Troll of the Month – Nigel Farage
The Troll of the Month is an individual chosen every month to expose racist and anti-religious haters and is highlighted to portray what can be done in response to fight against intolerance in Europe.
Nigel Farage, the former leader of the UK Independence Party who was a figurehead in the Brexit campaign, has expressed strong antisemitic sentiments in a recent Tweet in reference to the newly appointed UK Home Secretary, Grant Shapps.
Following the news of the new appointment of the Home Secretary, on 19 October 2022, a number of right-wing individuals and politicians used Twitter as a means to spread antisemitic tropes and hate speech including claims of this being a sign that ‘anti-Brexit globalists were taking over Liz Truss’s government’. Amongst these individuals spreading highly offensive statements, were GB News presenters Nigel Farage and Dan Wootton. Farage’s tweet made reference to a well-known antisemitic conspiracy narrative by labelling the newly appointed Home Secretary a ‘globalist’.
According to the American Jewish Committee, the term globalist is antisemitic, as it is often used to ‘promote the antisemitic conspiracy that Jewish people do not have allegiance to their countries of origin’ but rather to a type of world order such as the political system as a means to gain control. Furthermore, the term globalist has been used in a number of far-right circles in close association to Jewish people. The recent usage of the term ‘globalist’ by Farage to name the new Home Secretary, who is Jewish, was reckless and crossed all boundaries of professionality, only further contributing to existing antisemitic narratives and conspiracy theories.
Following Farage’s tweet, a number of Jewish groups and campaigners came out and condemned the comment from him, calling out GB news also for allowing such tropes to be spread by one of their employees. John Mann - a former Labour MP and currently the government’s independent adviser on antisemitism, tweeted Farage, requesting his post on Twitter to be removed immediately or else for GB News are to sack him. Alongside this, Stop Funding Hate, a community-driven human rights campaign, also reacted with a Facebook post regarding GB News commentators using the antisemitic term ‘globalist’ by calling out this month’s GB News advertisers in an attempt to raise awareness. Despite this, a spokesperson for GB News reacted by denying such usage of the word, justifying the term as one which is taken from the Oxford English Dictionary and claiming that the channel itself scorns antisemitism. Farage continued to defend his claims by arguing that he was not aware that Mr Shapps had Jewish roots in the first place.
Alongside this, in reaction to the new appointment of Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister, Nigel Farage came out and referred to Sunak as a ‘globalist if ever I saw one’. Rather than condemning this reoccurring usage of the antisemitic conspiracy theory, GB News tweeted this on their Twitter platform to hundreds and thousands of followers.
This is not the first time that Nigel Farage has been both condemned and held accountable for spreading antisemitic rhetoric including being exposed in the past by some of the UK’s main Jewish groups and MPs for spreading far-right antisemitic conspiracy narratives on a number of occasions. In addition, the party leader has also been criticised in the past for ‘agreeing to interviews with openly antisemitic US media personalities’ thereby, in effect associating himself and agreeing to be in the presence of openly discriminatory individuals.
Nigel Farage is an individual with a large platform, a former leader of the controversial political party UKIP, and now a presenter on GB News. In this instance, it is both Farage as an individual, and the responsibility of GB News to prevent the spread of religious hate speech. Both Farage and GB News hold a moral and legal obligation to prevent the spreading of hate speech and discrimination on religious grounds. By spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories such as this, it only continues the cycle of antisemitism and hate towards the Jewish community based on prejudice. Farage has had a history of spreading antisemitic tropes and must therefore be held accountable for his actions and his contribution to the perpetuation of the antisemitic rhetoric.
