HOPE not hate can reveal that two Brexit Party MEPs and a prospective parliamentary candidate (PPC) have appeared on the Richie Allen Show, a David…
HOPE not hate can reveal that two Brexit Party MEPs and a prospective parliamentary candidate (PPC) have appeared on the Richie Allen Show, a David Icke-affiliated radio broadcast that serves as an online platform for antisemitic conspiracy theorists and Holocaust deniers.
Ann Widdecombe MEP appeared on the show three times between August 2017 and April 2019, David Bull MEP appeared on the show as recently as 30 April 2019, and Stuart Waiton, PPC for Dundee West and an unsuccessful MEP candidate in Scotland, made five appearances between 27 June 2018 and 9 May 2019.
Allen has also hosted numerous antisemites and Holocaust deniers on his show, and has himself questioned the numbers of Jews that died in the Holocaust. Brexit Party figures have appeared on the same episodes as racist and antisemitic guests, such as alt-right white nationalist Lana Lokteff, and antisemitic 9/11 “Truther” Kevin Barrett.
Allen is the Manchester-based protégé of conspiracy theorist David Icke, who has frequently engaged in extreme antisemitism. The Richie Allen Show emerged from Icke’s short-lived broadcast The People’s Voice, and was for a time hosted on Icke’s website. As actor and writer Marlon Solomon writes, while Allen insists his guests are on to “debate”, they are often given an easy ride if they hold conspiratorial beliefs, and whilst presenting his show as a “free speech” platform, Allen often praises his guests despite their extreme positions.
For example, Allen hosted infamous Holocaust denier Nick Kollerstrom, a regular on the show, on Holocaust Memorial Day 2016, calling him an “old friend” and describing his 7/7 conspiracy theory work as “vital” and “essential”. Kollerstrom proceeded to deny the existence of gas chambers, to claim that the Jewish death toll was 200,000 in the camps, and to claim that there is “no trace of any extermination policy” and “no trace of any scorn or contempt” towards Jews in the camps. Whilst Allen lightly challenges Kollerstrom on some of his assertions, Allen also states that “I believe something is very wrong with the story, otherwise I wouldn’t be having you on”, and that “I believe they were killing people […] I believe they [the Nazis] were maniacal. However, there’s a big lie there somewhere, I don’t believe the numbers are anywhere near as great as they’re saying, you know”, going on to tell Kollerstrom “I’m with you with respect to the numbers and the way that it’s been exploited ever since”.
Allen is also a cheerleader for Holocaust denier Alison Chabloz, known for her prosecution for uploading to YouTube footage of her Jew-hating musical performance at the fascist London Forum in 2016. Allen has hosted Chabloz on his show, calling her a “remarkable woman, extraordinary woman”, and calling her songs “satirical, they’re very funny, they’re very good I think”. The songs for which Chabloz was convicted include the vile “(((Survivors)))”, in which she mocks Anne Frank and Holocaust survivors Irene Zysblat and Elie Wiesel (the triple parentheses in the title are a common antisemitic symbol in the contemporary online far right). There are many further examples of antisemitism on Allen’s show.
Widdecombe, described by Allen as an “an old friend of the programme”, most recently appeared on Allen’s show on 10 April this year, an episode which Allen kicked off by describing antisemite and frequent guest Gilad Atzmon as a “great jazz saxophonist and writer”.
However, Widdecombe’s first appearance came on 15 August 2017, while the show was still broadcast on Icke’s website. The following guest on that episode was Kevin Barrett, a regular on both Allen’s show and on the Iranian state network PressTV, and a contributor to the antisemitic conspiracy theory magazine American Free Press, founded by the nazi WIllis Carto. Barrett, who believes that Israeli plotters were behind 9/11, has also questioned the Holocaust. Allen introduced him as “a terrific journalist, [and] a renowned academic”, later stating that he “can’t recommend him highly enough”. During this episode Barrett and Allen agree that the violence at the alt-right Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, which resulted in the death of an anti-racist after a nazi drove a car into a crowd, was likely “partially staged or scripted” in order to enable a government clampdown on populism.
Bull appeared on the show on 30 April 2019, tweeting that the experience was a “pleasure” and linking to his interview via the website Conspiracy Daily Update (a site which contains numerous links to the show of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and nazi Mark Collett).
Their conversation focussed on his Brexit Party candidacy, although Allen also questioned Bull, a medical doctor, about his thoughts on vaccinations. The following guest on the episode was Lana Lokteff, the American white nationalist and co-host of Red Ice Radio, the premier media outlet of the alt-right.
Allen and Lokteff debated the conspiracy theory of “white genocide”, the notion that sinister elites are plotting to reduce the white European population. Whilst disagreeing with Lokteff on her views on racial identity and belief in a “Jewish conspiracy”, during the course of their discussion Allen repeatedly praises her for her intelligence, repeatedly states he does not consider her to be racist, and praises her programme as “very important […] long may it continue”.
Episodes featuring PPC Waiton, a Senior Lecturer at Abertay University, have also been marked by antisemitism. During the 27 June 2018 episode in which Waiton appears, Allen also talks to Barrett, with Allen claiming that the predominantly Muslim countries identified in Trump’s travel ban policy were “destabilised by the neo-con Zionist puppet masters that control Trump now”. Allen also agrees with Barrett that the 7/7 bombings were a “totally proven obvious false flag”.
On 6 March 2019, Allen’s talk with Waiton was preceded by a conversation with the economist and conspiracy theorist Paul Craig Roberts, who in May this year wrote in support of Holocaust denier David Irving on his website. Roberts was introduced by Allen as a “brilliant man”, and during their conversation Roberts claims that the “Israel lobby” “completely control” the media, later stating that Israel has power “over the United States, you know, it’s the media, it’s the Congress, it entertainment, it’s the financial system, Wall Street, the big banks, it’s just amazing. They control the foreign policy in the Middle East”.
Allen kicked off the 21 November 2018 show on which Waiton appeared with a lengthy solo rant, in which he reads the introductory paragraphs of a Guardian article, which describes the experiences of students visiting Auschwitz, in a mocking tone backed by emotional music.
Allen went on to state:
If you listen to Paul Craig Roberts talk to me last night about the presence, you know, Jews make up about 1.5, is it, or 1.8 percent of the demographic in the United States of America, something like that. And yet the influence of Zionist Jews in that country. Jews are a thousand times more likely to make it to an Ivy League University in the United States, a thousand times more likely than your typical average white guy or white girl. Why is that?
And [Norman] Finkelstein has said over the years, you know, with the success of the identity group that is Jews, why harp on and cry and whinge about antisemitism, which doesn’t really exist anyway – well there’s a political end to it […] It is outrageous to be spending government money! Sending students to go to Auschwitz, so that they can come back to combat Jew hatred, which does not exist in this country on any level. It does not. It is lunacy.
The revelation that Brexit Party figures have repeatedly appeared on Allen’s show despite his track records displays the willingness to party figures to rub shoulders with fringe figures and to exploit conspiratorial thinking. HOPE not hate has exposed multiple links between Brexit Party figures and conspiracy theorists:
A Reform Party candidate fantasised about deporting “millions” of British citizens to “rid itself of the foreign plague we have been diseased with”. UPDATE: Reform…
