It's often remarked that UK conservatives are a step or three to the left of America's, that even the right wingers are as gay as maypoles and that its government is the most diverse in history. But it turns out they're all on far-right Facebook groups full of Der Sturmer-tier racist hysteria, run by their staffers and now infiltrated by activists. The environmental group Greenpeace went fishing in the murk and returned with the heads of several Tory MPs and a myriad of local councillors, party apparatchiks and other political staff.
The closed groups – which have a combined membership of 38,000 – have been a forum for Islamophobic attacks on Labour's London mayor Sadiq Khan, with members calling him a "terrorist sympathiser" and a "khaki punt" and saying they would pay to get him "popped". Other posts promote white supremacist slogans, antisemitic conspiracy theories and have encouraged the destruction of Ulez enforcement cameras.
The findings by Greenpeace's investigative unit, Unearthed, shared with the Observer, are the latest controversy to embroil the party over its campaigning tactics and attacks on Khan. Its former deputy chairman, Lee Anderson, was suspended in February after claiming "Islamists" were controlling the London mayor, and a Tory attack video used scenes of a panicked crowd at a New York subway station to claim Londoners were in fear of crime.
Note that the media to which Greenpeace awarded this scoop is The Guardian, as scandalized by these groups advocating vandalism against traffic cameras as it is about their cartoons posing London mayor Sadiq Khan as a terrorist. The racists hate the surveillance, which makes hating surveillance … racist? Somewhere in central Asia, Tony Blair stands in a luxuriant robe on a marble verandah, grinning at the sunrise.
Previously: The UK`s Conservative Party recently put up a new statue of known anti-Semite Nancy Astor
