Hope not Hate

[Keenovay]

Just read Zoe Williams' interview with Nick Lowles of Hope not Hate, the anti-fascist campaign group, and decided to check out their stance on gender ideology to see if they had any nuanced understanding. Sigh.

It can be summed up by this 2022 article, "Transphobia and The Far Right" which reduces concerns around self ID to fomented media led panics which are then exploited by the far right.

HNH are an anti-fascist organisation, so I get that everything they publish will be via that lens. And they are correct in asserting that far-right and Christian fundamentalists exploit trans issues for their own ends.

However a responsible researcher would at least pay lip service to the fact that there's views across the political spectrum on this topic. There's no acknowledgement here that grassroots and left-leaning GC feminists exist, or may have legitimate concerns around self ID and puberty blockers which can be distorted and exploited by bad actors. The impression left in the reader's mind is a simplistic association of gender critical views with fascism, with trans people as victims. In publishing research on this topic without nuance or qualification, I think HNH paints a target on gender critical feminists' backs.

Let's hope this goes somewhere...

"Tory MP Jack Rankin has written to the CEO of the Charity Commission demanding it investigates Hope Not Hate for possible breaches of its charitable status..."

“Hope Not Hate Limited is purely political operation with a reported history of fabricating security threats, spreading disinformation and pushing smear campaigns…it seems incompatible with the charitable requirement to further public benefit in a balanced, non-partisan manner.”

https://order-order.com/2025/09/15/exc-tory-mp-demands-charity-commission-investigate-labour-linked-hope-not-hate/

I have very little time for hope not hate

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-63487213

They rode roughshod over Rosie Cooper for the sake of a TV show. It strikes me they are all about self promotion and £££££ rather than solutions.

Ms Cooper said: "I'm appalled at ITV's recent treatment of the threats to MPs. I've been used as a marketing tool by both Hope Not Hate and ITV"

Agreed. For this reason I have the strongest suspicion of anyone calling themselves antifascist or anyone else fascist. You can be pretty sure they don’t know what it means.

And it angers me that the word for something as horrific as fascism has been weakened to meaning “opinions I don’t like”.

I Hate HNH and I Hope they get exposed as the misinformed bad faith frauds they are

The problem is whilst Gender Critical left leaning feminists have legitimate concerns, their louder counterparts engage in loud dehumanisation campaigns routinely portraying trans people as mentally ill dangerous predators. Twitter & indeed Mumsnet are at saturation point with these characters. So if the public understand Gender critical beliefs to be associated with fascism & the far right that's not so much a product of outside conflation but the movement failing to call out their own. Whilst its certainly true the Far right are coopting the gender critical cause, the movement itself harbours far right thinkers.

However, having perused the Sex Matters website I was impressed with their presentation that clearly doesn't engage in such rhetoric & in fact calls it out.

How the Gender Critical movement goes about the natural attraction of far right thinkers is on them & blaming outside groups for noticing what is also an internal problem isn't going to get them there.

That old trope again. No, MN isn't far right.
I suggest you spend a little more time on these boards listening to what women are actually saying. You may find a lot more 'legitimate concerns' than you expect. If you disagree with someone on here, then state what in their argument you disagree with and why. The old 'far right' slander is as lazy as it is inaccurate.

There are a couple of issues with HNH that go beyond Nick Lowles' fondness for smear campaigns or for issuing inflammatory misinformation in the middle of riots.

The first is that I'm not sure how HNH reconciles its charitable status with being so close to Labour that, for instance, its intervention in the Runcorn by-election looks very much like a donation in kind.

The second is that the government actually pay these jokers. They get money from the Home Office because they're supposed to be "experts" in extremism, and they openly admit to collaborating with MI5. That might have been tenable in the old Searchlight days when their main business was investigating actual fascist groups, but the collapse of the far right as well as every organisation's tendency to mission creep means that they now have a definition of "far right" that includes Tories who are a bit to the right of Penny Mordaunt, and then stretches right across the spectrum to include left-wing GC feminists.

Basically their main business is to run smears against people who they dislike on political grounds, and any of the old-style investigative work that they still do is a loss leader to keep up their "anti-fascist" credibility.

Also, Nick Lowles is big mates with Morgan McSweeney. Make of that what you will.

You're assuming I haven't spent time here….& I have with the illegitimate concerns substantially outweighing the civilised ones or more accurately the legitimate concerns framed in dehumanising rhetoric. Perhaps you can't tell the difference? Hence the conflation between gender criticals & the far right.

One can't fix a problem they can't recognise or acknowledge…

"That might have been tenable in the old Searchlight days when their main business was investigating actual fascist groups, but the collapse of the far right..."

Maybe that's the problem, another organisation that was so effective they ended up accomplishing want they set out to and ended up with no purpose, so they invented a new 'cause' so they could remain relevant. That's what happen with Stonewall, they succeeded in getting all the laws they could past, and found themselves with no fight to fight, so invented the 'trans' cause to keep themselves in power and employment.

There's a bit of that, but I wouldn't credit HNH with the collapse of the BNP. I think Nigel Farage had more to do with that, by offering alienated voters something much more palatable to vote for. But yes, they were left needing a new business model.

You see this if you read HNH's annual "State of Hate" report. The last one has segments on groups like the BNP and NF, noting that they've been basically defunct for years. But it's got a whole four pages on Matt Goodwin, full of bitchy quotes from every academic they could find who's envious of his fame. You don't have to like or agree with Goodwin to wonder if this is what an "anti-fascist" charity should be prioritising.

(I suspect part of this is that, years ago when he was a young academic researching the BNP, Goodwin used to collaborate closely with HNH. There's an element of bitchiness in their coverage of him that's very personal.)

”One can’t fix a problem they can’t recognise or acknowledge…”

One needs to take a long look in one’s mirror.

Not sure why I'm ever surprised by this stuff, but it seems one of the Hope not Hate people is currently in court on child sex offences.

https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/labour-councillor-child-police-sting-5HjdS9b_2/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2k8dpdn0gxo

What is a ' loud dehumanisation campaign' please, Howseitgoin, so I can spot one if I ever see one on MN?

I think I read that FSU were paying for an investigation into who's funding Hope Not Hate, I expect they'll uncover a whole lot more unsavoury types who have despicable habits, these activists groups seem to be a magnet for them.

Hope not Hate are awful.

It really is quite astonishing how men who love pushing the boundaries of consent and decency are drawn to these organisations.

Why does Nick Lowles have another 2 names?

LV the labour councillor, caught in a sting; that makes nasty reading

How many more?
Disgusting individual

I may be weird but I have never felt that a person who was born on one piece of land moving to another piece of land has "destroyed my sense of identity", or that if I don't object to them moving then it's because I "enjoy ruining people's lives".

What are you wiffling about? This thread isn't about immigration.
It's about how Hope not Hate campaigners have harassed and denigrated women fighting for women's rights and most recently how one of them sent a picture of his penis to a 13 year old girl.
Apt username though.

Think you might be on the wrong thread.

I suspect that @TediousMansplainer is suggesting that if you are on TRSOH like him and Hope not Hate then these transgressions should be ignored. He is, of course, completely wrong.

Didn't they have a spat with Gerry Gable?

Anyway. Guess the origin of the following quote:

“These are – I’m sorry to use the word – feminist demands. The ground level is very different. The primary requirement of the women on the ground, the working class, is safety and that’s our prime concern."

Sounds like the sort of thing a Tommeh or a fascist would say doesn't it

profile still active on the Open Council Network website lists Vellemman as being part of multiple groups, including the Children and Education Overview and Scrutiny Sub-Committee.

Access access access
Always and ever about access..