Artist with history of inflammatory social media posts about Jews granted exhibition in London art space
An artist with a history of inflammatory social media posts about Jews is exhibiting her work in a London art space.
Anna Laurini, whose works are also featured on the website of the online art marketplace, Saatchi Art, is exhibiting her work in the show, “All this Energy”, at a North London cafe.
In one Instagram post, a figure, which appears to be Ms Laurini, poses on a rooftop with the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York City in the background. The caption reads “Imagine a world without #Israhell”, a reference to the conspiracy theory that Israel was responsible for the terrorist attacks on New York City on 11th September 2001.
In a Facebook post, Ms Laurini appears to have shared an article from what appears to be the publication, Palestine Voice, which seems to have featured Ms Laurini in a 2020 edition. Ms Laurini captioned the post with the words “From the river to the sea”, part of the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.
This chant only makes sense as a call for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state — and its replacement with a State of Palestine — and is thus an attempt to deny Jews, uniquely, the right to self-determination, which is a breach of the International Definition of Antisemitism.
Another online post apparently shared by Ms Laurini, features a black and white image of the gates to what looks like a Nazi concentration camp, but replaces the infamous words above the entrance gate, “Arbeit macht Frei” (“Work sets you free”), with the words “Green pass macht Frei”, which compares COVID-19 restrictions to Nazi ideology.
Ms Laurini appears to have repeated the sentiment in this post with one that features a version of the flag of Nazi Germany. In this instance, the post shows the flag with a green background and the words “green pass”, again apparently comparing Nazism and anti-coronavirus measures put in place by European governments.
Additionally, Ms Laurini appears to have retweeted a post that features the image of Jacob Rothschild, 4th Baron Rothschild, who is Jewish, with captions that seem to suggest that the Rothschild family are responsible for a conspiracy that involves the “geo-engineering” of the weather and its “rebranding” as climate change, which allegedly leads to the erosion of democratic freedoms around the world.
The Rothschilds appear in many anti-Jewish conspiracy theories as a sinister, controlling force.
Anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination networks have become known as hotbeds of antisemitic conspiracy theories and tropes.
Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right.
