Nigel Farage has said charities and volunteers who help asylum seekers get to the UK should face potential criminal prosecution. The Reform UK leader made the comments in an interview with Benny Johnson, a rightwing US podcaster who has previously written for outlets including Breitbart News.
While Farage did not specify which organisations should be targeted, he and other senior Reform figures have been heavily critical of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), which has faced a campaign of intimidation for its work rescuing asylum seekers in the Channel.
‘Aided and abetted criminality’
During the interview, Farage discussed the arrival of asylum seekers on small boats, calling it “literally an invasion of people who could cause us enormous harm”. When Johnson asked whether he believed in criminal penalties for those who facilitated the “invasion of the English Isles”, Farage replied: “Totally, totally. The role of the NGOs, the role of those that are sponsored by taxpayers’ money, because they’re nice, they’re good, they’re kind. They have actually aided and abetted criminality in absolutely every way.”
He added: “These are people [who are] deluded – deluded, hard-left socialist Marxists, who don’t believe in countries, don’t believe in borders, don’t believe in identities, are intent on destroying everything that exists.”
Farage has previously described the RNLI, which rescues some asylum seekers as a small proportion of its lifesaving work, as a “migrant taxi service”. Other Reform figures have also criticised the charity, including sharing footage of far-right protesters abusing RNLI crews bringing people ashore.
Echoes of Orbán
Calling for charities and campaign groups to be prosecuted for their work echoes efforts by former Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán to cement his grip on power. A Reform spokesperson said Farage’s comments “speak for themselves”.
In the conversation, Farage repeatedly raised what he said was the issue of Muslim asylum seekers arriving in the UK, citing the example of Michigan, the US state where rightwing agitators have sought to whip up anti-Muslim feeling. He said: “We are importing into our countries … people who will do us enormous harm, who will change, disrupt our lives in every way, in fact make our way of life potentially unrecognisable.”
Saying that European countries such as the UK and France had a greater problem with migration than the US, Farage said if Donald Trump was followed in office by a “weak politician” who did not tackle migration and stand up for “American, English-speaking Christian values”, the consequences would be dire.
‘Dummy run’ claim
Farage told Johnson: “If we don’t, this show of yours will be illegal in five or 10 years’ time. Literally, you’ll be banned for hate speech.” Elsewhere in the interview, he speculated that five UK nationals arrested near RAF Fairford late last month before being bailed had been undertaking “a dummy run for a proper terrorist attack on UK forces”.
He added: “I’m deeply, deeply shocked that they’re out on bail whilst there are other people in this country who have said things that the establishment now thinks are racist, who are held inside behind bars without, frankly, proper charge. So it’s what we call here two-tier policing.”
Farage has a habit of sometimes making his message more robust for rightwing US audiences. He has appeared several times on the web TV show hosted by the disgraced far-right pundit Alex Jones, who was sued by bereaved parents of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, which Jones said had been a hoax. Farage was criticised by some Jewish groups for using these and other US interviews to discuss tropes and conspiracy theories associated with the far right and antisemitism.
