Candidates standing for Reform UK at the general election have posted links to antisemitic videos by the conspiracy theorist David Icke, shared claims that Israel was behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks and suggested Greta Thunberg is “controlled” by “Rothschild handlers”, the JC can reveal.
Some of the most offensive posts were disseminated by Northampton North candidate Antony Antoniou. In May 2016, he posted a video by Icke on Twitter along with a description stating it was “the most antisemitic video ever” and revealed “the truth about Jews”. Since Antoniou posted the link, YouTube has removed it on the grounds it “promoted hate speech”.
Other videos linked to in posts by Antoniou included one entitled “Rothschild Zionism, World War Three and the New World Order”, in which Icke claimed “Zionism puts agents in places of power”. Another suggested “Hitler founded Israel”.
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The Mail on Sunday reported in March that Jacqui Harris, who is standing for Reform in Kenilworth and Southam, was suspended by the Conservative Party when she was a councillor after suggesting on Twitter that row over Labour antisemitism was “probably masterminded” by the Mossad or CIA.
However, the JC can reveal that after being cleared, she was suspended again and then expelled when the Campaign Against Antisemitism complained about further posts.
These included sharing a claim that President Trump was an “Israel puppet” who was “completely controlled by criminal Zionists”, and a post in which she linked to an article that said “all the credible, independent, and objective evidence proves that Israel and the United States were behind 9/11” while Israel’s treatment of Palestinians should be compared to the crimes committed by the Nazis in Auschwitz.
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Angela Carter-Begbie, Reform’s candidate in Queen’s Park and Maida Vale, posted in June 2020 after George Floyd was killed by US police that she “wanted to see a white or a Jew badly treated” every time she watched a clip of a “black person” being assaulted by police. The JC reported earlier this week that she also likened the government’s Covid lockdowns to the Holocaust.
Other Reform candidates have disseminated claims suggesting that the Rothschilds possess immense, hidden power – a classic and familiar antisemitic trope.
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One is Garry Sutherland, standing in Exmouth and Exeter East, who posted a link to an Icke talk on “Rothschild Zionism” in March, commenting: “Remember when they used to mock him? Well, they’re not mocking him now.”
Meanwhile in Grantham and Bourne, Reform candidate Mike Rudkin suggested in 2022 that the eco-campaigner Greta Thunberg had a “handler” who “is in fact a Rothschild”.
North Cornwall candidate Rowland O’Connor posted in November that renewable energy was the work of a “despicable globalist cabal” led by the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers and Bill Gates, which was trying to exert “totalitarian Marxist control under the false narrative of saving the planet”.
In another post O’Connor referred to the “Rothschild wealth redistribution scam”, saying that the reason why Rishi Sunak supported green energy was that he had received “30 pieces of silver” from Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum.
Asked for comment by the JC, O’Connor said he was “not an MP but a regular citizen” and that questioning him about his posts “breached my privacy”. He said he did not consider his statements about the Rothschilds were antisemitic.
After being contacted by the JC, Antoniou deleted the posts that mentioned the Icke videos. The following day he said he “did not agree with them” and had only posted them because he “wanted people to know what’s out there, what’s being said” and to drive traffic to his website. He said he had also posted links to segments from the Russian channel RT, whose Ofcom licence to broadcast in the UK was removed in 2022 because of its bias. He did not agree with the RT clips, either, Antoniou said.
Harris, Carter-Begbie, Sutherland and Rudkin were approached for comment.
