By Joe Langabeer
[This is the second part of a two-part article]
Recent revelations by former students at the same private school have revealed extremely plausible stories of a disgraceful level of racism and antisemitism by Nigel Farage when he was at school. These were not the actions of a child, but a young man, an eighteen-year-old, who is described harassing Asian and Jewish students. They described to the Guardian how Farage told a Jewish student that “Hitler was right” and singing songs including the words “gas ‘em all!”.
That said, the main focus of the racism of Reform members and their beloved GB News is today without a doubt Islam. Islamophobia is today what antisemitism was to Oswald Mosely and the fascists in the 1930s.
GB News has consistently broadcast racist views. Its persistent attacks on Muslims have helped to normalise dog-whistle politics and emboldened some people, including politicians, to be be completely open about their prejudice. Thanks to GB News and the likes of Farage, it is almost ‘acceptable’ to openly express opinions which in the past would have caused outrage.
A report from the Centre for Media Monitoring (CMM) in late 2024 revealed just how much anti-Muslim bias is aired by GB News in pursuit of its hate-fuelled agenda. Naturally, GB News dismissed this report, claiming it was full of lies and it tried to defend itself through think-tanks such as Policy Exchange, founded by current and former Tories, like Michael Gove, which rushed out a counter-report.
Blatantly racist and intellectually dishonest
Their so-called “rebuttal” is itself one of the most blatantly racist and intellectually dishonest documents ever written, making no attempt to refute the evidence presented by the CMM, and targeting the organisation itself simply on the grounds that it was founded by the Muslim Council of Britain.
We can take ‘official’ figures about anti-terrorist activity by MI5 and the security services with a very large pinch of salt. These bodies are, after all, an integral part of a state apparatus that is in place to support and maintain the interests of the capitalist class. Nevertheless, according to The Guardian, using MI5 data, since 2017 counter-terrorism forces claim to have stopped 32 planned terrorist attacks: 18 Islamist-related, 12 linked to the far right, and 2 categorised as left-wing, anarchist or single-issue terrorism (LASIT). That translates to 56.3% Islamist-related, 37.5% right-wing, and 6.3% from the third category.
Because these ‘official’ figures show that ‘Islamic’ terrorism accounted for the largest proportion of plots, this is something the CMM acknowledges. But the report from Policy Exchange deliberately ignores another important context, that far-right terrorism is on the rise and is increasingly being treated – supposedly – as a major threat by MI5. Meanwhile, government-sponsored programmes like Prevent continue to disproportionately target South Asian communities before white Britons, feeding a system of institutional prejudice that GB News is all too happy to reinforce.
Much of the evidence cited in the Policy Exchange report does not come from factual data at all, but from opinion columnists, many of them even from The Guardian. As usual, the supporters of GB News cannot distinguish facts from opinions and when they attack the CMM’s reporting, they provide no credible evidence to show what it supposedly got wrong. In fact, Policy Exchange uses the very same tactics it condemns in others – smearing individuals within the CMM rather than addressing their arguments.
Policy Exchange has long defended austerity
This is, of course, typical behaviour from Policy Exchange, a think tank that has long defended austerity, praised racist immigration policies, and published the work of openly Islamophobic authors. Sir Trevor Phillips, a regular contributor and headline figure at Policy Exchange, now hosting his own show on Sky News, has repeatedly targeted the Muslim community.
Phillips once criticised Muslims for “not wearing poppies,” claimed many had sympathies with the perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, and has even joked that he is “often called Islamophobic,” according to The Times. He was briefly suspended from the Labour Party over these remarks, but was later reinstated by Starmer, another leaders who has shown little concern for Britain’s Muslim communities.
Perhaps the most absurd element of all this is the person who fronted the Policy Exchange report: Andrew Neil. A long-standing right-wing journalist and former GB News host, Neil earned hundreds of thousands of pounds from the very organisation the report seeks to defend. His involvement alone undermines any pretence of neutrality.
It is laughable that such a document was ever published, but then again, Policy Exchange has never existed to uncover facts. Its purpose is to set a political agenda, one that legitimises prejudice, shields the establishment and the likes of GB News from criticism, and reinforces the grip of the right on Britain’s media and political landscape.
Let us take a closer look at what the CMM actually uncovered about the racism of GB News. According to the report, references to Islam on GB News far exceed those made by mainstream broadcasters, 47%, compared with 32% on BBC News and 21% on Sky News. That equated to roughly 17,000 mentions over the period examined. To put it into perspective, Islam was discussed well over 300 times a week, or 46 times a day.
Riots against asylum hotels
During the racist riots against asylum hotels in 2024, GB News devoted 10 hours of programming to Muslims and Islam, more than double that of both BBC News and Sky News. This is despite the fact that the riots had nothing to do with Islam at all; they were driven by anti-migrant sentiment. Yet GB News still managed to force a narrative that shifted blame onto Muslims. Much of its coverage claimed that Muslims were being “treated better” by the media and government, a completely fabricated notion designed to fuel resentment.
The strategy of GB News plays into a much older pattern. The media, both in news and popular culture, have long depicted Muslims as villains. Stereotypes of Muslims as terrorists or inherently violent have persisted since the attacks of 9/11.
A 2021 study by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that in the top 200 films, 54% of Muslim characters were targets of violence, while 39% were depicted as perpetrators. Such portrayals have helped sustain the false image that Muslims are somehow ‘inherently’ aggressive or threatening, a perception GB News has been only too eager to amplify.
The channel has repeatedly targeted Labour and its leadership, portraying Keir Starmer as being too “favourable” towards Muslims over “natives” or other minorities, such as Jewish communities. Sadiq Khan has been singled out many times and subjected to the kind of dog-whistle attacks that embolden the encourage the far-right to harass Khan online.
The CMM report also highlighted several racist remarks that were broadcast on GB News, including from the former editor The Sun, Kelvin MacKenzie, who claimed that “Islam, Muslims, the Muslim voters are organising the Labour Party.” Another host, failed comedian Simon Evans, added that there is a “worrying grip which Islamic pressure groups and Islamic interests have on the Labour Party.” It is only necessary to see the Labour leadership’s disgraceful stance on the genocide in Gaza to debunk that idea.
Of course these people never let the truth stand in the way of a good story. The racist historian David Starkey, another regular on GB News, went even further, declaring: “The two groups most likely to be powerfully antisemitic are certain groups of Muslims and certain groups of blacks, and they are certainly entrenched in the Labour Party.”
Muslim Labour members dissatisfied with the leadership
All of this is news to Muslims. This year, the Labour Muslim Network found that over half of Muslim Labour representatives, MPs, councillors and mayors, believe the party is not tackling Islamophobia seriously. Two-thirds said they are not treated equally, and one in three described the party as “institutionally Islamophobic.”
All of these so-called “experts” on GB News are inventing narratives to further a racist agenda, and they do so with impunity. Regulators fail to challenge them, and most of the mainstream press either look the other way or treats GB News as if it were a legitimate outlet and not, as it is in fact, a propaganda vehicle for the far right.
Most ordinary workers will find all of this prettey sickening and in fact GB News should never have been allowed to exist. However, it does exist and that is because it is paid large sums of money to lie and misinform. Meanwhile, the so-called ‘regulator, Ofcom, regulates nothing and is all too happy to accommodate the wealthy and powerful.
The first part of this article on GB News can be found here.
