A former Hope Not Hate communications adviser has admitted the group trying to take Nigel Farage to court uses “dirty, underhand, low down, unscrupulous” tactics in their efforts to crush political opponents.
Writing for the Labour Uncut website in 2011, paid Hope Not Hate activist turned Telegraph columnist Dan Hodges admitted to how the group operates.
“I started working with Hope not Hate on the media campaign for the 2009 Euro elections,” he writes, before going on to describe how his organisation went toe-to-toe with the socialistic British National Party (BNP):
“It was no-holds-barred, bare knuckle, PR. We used every dirty, underhand, low down, unscrupulous trick in the book. Then when the book had been used up, we tore it to shreds, set it on fire, and stuffed it down Nick Griffin’s underpants”.
This approach taken towards a racist, ethno-centric party like the BNP could be legitimised. But questions can be asked as to whether or not the George Soros-funded group — which found itself without raison d’etre following the BNP’s collapse — should be applying the same tactics to the UK Independence Party.
Indeed the group asked the question of itself just three years ago as it faced irrelevance.
In 2013, the group asked its supporters: “UKIP is surging in the polls and could well come first in next year’s European Elections. How should HOPE not hate respond? Should we begin to oppose them or should we stick to extremist groups like the BNP?”
The very nature of the question seems to accept that there is no element of extremism inherent in UKIP.
The author of the article accompanying the question, director Nick Lowles, even admitted at the time: “I really don’t know what we should do. As an anti-fascist, UKIP is outside my remit”.
But the organisation decided to pursue UKIP as their new target anyway, setting up the “Purple Rain” blog and assigning hordes of campaigners to pursue political activities against the party, despite Hope Not Hate also having a charitable arm.
Soon after the decision was taken, Mr. Hodges began writing attack pieces about UKIP in the Telegraph, a paper renowned for its UKIP-friendly audience and owners.
Hope Not Hate now spends a significant amount of its time attacking members of the UK Independence Party on policy points, repeating libellous and untrue comments against members, and targeting young members of the party in particular.
This week it was revealed that the organisation had exaggerated data in order to create more tensions over hate speech in Britain.
Just six days after the murder of Jo Cox MP, the group sent out fundraiser emails using the tragedy to rake in cash.
Hope Not Hate then published a report found to be “misleading” by The Economist magazine, which stated they inflated so-called “hate speech” incidents online by around 3000 per cent in order to garner media headlines.
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