Labour suspends councillor alleged to have posted horrific article arguing “The Germans were completely justified in persecuting and expelling the Jews…just as we would be today”

The Labour Party has reportedly suspended a councillor alleged to have posted a horrific article arguing “The Germans were completely justified in persecuting and expelling the Jews…just as we would be today.”

The suspension came within hours of the JC publicising the allegation, but reportedly a week since Labour Against Antisemitism first filed the complaint, raising questions anew about how Labour is tackling antisemitism in its ranks and reviving concerns about the extent to which PR considerations are a driving factor.

Belgica Guaña is alleged to have posted the article, titled “The Holocaust Hoax and the Jewish Promotion of Perversity”, on Facebook in 2016, two years before she became a councillor in Newham in London, where she is running for re-election this week.

The article says that “The so-called ‘Holocaust’ is propaganda in an ongoing war between the Jews and those with the courage to stand up to them – a war that began with the National Socialists coming to power in Germany in the 1930s and continues to this very day. The Jews do not have the means or the numbers to defeat Europeans with the force of arms so they have to rely mainly on infiltration, subversion, and economic and psychological warfare, with the Holocaust hoax being the best example of the latter. 

“The Germans were completely justified in persecuting and expelling the Jews (which is all that was actually happening), just as we would be today. Hitler and the National Socialists freed Germany from the death grip of the Jews and gave it back to the German people.”

The essay also argues that Jews use pornography to control western societies by way of the “Holocaust hoax”, and pushes the “white genocide” conspiracy theory, as well as claiming that teenage diarist Anne Frank, murdered by the Nazis at Bergen-Belsen, was a “bisexual degenerate” whose popular diary is an “obvious fraud…laced with pornographic and sexually subversive messages”.

In May 2016, Cllr Guaña reportedly shared a post that said that “The Nazi holocaust [sic] was a crime against humanity, and the Israeli Genocide against Palestinians can not be ignored or denied,” and in December 2017, Cllr Guaña is said to have shared a video of the United Nations General Assembly, writing: “If you can have a minute of silence for the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust. So how much time should I ask for the more than 50 years of invasion and oppression of the Palestinian people?” Both posts are further breaches of the International Definition of Antisemitism. Other inflammatory material is also alleged to have been posted by Cllr Guaña.

Although Cllr Guaña has been suspended from the Labour Party and therefore no longer enjoys its endorsement in her bid for re-election, she will remain on the ballot paper listed as a Labour candidate, which is unavoidable in view of how close the revelations came before the local elections.

The allegation that Cllr Guaña posted the article was made in the JC, based on research by Labour Against Antisemitism. Earlier this week, Campaign Against Antisemitism announced that it is examining legal options in respect of the posting of the article.

A Labour Party spokesperson said: “The Labour Party takes all complaints seriously. They are fully investigated in line with our rules and procedures, and any appropriate action is taken.”

A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said on Wednesday: “The article allegedly shared by this councillor is a not only an abhorrent collection of antisemitic tropes, from Holocaust denial and paedophilia to comparisons of Israel with the Nazis and support for the far-right ‘Great Replacement Theory’, but it may also imply support for Jewish genocide. In view of just how horrific this post is, we are examining legal options.”

The Labour Party was found by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to have engaged in unlawful discrimination and harassment of Jews. The report followed the EHRC’s investigation of the Labour Party in which Campaign Against Antisemitism was the complainant, submitting hundreds of pages of evidence and legal argument. Sir Keir Starmer called the publication of the report a “day of shame” for the Labour Party.

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right.

Campaign Against Antisemitism advocates for zero tolerance of antisemitism in public life. To that end we monitor all political parties and strive to ensure that any cases of concern are properly addressed.