represented in boardrooms.

For Hope not Hate's benefit, here is a dictionary (the Oxford English Dictionary) definition of a debate:

"a formal discussion on a particular matter in a public meeting or legislative assembly, in which opposing arguments are put forward and which usually ends with a vote"

In practise, this works by openly debating the matter at hand, something which Hope not Hate are not keen on, probably because it smack of, well, democracy, and other 'right wing' tendencies.

In their moralising, Hope not Hate have yet to mention how an open debate can be held on whether quotas on the number of women in boardrooms should be held if only one side of the debate - the side in favour - is allowed to participate, of if those who oppose the idea of 'affirmative action' (which did so much to harm race relations in the United States) are castigated as racist/sexist/misogynist/Nazi (delete as appropriate).

This is what Hope not Hate mean by 'democracy', I suppose. Just out of interest, how many women do Hope not Hate employ? One? Out of how many?

Hope not Hate's response to us - play the man, not the ball

We have noticed a fresh line of attack developing on our work to expose Hope not Hate. Never ones
to push the envelope on originality, Hope not Hate's minions have hit on the entirely unoriginal idea of condemning what we write because Dave Briggs - me! - has as Facebook friends people it claims are from the far-right.

Playing the man and not the ball is an old established favourite of Hope not Hate, so we'd like to be perfectly clear about a few things.

• We support UKIP, a democratic, non-racist, non-fascist party.
• We do not support the EDL, the BNP, the NF or any of the other splinter groups from them or any other far-right groups. 
• We do not support or endorse violence in politics whether from the right or the left.
• We accept all friend requests on Facebook without endorsing the views held by those making the request. Hope not Hate has no shortage of Facebook 'likes' from far-right activists.
• We sometimes highlight inaccuracies in Hope not Hate reports on EDL and BNP activities. This does not imply support. The truth is always the truth, and a lie is always a lie no matter who tells it or for what cause.

We endeavour to be accurate in all of our postings. Although we like to have a bit of fun at Hope not Hate's expense - they take themselves ever so seriously - we are not in the business of spreading lies or disinformation. We do speculate on events and their causes, but we attempt to do so honestly. Where reports of Hope not Hate meetings are published, they are reports which we believe to be accurate from people whom we believe were actually present. 'We' are a small team of like minded individuals who work hard to expose the machinations of the far-left - the groups like Hope not Hate and UAF of which Labour MP Simon Danczuk said "The hard right threatens social cohesion and sows ugly seeds of division. The politics of the hard Left does much of the same.”

We accept as true the following:

• Not everybody who supports the EDL is a football hooligan or fascist thug
• When someone aligned with the far-right says something, it is not necessarily untrue
• When someone aligned with Hope not Hate says something, it is not necessarily true

Finally, if you believe something we have published is incorrect, please draw it to our attention and if you can prove it wrong, we will correct it. Unlike Hope not Hate, we will not block you from our site and remove the posting as we believe in democratic debate.

We must be doing something right. 21,000 page views in 6 weeks, and a daily reach of between 3,000 and 11,000 people on Facebook. Not bad.