Jeremy Corbyn leadership ‘radicalised’ some Labour members, report claims

Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership has “radicalised” some Labour Party members into holding more extreme views on Israel, a report claims.

Research by campaigner David Collier, submitted to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, was published today after a deep dive on thousands of social media accounts.

According to the 200-page report, some party members who previously exhibited little to no interest online in Israel became “obsessed” after Corbyn’s election.

The report, which contains over 30 case studies, claims to have identified a pattern of radicalisation in the party, with some members joining pro-Labour Facebook groups and sharing conspiratorial material about Israel, including the depiction of mainstream media as “Zionist”, and developing “hostility towards mainstream British Jewry”.

“Loyalty to the Labour Party and by extension Jeremy Corbyn saw many Labour supporters dip their toes into anti-Israel ideology,” the report reads.

In one case, a person claiming to be a Labour member who had made no public statements on the conflict in 2014 grew to posting over 300 times on the subject last year, the report claims.

Among the material by the user flagged up by Collier is a post from September 2018 claiming the Rothschild family “are also behind every war since Napoleon”.

Another post by the user claims “Zionists and other US corporations” bankrolled Adolf Hitler before and throughout the Second World War.

Another online user claiming to be a Labour member who made no Facebook posts in 2014 referencing Israel grew to sharing conspiracy theories, such as a captioned photograph claiming the United Nations seeks to build a “one world totalitarian Zionist government.”

“The antisemitic toxicity we are witnessing is not new, nor is the message and the underlying anti-Jewish discrimination is older than the nation we live in,” Collier’s report reads.

“What does need highlighting is how the normalisation of antisemitism is spreading beyond the political confines of the Labour Party.”

A Labour Party spokesperson told the Telegraph: “Some of these individuals are suspended and some are not Labour Party members. The majority of complaints we receive are about people who are not party members.

“The vast majority of Labour members are motivated by equality, justice and fairness, and despise antisemitism. As the data we have released shows, antisemitism complaints relate to a small minority of members, but one antisemite is one too many.”