Protestors to march on Hackney art gallery after it hosted ‘openly racist’ shows
Controversial: LD50 art gallery on Dalston’s Tottenham Road. Photograph: Google Streetview
Anti-fascist campaigners are set to demonstrate outside Dalston’s LD50 gallery this Saturday after it hosted an alt-right exhibition and a series of talks from right-wing speakers, including one who praised mass murderer Anders Breivik.
The Tottenham Road gallery, owned by Lucia Diego, recently held an exhibition featuring art from the alt-right, a pro-Donald Trump movement accused of promoting a far right ideology.
Last year, LD50 hosted a series of talks from speakers including Brett Stevens, who runs Amerika.org, a blog that calls for the “reversal of Leftist policies” and demands the “repatriation of the non-indigenous”.
Stevens has previously lauded the “bravery” of right-wing extremist Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 people in 2011.
Another speaker, Peter Brimelow, is described by American anti-fascism group Southern Poverty Law Center as “a leading anti-immigration activist”.
Andrew Osborne, who set up the Shutdown LD50! blog, said: “The gallery is using the cover of the contemporary art scene and academia to legitimise the spread of these materials and the establishment of a culture of hatred.
“It is imperative that this is not allowed to continue, that the gallery is shut down, and those responsible for it understand that their views are not welcome in our diverse city. The materials produced by the gallery, and the culture they promote, are a real threat to many of the communities living in Dalston.”
Gallery owner Lucia Diego faced a backlash from artists on Facebook after a private conversation appeared to reveal her support for Donald Trump’s “Muslim ban”.
She defended the gallery by saying: “We feel that the exceptionally aggressive, militant and hyperbolic reaction this has provoked vindicates our suspicion that at some point, as a society, we have drifted into a cultural echo chamber.
“A position on the left has become the only permissible orientation for cultural practitioners and apparently any who dare eschew this constraint are now publicly vilified, delegitimated and intimidated with menaces.
“The attacks against us have come from a position of ignorance, fuelled by emotions that have ratcheted up a group dynamic that has, intentionally, obviated the possibility of rational interpretation.”