Bartholomew's Notes

From the Huffington Post (UK):

Katie Hopkins has deleted a tweet which showed her posing with a Swedish journalist known for claiming the Holocaust never happened.

The picture, screengrabbed by another Twitter user, shows Hopkins with Peter Sweden.

…Sweden has previously used Twitter to question the fact that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust as well as expressing some sympathies for the policies of Adolf Hitler.

…He also believes the Jews and the Vatican are colluding in a plot to create a New World Order which is seeking to undermine Europe by moving Muslim populations under the guise of the current refugee crisis.

The same photo was also Tweeted and then deleted by Sweden himself, suggesting that he complied with a request from Hopkins for its removal.

As has been widely reported, Hopkins – known as an opinion-monger rather than a journalist – met Sweden while reporting for Mail Online (1) from Sicily on the refugee crisis. Sweden is part of Defend Europe, a group affiliated with the Identitarian Movement that has chartered a boat to prevent refugees and undocumented migrants from crossing the Mediterranean from Libya.  They argue that this will prevent human trafficking and save lives, and they stress that refugees found adrift will be returned to Libya – i.e. not left to drown. The Defend Europe website is registered to Patrick Lenart, the Identitarian Movement leader in Austria.

Hopkins presented herself on Twitter as also having met with Save the Children, which assists those who get into difficulties while making the crossing, and thus as someone who is investigating both sides of the argument; however, another Huffington Post article states that Save the Children denies this, and it notes that Hopkins’s article, titled “Katie Hopkins on NGOs colluding with traffickers in Sicily”, was pulled by the Mail website after being up for just a couple of hours.

The new attention on Peter Sweden (not sure if that is his real name) has not been to his advantage. He had been scheduled to speak at an anti-Islam protest in Bristol in September, but he has now been removed from the line-up following complaints from UKIP’s Anne-Marie Waters. Sweden describes Waters as “supposed right wing” (here) and a “radical feminist” (here), and he appears to believe that this is an issue of “free speech” (here).

He has also attempted some Twitter PR. He began with a dismissive brush off: “There were some old tweets but people mature and views change.” Then, he moved on to a complaint of “character assassination” by “leftist trolls” using “old tweets” that have been taken “out of context”, before finally announcing that “I have had opinions in the past that I strongly regret”. In this third Tweet, he explicitly repudiates his former Holocaust denial, and he asks readers to recall the words of Jesus, “let he who is without sin cast the first stone”. These were “stupid misstakes [sic] done in one’s youth”.

There are a few problems here: his anti-Jewish conspiracy Tweets date from only a year ago or less, and this is the first indication that he has had a re-think. He doesn’t explain when or why his views changed, and he has done nothing to make amends for hate he was spreading just a few months ago. His concern appears to be only for his own reputation and advancement as a political activist.

The first Huffington Post article also notes a couple of other Defend Europe crewmates: Lauren Southern, and one Brittany Pettibone. The article notes Pettibone’s belief that the West is experiencing “white genocide”, and her attempts to raise funds for a podcast based on her self-described status as a “Pizzagate expert”.

Footnote

(1) Hopkins is frequently described as a writer for the Daily Mail, although the Daily Mail‘s editor Paul Dacre has recently complained that this is “a lie”, because Mail Online is “a totally separate entity that has its own publisher, its own readership, different content and a very different world view”. However, Mail Online is very obviously the online presence of the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday (the url refers to “dailymail”), even though it also has extra content that does not make it into the print editions.

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