Jeremy Corbyn’s brother joins his new party, then shares antisemitic conspiracy theory

Jeremy Corbyn’s brother has shared a notorious white supremacist antisemitic conspiracy theory on social media, days after stating that he had joined his sibling’s new political grouping.

Piers Corbyn, best known for climate change and Covid-19 vaccine denial, told an interviewer in late August that he would be joining “Your Party”, the new political group formed by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana. Video footage showed Piers Corbyn saying: “It hasn’t formed policies yet, but I’ve joined it, to make debate about the issues which he [Jeremy Corbyn] is missing, the issues about migration… and the issues on climate, which he’s currently very confused on”.

On Monday Piers Corbyn shared an antisemitic conspiracy theory known as the Kalergi Plan, attributed to a political thinker named Richard Coudenhove Kalergi.

The graphic shared by Jeremy Corbyn’s brother included the incorrect claim that Kalergi was “Jewish”, and attributed a false quote to him, which read: “We intend to turn Europe and North America into a mixed mongrel race of Asians and Negros ruled over by Jews”.

The graphic shared by Piers Corbyn also included a supposed 11-point plan of Kalergi’s “to subvert Western civilisation”, including “the teaching of sex and homosexuality to children” and “huge immigration to destroy identity”. Alongside the graphic, Piers Corbyn had written “Everything in the Kalergi plan is being attempted now. Resist! Defy! Do Not Comply!”

Richard von-Coudenhove Kalergi was the founder of the Paneuropean Union, the first organisation to actively promote the concept of a politically unified Europe. The child of a white European father and a Japanese mother at a time when to be such was rare, he wrote in his 1925 book, Practical Idealism, that “The man of the future will be of mixed race. Today’s races and classes will gradually disappear owing to the vanishing of space, time, and prejudice. The Eurasian Negroid race of the future, similar in its appearance to the Ancient Egyptians, will replace the diversity of peoples with a diversity of individuals.”

In recent years, Neo-Nazis have sought to take Kalergi’s writings and merge them with the Great Replacement antisemitic conspiracy theory, which falsely claims that Jews have orchestrated mass immigration to Europe in order to demographically and culturally replace white Europeans. Kalergi was not Jewish, and his quote has been doctored to include references to the Jews.

In 2020, Hope Not Hate and the Community Security Trust reported that Piers Corbyn had attended a meeting arranged by Keep Talking, a discussion group focused on conspiracy theories which has featured a number of speakers notorious for Holocaust denial. In late 2021 and early 2021, leaflets connected to Piers Corbyn were distributed in several areas of London, including Barnet, which has a large Jewish population, which compared the Covid-19 vaccine to the Holocaust. When queried about his use of this comparison, Piers Corbyn defended himself by saying: “I was married for 22 years to a Jewess and obviously her mother’s forebears fled the Baltic states just before the war because of Hitler or the Nazis in general. I’ve worked with Jewish leading world scientists over the last 30 years. I’ve also employed Jewish people in my business Weather Action, one of whom was a superb worker.”

In 2016, Piers Corbyn described comments by Louise Ellman, then the Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, saying that Jeremy Corbyn needed to do more to combat antisemitism in Labour as “absurd”. When quizzed about this, the then-Labour leader sided with his brother, saying “My brother has his point of view, I have mine. We actually fundamentally agree – we are a family that has been fighting racism from the day we were born. My mother was at Cable Street.”

Responses to Piers Corbyn’s tweet included: “Congratulations on actually managing to be the less sane Corbyn”, “I think this finally answers which side their mother was on at Cable Street”, and “Not gonna lie, I’m sort of looking forward to Jeremy having to kick his lunatic brother out of Party McPartyface”. The name “Your Party” is an interim name for Corbyn and Sultana’s new initiative, with the wider public being canvassed last week to provide ideas for what the party should be known as.

Both Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana have been contacted for comment.