President Donald Trump retweeted three videos from nationalist anti-Muslim party Britain First’s deputy leader Jayda Fransen, a woman who has vocally shared her opinions over the years.
The videos purport to show Muslims beating up innocent civilians and desecrating Christian icons. (RELATED: Trump Retweets Three Videos From British Anti-Islamist Group)
The backlash to Trump’s retweets was swift, and led many to bring up charges of racism and anti-Islamic hysteria against the president for retweeting an account associated with a political group that’s too nationalist for Britain’s UKIP party.
Fransen is a high-ranking leader of Britain’s national front movement, that pushes platforms of ethnic and religious nationalism. According to the Britain First website:
We require only the most stern, dedicated, loyal, steadfast and incorruptible men and women to help us build a future for our nation.
We want our people to come first, before foreigners, asylum seekers or migrants and we are overtly proud of this stance.
We will not stand back and watch as our people are made second class citizens by leftwing-liberal policies and political correctness.
The group notes that they are not racist, but argue that Islamic extremism and mass migration will damage the country. From the website:
Britain First rejects racial hatred in all its forms.
British ethnic minorities regularly attend our events and activities.
Britain First opposes Islamic extremism and mass immigration because they are a danger to the British people.
Britons from all backgrounds are welcome to join our struggle to put British people first.
Fransen was arrested in London by Irish police Nov. 19 for “threatening, abusive or insulting words or behavior” displayed at a rally in Belfast, Ireland, in August. The parade was to protest all violent terrorism, “including Islamic extremists and Irish republican extremists,” organizers said. The event passed mostly peacefully, but Fransen was picked up by Police Service of Northern Ireland operating with the London police, and flown to Ireland for interrogation, according to Britain First leader Paul Golding.
“What have they arrested her for? Both of us addressed, made a speech, at a public demonstration outside Belfast City Hall all the way back in August,” Golding said.
Fransen made headlines in 2016 when she participated in a march through Luton, a town 30 minutes from London with a high Muslim population, wearing berets and carrying wooden crosses. Fransen was convicted of religiously aggravated harassment for shouting at a woman wearing a hijab during the march in Nov. 2016.
Video of the incident, posted on Britain First’s YouTube channel, shows Fransen yelling that Muslim men force the woman to wear a hijab “because they cannot control their sexual urges.”
“That’s why they are coming into my country raping women across the continent in all black so men can control her,” she added.
WATCH:
Luton is a predictable target for Fransen and other anti-Muslim groups. Khalid Masood, the man who killed an American tourist and three others outside the U.K. parliament in 2016, spent two years living in Luton. Fransen’s “Christian patrol” of the neighborhood happened in January 2016, months before Masood’s attack.
The group’s name is also familiar to another kind of terrorist. When Thomas Mair shot and stabbed Labour minister Jo Cox in November 2016, he shouted “Britain first,” according to witnesses. Officials sentenced Mair to life in prison for the murder in advance of a cause associated with Nazism.
Based on Mair’s internet history, Mair had “admiration for Nazis and similar anti-democratic white supremacist creeds,” according to the judge on the case.
Golding vehemently denied any connection to Mair and the attack on Cox.
The White House did not respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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