Jewish social media users have expressed disgust after Twitter accounts supporting Jeremy Corbyn parroted claims by the child of a Holocaust survivor that the Labour leader is not antisemitic.
Andrew Feinstein, a far-left activist, tweeted that he could “state unequivocally that Jeremy Corbyn is not antisemitic”, citing how his mother was “a Holocaust survivor who lost 39 members of her family in the camps”, how he “lectured at Auschwitz on genocide prevention” and “experienced antisemitism in apartheid South Africa.”
However, a number of Twitter accounts supporting Jeremy Corbyn then similarly claimed to have lost 39 members of their families in the camps and having lectured at Auschwitz on genocide prevention, in response to concern about Labour antisemitism from other people.
One of those same accounts had previously asked people to vote on whether the Holocaust “was a hoax”.
Jewish twitter users described the behaviour as “sick”, “repulsive” and “repugnant".
“Not only are they deep antisemites they are willing to go even lower in their depravity by ridiculing the horror of the Holocaust”, one wrote, before urging “Jewish Corbynites” to “wake the f*** up.”
Others mocked the Corbynite accounts, saying all of those claiming the exact same story “must be siblings”.
Some Twitter users questioned how Mr Feinstein could say that his family history enabled him to tell who was antisemitic while simultaneously choosing to retweet Sarah Wilkinson, an anti-Israel campaigner who has engaged in Holocaust denial.
Other Twitter users said they had contacted the South African, author of The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade, in order to let him know that his family story was being imitated online by bots, Twitter accounts being run by software designed to pass as humans.
Mr Feinstein responded to one account by saying “not sure how bots work but just to reaffirm that I am very real as was my mother who passed away 9 years ago, as were the 39 members of her family until they were murdered in Theresienstadt & Auschwitz.”
