Former vice-chair of Momentum Jackie Walker. Photo: YouTube screenshot.

Far-Left activist and former vice-chair of British Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s Momentum movement Jackie Walker opened a one-woman show over the weekend at the Edinburgh Fringe festival in which she received a standing ovation for defending her claims that the Jews financed the African slave trade and that Holocaust Memorial Day is exclusionary.

The UK’s Jewish Chronicle reported that Walker performed her show The Lynching beneath a banner saying, “Anti-Semitism is a crime. Anti-Zionism is a duty.” The show’s title refers to what she says was unfair treatment by her opponents, which ultimately led to her suspension from the Labour party amidst accusations of antisemitism.

At one point in her performance, Walker took on the character of her own mother speaking in Walker’s defense, in which she stated, “First, she [Walker] said Jews financed the slave trade. …The Jews were coming away from persecution from the Christians. They got involved in the slave trade, but what else were they supposed to do? This is not Jackie hating Jews. You can say this is Jackie showing off, showing how well she knows her history.”

Regarding the Holocaust, Walker’s character charged that it is wrong to mark the genocide of the Jews alone, asking, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Holocaust Memorial Day could be opened to all people. What a terrible thing… People say it is open to everybody. Others say, no it doesn’t include the terrible things that went on before the Nazis, things in the Belgian Congo when they killed 12 million …none of that is in Holocaust Memorial Day.”

Walker’s character also defends Corbyn, claiming that they are both targets of “enemies” who support Israel. Corbyn, she said, “has been accused of being a Jew-hater, but when he was just an MP he was a supporter of the Palestinians and he didn’t mind saying what he thought. He called some of the nasty people in the Israeli government criminal politicians. He has some enemies: the establishment, people on the side of the Israeli government, right-wing Labour MPs. They even say Mr. Corbyn is the second greatest danger to people in the world; they even say Jackie is too. This is not just against Jackie Walker. It’s the whole big left movement for change.”

The Chronicle report added that during the question and answer session following the show, Walker staunchly defended her positions on both the slave trade and the Holocaust, saying, “At the moment we are being told what history we can speak about and what history we cannot speak about. We have to have a way where it is possible to write about the Holocaust, holocausts and the slave trade and race and identity where there is openness, and we haven’t got that now and I think that is very dangerous.”

She also denied that the Jews are an oppressed people, asserting, “Millions more Africans were killed in the African holocaust and their oppression continues to this day on a global scale in a way it doesn’t for Jews, and many Jews, my ancestors too, were the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade.”

Walker has stated that she is of mixed Jewish and African descent.

Walker first ran into trouble last year when she said that Jews were the “financiers of the sugar and slave trade” and asked, “In terms of Holocaust Day, wouldn’t it be wonderful if Holocaust Day was open to all people who experienced Holocaust?”

She was removed as vice-chair of Momentum and eventually suspended from the Labour party after an outcry broke out over her statements. Nonetheless, Momentum issued a statement saying it did not consider Walker’s statements or Walker herself antisemitic.