MP praises CST after it alerts him to online death threats

Conservative MP Johnny Mercer has praised the Community Security Trust (CST) after it alerted both him and the police to sickening death threats on social media.

The former veterans minister, and MP for Plymouth Moor View was targeted with threats including a message reading, “The next dead MP?” posted by individual who objected to reports that Mercer had offered employment to an Afghan interpreter in his office.

Screenshots also showed the comment, “Until politicians are dragged out of their homes and butchered, things won’t change. Until that happens they will continue to take the piss. They’ve made it that way, not us.”

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The same individual, who is believed to live locally to the MP and former British army officer, had also posted antisemitic messages about “globalists” and another suggesting the “little Jew needs skinning alive.”

Mercer later pointed out on social media he is not himself Jewish.

Jewish News understands that CST researchers had been  doing general work on protecting the Jewish community when they came across the threats directed at Mercer.

A few weeks ago they had foiled a potential extremist plot in New York, and it is the second time this year CST have discovered a threat to a UK MP.

They communal charity conduct such work on a confidential basis, but have confirmed their involvement in the Mercer incident, after the MP made the threats against him public on Monday.

As @JohnnyMercerUK says, this thread relates to a series of vicious threats against him that CST researchers found in the course of our work, which we reported to police and to Johnny Mercer's office. Extremism feeds antisemitism and endangers democracy – it is all one fight. https://t.co/vgGrSS6jXt

— CST (@CST_UK) December 12, 2022

In further threatening posts directed at Mercer, the individual claimed to have done “recce’s” of the MPs home, as well as encouraging others to “lynch” him.

Sharing the posts  himself Mercer tweeted:”People should know the price of being an MP.”

He added: “Thanks to the Community Security Trust for bringing this to my attention, and doing your bit to look after brilliant Jewish colleagues like Ruth Smeeth.

“Think before you do things like this. We all have families – and for the record, colleagues get far worse.”

On the specific threats to himself, he wrote:”This all from one guy, in Plymouth. Threatens to kill me, skin me in salt (bit specific), has done recce’s of my home and encourages others to ‘lynch’ me.”

CST later tweeted: “As Johnny Mercer says, this thread relates to a series of vicious threats against him that CST researchers found in the course of our work, which we reported to police and to Johnny Mercer’s office.

“Extremism feeds antisemitism and endangers democracy – it is all one fight.”