The Dalston art gallery chief at the centre of a national “neo-Nazi” storm says she publicly linked LD50 to an apparent alt-right Twitter account because it was “funny”.
Embattled Lucia Diego had this week defended her business against allegations of racism after it emerged it had hosted an “alt-right” exhibition and anti-democratic conference.
But today she told the Gazette the @Kantbot2000 account she had directed enquiries to was run by her “press officer” and that its tweets were funny.
Those tweets include: “You know who didn’t invent modernity? Blacks in Africa. Checkmate losers.”
Another from the same account referred to “infected Muslims”.
Anti-fascist campaigners have formed a Shutdown LD50 campaign and will tomorrow protest outside the Tottenham Road gallery.
Organiser Andrew Osborne, who works at the Royal College of Art, said the tweets – and the alt-right Twitter realm in general – were “quite confusing, but clearly horrible stuff”.
When asked today by the Gazette about the Twitter account, Lucia initially said @Kantbot2000 was an account used by her press officer.
But when told about some of the tweets the account had posted, she then backtracked, saying: “He sometimes does social media for us. Sometimes tweets and things.
“He’s a person who tweets funny jokes online. I thought he was going to joke with the people [attacking us].”
She added she did not know the real identity of the person behind the account, but said he was American.
The LD50 gallery website also lists “Kantbot2000” among the “contributors/artists/inspiration” for its 71822666 exhibition.
In the last 24 hours the @Kantbot2000 account appears to have been deleted or renamed, and the tweets removed.
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