An investigation by anti-racism watchdog Hope Not Hate and Jewish security organisation CST has documented the attendance of several high-profile Labour activists at meetings with far-right Holocaust deniers and antisemitic conspiracy theorists.
According to a report on the investigation, those attending events organised by conspiracy group Keep Talking included Labour activist Elleanne Green, who created a secret Facebook group featuring Shoah denial and theories that Israel was responsible for 9/11.
Jeremy Corbyn was a member of the Facebook group, called Palestine Live, from 2014-2015, and other senior Labour party figures joined the group at various points since its creation in 2013.
Green, suspended by the party in July 2018, accompanied ex-Labour MP Chris Williamson to court when he sued the party in a row over Jew-hate.
According to the report, at one of the events organised by Keep Talking, Labour supporters heard James Thring, an infamous antisemite linked to the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke, speak openly and unchallenged about Holocaust denial.
In the meeting at which Thring spoke, on 5 March 2019 at a Kentish Town cafe, ex-Labour party member Peter Gregson reportedly gave a speech titled: “The loss of freedom of speech on Israel, thanks to bogus antisemitism claims.”
Gregson, who was thrown out of the GMB union and suspended by Labour over allegations of antisemitism, went on to found a group called Labour Against Zionism and Islamophobic Racism.
According to Hope not Hate and CST, also present was Ian Fantom, co-founder of Keep Talking and a 9/11 “truther”, who has appeared alongside Piers Corbyn, older brother of the Labour leader, at a Keep Talking event.
Footage of the meeting also revealed the presence of Gill Kaffash, former secretary of the Camden branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, who was refused Labour membership in 2016 because she had promoted Holocaust revisionism.
Other Keep Talking attendees reportedly included Holocaust denier Alison Chabloz, who in 2015 became a supporter of the Labour party and reportedly declared loyalty to Labour leader Corbyn in several blog posts.
According to the investigation, another speaker at Keep Talking meetings was Israeli writer Miko Peled, who addressed the group after appearing at a Labour Party conference fringe event in Brighton in 2019.
Nick Lowles, chief executive of Hope not Hate, said: “Our investigation reveals how this hinterland works to transmit a conspiratorial mindset into mainstream politics via the far-right and some of the far-left.
“They are not harmless - they offer a safe space for dangerous conspiracies to be incubated and sustained, feeding a paranoia and distrust that can have tragic real world influences.
"The idea that there is ‘them’ out to deceive and cheat you is central to all messages of division and we must never stop challenging these falsehoods and those who peddle them.”
