Director of Hope Not Hate Nick Lowles has entered damage control mode after Breitbart London editor in chief Raheem Kassam exposed his organisation’s methods.
Mr. Lowles decided to slam Mr. Kassam who, as a private citizen, had begun a crowdfunding project to gather information on the self-proclaimed anti-fascist organisation.
Taking his PR effort to the Guardian, Lowles noted that Kassam was the editor of Breitbart, calling the website “far-right” but not offering any evidence to back up this spurious claim.
Lowles also claimed that Hope Not Hate and he himself had received “thousands of abusive and threatening tweets, Facebook posts, emails and phone calls,” though he failed to elaborate on any specific incidents and failed to see the irony in the fact that many of his fellow travellers of the left have used this tactic against UKIP and its leaders for years.
He then claimed, “this is how these people operate. They attempt to vilify, abuse and bully their opponents into silence.”
Mr Lowles is currently attempting to use the courts to silence Nigel Farage’s criticism of his organisation.
Despite Hope Not Hate receiving funding from hedge fund billionaire and open borders supporter George Soros, Lowles claimed that he was in a “David v Goliath struggle”, portraying himself as a David against “an online army and millionaires in the wings.”
According to Lowles, Mr. Kassam and former UKIP leader Nigel Farage “ignore the community campaigning we carry out across the UK.” Lowles went on to add that the group “brings communities together.”
Despite the claims made by Lowles regarding the accomplishments of Hope Not Hate, some are highly sceptical of the tactics used by the group. One such is Telegraph columnist Dan Hodges who formerly served as communications director of the organisation.
He has reported that Hope Not Hate used “dirty, underhand, low down, unscrupulous” tactics against those the perceived as their enemies.
Hope Not Hate have also been accused of skewing data related to hate speech claims in the wake of the murder of MP Jo Cox. The Economist magazine investigated a claim by Lowles that there had been over 50,000 tweets “celebrating” the death of the Yorkshire MP. The magazine proved that Lowles had exaggerated the number by almost 3,000 percent.
The column written by Lowles is largely in response to comments made by Mr Farage who said the organisation, which has specifically targetted him and UKIP, uses extremist methods to shut down their perceived enemies.
Lowles has since declared that he will be filing a lawsuit against Farage requesting supporters to donate to a legal fund.