Lee Kenneth Wicks
Charity Trustee and Treasurer at Furness Multi-cultural Community Forum | Barrow-In-Furness, Westmorland and Furness, Cumbria, England, UK
Background information
The posts
Holocaust inversion
- 21 September 2026: A post falsely claiming that a video showed “Israel using machine guns from a tank to shoot prisoners in a Concentration Camp,” directly comparing Israel’s actions to the sniper execution scene in Schindler’s List.
- 13 April 2026: An image of a concentration camp prisoner with the text: “Only two states in history have ever designated the death penalty for just one particular race. One was in 1933 in Germany. Israel just became the second.”
- 5 June 2026: A Mr Bean meme labelling “1940s Germany” and “Israel 2026” side by side.
The comparison of Israel to Nazi Germany is a textbook example of Holocaust inversion, recognised internationally as a form of antisemitic discourse.
October 7 denial and minimisation
- 5 August 2026: A meme asserting that those killed on 7 October “were killed by Hellfire missiles, artillery shells, tank ordinance, and Apache attack helicopters,” things the meme claims “Hamas doesn’t have, but Israel DOES!” This recycles the conspiracy theory that the atrocities of 7 October 2023 were fabricated or self-inflicted, contradicting the extensive documentation by Israeli and international investigators.
Conspiracy theories about Jewish control
- 15 April 2025: “To learn who rules over you… simply find out who are NOT allowed to criticise,” illustrated with a giant hand pressing down on a huddled crowd. This line did not originate with Voltaire, as often claimed. It is a paraphrase of a 1993 broadcast by Kevin Alfred Strom, an American neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier who pleaded guilty in 2008 to possession of child sexual abuse images (Reuters, AP). Wicks shared a neo-Nazi’s words, without attribution, as commentary on Jews.
- 29 March 2025: An AI-generated image of MPs prostrating themselves on an Israeli flag, captioned: “The entire British government, both le and right, is corrupted and beholden to a rogue foreign state.”
- 16 May 2026: A map of Britain filled with the Israeli flag, captioned “Britain is occupied.”
- 13 October 2026: A doctored US passport reading “UNITED SLAVES OF ISRAEL”, again implying national subjugation to Jewish/Israeli control.
- 10 September 2025: A post reviving the “tunnels” conspiracy theory with the line “well I guess we know who run the media then,” the age-old claim of Jewish media control. The accompanying AI-generated image shows Orthodox Jewish men carrying soiled mattresses, and a picture of the “Happy Merchant” caricature in the corner: a neo-Nazi drawing of a Jew with a hooked nose and greedy, grasping hands. According to the Anti-Defamation League, the Happy Merchant is “by far the most popular antisemitic meme among white supremacists” (ADL). The image also displays Telegram channel tags, including “T.me/SatanicJew.”
Demonisation and dehumanisation
- 18 October 2026: A two-panel meme depicts a man wearing visibly Jewish religious clothing and tefillin. The first panel shows him rejecting “Use electricity on Shabbat”; the second shows him approving “Rape and murder children on Shabbat”. This is not a criticism of a named government, military unit or policy. It uses Jewish religious observance to portray a visibly Jewish person as accepting the rape and murder of children. The contrast between religious observance and approval of atrocities demonises Jews through a religious stereotype.
- 7 April 2026: A poster reading “EVERY ZIONIST IS AN ENEMY TO ALL,” set to the theme from The Omen. Treating “Zionists,” the great majority of Jews worldwide, as an enemy of humanity is collective demonisation.
- 13 May 2026: An illustration of the Grim Reaper covering a baby’s mouth in front of the Israeli flag, captioned “BABY KILLERS.”
- 3 November 2024: A photo of Israeli soldiers with a tank flag edited to read “WE KILL CHILDREN.”
- 14 April 2025: A graphic claiming “ISRAEL” stands for “Illegal State of Racism Aggression Evil and Lies,” set against a Star of David on a blood splatter. The graphic places a Jewish symbol at the centre of accusations of evil and bloodshed. Alongside the posts explicitly targeting Jewish religious identity and alleging Jewish control, it contributes to a wider pattern of demonisation.
- 20 July 2026: An AI-generated caricature captioned “ANOTHER RAT ZIO BOOTLICKER.” “Zio” is not a neutral abbreviation for “Zionist.” The American Jewish Committee’s Translate Hate glossary notes that antisemites use “Zio” as shorthand for “Jew” to cloak their hate as anti-Zionism (AJC), and Haaretz describes it as “a pejorative brought into prominence by former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke and often deployed by white supremacists” (Haaretz). The word “rat” applied to a Jewish person is unambiguous dehumanisation.
- 30 May 2026: An anti-litter icon throwing the Israeli flag into a bin, captioned “SAVE THE PLANET.”
Mockery invoking Jewish identity
- 29 July 2026: A photograph displaying a Star of David tattoo with the caption “GOY George”, a derogatory play on Boy George’s name. Read together, the Jewish symbol and the word “goy” invoke Jewish identity and the distinction between Jews and non-Jews to ridicule him. Although “goy” is not inherently a slur, its use here is mocking. The target is a person, and the means of ridicule is Jewish identity, not an argument about a particular Israeli government policy.
Why this matters
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism identifies examples including “holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel” and “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis,” while requiring the overall context to be considered. It also states that criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.
Here, the clearest evidence goes beyond criticism of Israel. The Shabbat meme targets Jewish religious identity directly, while the post about “who run the media” accompanies an image of Orthodox Jews and an antisemitic caricature. These are attacks on Jews, not scrutiny of a government’s decisions.
The origins of the material are also significant. The Strom quotation, the “Happy Merchant” caricature and the use of “Zio” bring language and imagery associated with neo-Nazis and white supremacists into the Facebook activity of an anti-racism charity trustee. Their presence cannot be explained away simply by calling the posts criticism of Israel.
As Trustee and Treasurer of an organisation delivering inclusive youth and community work, Wicks occupies a position of trust within a body that publicly promises to challenge racism.
That makes the contrast between the charity’s mission and these posts a matter of public interest, not merely a disagreement about politics.
FMCF’s other trustees are not responsible for authoring these posts. But the organisation faces a straightforward question: what does its commitment to challenging racism mean when one of its own trustees circulates material that demonises Jews?
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