The reporter and former reality TV star Katie Hopkins is set to grace the stage this weekend at the conference of The For Britain Movement, the far-right party founded by anti-Muslim activist and former UKIP leadership contender Anne Marie Waters.
Also speaking is Ingrid Carlqvist, a well-known activist in the anti-Muslim ‘counter-jihad’ scene who has in recent years embraced the extreme right and engaged in Holocaust denial. Other speakers include Paul Weston, former leader of the now-defunct anti-Muslim party Liberty GB, and central counter-jihad figure Robert Spencer. Spencer will address the conference via Skype, being barred from entering the UK in 2013 following a HOPE not hate campaign.
Hopkins’ scheduled appearance is further evidence of her slide towards far-right territory. She is also set to address the far-right Traditional Britain Group (TBG) conference on 20 October, where Waters spoke herself in October 2017. The TBG is run by former Tory fringe figure Gregory Lauder-Frost, who has called for the “assisted voluntary repatriation” of those “not of European stock” from the UK to their “natural” homeland.
Despite Waters’ criticism of antisemitism within the Labour party, Carlqvist’s announcement as a speaker is sadly unsurprising: the party has had to jettison several of its local election candidates after HOPE not hate exposed them engaging in extreme racism; one candidate was even a former member of the now-banned nazi organisation National Action. HOPE not hate has also exposed numerous prominent former members of the fascist British National Party (BNP) within For Britain, as well as other extreme figures linked to the party.
Since establishing herself as one of Europe’s leading anti-Muslim activists with her writing for the leading counter-jihad websites Gates of Vienna and Dispatch International, Carlqvist has associated with out-and-out racists and engaged in antisemitism.
In April 2017, she told her Facebook followers:
“…check for the evidence for the Holocaust. Most people are convinced that there are tons of evidence, but when you start looking at them its [sic] not that obvious anymore. Always check everything”.
This was followed up with a tweet questioning survivor testimony, writing:
“You are aware that many of the [Holocaust] survivors have faked their stories?”
In a social media exchange with a woman who told Carlqvist that her mother-in-law had survived Auschwitz, Carlqvist responded:
“…show me the irrefutable evidence that the Holocaust took place. I’m completely open, I just want to see real evidence. The most important thing for us human beings is to always have an open and critical disposition, not just to swallow what others have told us. Do you understand what I mean?”
During a lengthy online row Carlqvist also went on to state:
“There are so many lies about the Holocaust – Soap and lampshades. And this about 6 million jews. The public records from the camps have lowered the numbers a lot, but people still say 6 million. Shouldn’t we talk about these facts?”
She has been increasingly willing to rub shoulders with the extreme right, and was photographed by HOPE not hate and Swedish anti-fascist organisation EXPO attending the white nationalist Identitarian Ideas conference in Stockholm in February 2017, alongside leading far-right racists and nazis from across Europe.
EXPO reported in December 2016 that Carlqvist appeared on a podcast of the violent nazi group the Nordic Resistance Movement. During the interview she stated that, while she “detests” totalitarian ideologies:
“If the Nordic Resistance Movement would help to save Sweden from Islam and the horrific situation we’re in, then I’m completely ready to work with them. Until the day we’ve saved Sweden, then we part ways”.
Carlqvist has appeared several times on the white nationalist media outlet Red Ice Creations, which hosts extreme-right figures such as notorious Holocaust deniers Alfred Schaefer, Germar Rudolf, David Duke, Eric Hunt, Gilad Atzmon and Andrew Anglin of the notorious Daily Stormer as a matter of course.
During one of her appearances she told host Henrik Palmgren “[…] like the rest of Westerners I always believed that what I was taught in school was the truth”, but that when she started investigating the Holocaust she “found things that didn’t add up”.
Carlqvist’s most recent appearance on Red Ice came just two weeks ago. Waters also appeared on Red Ice in April 2017, talking about her Muslim-obsessed organisation, Sharia Watch.
During a public talk in February 2017, Carlqvist stated:
”those who have been the vanguard of Sweden’s cruel transformation into Absurdistan are Jews. In my naïvity, I have viewed Swedish Jews as entirely sympathetic to the fatherland. Presumably the majority is, but those who stubbornly and purposefully, in the 60s, claimed that Sweden was awful and had to change, were above all Jews.”
Hopkins has been employed by the Canadian far-right media outlet Rebel Media since January 2018, having rendered herself untouchable by legitimate news sources due to her long history of extreme, discriminatory statements.
Her many controversies include an April 2015 column for The Sun entitled “Rescue boats? I’d use gunships to stop migrants”. Throughout the article she labelled migrants as “cockroaches” and “a plague of feral humans”. The article began:
“No, I don’t care. Show me pictures of coffins, show me bodies floating in water, play violins and skinny people looking sad. I still don’t care”.
The comments, published shortly before hundreds of refugees were killed after their boat capsized in the Mediterranean, were condemned by the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights.
Hopkins’ weekly show on LBC Radio was cancelled three days after she called for a “final solution” following the appalling terrorist attack in Manchester in May 2017, which left 22 dead. Hopkins later claimed her use of the phrase – which echoes the Nazi term for the Holocaust – in the now-deleted tweet was a ‘mistake’.
Hopkins has recently applied for insolvency to avoid bankruptcy after losing a lawsuit to food writer Jack Monroe. She has faced another lawsuit from the Mayor of Molenbeek, an area of Brussels, Belgium, where she filmed a video with Rebel.
Ahead of For Britain’s conference, Hopkins has provided a very friendly interview to Waters on her Rebel Media show, telling Waters: “I like this idea that you’re prepared to talk about things in a very straight and honest way, so you’re not dancing around it”.
A Reform Party candidate fantasised about deporting “millions” of British citizens to “rid itself of the foreign plague we have been diseased with”. UPDATE: Reform…
