Voters react to the claims that Nigel Farage made repeated racist and antisemitic comments to his fellow pupils.
The Guardian revealed earlier this week that over 20 people made the accusations whilst he was a student at Dulwich College. All the sources were named and include his fellow students and teachers.
This was alleged to have happened 48 years ago, from when he was 13 to 18.
Karen McArthur said: “I think it’s absolutely disgusting. How could anyone think or say that? It’s inhumane.”
Voters were not taken aback by the claims, Katie said: “I suppose it’s not surprising he’s been like that for the last 50 years, it’s not shocking.”
Some of the claims include Farage saying to Jewish students that he believed ‘Hitler was right,’ and singing a song ‘Gas ’em all’ which referred to the killing of Jewish, black and south-east Asian people.
Charlie Hawkes also echoed this view: “Sadly I’m not surprised that he denied it because he’s unfortunately quite a good politician like he knows how to play the system and knows how to win votes and get reactions.”
Voters hoped that this would impact Farage negatively but none felt that these claims actually would.
“The problem is the people who support him think it’s great, so I would say it’s not going to affect his ratings at all,” Rob Hill said.
Karen added: “I’d like to think it would be a negative effect but there are so many weirdos that I think will actually agree with him, which is even scarier.”
Charlie felt that Farage would not be negatively impacted by this, which is indicative of other people’s priorities.
He said: “I think people care mostly about what politicians are going to do to affect their day-to-day quality of life and the cost of living, not which they might or might not have said. Which I think is awful but just the reality.”
Both Karen and Charlie felt that there was a sentiment that the UK was regressing on its previous values, and that the rise of right-wing attitudes was damaging for cohesion.
“I feel like we’re going backwards, like we’ve progressed so much there’s been so many awful things that have happened in our world that the British are to blame for, but I don’t understand why people can’t live harmoniously together,” Karen said.
Charlie said: “There’s so much shocking news at the moment with regards to marginalisation of different groups, whether that be Jewish people, Muslims, LGBT or just general misogyny that I don’t think it’ll change a thing.”
Farage has denied these claims. Speaking to the BBC, he said: “Have I said things 50 years ago that you could interpret as being banter in a playground, that you can interpret in the modern light of day in some sort of way? Yes.”
He added: “I’ve never directly racially abused anybody. No.”
Last night, a further three students came forward rejecting Farage’s claims it was just ‘banter.’
The voters we spoke to were not convinced by his public response to the claims.
“I think it’s nonsense, I think he’s making it all up, he’s definitely racist and always has been and always will be,” Katie said.
Rob added: “I think it’s probably all true and he just didn’t give a true answer he just evaded it. He said it 49 years ago.it doesn’t matter if it was 4 years ago or 49 years ago”
