CLAIM: Video shows Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage making disparaging remarks about the British people, including that they are racist and should be ashamed.
FILE - In this Friday, Feb. 28, 2020 file photo, leader of the Brexit Party Nigel Farage speaks during Conservative Political Action Conference at the National Harbor, in Oxon Hill, Md. On Friday, June 19, 2020, The Associated Press reported on a video circulating online edited to appear as if Farage made disparaging remarks about the British people, including that they are racist and should be ashamed. In the full video, Farage was actually criticizing the media for their coverage. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
THE FACTS: Comments Farage made in a YouTube video were edited to misrepresent what he said.
In the full video, Farage was actually criticizing the media for their coverage. On Thursday, a Twitter user posted an out-of-context clip that appeared to show Farage calling the British “awful,” “racist people.” A check of the video shows that Farage was describing the so-called “narrative” of British people that he said the media puts out. A Twitter user tweeted the misleading clip on June 18: “Wow, this can’t have been easy to admit. Well done @Nigel_Farage.” In the edited clip, Farage states: “We are awful, terrible, backward, knuckle-dragging racist people and we should be deeply ashamed.” The tweet with the out-of-context clip had over 8,000 retweets and nearly 1 million views.
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In the full version of the video, Farage said: “Whenever I turn on the BBC, it could be Channel 4, it could be Sky, it doesn’t matter, we are completely bombarded by a narrative that somehow we are awful, terrible, backward, knuckle-dragging racist people and we should be deeply ashamed… . That message, that narrative is coming out of mainstream media constantly.” On June 16, Farage uploaded the video to YouTube and then shared it on Twitter, saying, “This is why nobody trusts the mainstream media. Watch my latest YouTube upload.” Since the police killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into his neck for several minutes, Black Lives Matter protests have spread across the U.S. and to countries around the globe, including Britain. In June, Farage made comments comparing Black Lives Matter protesters to the Taliban for pulling down statues of slave traders. That same week, London-based radio station LBC announced that they will no longer broadcast Farage’s weekday evening show. “Nigel Farage’s contract with LBC is up very shortly and, following discussions with him, Nigel is stepping down from LBC with immediate effect,” the company stated on June 11.
