Of all the blights on our politics, there are few more tedious than the left-wing campaign group that masquerades behind some poorly constructed frontispiece.

The Resolution Foundation – run by the gloriously named Torsten Bell – is a fine example. Torsten allows his publishers to call his Foundation ‘an enormously respected and influential economic research charity’. You may have heard of it, or you may be one of those who focuses your enormous respect elsewhere, but you will probably have seen the BBC and others regurgitate its press releases in lieu of doing actual journalism. The Resolution Foundation routinely discovers things like many people in Britain are poor or ill or suffer from mental health problems. The cause is always Tory cuts. The solution is always more money. Because if only we gave even more money away in taxes one day nobody in Britain will feel sad.

All that the geniuses at HNH had to do was sit at home eating crisps and screen-shotting tweets

I only mention this enormously boring organisation because it is of a type. Torsten used to be Ed Miliband’s head of policy (which makes it rather surprising he isn’t yet Lord Bell – give it time). In any case, as we gear up to an election, you can expect dear Torsten to release more reports ‘revealing’ nasty things to which Labour is the answer.

These people are not even good at disguising their politics. Just this week Torsten was on Twitter writing that Suella Braverman’s warning that we are ‘sleepwalking into a ghettoised society’ was the former home secretary ‘talking garbage’. But don’t expect to hear Torsten questioned about his language next time the BBC gives a fawning interview to him.

Most of these groups give themselves more obvious names; indeed they name themselves in a way which is meant to make them unopposable. Love Music Hate Racism is one such construction – as though there’s anyone who says: ‘I actually hate music, but I’m very much into the old racism stuff.’

Worst among these campaign groups is Hope Not Hate (HNH). It is supported by a range of left-wing MPs and occasionally gets a reach-around from some Conservative or other. HNH calls itself an ‘anti-fascist’ organisation and that is what the media slavishly call the group when they report on its work. A few years ago, a classic piece of HNH reporting claimed that evil people are using video games to spread messages of hate. This crack journalism was picked up by the BBC, which quoted one of the group’s activists saying: ‘Once you’re in that world, then the radicalisation starts to happen.’ The man in question was referred to by the BBC as coming from the ‘anti-fascist organisation Hope Not Hate’.

If anyone had any doubt that HNH is not, in fact, an anti-fascist organisation they might note several things. First – there aren’t many fascists around. We don’t like them in Britain. Perhaps thanks to a dearth of targets or perhaps because it’s full of far-left ideologues, HNH some while ago decided that its targets should be Ukip, Nigel Farage, Brexiteers and the Tory party.

Naturally the group has had little to say about the hate marches in London each week. But they did swoop into action when a small group of people opposed one of the protests. This group – predictably enough – was portrayed by HNH as the far-right on the march. As we all know, calls for ‘intifada’ and ‘jihad’ are expressions of peace and love whereas saying ‘Eng-er-land’ is a notorious far-right dog-whistle.

Anyhow, this week HNH was back at it, heralding another incredibly unimpressive ‘investigation’ online: ‘This is BIG. We’ve uncovered the private Twitter account belonging to Sir Paul Marshall, co-owner of GB News. And it’s littered with likes and retweets of racist and Islamophobic content.’ It was amusing in its way. HNH, of course, had not ‘investigated’ or ‘uncovered’ anything. Marshall’s Twitter account was public and all that the geniuses at HNH had to do was sit at home eating crisps and screen-shotting tweets.

Nor was the material ‘racist and Islamophobic’. Most of it was just retweeting things which the rest of us notice as ‘events’ and ‘facts’, such as disturbing footage of Islamists running riot. HNH cherry-picked a few ‘likes’ from Marshall’s account and then presented it as representative not just of the man but of a wider, sinister movement.

The usual dolts jumped on board. Alastair Campbell insisted Ofcom step in (because when it comes to reliable dossiers, Campbell is your man), as did Alan Rusbridger, formerly of the Guardian. Just as predictably, a group of ex-BBC journalists who call themselves ‘The News Agents’ joined in. These former Newsnight employees – who have given up any pretence of impartiality– thought this was major stuff. Indeed one bubble-dwelling creature called Lewis Goodall tried to claim it as their ‘exclusive’.

All these people whipped themselves up about Marshall’s ‘likes’ in the same week that parliamentarians in Westminster were fearing for their safety because of pro-Palestinian mobs turning up outside parliament and, in some cases, outside their homes. Again, HNH and co. have little to say about any of this.

Well I have something to say about them. Some years ago HNH published a list of ‘Islamophobes’. One – a scholar I know – subsequently had an Islamist come to his front door and try to shoot him in the head. I wrote about this at the time.

A while later, HNH wrote a similar report and threatened to put me in it. When I lawyered up, HNH explained that if I removed the piece criticising it, it might consider removing my name from its latest hit-list.

In other words, the group is not just silly but sinister. It wishes to change the political weather in our country, and it operates like a gangster. As with so many self-proclaimed ‘anti-fascists’, their name is wrong. They really should drop the ‘anti’ bit and rename themselves Hate Not Hope.