Abul Monsur, who was suspended by the Aspire Party ahead of the local elections after making social media posts denying the Holocaust, was elected to Tower Hamlets council this week.
The Standard reported that Monsur shared a string of offensive posts on his Facebook page in 2025, including one with an image of a “Zionist victim card”, which said that “any criticism of Israel is antisemitic and accusers are supporters of terrorism”.
Below that, there was a line which read “if in doubt, refer to the Holocaust”, but the word “Holocaust” had been crossed out and had “Holohoax” written above it.
Another post shared by Monsur appeared to express approval for Hitler, as he wrote that “Adolf Hitler outlawed usury [the practice of charging excessive interest on loans]” alongside three bullseye emojis.
He then replied with three bullseye emojis to a comment on that post, which included the sentence: “The main reason the Jews conspired to kill Jesus was that he was against usury”.
Elsewhere, he said that “there is NO mention of a ‘Holocaust’ in papers written after WW2 by Churchill, Eisenhower, and De Gaulle”, and referred to “Jews gaining control of the media”.
Monsur also shared several antisemitic conspiracy theories, including that “Zionists” were responsible for the Bondi Beach terror attack in December, and for the assassinations of political commentator Charlie Kirk and former US president John F Kennedy.
The posts were brought to light when an independent candidate in another ward, Andrew Wood, notified the Local Democracy Reporting Service of his Facebook profile.
Aspire said that they “had no idea about these appalling and unacceptable posts and once informed, took immediate action”.
“Abul Monsur has apologised for not disclosing this to the Party when he was asked about social media accounts during candidate vetting, and we apologise and are extremely regretful that this was not found in due diligence checks”, the party continued.
“We are reviewing how we can improve social media checks to make them as thorough as possible to ensure this mistake can never happen again.”
Monsur apologised, saying: “I agree with that decision and I am deeply sorry to Aspire and to all the party’s supporters.”
He continued: “I am deeply sorry for these social media posts and ashamed of them. I apologise from the bottom of my heart to Jewish people in our community and in wider society.
“These social media posts were unacceptable and I have a lot of learning to do and I will undertake training and education. I was not thinking straight and did not understand a lot of what I posted.”
Monsur’s name was still affiliated with the Aspire Party on the ballot paper, as the deadline for candidate withdrawals had passed by the time he was suspended.
He received the third-most votes in Lansbury ward, along with two other Aspire candidates.
Aspire will govern the Tower Hamlets council, having won 33 of its 45 seats. Labour and the Greens each won five, and the Lib Dems and Conservatives took one each.
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