Lauded 'anti-racism activist' has ties to Holocaust denial group

An image of Jim Curran went viral after he was photographed at a Black Lives Matter rally in London, but Curran regularly attends antisemitic conspiracy theory meetings.

By DONNA RACHEL EDMUNDS
Antisemitism in the United States: Antisemitic graffiti on The Rock landmark at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, blaming Jews for the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, September, 2019 (photo credit: ADL)
Antisemitism in the United States: Antisemitic graffiti on The Rock landmark at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, blaming Jews for the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, September, 2019
(photo credit: ADL)
Britain's ITV News has been forced to retract a report purportedly about two anti-racism campaigners, one a young black girl and the other an elderly white man, joining forces across the generational divide, after it emerged that the man in question was known to attend antisemitic meetings where Holocaust denial was commonplace.
The story was supposed to be a heart-warming one. A photograph of Rosie Grace and Jim Curran in conversation, snapped by a student at a recent Black Lives Matter protest in London, had quickly gone viral, lauded across the internet as an illustration of the power of the anti-racism protests to bring people together in unity. Curran was particularly praised for a sign he was wearing, which read: “Racism is the virus and we are the vaccine.”
The image caught the eye of ITV London News which ran a segment reuniting the pair on their flagship 10pm news broadcast, describing Curran as "a veteran of human rights campaigns dating back to the 1960s."

However, all was not what it seemed. A report published jointly earlier this year by the Community Security Trust (CST), a charity which protects British Jews against antisemitism, and anti-racism charitable trust Hope Not Hate named Curran as a regular attendee of "Keep Talking," described in the report as a "conspiracy theory organization" that meets regularly in north London.
According to the report's authors, a meeting they attended included "open and unchallenged Holocaust denial and antisemitic conspiracy theories about Mossad and the Rothschild banking family."
A March 5, 2019 meeting was titled: "The loss of freedom of speech on Israel, thanks to bogus antisemitism claims."
Another talk delivered to the group on September 7, 2017 by Gilad Atzmon was titled "History Concealment and the Balfour Declaration." The report notes: "In the speech he argued that the Balfour Declaration came about to 'conceal a century of Jewish political hegemony in Britain.'" Atzmon has a long history of antisemitic conspiracy theories: in his most recent book, Being In Time, he wrote that “Jewish power is the most effective and forceful power in America and beyond” and that “Jews have become a dominant element in Western society.”
"Atzmon’s theories of Jewish power fell on fertile ground to this audience, with one member even shouting out a comment about Jewish DNA."
The report further notes: "Tony Gratrex, who previously headed the Bracknell Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and Irish nationalist campaigner Jim Curran, both attended meetings consistently over the period we were monitoring the group [2017 - 2020]."
The difficulty with the photo appears to first have been brought to light by Joanne Bell, an activist against antisemitism, according to CAMERA UK, which tweeted its opposition to the image being lauded. Bell commented in her tweet: "Racists can also wear suits and kindly elderly faces."
Bell then put Curran's record to Grace on Twitter, but the latter was unapologetic, defending Curran and his record. In a return tweet, Grace commented "I spoke with Jim and judge him on our convo and from his vibe and his work. The Jews are not innocent." That tweet appears to have since been deleted.
In a separate tweet Grace added: “He is an activist and a beautiful man. Spoke some real deep truths. His words brought me to tears. He said the genocide the news [sic] went through, was nothing on slavery and what black people endured and are still enduring.”
And in a further tweet she made the same claim, writing: "He spoke about the genocide the Jews went through ( so your wrong ) more importantly though he said that these numbers are nothing compared to the Africans genocide endured for the sake of slavery.. #facts"

ITV News has since retracted its report, removing it from their website.


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