The Richie Allen Show

as a significant influence on Richie Allen. Richie Allen is an Irish radio broadcaster and content creator. He began his career presenting late-night shows for a local radio station in Waterford, Ireland, where he later became the producer of the station's news show. 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 relocated to northwest England, having initially been offered a new role as a breakfast show presenter for an unnamed commercial radio station. However he later turned down the offer after being persuaded by David Icke to present his current show instead. Richie Allen has been described by Hope not Hate as a "protégé of conspiracy theorist David Icke". "emerged from Icke's short-lived broadcast ''The People's Voice'', and was for a time hosted on Icke's website". However Allen later rescinded the show's association with Icke and has since been operated independently by Allen himself. Hope not Hate have been described by Allen as "enemies of free speech" on his show. Allen rejects the far-right label, and says he is a Bolivarian socialist opposed to identity politics, who interviews the right-wing more than the left "because it balances the show". ==Guests==

The show hosted Nick Kollerstrom, a British Holocaust denier, on Holocaust Memorial Day 2016, wherein Kollerstrom rejected the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz concentration camp. Although Allen made it clear that he disagreed with Kollerstrom, saying that Hitler and the Nazis "were killing people" and were "maniacal", he believed that the figure of six million Jews dying in the Holocaust was too high. Allen described Chabloz's songs as "very funny" on his show. In 2019, anti-racist advocacy group Hope not Hate released a report which said that Brexit Party figures appeared on the programme, on the same episodes as racist and antisemitic guests. This included Brexit Party MEP and former Member of Parliament Ann Widdecombe, as well as Brexit Party MEP, former television personality David Bull, and senior lecturer of Abertay University and PPC for Dundee West and unsuccessful MEP candidate in Scotland, Stuart Waiton. Widdecombe told The Jewish Chronicle that she agreed to appear to discuss Brexit, and that she "had never heard of the Richie Allen Show until I agreed to go on." She distanced herself from the programme's antisemitic content by, among other things, pointing to her membership of the Conservative Friends of Israel, B'nai B'rith event speeches, and her novel An Act of Treachery, which is set during the Holocaust. Former television personality David Bull MEP appeared on the show on 30 April 2019, tweeting that the experience was a "pleasure" and linking to his interview via Conspiracy Daily Update, a website which contains numerous links to the show of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and British neo-Nazi Mark Collett. The following guest on the episode was Lana Lokteff, an American white nationalist and co-host of the alt-right outlet Red Ice Radio. Although disagreeing with Lokteff on her views on racial identity, "white genocide" and belief in a "Jewish conspiracy", Allen repeatedly praised her for her intelligence, said he did not think she was racist, and praised her programme as "very important ... long may it continue". Other guests have included neo-Nazi and former British National Party activist Mark Collett and controversial jazz musician and commentator Gilad Atzmon in 2016. 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". 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. ==References==