Lowles' mis-firing report - the 'some of my best friends are black' defence

Following Breitbart's expose of Hope not Hate's anti-Muslim bias in their latest report, it is good to see the heat has been turned up under their director Nick Lowles sufficiently to goad him into one of the self-justifying blog posts he is known for.

Breitbart pointed out that Lowles and his student co-author Joe Mulhall had singled out among others Muslim anti-Shariah campaigner Raquel Saraswati and lumped her in with assorted members of the hard-right. In a surprising volte-face, her name was hurriedly removed.

Also targeted were other reform-minded Muslims such as Auhdi Jasser and former extremist turned reformer Tewfik Hamed.

Lowles was quick to go on the attack when criticised by Quilliam Foundation director Maajid Nawaz, although that was more a continuation of the long running feud between the pair following Nawaz's success - and Hope not Hate's implied failure - over Tommy Robinson and the effective demise of the EDL. Lowles - after an amusing diversion attacking Nawaz for destroying the EDL - then resorts to playing the race card to try and save his own (apparently not quite white) skin:

Lowles - of mixed

parentage? Would he

know?

"There are several aspects of Mr Nawaz’s attack piece on our report that are demonstrably untrue, including his peculiar attempt to undermine it by explaining that it was written by ‘two white men’. One of us is of mixed parentage and the other is of Indian descent."

Readers may recognise this as the hard-left equivalent of the 'some of my best friends are black' defence which Hope not Hate regularly ridicules. Lowles leaves it open as to which of the two white men is of mixed parentage - if it's Lowles, we're surprised he can be so certain - and which is of Indian descent, although looking at the pair of them and assuming them to be a couple of white, comfortably middle-class champagne socialists would be an easy mistake to make.

Mulhall - clearly of

Indian descent

Lowles continues his self-justifying monologue by claiming credit for 'raising awareness of child grooming/exploitation' while failing to mention it was the attack-dog mentality of his organisation which prevented decent staff members of all religions from speaking out for fear of being labelled a racist in Rotherham, Bradford, Rochdale and myriad other cities (all Labour controlled, of course). After all, being a devout Muslim committed to reform of your religion has not saved many people from being called a 'counter-Jihadist' in this report. How many children suffered because his organisation acted as a persistent threat to the careers of any who dared speak out?

This defence of radical Islam from those who speak out against Islamic-extremism is not a new course for Hope not Hate, but rather a continuation of one plotted long ago. We blogged several years ago how Hope not Hate campaigned to bar Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer from the UK, while at the same time turning a blind eye to the admittance to the UK of two extremist Muslim preachers (Mohammed al-Arefe and Yasser al-Habib) whose preached their usual blend of homophobia, sexism and violence to congregations across North London.

The rest of Lowles posting is little more than a continued attack on Nawaz, which really shows how much pressure Lowles has come under over his report. Citing a list of other groups, it would appear that Hope not Hate's 'The Counter-Jihad Movement' report is nothing more than a cobbling together of internet sourced second- and third-hand reports about people the authors have little if any knowledge of. As 'dodgy dossiers' go, it is second only to the Progress inspired Iraq War dossier.

The real interest here is the squeeze Lowles is coming under within the Labour movement. Having relied for several years on the financial support of the Mandelson lead, Blairite 'Progress' wing, he now finds the Corbynistas in the ascendant and Progress viewed as a pariah organisation by most of the Shadow Cabinet. As Breitbart reported earlier this week, Lowles' organisation gets significant funding from outside the UK (there is more to come on this story!), but it still relies on the Unions here to provide the bulk of his political funds. With the Unions moving to support Corbyn's 'old-Labour-lite' approach, Lowles is feeling the squeeze and his ready access to the movers and shakers has been diminished.

Even within Hope not Hate, there are finally rumours of discontent. With many long-term staffers little more than barely tolerant of Progress - come on down, Carl Morphett, David Braniff-Herbert and others - there are rumblings about the whole political positioning of Hope not Hate and its declining influence in the Labour Party. With the acrimony over the split from the more honestly left wing Searchlight organisation still ringing through the halls of Hope not Hate towers - an office let to them by another charity - there could yet be blood on the carpet if Lowles handles the negative publicity from his mis-firing report badly.

Forget tall stories about UKIP intimidation in Dudley - Lowles is trying to save his friend Austin's seat

Believe nothing about Dudley North - Labour PPC Ian Austin
is a long time friend of HnH's Nick Lowles. Both are full of
unlikely tales of their own victimhood.

Following our FB & Twitter post regarding the on-going campaign of vandalism against UKIP shops and intimidation against UKIP candidates and supporters, we have now seen Hope not Hate's response: to complain that they are the real victims. Unoriginal in the extreme, this rather dim-witted approach  is based on a handful of incidents, almost none of which are true. Their article focuses on Dudley North, where they complain that a Hope not Hate activist (also coincidentally a Labour activist) was photographed, with the photograph being put on Twitter by UKIP MEP Bill Etheridge followed by some alleged UKIP members saying rude things about him in the comments.

Contrast this with Hope not Hate's glee when posting pictures of hapless elderly UKIP members who can't keep up with whether people of African origin are coloured, black or BME in the latest politically correct terminology.

There is an ulterior motive for all this focus on Bill Etheridge and UKIP in Dudley North, which YouGov list as 'too close to call' between UKIP and Labour. Dudley North Labour PPC and outgoing MP Ian Austin is a friend of Nick Lowles, who previously wrote of Austin,

"Last night I spent about an hour on the phone with Ian Austin, the Labour MP for Dudley North. Ian is a long-time friend of Searchlight, and by that I mean since he was in his mid-teens, but today he is more helpful advising us on a media strategy"

This 'media strategy' has so far involved comedy death threats allegedly received from UKIP supporters, and leaking confidential information on a constituent who stood for UKIP, a strategy which backfired as that constituent is now local Cllr Dean Perks. It hardly needs mentioning that as a good New Labour man, Austin is also an expenses cheat.

Laughable claims of intimidation are nothing new. After the abortive attempt to deliver leaflets in Grimsby on Saturday when nobody turned up, Lowles was bleating that his activists were 'intimidated' and that the police had been called. However, as the Grimsby Telegraph makes clear in their article on Monday:

"The spokesman also claimed members and a member of Humberside Police staff had been physically assaulted. However, Humberside Police was unable to confirm if this was the case and, at the time of going to press, the group had not supplied the Grimsby Telegraph with a crime number."

In other words, even the local paper - which was there - doesn't believe them.

These lies seem to be a new tactic as Hope not Hate feel they are beginning to lose the battle, and the £600,000 a year that goes with it - an attempt, after years of bully boy tactics, to suddenly play the victim. Exactly the same tactic the Nazi's used, in fact.

In terms of threats, nothing compares to the vast amounts of hate that appear on Hope not Hate's own Facebook feed and on their own pages. Incitements to violence are frequent, as we have previously blogged here, while marches by anyone HnH deems unacceptable are given a running commentary to ensure their fellow hard-left bully boys can get the fight they desire, as here. Hope not Hate activists have called for UKIP shops to be burnt down, for attacks on the mentally ill and have cheerfully condoned acts of violence against UKIP MEPs by their own members. Of course, we have screen grabs of some of their supporters comments - we used to grab a lot, but it all gets a bit repetitive after a while.

Earlier today we posted a meme on our Facebook & Twitter pointing out that over 30 UKIP shops have been attacked during this extended General Election campaign. We have been unable to find any accounts of Labour Party or Hope not Hate premises which have been attacked outside of Scotland, where the SNP is responsible - something Hope not Hate has been at pains to not mention. If anybody has any knowledge of any attacks on Labour, HnH, Unite, UNISON, SWP, Green Party or Stand up to UKIP premises in England, we'd be interested in hearing of it.

Hope not Hate photoshop Facebook 'evidence' of racism/homophobia

Last week, Hope not Hate were busy sending 'evidence' of racism and homophobia to Oxfordshire newspapers after 'uncovering' evidence on the Facebook pages of two UKIP candidates, Alan Harris and Dickie Bird.

EXIF data showing the creation date of one of the
images used in the article

Perhaps it was the date - the article was posted on their website on the 1st April - but as usual Hope not Hate's evidence is not all it appears to be.

The article, written by 'Simon Cressy' (a pointless pseudonym used by Kirklees-based HnH activist Carl Morphett) features a number of images which purport to be 'screen grabs' taken from the UKIP member's Facebook timelines.

But as the County chairman for UKIP pointed out in an e-mail, it is here that their lie is exposed. Contained within online images is data about the image itself. This data is known as 'EXIF' data, and contains amongst other information the date and time the image was created, and by whom. If we look at a sample image, we find that far from it being a post that was 3 years old, it was created by one Carl Morphett at half past eight on the 28th March. How convenient!

Some have the EXIF data stripped from them, and one - relating to a posting about Morrison's supermarket allegedly refusing to allow poppy sellers in the store - shows an image date in early 2014, indicating that it is the only genuine screengrab from the page.

To quote Dr Lee Upcraft, the Oxfordshire chairman:

"This proves that the image, reportedly a screen shot of Alan Harris’ Facebook feed, was created at March 28th 2015 at 8:32 pm. Similarly two others were also created within a few minutes of this. According to Hope Not Hate, these are screenshots of Alan Harris’s Facebook page – of postings from 2012 & 2013. Why then do they have an embedded date that is two days before the dissolution of Parliament?


If they are genuine, then they were taken just before start of the "short" election campaign. UKIP conducts extensive vetting of its candidates, and there is no chance that we would permit anybody to stand for the Party with that content on full view on their Facebook page. Nor would we allow anybody to stand who had expressed such views.

We maintain that these images are faked to smear Alan Harris. Alan is standing in a key Tory/Lib-Dem marginal seat. The Liberal Democrats lost this in 2010 to the Tories with a majority of 176. Ask yourself who is to benefit from this?"

 There are a few other points worth noting. Cressy/Morphett's article is rather strong on homophobia in places - in fact, the article is titled 'Oxfordshire UKIP candidate exposed as a racist homophobe'. This seems rather strange, as we understand that one of those mentioned shares his house with his adult son. Who is openly gay. Which makes it all the more remarkable that these two candidates would talk about 'gay pricks' as claimed.

Still, the wonder of photoshop is that you can make anyone say anything. Below we have damning evidence that Morphett and Lowles actively conspired to frame the two candidates. Needless to say, the evidence was created by our own fair hands in Photoshop.

A not at all Photoshopped screen grab from Carl Morphett's Facebook

The NHS steals desperately needed doctors from Africa, but HnH attack UKIPs health policy

More fundamental dishonesty from Hope not Hate writer 'Simon Cressy' (Carl Morphett's pointless pseudonym) in an attack on UKIP's Neil Hamilton over the NHS. Quite what the NHS has to do with HnH's 'anti-racism and anti-fascism' campaign, we don't know, although possibly it is guilt over the Labour inspired need to import doctors from Sierra Leone (1 doctor per 50,000 people) in order to sustain the NHS administration (142 doctors per 50,000 people). Who knows? Labour doesn't care, Sierra Leoneans don't have a vote here anyway. With the partial privatisation of services introduced under the last Labour government, it probably makes sense to take desperately needed doctors from third world countries rather than train enough at home anyway.


Sierra Leone - Labour and the Unions are happy to steal their
medical personnel to prop up their NHS empires

On the HnH website, Cressy puts his name to an article titled "UKIP Claim NHS is diseased and worse than Taliban". Referring to an article which is over a year old, and coincidentally discovering it on the evening that Hamilton was due to attend a selection meeting for the Basildon constituency (he withdrew), Cressy begins his distortions in the title, and doesn't let up throughout his entirely misleading article.

Take the Taliban claim. What Hamilton actually wrote was, "Since 2001, we have had 450 British fatalities in Afghanistan. During the same period, Mid Staffs hospital alone was responsible for at least 1,200 avoidable deaths....another 14 English NHS trusts ... may be responsible for 13,000 unnecessary deaths".

Neil Hamilton

In other words, what Hamilton said was the same as the original Express article's subtitle - The NHS is a more effective killing machine than the Taliban. However much Cressy's union paymasters may not like this, the statistics are true, which is more than can be said of the gross distortion of Cressy's paraphrasing of Hamilton's words.

Did Hamilton say the NHS was diseased? Yes, it was the title of the article. But what he was referring to - contrary to what Cressy implies  - was not the principle of free, universal healthcare, but rather the dominance of it by Labour and the largest trade unions and the need to break that by genuine democracy - "If we are to retain a state-funded system, it must be more democratic so that patient power counter balances the power of unions like Unison and the BMA."

That Hope not Hate should leap to the defence of the big Unions is hardly a surprise as they are heavily reliant upon them for their funding. And control of the NHS - and the £120bn annual spend and 1.4m employees - is essential if the Union's fat cats are to continue drawing banker style salaries. As Hamilton says, "Labour's shroud-waving has closed down debate on whether this is the best way to provide healthcare free at the point of delivery."

Whether you agree with Hamilton's assessment or not is immaterial, as is whether you have

Carl Morphett - not the first time he's
been caught taking lessons from Goebbels

reservations about Hamilton. Certainly his argument about debate being closed down is correct: what other point is there in deliberately distorting the whole thrust of his argument?

It borders on the obscene that on a day that Hope not Hate is singing the praises of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights they should fall back on the tactics of the totalitarian: to distort with propaganda rather than to argue with facts. The point of a democracy is to hear all sides of the argument. It is not talking about other options for the NHS but preventing those options even being open for debate which is fascist. Perhaps someone will buy Cressy/Morphett a dictionary for Christmas.

Don't worry, Nick - it'll be all white. UKIP can teach you what equal opportunities really look like.

A deafening silence has surrounded UKIP leader Nigel Farage's final speech of his tour of the UK last night in London, not least because of the picture Hope not Hate don't want to see:

'Bloody racists'

In the interests of fairness, we thought we'd take a quick look at Hope not Hate's record of equal opportunities over the past year or so.

Hope not Hate leadership: (LtoR) Nick Lowles, Ruth Smeeth, Matthew Collins, Carl Morphett - doing all white

No luck there in our search for equal opportunites. Still, perhaps they're training people from our minority communities how to 'Stand up for HOPE'? Maybe pictures of their training events will prove more fruitful?

Still doing all white......

 

Oh, OK then. Not there either. Maybe we're just looking in the wrong place? Perhaps on their action days when they get all their supporters out delivering leaflets?

It's all looking a bit white and middle class

Hmmm. After all that, we're still struggling to find the inclusiveness that Hope not Hate constantly trumpets - indeed which is part of its founding statement - being shown in practise.

Unlike Hope not Hate, UKIP is a party of inclusiveness, with senior members from the Jewish, Hindu, Sikh and Islamic faiths; from the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, India, Pakistan and Europe; from the rich and from the poor. All that is required is a love of our shared nation, its values and its culture.

If you were planning to get to the top of an organisation because you're white, don't bother with UKIP - all it takes is dedication, commitment and belief wherever you're from.

If what you want is a colour bar to help you get on, Hope not Hate is the obvious place to be.

PS It helps if you're middle class too. Hope not Hate are just as committed to selling out the working class as their Labour and Union paymasters.

HuffPo calls for racial discrimination, while HnH's leaflet campaign goes off with a whimper

An interesting article on today's Huffington Post website, where they condemn UKIP for employing a leaflet distribution company which in turn hires Eastern Europeans to deliver the leaflets.

The gist of the rather weak argument is that HuffPo thinks UKIP should only have British leafletters, in other words that it should break the law by discriminating on the basis of their nationality against people who are in the UK legally, which is really a rather racist position for what is supposed to be a reputable website to take.

***Hope not Hate's 'Simon Cressy' has just chipped in with a blog post, asking 'whatever happened to British Jobs for British workers, it used to be a UKIP and BNP battlecry', forgetting that it was a Labour battlecry as well, straight from the mouth of Gordon Brown. Cressy (aka Carl Morphett) is also suggesting that UKIP practise racial discrimination, although that's not entirely surprising given his casual racism against an Anglo-Albanian UKIP candidate a couple of days ago. ***

While we're on the subject of leaflets, it is worth mentioning that Hope not Hate had their 'weekend of action' over the May Day bank holiday weekend just gone.

Interesting photographs were tweeted by Hope not Hate, who are pushing their 'votehope' campaign for all it's worth regardless of the net positive effect such leafleting has had in the past for those targeted by it. UKIP thanks them for their efforts in calling the 77% of people in the UK who are concerned about immigration 'racist', and looks forward to another boost in the polls.

Hope not Hate very helpfully posted images on their blog showing how many of their leaflets and newspapers they intend to deliver in each of their target areas - it is reproduced at the bottom of this article. We congratulate them on their ambition, but wonder given the size of their campaign teams whether this will prove possible.

In Brighton, for example. Their plan is for 40,000 leaflets to be delivered, and yet the morning's

VoteHope Brighton - with 40,000 leaflets to deliver, they'd
do better to get cracking rather than standing around taking pics!

campaign team photograph is of 4 people. Allowing for the photographer, that's 5 of them, or 8,000 leaflets each. If they really run and deliver 100 leaflets an hour, they'll be finished in a mere 80 hours, assuming they have no breaks for food, drink or the toilet. We should not forget that police are still hunting for the Hope not Hate activists who assaulted two policewomen at a UAF demonstration there last weekend, so it is possible that the campaign team will be further reduced. You will notice as well that all the ethnic groups in Brighton are represented in this show of solidarity for minorities, who have demonstrated their support by, erm, staying at home and leaving it to the achingly right-on middle class to stand up for them.

HnH's Ruth Smeeth takes the pictures, others do the delivering.
Will they deliver the 25,000 each, or just chuck them in a skip?

Meanwhile, in Halesowen, Ruth Smeeth popped by to tweet a photograph before going home and leaving the delivery work to the peons. Again, the minorities put in a strong show of concern by staying at home and having a lie in. Or maybe they've just heard of the institutional racism in the Labour Party in Harrow and want no part of these smears. Not entirely surprising perhaps, as the entire campaign team appears to consist of Labour Party candidates and activists taking a break from their day jobs which involve protecting the incomes of the richest by supporting an unending flow of cheap labour.  No surprises there from the party which used to stand up for the working man.

three of the four HnH activists complaining about something
different this time.

With 100,000 leaflets to deliver across the West Midlands, the Labour campaign team needs to get cracking with the mere 25,000 each they have to get rid of. At 100/hour, it'll only take 2,500 hours or a little over 14 days of 24 hour working to get them all delivered. As most working class people have to do those hours to pay for their families, it may well educate them on how the other half live: being Labour, they'll use that knowledge to hire poor people to do the deliveries next time. You will note the picture of the local Labour Party from earlier this year protesting against a tax they have no intention of scrapping features three of the four Hope not Hate activists. The fourth is also a Labour Party member, but there's not enough space to fit in pictures of them all.



Warrington Labour Party reduced to scaremongering as they
have nothing positive to say ahead of this month's elections

Labour were heavily involved with all this - they want to get their money's worth out of Hope not Hate, after all. In Warrington, the Labour Party gave up on campaigning for the European and local elections and instead spent the day handing out Hope not Hate leaflets in the town centre and then tweeting about it. Quite how that is supposed to persuade people to vote Labour we're not certain, but then they don't really have anything to say about the EU that voters want to hear. Better to scaremonger with HnH leaflets than tell people how you want to give their country away.

Whitehaven Labour Party resign themselves to being out of
touch and so deliver negative propaganda instead.

In Whitehaven the local Labour team had also given up telling people what they were planning to do if elected, preferring to hand out HnH leaflets as they ramped up their negative campaign. As there are three Cumbrian activists pictured and 20,000 leaflets are planned for delivery, they'd do better making a start pushing them through letterboxes rather than standing around taking selfies as they've each got just under 7,000 to deliver.

And so on to Manchester, where the 8 ethnically diverse Labour Party members are planning to deliver almost 250,000 leaflets across the Metropolitan area. Good luck with that then.

HnH's Manchester team taking pictures rather than delivering
the 31,000 leaflets each needed to reach HnH's target

Given the increase in the vote they will deliver for UKIP, we're almost tempted to put out a call for UKIP members to go and help them. Then again, most UKIP members have jobs and responsibilities other than signing on, so they can't devote the time necessary. HnH's supporters are of course largely unemployed, which may explain the low turnout - it's only lunchtime and it's not giro day, so most haven't got up yet. To be serious, what is sad is how Hope not Hate target the poorest in society and attempt to persuade them that having lower wages is good for them: as polling figures show, it takes a special kind of stupid to believe that, which is why UKIP's argument is soaring. But with HnH's 'officer class' comprised entirely of middle class kids who have never had a proper job, it's in their best interests to protect the richest in the land at the expense of the poor. Donkeys lead by donkeys.

 Elsewhere in the North West, the much vaunted 'major leafleting exercise' was not spotted by activists carrying our own leaflets in the centre of either Manchester or Liverpool, and UKIP activists had as of today received no reports of HnH leaflets being delivered through doors.

If you see a Hope not Hate campaign team out delivering leaflets, please take a photograph. We don't want it, but it is such a rare sight, it may prove a collector's item one day. Alternatively, you could print off a few of our leaflets available on the blog here and hand them out - perhaps their campaigners don't know the racist, criminal, tax evading company they are unwittingly keeping.

Casual racism from HnH's Carl Morphett, whose geography isn't so hot

A little bit of casual racism from Hope not Hate's Carl Morphett (writing under the utterly pointless (as everybody knows who it really is) pseudonym of Simon Cressy) yesterday evening in a post entitled 'A quick question for UKIP Barnsley'.

Rather neatly summing up exactly why Hope not Hate don't grasp the problems of immigration or
UKIP's policy, he writes:

"It is well documented that UKIP have a problem with East European immigrants coming to the UK.
So I was rather interested to see that UKIP in Barnsley are fielding an Albanian immigrant, Anisa Kola as a candidate in the Dodworth ward.
How very interesting"

(i) UKIP does not have a problem with Eastern European immigrants coming here, we'd just like a say in how many.
(ii) Most Eastern European immigration comes from within the EU. Albania, the last time we checked, was not a member of the European Union, and therefore immigrants from there have to qualify for a visa to enter the UK. This visa is issued under the points system we'd like to apply to EU immigrants as well.
(iii) Why would her country of origin make any difference if she is a suitable candidate?
(iv) Why would a legal immigrant to the UK not realise that allowing 200,000 people a year into the country will put further strain on public services and greater pressure on housing, which is already in short supply?

In order to avoid them mistaking Albania for an EU country the next time they want to attack a UKIP candidate based on their ethnicity, we have prepared a handy 'cut out and keep' guide for them to check.

Good to see that it hasn't got in the way of Hope not Hate's casual sexism either. Alongside comments about how good looking or not Anisa is is the following gem, suggesting that because she's pretty, she is therefore too stupid to make up her own mind. 

Of frauds and forgeries

Prominent on Hope not Hate's website today - although yet to make it to their Facebook page - is their "100 days to stop UKIP" campaign, complete with a plea for funds from Nick Lowles. We're not convinced that using a slogan already used by Nick Clegg will prove to be an asset, but Hope not Hate have never been strong on originality: most of their methods have already been tried and tested by Josef Goebbels after all.

Still, Lowles can barely contain his excitement at it all. He breathlessly gushes about how 'just £15 will pay for 1,000 anti-UKIP leaflets', and '£100 will pay for 500,000 online ads' - remember boys and girls, if you ever see an online ad for HnH, be sure to click it to help them spend their budget!

Lowles also talks about their planned 'Campus Call Outs at dozens of universities where we'll register and mobilise student voters". Given their links with the Labour Party, we're sure that such registrations will in common with the TULO/Unions Together efforts be diverted via the Labour Party national communications centre in Newcastle.

The vast majority of HnH's funds come not from the public,
but from the Union barons

The question which really needs to be asked is why Lowles bothers with such campaigns at all. A
quick check through the Electoral Commission's records of regulated donations to Hope not Hate shows that in fact, of the £542,893 reported since 2004, a mere £88,618 has come from members of the general public - less than 17%. The remainder - £454,275 - has come from the trades unions and bodies such as the Joseph Rowntree Trust.

It is of course rhetorical to ask why. Hope not Hate's own 'about us' section still states "HOPE not hate mobilises everyone opposed to the British National Party’s (BNP) and English Defence League’s (EDL) politics of hate" - no mention of UKIP - and likes to give the impression that it is a grassroots campaign. Needless to say, that is not the case - it relies heavily on the unions, the Labour Party and political charities to fund its cause. If it relied solely upon private donations, it would have gone bust many years ago.

The old saying does however remain true - he who pays the piper calls the tune. As we have said before, with recent newspaper polls showing UKIP to be the best regarded party amongst the general public, Labour and their Union paymasters are desperate to head off the challenge in what Labour regard as 'their' heartlands. As we discussed in our last posting, there are no depths to which they will not stoop in order to achieve this end, and Hope not Hate are increasingly becoming the front organisation they hope to use to do it.

For Hope not Hate to be credible, it is necessary that they continue to present themselves as a grassroots campaign and not as they really are, a tool of the unions and Labour and powered by multinational consultants in Blue State Digital.

What does that mean for the whole "100 days to stop UKIP" fundraising campaign? It is nothing more than a charade. The union barons will pick up the tab for a sophisticated on-line, anti-UKIP campaign, while the rank and file are viewed as little more than an irritant except when there is violence against UKIP to be incited.

Although Hope not Hate's entire campaign is based on a lie, one question remains: would they be prepared to pay for UKIP infiltrators to spill the beans? A letter has been doing the rounds which purports to come from Simon Cressy promising payment for UKIP 'secrets'. For a whole host of reasons - not least that Simon Cressy doesn't exist, but is a nom de plume for HnH employee Carl Morphett - we are forced to conclude that the letter is a forgery. In a fast growing party such as UKIP, it is far easier to get their own supporters to sign up and attend UKIP meetings than it is to pay for information, and we are forced to conclude that the continued circulation of this letter is likely to be counter-productive.

Why so? Because unlike Hope not Hate, UKIP is a genuinely grassroots organisation. We are well regarded by the voting public, and are not in the pockets of anybody. While Hope not Hate, Labour and the trades unions are quite happy to lie, cheat and steal in order to blunt the force of our message, we have no need to descend to such depths. The British public are increasingly behind us, and we are happy to stand on our own beliefs: the use of forged documents will not help us in this.

HnH's Morphett photoshops details on latest 'expose': not spin, an outright lie

Hope not Hate's latest 'expose' of UKIP members with links to the far right has just been written in rather excitable style by Simon Cressy, the pseudonym for Carl Morphett.

According to Morphett, "Only three days away from Christmas and those lovely people in UKIP have given us a smashing present for us to unwrap in time for the big day". It could take some time, because the wrapping is quite complicated. Essentially, three former NF activists once belonged to a party - Third Way - set up by a person who now works for Nick Griffin. At some point but over a decade ago Third Way changed its name to the National Liberals. According to Morphett, this is clear proof that UKIP is linked to racists.



Morphett has photoshopped out the
'added by' details and altered
Davies position within UKIP

There are several problems with his breathless logical fallacy. The first is that it is an open group, meaning people can be added to it without their knowledge or consent. This is easily spotted by the 'added by' information under the members names. You would be able to see this on the screen grab Morphett helpfully appended to his post, except that he has photoshopped it out. You can see the two versions on this page. Certainly in the case of Davies, he did not join this group, he was added to it. Don't believe me? Go take a look - just search on Facebook for National Liberals.

We move on to the other two UKIP activists Morphett names -
Arthur Thackeray and Alexander Balkan. Morphett does not appear to have photoshopped their entries in the list of members, and they appear to have joined themselves.



How Davies entry actually looks

If this makes them racist, then I wonder how Morphett explains the membership of some of the other group members? I have screen grabbed some images, but among the other people he feels are also allied to the National Front and the BNP because of their membership of this group are Ruby Akhtar, Shira Singh, Sabiha Choudhury, Paul Siwela, Samer Reza, Tarig Anter, Thabisa Mabhena, Majid Sandilo etc etc. You get the idea. Bloody racists.

The point about Morphett is that he is not an internet amateur - this is what he does for a living with Hope not Hate. He has not made a mistake, and he is well aware of how these groups work. He knows that Davies did not sign up to the group voluntarily, but he has deliberately removed the wording which proves it. This is not spin. It is not propaganda. It is not a mistake. It is a deliberate lie intentionally done to smear the name of Davies.

It is also worth noting that if he found these three UKIP members in the group, he could hardly fail to have noticed Akhtar, Singh, Choudhury, Siwela etc. I don't know how Thackeray and Balkan came to join the group - perhaps they just hit 'accept' on an invite, perhaps they intentionally joined. Either way, it is no more proof of racism than it is proof of the other member's racism. Particularly as Morphett - under a pseudonym - is also a member.

Interestingly, Edward Davies was added to the National Liberals group by Richard Byng. Byng joined facebook in September, just weeks before he started adding people to the National Liberal group. Amongst his FB 'likes' are Radical Independence Campaign Scotland - the group which barricaded Nigel Farage in a Scottish pub, and who have close links to both Hope not Hate and the UAF. This looks more and more like a set up.



Racist members of the
National Liberals
Facebook Page



Wasting police time, and condemning the opposition for saying what your own supporters say

Hope not Hate continue to lay into a hapless former BNP supporter in Lincolnshire by the name of Dean Everitt. His name has previously come up in our article here, where we pointed out the stupidity of suggesting that UKIP was comprised of former BNP people just because Everitt said 'Vote UKIP' - as stupid as suggesting that Dennis MacShane's very public support of Hope not Hate implied that all HnH supporters were thieving toe-rags. That is not true, of course - most of them are just stupid, and taken in by the lie that Hope not Hate 'fight racism', when in fact they fight parties which look set to take Labour votes.

The latest assault on Everitt is over his homophobia. The actual content is not really contested - it is homophobic, but not particularly any more homophobic than content which Hope not Hate happily allow on their own comments stream so long as it is directed against people they don't like. Who could forget such pricelessly inclusive comments as

Naturally, as Tahair - we assume given his name - is Islamic, there's not a word of official complaint from Hope not Hate, although the poster immediately afterwards does suggest that homophobia is perhaps not the best approach to use. And in fairness, nobody else used it that day: instead, they called for the EDL to be urinated on, beaten, 'given it up the arse' (although that could be

Carl Morphett - adapting the methods of
fascism quite nicely

homophobia!) and then decided that 'retard' and 'chav' were more suitable. Mockery of the mentally ill is of course a long established trait in inclusive Hope not Hate.

What really puts the icing on the cake however is Carl Morphett's (writing as Simon Cressy) assertion that

"We will be passing these posts onto Lincolnshire Police as well as the local media in Lincolnshire, I'm sure they will be very interested."

I'm sure they will be. The figures below show crime figures in Lincolnshire Police's area for the most recent month available - October 2013. With 4,876 crimes reported, the police have nothing better to do than investigate politically motivated reports about victimless crimes on Facebook. Still, as Morphett claims benefits in his home town, it's not him who will have to pay the taxes which pay for such wastes of police time. Perhaps he will however be consistent and also inform the police about the homophobic rants of Hope not Hate's supporters?

	Anti-Social	Burglary	Robbery	Vehicle Crime	Violent Crime	Other Crime	Total
Oct 2013	1,708	483	12	288	539	1,846	4,876

Goebbels - Morphett learns his lessons well, while claiming to hate fascism.

Regular readers will not be surprised to discover yet more hypocrisy from Hope not Hate. Their latest 'Purple Rain' article sees an attack on UKIP councillor Victoria Ayling for comments made in a video while she was a Conservative Party member. In 2008. Still, not a reason to not attack UKIP, eh? And Hope not Hate are having their coffers surreptitiously replenished by both Lord Ashcroft for the Tories and Lord Mandelson for Labour, so neither of them are fair targets regardless of what they do. There is a certain irony however as even as they attack Ms Ayling for using her right to freedom of speech, they are complaining about the possibility of themselves being gagged.

Extremism in action - How dare Ayling suggest she has freedom of speech?

Righteous anger - how dare the government try to halt our campaign against freedom of speech?

 

Still, nobody said their campaign had to be consistent or make sense, did they? Carl Morphett has learned the lessons of Goebbels well for somebody who professes to hate fascism.

 

 

“That propaganda is good which leads to success, and that is bad which fails to achieve the desired result. It is not propaganda’s task to be intelligent, its task is to lead to success.”

― Joseph Goebbels 

HnH condone violence against the mentally ill - continued

Following on from our story this afternoon about the mentally ill man who Hope not Hate labelled a BNP member despite knowing he was nothing of the sort. I received the following earlier on this afternoon -

The original comment remains there, with several others of similar intent -

Now, from looking at Mr Hershman's profile, it would appear that he is Jewish. Fine, and it might go some way towards his attitude towards a person wandering around Asda in Nazi uniform, and I say that in all seriousness and not in jest. We make no excuses for the terrible suffering and wholesale mass murder committed by the Nazis, but that is to miss the point of Mr Dutton. It is a sad indication of the gross distortions Hope not Hate are capable of that the need exists to point out that we do not deny or defend the Holocaust or the evil of Hitler to avoid the inevitable accusations should we not point out the obvious.

In Mr Dutton we have a person who from even a casual look at his website you can see is seriously unwell. This is not someone who is a Nazi or racist because of their rational belief system, this is someone who believes he has time travelled from 1942 to the present day, who thinks Adolf Hitler is his personal saviour and who is convinced that he is destined to change the future by travelling back in time and changing the past. Hope not Hate often attack anyone who disagrees with immigration for scaremongering, exaggeration and for misleading their audience, and yet they have knowingly placed a mentally ill man in peril by pretending that his delusions are the product of a rational mind.

It is very sad indeed on a whole host of levels. It is sad that he is not in institutional care, for a start. It is sad that a national newspaper like the Daily Mirror sees fit to mock someone who is so clearly mentally ill. And it is absolutely outrageous that Hope not Hate has set out not only to incite people to mock someone who is so clearly mentally disturbed, but are happy to use his affliction to score petty party political points against the BNP when there is no evidence whatsoever to support an association between them and poor Mr Dutton.

Imagine if you will that Mr Hershman was an EDL supporter and he had made that comment on an EDL page about Muslims. Hope not Hate would be baying for his blood all over their front page. Instead, as the comment was only about a poor, deluded soul whose mental illness makes him think he's a Nazi general, violence is perfectly acceptable. Hope not Hate's unspoken subtext is 'do as I say, not as I do'. Lowles, Smeeth, Morphett and the rest must be fortunate indeed to never have had contact with a family member who suffers from the sort of crippling mental illness suffered by Mr Dutton. Or perhaps they see the answer to Mr Dutton through the prism of their Stalinism - their political hero would after all have ensured that someone as clearly in need of medical treatment as he would have disappeared quite quickly.

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?

'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.