A councillor for the town where Jo Cox was murdered has said she no longer feels safe after being labelled a “dangerous and divisive extremist” by the publisher of Tommy Robinson’s memoirs.

Fazila Loonat, 38, said she had been racially abused in the street and received threatening phone calls following an article by Danny Lockwood, the local newspaper owner and backer of Robinson.

Headlined “Loonat’s loonies are a big problem”, Lockwood’s article highlighted Loonat’s membership of the campaign group Momentum, which he described as “anti-British” and “antisemitic”, and referred to Loonat as “a dangerous and divisive extremist” who “plays the race card” to stifle debate.

Just days after its publication in November, Loonat was walking to a public meeting when she said she was confronted by a man who called her a “Paki” and said: “You don’t belong here.”

The man told Loonat he knew where her daughter went to school, she said, and raised his hand to hit her but was “startled” by a passerby.

“He looked very nasty and the closer he got the more scared I got. He got quite physical towards me,” said the councillor for East Batley, in West Yorkshire. “I’m just thankful there was someone else there – I would have been on my own otherwise and I don’t know what the outcome of that would have been.”

Loonat said she had received “a load of nasty phone calls” and seen racist messages on social media calling her a terrorist following the article, published in Lockwood’s weekly newspaper the Press, which she said was “breaking down communities” and sowing division.

“Ever since that article it’s just spiralled out of control. It’s become very, very nasty,” said Loonat, who is also an equalities officer for the GMB union. “I’m a very active councillor and I would be going to all of the events in the community and now I’m so frightened and scared, genuinely scared. I’m forever looking over my shoulder.”

West Yorkshire police confirmed they were in the early stages of investigating the incidents.

Tracy Brabin, the Labour MP for Batley and Spen, said: “All elected councillors and politicians must be able to carry out their community duties without abuse or threats of harm. Sadly though, it appears abuse is becoming more normal, a worrying trend we must see the back of. I fully support the police in their investigations into illegal activity.”

Lockwood, who regularly appears on the BBC’s Newsnight and Politics Live shows, said he was referring to Loonat’s membership of Momentum, not her religion, and that he condemned any abuse as “absolutely unacceptable”.

He said his column was in response to “some rather unsavoury” comments made by Loonat online. “As a senior officer in Momentum, yes I do consider her politics divisive and extreme,” he added. “Anyone interpreting my remarks as being racially motivated are the ones stirring up hatred here.”

It is not the first time concerns have been raised about Lockwood’s columns inflaming tensions in a town still coming to terms with the murder of Cox, who was fatally stabbed and shot by a far-right extremist in June 2016.

Some of Batley’s politicians say they have been reluctant to publicly challenge Lockwood for fear of being subjected to his often combative columns.

In recent months, he has mocked the “Zorro outfits” worn by Muslim women and accused Cox’s widower, Brendan Cox, of “weaponising” his late wife’s values “before her body was barely cold”. Last year, he wrote that he had “fantasised about Diane Abbott in straps and chains – but only in the context of being dragged over broken rocks behind a team of wild horses”.

Shabir Pandor, the leader of Kirklees council, said all councillors were witnessing “a growing intolerance from those who seek to undermine our democracy”. “The attacks on Councillor Loonat are an attack on us all. Where we see hate, we’ll call that out, with messages of hope,” he added.

“As has been said before, we have more in common than that which divides us. That’s a message that resonates strongly in our communities, and across the country.”

However, Lockwood said Pandor was to blame for “ramping up the rhetoric and divisiveness”. Pandor clashed with Lockwood’s paper last week after it ran a campaign to overturn the council’s policy on using non-stunned halal meat in schools, which Pandor claimed was “generated deliberately on the back of creating divisions, hatred and putting communities against one another”.

Lockwood added: “Batley people know all about extremism and its dangers. None of us are helped when politicians play the race card to avoid accountability, which sadly we see all too often.”

Loonat said she felt uneasy about speaking out. But by doing so she said she hoped to help other councillors and MPs who had a “genuine fear” of being targeted by far-right agitators.