Donald Trump’s Twitter account appears to be endorsing Britain First by retweeting - at the time of counting - three video tweets from the far right group’s Deputy Leader, Jayda Fransen.
Just last week Fransen was charged with using “threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour” during a speech made at a “Northern Ireland Against Terrorism” rally at Belfast City Hall in August.
And last year she was found guilty of religiously aggravated harassment for verbally abusing a Muslim woman in front of her children.
One of the videos retweeted by Trump carries a caption which read “VIDEO: Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches!”.
The clip bears the logo of Dutch video sharing website Dumpert, which hosts user-uploaded content, much like YouTube.
One of the themes of content on the site focusses on the behaviour of adolescents. Many videos show children fighting in schools.
According to an article on Telegraaf.nl, the parent company of Dumpert, a 16-year-old was arrested following the video which was filmed in the town of Monnickendam, in the Dutch province of North Holland.
The video’s original caption did not mention the race of either of those in depicted, according to Telegraaf and it was subsequently taken down from at the request of police and the victim.
All of the clips retweeted by Trump are unverified and Fransen has been called out multiple times for stoking anti-Muslim sentiment by misrepresenting the providence of videos.
A clip tweeted last month which she said showed “Migrants In Spain Attack Tourists And Locals!” actually shows UK rapper, MoStack, defending himself with a broom as someone tries to attack him with a knife in July.
The group has also:
- Desecrated the memory of Afghanistan’s fearless first female police officer.
- Protested against the Rotherham grooming scandal by flogging official merchandise.
- Backed Ukip and tricked members into posing for photographs with them forcing Nigel Farage to publicly distance his party from the group.
- Threatened to bury a pig at the site of a proposed mosque.
- Claimed a Ukip by-election victory as their own.
- Tricked the BBC’s Nick Robinson into posing for a photo with Jayda Fransen forcing him to deny he was a supporter.
- Blamed a terrorist attack on chocolate.
- Claimed Barack Obama is a Muslim.
- Launched an app which was absolutely slated online and later removed by Apple.
- Held a ‘Britannia Ball’ to which barely anyone showed up.
- Liked Facebook posts on their page calling for mosques to be blown up.
- Been totally owned by Jason Manford in an epic spat.
- Exploited children collecting for charity.
- Thrown one of our reporters out of their annual conference.
- Been banned from Luton for staging a “Christian patrol”.
- Repeatedly held protests outside the East London Mosque and called Allah a “false prophet”.
- Fallen for really obvious spoof news articles.
- Confused kids doing yoga with evidence of “Creeping Sharia”.
- Invaded a Halal slaughterhouse and accused workers of working for Satan.
Additionally, Britain First who describe themselves as Christians, has been denounced by every single Christian denomination in the UK.
The Muslim Council of Britain said in a statement: “This is the clearest endorsement yet from the US President of the far-right and their vile anti-Muslim propaganda. We cannot give such bigotry a free pass.
“We hope our Prime Minister and Home Secretary will distance the UK from Mr Trump and his comments and will reiterate the Government’s abhorrence to all forms of extremism.”
Labour’s David Lammy said Trump was “not welcome in my country and my city”.
A spokesperson for Hope Not Hate told HuffPost UK: “Even by Donald Trump’s standards this is pretty incredulous - Britain First is one of the most notorious groups in the UK who promote hatred disguised with a thin veneer of Christianity.
″[The group’s] calling card is sowing division, discord and hatred. Surely someone among his advisors could tell him this is a far-right group?”
Even an editor of Infowars, an alt-right conspiracy website, thought it was a bad idea.
Without a hint of irony Trump followed up the three retweets by tweeting about “fake news CNN”.
Anti-extremism hotline, Tell Mama, said: “We are utterly appalled hat the President of the United States would retweet Jayda Fransen of far-right group Britain First.
“Today shows us how far extremism has has moved mainstream.”
Reaction to the retweets sparked a mixture of disgust, bafflement and outright condemnation.
Britain First appeared thrilled at the development.
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