A racist agitator has appalled members of Britain’s Jewish community by announcing plans for a march next month against “Jewification” in Stamford Hill, the centre of the ultra-orthodox Haredi population.
Joshua Bonehill, who describes himself as a “nationalist, fascist, theorist and supporter of white rights”, has called for a mass protest in the north London area “against the complete Jewification of the borough” and against the Shomrim, a neighbourhood watch group, that he claims wrongly is an illegal religious police force.
He has produced a poster for his “Liberate Stamford Hill” march which features an antisemitic caricature of a Jewish man and a video message in which he says: “On 22nd of March as one white and unified mass movement we will be finally pointing the finger in the right direction … You owe it to your race white man.”
Bonehill has a large following on social media with 26,100 followers on Twitter, raising fears that even without a genuine political organisation behind him, his plan could draw in other far-right groups as well as anti-fascist campaigners, causing problems in the area which is home to an estimated 20,000 Jews.
The announcement of the march comes ahead of new figures due to be published on Thursday by the Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that funds security for Jewish schools, synagogues and residential areas, that will show that more antisemitic attacks than ever recorded were reported to its hotline in 2014.
Bonehill claims that “in Stamford Hill, white people are openly spat at on the streets and viewed simply as ‘Goyim’, slave to the Jew”.
The CST said it is in talks with the Metropolitan police about the march. It said local Jewish leaders are calm about the threat, but that many members of the wider Jewish community have voiced concern.
“He has a long record of racist provocation and antisemitic abuse but he doesn’t have much record of being able to mobilise large numbers of people on the street,” said Dave Rich, a spokesperson for CST.
“People should treat this with the contempt it deserves. We are speaking with the police and the social media platforms to persuade them to take the information down.
“We will monitor the situation as it develops. The most important this is that people don’t allow his provocation to damage community relations.”
In a statement on his website, Bonehill said: “It is our democratic and civil right to demonstrate peacefully and protest against the wrongs in society, we will not be threatened by the Anti-Whites or their Jewish puppet masters.
“I can categorically guarantee that on 22 March, we will be in full force at Clapton Common in Hackney where we will stage our legally sanctioned demonstration.”
A Scotland Yard spokesman said it had received an application for the march but no decision has yet been made about whether it will be authorised, but added that it is unlikely to facilitate an event that would itself facilitate someone breaking the law.
Using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour or displaying written material with intent to or which is likely to stir up racial hatred can be prosecuted as a criminal offence and attracts a prison sentence of up to seven years.