Far-left group HOPE not Hate (HnH) have been identified in a new research paper on far-left extremist violence alongside Antifa and other violent groups by the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) for their “infiltration and research” of political opponents.
The research paper lists the group, which has previously received funds from left-wing billionaire George Soros, as a facilitator of information for far-left extremists alongside the Swedish Expo Foundation, also funded by Soros, which objected to being included in the report earlier this week.
The FOI report states that the far-left scene often requests information on right-wing opponents, “that they want to hold to account in some way (for example by visiting people’s homes with threats and harassment) and sometimes they want information, names and pictures, to publicly identify those involved in nationalist movements”, and that organisations like Expo and HnH provide this information.
The report specifically lists an operation involving former Expo writer, now HnH researcher, Patrik Hermansson, who infiltrated the alt-right and far-right circles in the UK and the U.S. last year.
The report is not the first time HnH have been linked to radical far-left extremists as head researcher Dr. Joe Mulhall has tweeted out to Antifa accounts on a number of occasions. In one tweet he asked the account “Antifascist Network” their “thoughts” on a mini-documentary he had made for HnH in Northern Iraq in 2014.
The Antifascist Network twitter account has also tweeted out support for Antifa extremists fighting alongside Kurdish militias in Northern Syria.
Antifa has long claimed their members fight with the YPG forces, though the Antifascist Network account, and other Antifa-linked accounts, have tweeted out pictures featuring symbols of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a proscribed terrorist group in the UK.
French members of Antifa fighting in Northern Syria released a video late last month claiming they would return to France to fight the French state, engaging in acts of sabotage and targetting police and intelligence officials in revenge for several evictions of far-left activists from squats and occupied university buildings.
HnH has, in addition to receiving funds from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, received funding from the UK government as well. A senior director of the group, Ms. Ruth Smeeth, is a sitting Labour MP for Stoke-On-Trent North.
There has been at least one recent instance of HnH providing private information to the public that was read by Antifa extremists who committed acts of violence.
Last month HnH tweeted out the private location of the conference being held by the anti-mass migration Generation Identity activist group which was then read and republished by the Antifascist Network account. Not long after the release of the address, Antifa extremists arrived at the location and engaged in violence, with one of their number being arrested by the police.
In recent months far-left violence has increased in countries like France and Germany. Earlier this week Breitbart London reported on a “riot tourist” handbook released by the German branch of Antifa calling on extremists to target the conference of the anti-mass migration Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Augsburg a the end of June as well as various war memorials and other targets across the city.
The handbook, which teaches extremists how to burn down cars and puncture the tyres of moving cars by laying down strips of wood with nails in them, also featured a blog site which linked to an even more radical terror manual called “Prisma” that teaches extremists how to sabotage electrical lines and provides schematics for making remote-detonated bombs.