Hope Not Hate is Hateful
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Some organisations hide behind words that sound nice.
Hope Not Hate is one of them.
Behind the name is a group with a long record of harassment, false claims, and politically motivated targeting. It has positioned itself as a charity on paper, but operates more like a partisan enforcer. And despite years of complaints, the authorities have looked the other way.
Let’s be clear. This is not about policy disagreements. It’s about conduct.
A Charity in Name Only
Hope Not Hate uses a dual structure. The Hope Not Hate Charitable Trust is a registered charity. It claims to do “educational” work. But it directs its funds to Hope Not Hate Limited, a private campaigning company. In 2023 alone, the charity handed the company £650,000 in grants.
Charity Commission accounts for Hope Not Hate Charitable Trust, 2023 (PDF)
There is no meaningful separation between the two. Same directors. Same mission. Same premises. Just enough legal smoke to avoid scrutiny.
This kind of structure is exactly what the Charity Commission warns against in its official guidance (CC9).
What They Actually Do
The activities funded by this “charity” include:
- Libelling private individuals. In 2018, Hope Not Hate were successfully sued for defamation by a small bookshop owner.
- Falsely smearing their own award winners. In 2021, they were forced to retract claims about an honouree they accused of racism.
News report, Hope Not Hate retracts statement after legal threat
- Spreading disinformation. Director Nick Lowles publicly circulated a hoax list of pro-Palestinian protestors and falsely claimed acid attacks were occurring in Middlesbrough. He later admitted it was untrue but defended the lie because it “spread an anti-racist message.”
Infiltrating events under false identities. Channel 4’s “The Enemy Within” documentary shows one staffer using a UK passport with a fake name. This appears to breach the Identity Documents Act 2010.
Publishing dossiers of private citizens based on social media trawls, then distributing them to journalists and MPs. Some of these dossiers contain unverifiable allegations, repackaged as “research.”
Even former allies have condemned their tactics. Dan Hodges, once their communications advisor, said they used:
“Every dirty, underhand, low down, unscrupulous trick in the book.”
Who They Target — and Who They Don’t
Hope Not Hate claim to monitor extremism. But most of their targets aren’t bomb-makers or hate-preachers — they’re authors, bloggers, YouTubers, and political candidates.
At the same time, the biggest threat to public safety, according to MI5, comes from Islamist extremism — accounting for over 75% of its caseload. Yet Hope Not Hate have done virtually nothing to investigate radical mosques or religious extremism. Why?
Because it’s easier to go after Reform UK candidates and random Twitter users. That’s not bravery. That’s cowardice.
Charity Law and Libel Law Matter
Hope Not Hate is exploiting a regulatory blind spot. The charity raises public money, then spends it on political campaigning through a separate legal entity — despite sharing leadership and resources.
This is called regulatory arbitrage. It violates the spirit of the Charities Act 2011 and may even constitute a sham structure under case law (Prest v Petrodel Resources Ltd [2013] UKSC 34).
Hope Not Hate have already lost defamation cases. They may lose more.
This Is Not Charity
None of this is charitable work. It is coordinated political activity, sometimes using public money, aimed at intimidating critics and destroying reputations. It is the abuse of legal structures for ideological gain.
There is no honour in that.
There is nothing “anti-extremist” about running smear campaigns and calling it “research.” There is no justice in using fake names to infiltrate events, or in trawling private channels to weaponise old messages. There is no defence for spreading hoaxes to make a point.
This is not hope. And it certainly isn’t love.
It’s hate.
For a much more detailed review see Restorationist.org
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