Nick Ferrari has been openly racist for years and has multiple platforms from which he can spew his disgusting bile. Here he is claiming that the 50 Jamaicans being deported by the Home Office were all criminals, rapists and paedophiles and telling his listeners that, thanks to lefty do-gooders and a number of outspoken black celebs, that they could now have a Jamaican paedophile moving in next door to them.
This is certainly not the first time. In June this year, on Sky’s debate show ‘The Pledge’, when Afua Hirsch raised the topic of what to do about statues of historical figures who were either racist or involved in the slave trade, Ferrari’s response was to ask Afua “why do you stay in this country if you take such offence when you see Nelson’s column, if you take such offence when you hear Winston Churchill’s name”. It seems that in Ferrari’s mind, if your black you don’t have a right to criticise the country you live in, grew up in and call home. Would Ferrari ever consider posing that question to a white person who shares Afua’s views on misrepresented British history, unlikely I would think. In Ferrari’s mind, it seems that all non whites are foreigners who should lump it or simply just ‘go back home’ if they don’t like the way that ‘he’, and people like him, think. It seems that, according to Ferrari, if you’re not white then Britain is not, and never will be, your home. The irony is that Ferrari is of mixed heritage – his father was Italian/Swiss while his mother was English – and Afua’s father was white British while her mother was Ghanaian but, for some reason, Ferrari thinks he has a greater claim to being British. Incidentally, he has been known to boast about his Italian/Swiss blood so perhaps it’s not about being British at all and really just about holding onto white privilege?
Ferrari is so determined that the opinion of white, middle aged, heterosexual men (like him) should dominate the news media narrative that he’s even prepared to attack other journalists and alternate news sources. In this debate with Kerry-Anne Mendoza on BBC’s Question Time, when Mendoza simply argues that “the news rooms of the British media should look and sound like the modern Britain in which this sit”, Ferrari’s response is to praise the Daily Mail, defend his own credibility, attack the Canary Newspaper and other non-mainstream platforms. He accuses them of just making stuff up and and of having zero journalistic credibility. Clearly, the strategy here was not to even try to defend the indefensible, but just to go on the attack instead so you can completely avoid tackling the issue altogether.
Where is the anger and disdain, where are the calls to de-platform this vile racist? In fact, the very political figures who have been slandering and smearing and working to de-platform anti-racist campaigners like Jeremy Corbyn and Ken Livingstone are the same people who get interviewed by the likes of Nick Ferrari on his LBC show. People like Keir Starmer, for example.
Just weeks after Ferrari’s ignorant racist exchange with Afua, he was exchanging banter with Starmer on his LBC show and when Starmer got a difficult question from a caller who explains that she is a Labour Party member and that she was bitterly disappointed to hear him refer to the Black Lives Matter movement as “a moment”, Ferrari quickly jumped in to deflect some of the sting by attacking the Black Lives Matter movement for criticising the police and calling for defunding.. which of course had absolutely nothing to do with the question being posed by the caller. Perhaps even more surreal was Ferrari’s next question in which he asked Starmer if he regretted his decision to take the knee in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and what he thought of people who chose not to take the knee. That he should even ask that question at all is shocking but Starmer’s response to that question was also rather telling because he simply deflected it away by saying “well it’s got to be an individual choice”. It seems, according to Starmer, if you choose not to take the knee, for whatever reason, including if you don’t think black lives actually do matter, then that’s your choice and you should not be challenged on that view… or, at very least, he is saying that ‘he’ (Starmer) will not be challenging your views. I guess Starmer believes people are simply entitled to be racist if they want to be.
If you can stomach watching the Starmer interview a little bit longer you will also notice that Ferrari continues to attack the BLM movement and, at one point, he even tries to smear the entire global movement as anti-Semitic because a couple of BLM protestors were allegedly seen carrying a copy of an anti-Semitic mural on a march. Essentially, he was labelling all black people and anyone who stands up against racism as anti-Semitic.
When Ferrari was considering standing for London Mayor as the Conservative candidate (a role later taken by Boris Johnson after Ferrari dropped out) he proposed a number of surreal manifesto pledges, including doubling income tax on Human Rights lawyers. Human Rights Lawyers frequently find themselves defending immigrants and asylum seekers so we can only assume this was some kind of punishment tax that he was planning to inflict if he got elected.
Ferrari is a Christian Zionist and has even written a travel blog format article promoting Israel for the Jewish Chronicle newspaper, and in which he talks about how much he admires and reveres Israel – odd given that his father was Italian/Swiss, his mother was English and Ferrari is Christian, not Jewish. That said, encouraging Jews to leave Europe and move to Israel strikes me as something that a racist anti-Semite, might wish to do? Odd too that someone who gushes on about Israel like Ferrari does should not then expect his own British identity or his loyalty to Britain to ever be questioned, despite the fact that he frequently questions the loyalty of non-white Brits, referring to them as a “problem” and telling them that ‘they’ should leave the country?
Ferrari has been in hot water before and he even had the Broadcasting Standards Commission breathing down his neck at one point. In fact, in 2003, they upheld a complaint against him saying that his programme employed “active reinforcement of prejudiced views about asylum seekers had exceeded acceptable boundaries for transmission”. The commission found that he had in fact been encouraging racism against asylum seekers. It’s ironic then that it was the then London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, of all people, who took Ferrari to task over his racist views and wrote to the Managing Director of LBC demanding to know what they were going to do to ensure Ferrari would never be allowed to get away with it again. Livingstone would become a regular guest on Ferrari’s programme after that.
Incidentally, Afua wasn’t the first non white person to get the ‘go home’ treatment from Nick Ferrari. Following the Paris attack in 2015, Ferrari started ranting about “a Muslim problem” and when he was challenged about this by a Muslim caller on his show, Ferrari responded by telling the caller that he should just “go some place else” if he didn’t agree with UK foreign policy. White British citizens frequently disagree with, campaign and vote to change government policy, as is their absolute right, but it would appear that in Nick Ferrari’s mind, non-white British citizens shouldn’t be allowed to have that same privilege.
From what I’ve seen and read so far, it would be hard not to conclude that Nick Ferrari is a proud racist and even wears his bigotry like a badge of honour. It’s come to something that in Britain today, racists like Ferrari are given access to multiple national platforms and are endorsed by political figures, including Keir Starmer (the current leader of the British Labour Party) who all seem to clamour over themselves to be interviewed by a notorious racist. Every newspaper, TV or radio debate program has a specific readership or audience. People are naturally drawn to read newspapers or listen to radio/TV hosts who share their views and who agree with their political perspective. When politicians write for these papers or go on these programs, they are doing so because they want to appeal to their followers. The question is, when you’re on the Nick Ferrari show, what kind of audience are you hoping to connect with?
