Far-right group Patriotic Alternative hang “White Lives Matter” banner over Clifford’s Tower where 150 Jews were murdered

The far-right group, Patriotic Alternative, hung a “White Lives Matter” banner over Clifford’s Tower in York earlier this week.

In 1190, a massacre of York’s 150 Jews took place after the community gathered there seeking refuge from the belligerent townspeople. The massacre at York was one of a series of antisemitic pogroms in England in 1189-90 which also included Norwich and Lincoln.

Video footage of the stunt depicts dramatic music and drone shots of the Tower as activists from the far-right group unfurl the banner. 

In the group’s Telegram, it wrote that it “narrowly avoided disaster and a mob of 40 Hasidic Jews”.

Patriotic Alternative is a UK-based group headed by the former leader of the youth wing of the BNP, Mark Collett. Mr Collett is reported to have dabbled in Holocaust denial, is regularly heard as a guest on the radio show of the former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard, David Duke, and has described the Holocaust as “an instrument of white guilt”.

The group is known for its efforts to recruit youth to its white nationalist ideology. Previously, the far-right group published an online “alternative” home school curriculum condemned as “poison” and “hateful” and attempted to recruit children as young as twelve through livestreaming events on YouTube, according to The Times.

Campaign Against Antisemitism closely monitors the far-right, which remains a dangerous threat to the Jewish community and other minority groups.