The National Union of Students (NUS) has again descended into crisis after its leader, Shakira Martin, was criticised for allegedly bullying other NUS officers and for comparing political criticism she had received to her experiences of domestic abuse.

In a public Facebook post, Martin posted a screenshot of a tweet by UCL students’ union postgraduate officer, Mark Crawford, apparently accusing her of being a “scab” for her alleged failure to oppose a gentrification campaign and saying “all you can do is defend someone’s personal feelings get over yourself”.

Responding to the criticism, Martin wrote: “This is the name calling and abuse i have to put up with. I’m a scab now yeh.... these people are as abusive as my ex was too me, emotionally trying to break me down at every level every single day. I feel like im back in a domestic abuses realationship and if i am honest this shit is really triggering things for me. I dont have to nor will i continue to put up with this shit.”

The NUS women’s officer, Hareem Ghani, announced she would be filing a complaint to the NUS, labelling Martin’s words “deeply dangerous” and also accusing her of “bullying”.

In a tweet, Ghani said that she will be avoiding the NUS offices as she feels “uncomfortable working in the same office as someone who would make such a distasteful and frankly upsetting comparison”, adding that Martin “has threatened and bullied officers over the course of the last 6 months”.

Martin’s words were slammed as “totally unacceptable” by National Executive Council (NEC) member Amelia Horgan, a former CUSU women’s officer, who accused Martin’s “right [wing] faction” of encouraging harassment of last year’s NUS president Malia Bouattia.

Bouattia was roundly condemned in the national media for a 2011 blog post which labelled her former university, Birmingham, as a “Zionist outpost”. She was defeated in April 2017 by Martin, who won 56% of the vote in a contest marred by controversy after multiple university students’ unions disaffiliated from the NUS over Bouattia’s alleged anti-semitism.

Martin is considered by many to be moving the NUS away from demonstration-orientated action, toward lobbying the government more directly and pushing for more incremental reforms to higher education. Some on the left of the NUS have criticised her for not pushing hard enough for free tuition fees.

Amelia Horgan also condemned Martin’s Facebook post for supposedly setting expectations for others to “disclose their experiences of gendered violence to thousands of people”.

She added that the criticism Martin had received was “largely very polite and non-confrontational” and therefore “not abusive”.

“[This] comparison is not only very messed up but also silences people with serious political problems with the NUS president” she continued.

In a statement, Mark Crawford, whose tweet provoked Martin’s Facebook post, alleged: “Many activists I know have found themselves personally attacked for resisting the rightward drift of the NUS that Martin is overseeing”, highlighting Martin’s comments in a video earlier this week in which she told critics of students’ unions “I will come for you”, telling them to "shut [their] mouth", adding she will fight “tooth and nail for [her] membership”.

“To compare political criticism to domestic violence is an appalling and absurd attempt at deflecting legitimate political criticism of the record of her and her leadership, and Martin should be ashamed of herself.

“Her only engagement with the anti-gentrification campaign at Elephant and Castle has been to insult the brilliant students heading it up and then denounce those who criticise her for it.”

He added that his criticism was not just of Martin, but of the whole NUS leadership, which he claimed “has little respect for democratic mandates and policies”.

Martin was elected last year on a slate alongside Amatey Doku, NUS vice-president for higher education and last year’s CUSU president.

Varsity has approached the NUS, Shakira Martin, Amelia Horgan, and Hareem Ghani for comment.

Update 28/01 01:26am: This article was updated to include comment from Mark Crawford.