BREXIT Party candidate Dionne Cocozza who is representing Glasgow North, claims there has been a vicious smear campaign against her by the anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate and Labour leaning media.
“It started online with an article in the Glasgow Guardian a student website run by Glasgow University. Everything written seems to concentrate on quoting Twitter interactions.
HNH added: “Cocozza repeatedly shared a video titled: ‘Qatari Man Teaches Muslims How to Beat Your Wife’ and links this content to what she sees as the threat of Sharia Law spreading in the west.”
The most worrying thing is that the writer Sam Doak, does not question the abusive nature of the video.
“What about the physical beating up of a woman being unacceptable?” says Dionne.
“The attacks came one after the other with The Evening Times, The National, The New European and Hope Not Hate.
“They all copied the same format as if a press release had gone out on the North Glasgow candidate.”
Hope Not Hate, however, took it a step further by becoming more personal, more abusive and beyond reporting norms.
Stating Dionne had disturbing conspiracy theories suggesting that Muslims could “take over the UK.”
They seemed to claim that Honour Killings were all in her imagination by saying: “In April she tweeted ‘Pakistani Muslim refugee murdered his daughter as an act of honour for having a boyfriend without his permission.”
Hundreds of women are killed every year in Pakistan often by their own family members for violating the country’s conservative teachings regarding love and marriage.
The Kim Kardashian of Pakistan in 2016 Qandeel Baloch 26 was killed by her brother who said it was an ‘Honour Killing.’
But the ‘Hate’ did not stop there as a 38 Degrees petition was set up asking Dionne to apologise for “The offensive comments you shared.”
“These two tweets are a year apart” blasted Dionne. She explained that HNH are implying her Twitter feed every day is just full of Muslim hatred “I write up two tweets that are factually correct and they fabricate that they have been watching my account for a year and everyday I am acting like a Hate Preacher.
It is the crimes being committed not just the race.”
Dionne has been tweeting political content about Brexit and the Scottish National Party (SNP) mostly: “It is just not true as it looks like I have been spreading mass racism when in fact I have been only criticising the main parties on Brexit and the SNP,” explained Ms Cocozza “The SNP have had a lot of press with their failings in bringing the NHS to a crisis point and all the Alex Salmond court action has to be mentioned.”
Dionne began her political career because she is waiting for an operation on her arthritis and knows that the NHS waiting times are too long. She thought tackling it from the inside could be an answer, so applied to become a Brexit candidate.
“These past two weeks have played havoc with my pain and movement and that’s just the campaigning alone. But add the mental stress of this online and media abuse I could not cope with it all.”
The strange thing is that HNH in 2016 are guilty of calling out the Muslim grooming gang exposure too.
Nick Lowles who founded the group had to defend himself when he was not allowed to talk at a student union address because he DID comment on the growing problem.
In the Independent, he said: “I repeatedly call on the anti-racist movement to do more to condemn on-street grooming by gangs and campaigning against Islamist extremist groups in the UK and abroad.
I make no apology for either position. We need to be consistent in our opposition to extremism – from whatever quarter it comes.”
He added: “The situation is almost amusing in its absurdity, but I want to stress that my beef is with a small group of ultra-leftists within the NUS, not NUS itself.”
Fellow Director of HNH, Imam Qari Asim of the Makkah mosque in Leeds, commented on a Trevor Philips story in 2017, calling out the Muslim rape gangs: “We cannot hide from the fact that the perpetrators of these appalling crimes were mostly Muslims. If it is cultural prejudices that have led these men to prey on white girls, seeing them as “easy meat”, then this needs to be addressed.
He went further by adding his community might be at fault too: “There can be no excuse if members of the British Pakistani community are aware of people exploiting children and young girls and not reporting the wrongdoers.”
But the Imam was also exposed in an investigation in The Mail on Sunday on the government’s Working Group on Anti-Muslim Hatred in April of this year.
Imam Qari Asim supported a Cleric called Khadim.
DOPED UP HATE
HOPE Not Hope hate attacked this outlet on our reporters tweets that had posted in relation to Dionne who I had only met twice stating: “Judging by her Twitter feed, Cocozza is an avid follower of far-right website Politicalite, including its conspiracy theorist writers.
Days later Sky News described this outlet as “right-wing” proving the Hope Not Hate smeared us.
Just two weeks ago, on 6 November, she retweeted a post by the Politicalite writer “Angela Eagleheart”, saying “I heard a Muslim say, we get elected then slowly we takeover. Happened in Belgium, Sweden and Germany.”
This is a fact as when I was studying for my HND in Journalism I worked at night in an Indian takeaway to make ends meet and a worker there told me about the Quoran and the teachings in it. This was over 26 years ago!