A campaign group linked to the GB News boycott has been accused of running racist conspiracy theories which Sir Keir Starmer has had to ban in the Labour Party.
Ethical Consumer, a UK-based Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) group, helps produce toolkits, imagery and research documents for groups like Stop Funding Hate which is behind the push to stop advertising on GB News.
But it has been revealed that one of those toolkits includes an antisemitic conspiracy theory about Israel which Starmer has banned in the Labour Party.
It claims: “Israel’s system of apartheid is a worldwide model for repression and plays a key role in the international growth of racism and militarism. Police and security personnel from Brazil, the US and the EU have been trained by the Israeli police, military and/or other security forces. Our oppressors are more connected than ever.”
Join our free WhatsApp community for the latest politics news
The theory was used by leftwing groups to suggest that police who killed George Floyd in America which sparked riots across the country, were trained by Israel in the killer techniques.
When in June 2020, Rebecca Long Bailey shared an article containing the conspiracy theory she was sacked from the front bench by Starmer.
Sir Keir said: “The sharing of that article was wrong… because the article contained anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and I have therefore stood Rebecca Long-Bailey down from the shadow cabinet.”
A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “The notion that Israel exports repression around the world and can be tied to all the abuses committed by security services in both the developed and less developed parts of the world is obscene.
“It draws on a trope of outsized and nefarious Jewish power, which was also the basis of the antisemitic conspiracy that the Jewish state had taught American police how to kneel on necks and kill black Americans.
“When activists try to connect every bad thing in the world to the Jews or their state, reasonable observers can see what is going on.”
The row has broken out amid concerns over the way hard-left woke groups are trying to influence advertising and the behaviour of businesses to shut down free speech.
Ethical Consumer has not responded to Express.co.uk for a request for comment.
However, its partner group Stop Funding Hate (SFH), which uses its toolkits, has been pushing a boycott by advertisers of GB News because they do not like its centre-right content.
The Government also distanced itself from another partner organisation of SFH, the Conscious Advertising Network after people connected with it branded Nigel Farage a fascist and supported efforts by the banks to close his account over his political views.
Mr Farage has warned that the problems of woke leftwing influence in corporations “runs deep”.
Ethical Consumer is a magazine, campaign group, and consultancy business that was founded in 1989 to advance the BDS anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. Since 2014 they have supported the controversial BDS movement.
When GB News launched they told their supporters to “boycott the bad guys” and that “a great way to shop ethically is to boycott those companies that aren’t behaving responsibly and maybe join a boycott campaign” (against GB News).
