The Richie Allen Show

Richie Allen is an Irish radio broadcaster and journalist. He began his career presenting late night shows in Waterford, Ireland, where he later became producer of the station’s news show.[5]

Allen left Ireland to study TV and Radio at the University of Salford, and later moved to Spain where he presented an evening show for Talk Radio Europe. In 2013, he relocated to London to present a daily television show for The People’s Voice. A year later, following the closure of TPV, Allen moved back to Salford to present his current radio show.[5]

Richie Allen has been described by Hope not Hate as a "protégé of conspiracy theorist David Icke".[6] The show (founded in 2014)[7] "emerged from Icke's short-lived broadcast The People's Voice, and was for a time hosted on Icke's website".[6] The show is broadcast six times a week from Fab Radio International and all episodes are available as podcasts (many on YouTube).

The show hosted Nick Kollerstrom, a British Holocaust denier, on Holocaust Memorial Day 2016.[2] Kollerstrom rejected the existence of gas chambers and said the Jewish death toll in the camps was only 200,000. Although Allen made it clear that he disagreed with Kollerstrom on some points, he expressed scepticism that six million Jews had been murdered:

I believe something is very wrong with the story, otherwise I wouldn't be having you on... I believe they were killing people... I believe they [the Nazis] were maniacal. However, there's a big lie there somewhere, I don't believe the numbers are anywhere near as great as they're saying, you know... I'm with you with respect to the numbers and the way that it's been exploited ever since".[8]

Allen described Kollerstrom's 7/7 conspiracy theory work as "vital" and "essential".[8]

Allen has also praised Alison Chabloz, who gained prominence following antisemitic musical performances at the far-right London Forum in 2016.[9] This included her mocking a "Jewish accent" and singing a song called "(((Survivors)))"[lower-alpha 1], which mocked Anne Frank alongside Holocaust survivors Irene Zysblat and Elie Wiesel as liars looking for financial gain. This performance led to her being sentenced in June 2018 to a 20 week suspended prison sentence.[6] Allen described Chabloz's songs as "satirical" and "very funny" on his show.[9] James Fetzer, an American conspiracy theorist and Holocaust denier, has also been interviewed on the programme.[8]

Right-wing conspiracy theorist Liz Crokin also appeared on the show to discuss then-recent Hollywood sexual abuse scandals; Crokin linked Hollywood paedophilia and the death of Seth Rich to supposed "rampant" paedophilia within the Jewish community.[10] Other guests have included neo-Nazi and former British National Party activist Mark Collett and controversial jazz musician and commentator Gilad Atzmon in 2016.[1][11]

Guests connected to UKIP have included Welsh Assembly member Neil Hamilton, party founder Alan Sked and former party president in Scotland Christopher Monckton.[1]

Although generally catering to the far-right, a number of left-wing individuals have appeared on the show including former MP George Galloway,[6] Brexit activist and climate change denier Piers Corbyn,[1] and human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell. Tatchell told The Jewish Chronicle: "I've been on The Richie Allen Show to defend trans people and to speak out against the alt-right and conspiracy theorists. Anyone who listened to my contributions would realise that I was opposed to far-right views and advocated a liberal and left-wing perspective."[1] Liberal Democrats have also featured, including former minister Norman Baker, who suggested weapons inspector David Kelly was murdered, and John Hemming, who discussed "forced adoptions" on the show in 2016.[1]

The chair of the Liverpool Wavertree Constituency Labour Party, a Jewish Voice For Labour activist, appeared on the show a number of times from 2017 until 2019. In one appearance, he described the Rothschild family as "behind a lot of the neo-liberal influence in the UK and the US" and accused them of profiting from wars, leading his former employer, the University of Liverpool, to distance itself from him.[12][11] Labour MP Alex Sobel said Allen and Icke are "fermentors of antisemitic thought and draw people into a series of conspiracy theories... Sharing a platform with these men is incompatible with Labour membership".[12]

In 2020, Martin Kulldorff of Harvard Medical School appeared on the programme to oppose the COVID-19 lockdown. As a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, he favoured an approach based on herd immunity to the disease.[13] Conservative Party MP Desmond Swayne appeared on the same edition of the show as James Fetzer in late 2020 to talk about the COVID-19 pandemic, asserting that deaths were similar to "a bad flu season" and questioning the validity of published case and death statistics. When this was reported in January 2020, Swayne was widely condemned by anti-racist and Jewish organisations.[8][14]

• "Exposed: Brexit Party MEPs on antisemitic conspiracy show". HOPE not hate. Retrieved 22 August 2019.