Keep Talking (group)

Keep Talking is a conspiracy theory and Holocaust denial discussion group in the United Kingdom attended by far-left and far-right activists. In existence by 2010, the group was founded by Holocaust denier Nicholas Kollerstrom and 9/11 truther Ian Fantom. Fantom helped to set it up because he believed the 9/11 truth groups had been "sabotaged from within". The group meets once a month in London.

Researchers Dave Rich of the Community Security Trust and Joe Mulhall of Hope not Hate began a three-year investigation into the group in 2017, which included infiltrating meetings. Their report, Inside Keep Talking, was published in February 2020.

Meetings and membership

Topics

The group has discussed a wide variety of conspiracy theories, particularly about 9/11, the London terror attacks, assassinations, the White Helmets, and Holocaust denial. One frequent theme is that terrorist attacks in London have been false flag operations. In November 2017 Gilad Atzmon told the group that the Balfour Declaration was meant to "conceal a century of Jewish political hegemony in Britain". In 2020 the group discussed COVID-19 conspiracy theories.

Attendees

The group includes both far-left and far-right activists. According to Rich and Mulhall, "The deeper we looked into the 'Keep Talking' group, the harder it became to know whether it was far-right, far-left, a mixture of the two, or something else entirely." People involved in the group include expelled Labour Party member Elleanne Green; Gill Kaffash, a Holocaust denier and former Palestine Solidarity Campaign activist; Alison Chabloz, convicted in 2019 after singing Holocaust-denial songs on social media; and James Thring, a regular attendee with links to former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Thring has claimed that there were no recorded deaths at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Piers Corbyn, older brother of the former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, addressed at least one meeting and attended several.

Stead Steadman, an organizer of the far-right group London Forum, has regularly videotaped Keep Talking meetings. Vanessa Beeley, a conspiracy theorist focused on the Syrian Civil War, spoke to the group in December 2018, as did Peter Gregson in March 2019. Gregson was suspended by the Labour Party and expelled from the GMB trade union after making comments deemed to be antisemitic. Gregson's use of Keep Talking material and support of Fantom and Kollerstrom caused a rift within Labour Against the Witchhunt (LAW), a group opposed to the expulsion of Labour members who made antisemitic comments, leading to the banning of Gregson from LAW's facebook page by LAW's vice-chair Tony Greenstein. According to Rich and Mulhall, he was "ridiculed" at the meeting for saying the Holocaust had happened; during the Q&A, Thring maintained it had not.

In 2018 a series of six events the group was planning at Conway Hall in London were cancelled after it was revealed that Holocaust denier Nick Kollerstrom would speak at the events. In 2019 St Anne's Church, Soho apologized for allowing the group to have a meeting at its premises, during which Miko Peled gave a speech.

Black Lives Matter photograph

During 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the UK, a photograph was taken of a young black woman talking to an older white man, Jim Curran, who was wearing a sign that said, "Racism is a virus, we are the vaccine". The photograph was considered heartwarming and went viral; they were interviewed by ITV News, which described Curran as "a veteran of human rights campaigns dating back to the 1960s". Best for Britain retweeted the photograph, but later deleted the post and apologized, while ITV News retracted the story, after it was revealed that Curran had regularly attended Keep Talking events.