Now the Met police are investigating death threats to Corbyn, the smear campaign has gone too far

The Metropolitan police are investigating death threats to Jeremy Corbyn. This suggests the unsubstantiated smear campaign has gone too far.

Death threats

Both the Charity Commission and the police are investigating the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA). People have accused the alleged pro-Israel organisation of inciting death threats after it launched a petition branding Corbyn an “antisemite” and calling for him to go.

The Skwawkbox compiled some of the threatening comments:

Gideon Falter, Chairman of CAA, told the Skwawkbox:

We condemn this violent language which is as bad as the language about Jews on Jeremy Corbyn’s own Facebook page. We have asked Change.org to give us a means of removing it. Campaign Against Antisemitism fully understands its obligations. We are obliged to act in the public benefit and without political fear or favour. That is why we have called out Jeremy Corbyn as an antisemite and demanded his departure, just as we have done before with antisemitic politicians in other parties.

The CAA petition provides no contextualised evidence that the Labour leader has ever said anything antisemitic. Nor does it contain any quotes from Corbyn that you could describe as antisemitic, because it relies on misrepresentation.

Elsewhere, a far-right extremist was jailed earlier this year after threatening to kill Corbyn. Another who sent an email to Corbyn saying “death is coming soon” in 2017 got a suspended sentence.

A charity?

Aside from the death threats, the Charity Commission is investigating the CAA over its charity status. People reporting the CAA argue that it’s violating rules about charities engaging in political activity. Those rules include:

• “legal requirement: to be a charity an organisation must be established for charitable purposes only, which are for the public benefit. An organisation will not be charitable if its purposes are political”
• “campaigning and political activity can be legitimate and valuable activities for charities to undertake”
• “legal requirement: however, political campaigning, or political activity, as defined in this guidance, must be undertaken by a charity only in the context of supporting the delivery of its charitable purposes”

The media has extensively covered allegations against Corbyn for months. Yet no corporate outlet has reported on the investigation, even though outlets regularly report on other Charity Commission investigations.

We are witnessing a life-long anti-racist campaigner smeared as an antisemite. Now it’s got to the point where Corbyn is receiving death threats because of the campaign to stain him. That’s despicable.

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Featured image via Chatham House/ WikiCommons