London – The leader of the campaign to legalise the recreational use of cannabis has made deeply offensive antisemitic remarks describing Jewish people as ‘evil’ and Israel as ‘the Nazi power in the world’.
Peter Reynolds, who heads pressure group CLEAR Cannabis Law Reform, has been granted meetings with Ministers in his campaign to abolish laws controlling the possession and sale of the Class B drug.
But in the past Mr Reynolds, who also writes blogs about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has made a series of appalling comments about Jewish people and homosexuals.
On January 2, 2009, he posted online ‘I curse the evil Jews’ before writing later that month: ‘Israel is now the Nazi power in the world. It is beyond forgiveness or redemption. Gaza is the new Auschwitz.’
Referring to the poisonous gas used in the Nazi concentration camps, he went on: ‘The only difference is that your method of death is not Zyklon B.’
Three years later, Mr Reynolds wrote: ‘Homosexuality is a perversion from the norm and gay culture has been allowed virtually to extinguish heterosexual influence in the fashion industry.’
The blog posts were unearthed in 2012 by The Jewish Chronicle when Mr Reynolds was standing as parliamentary candidate for the Cannabis Law Reform Party, the forerunner to CLEAR, in the Corby by-election.
When confronted, he insisted the blogs were ‘forgeries’ created by those intent on discrediting him.
However, when he gave The Jewish Chronicle a web address to what he said was his real website, it linked to the site containing the same offensive blog posts as the paper reported.
In addition, archived internet pages of his website – The Life And Times Of Peter Reynolds – show these blogs were posted on it in January 2009.
CLEAR claims it ‘does not advocate, condone or encourage breaking the law’ and it ‘exists to promote a change in the law by legitimate means’.
But last month, Mr Reynolds started advising people to buy cannabis seeds so they could grow their own drugs – encouraging a breach of the law.
Last night, Mr Reynolds said: ‘CLEAR has changed its policy on home cultivation. It is no longer against the law to use cannabis for medicinal purposes and I congratulate [Home Secretary] Sajid Javid on taking the law out of the equation completely.
‘I am neither antisemitic nor homophobic. On the contrary, I regard tolerance and liberty as the most important principles.’
