The former leader of UKIP, rebranded as Reform UK, Nigel Farage, recently said something about Muslims in an interview that people dubbed as ‘racist’ and ‘Islamophobic. ’ This controversy is not shocking as Farage has always relished in offending people.
Interviewing Trevor Phillips on Sky News, Farage unveiled that the UK is home to a more significant population “who do not accept British values” and “hate much of what we are. “Phillips pushed him to elaborate, and Farage confessed that, indeed, he was talking about Muslims.
These comments raised eyebrows among the studio guests, let alone Labour’s Baroness Rupi Hazarika, who called Farage a ‘nasty race-baiting character,’ while Zara Mohammed, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain presaged that Farage was merely ‘Islamophobic racist hate-misinformation mongrel’.
Farage said that Mohammed summed up why more and more people did not want Muslims in Britain. Still, on Twitter, Mohammed reiterated her condemnation, saying that Farage’s words were aimed at inspiring hatred towards British Muslims. Other critics also opposed such actions and rhetoric. Muhammad Jalal once called Farage for his exploitation of fear. At the same time, Jolyon Rubinstein said one could imagine that the reaction to the incident would have been even more intense if Farage had directed his aggression to other believers.
A letter cited from a find from his school days at Dulwich College in 1981 contains “racist neo-fascist” bigotry. Other allegations included him parading in a village in Sussex at night singing ‘Hitler Youth songs’. Farage dismissed these as saying he said some silly things, not necessarily racial and that he never had anything to do with the far right.
Nevertheless, he still has a soapbox to spew bigotry towards minorities, something that is often suppressed by the same minorities, which includes immigrants.
Controversies regarding Muslims have existed in the speeches of Farage for a long time. Phillips further identified Muslims as a “fifth column” in a 2015 interview with the Dutch newsmaker.
He said in 2013 that he supports Muslims in Britain who are “integrating” but condemned those he called “neo-conquering” newcomers who seek to “take over this country. ” He also alleged that there is a “huge clash and division” in the Muslim community in Britain.
In March 2024, Fairfax defended ex-Tory deputy chairman Lee Anderson, who was suspended for Islamophobic remarks asserting that he was “very, very fearful of extreme Islam.
The opinions of the man expressed by Farage on immigration have also caused many people to express a lot of anger. He said he was made ‘awkward’ hearing foreign languages on Transport in London and stated his worry about having his neighbours be Romanians. He even attributed his being late for an event to immigration saying that the population in the country is increasing because of ‘open-door immigration. ’
One famous episode was the 2016 Brexit referendum when Farage was photographed next to the campaign poster where there was a line of brown refugees and the title “Breaking Point” Nothing can be as explicit as that about Nazi propaganda.
Other statements that can be considered controversial include those referring to other minorities by Farage. He justified a UKIP candidate who attacked a Chinese individual, referring to him as a ‘rat’ and disrespected a newspaper editor, mimicking them as how people in Black Africa would act.
In this year, 2019, Farage was dismissed from LBC after comparing the Black Lives Matter demonstrators to the Taliban and referring to individuals who pulled down a statue of a slave trader as a ‘mob.
Farage praised Enoch Powell as his political role model and supported the speaker’s ‘basic proposition’ from the ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, one of the critical texts of anti-immigration discourse in Britain.
Nigel Farage’s recent comments about Muslims are again on the list of controversies regarding his record of such comments. Thus, a person like Farage, who has a bad reputation for his previous activities, can still spread opinions that many consider armed and unfriendly to Great Britain and values such as tolerance and multiculturalism.
His comments serve as a stark reminder of the ongoing challenges in combating racism and Islamophobia in the public sphere.
