Nigel Farage recently made this explosive claim during a widely shared Sky News interview1. The interview provide “red meat” for the both the radical Left and the far Right. Leftist commentators were outraged by the fact that Nigel Farage was directly attacking their open borders nirvana. At the same time, he was delivering dishonest racial stereotypes to the far Right by smearing British Muslims as Hamas sympathisers.
The claim was based on a recent survey carried out by J.L. Partners2 and whilst Farage was happy to disclose the name of the polling company, he seemed reluctant to mention the fact that the survey was funded by the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), which for me was a red flag. HJS refuses to provide transparency over its funding base, but it is closely associated with relentless neo-con war mongers. Its most famous (infamous?) International Patron is Robert Kogan, husband to Victoria Newland and this group includes a number of high profile war mongers who seem to enjoy international conflict3.
HJS is also associated with vocal Israel supporter Douglas Murray, who was associate director from 2011 to 2018 and is a regular contributor.
The specific question in the survey which Nigel Farage was referring to with his 46% statistics is shown below:
In many ways, the survey is designed to be inflammatory as you are asking a religious group to answer questions that are of unique interest to them, so inevitably the desire to introduce Halal food (for example) is much higher in the Muslim group than for the general population. Again this seems designed solely to generate more “red meat” for the far Right.
As well as the highly partisan funding involved in the survey, the other issue is that this result is at odds with virtually all previous surveys. A 2016 survey carried out by the Policy Exchange found no meaningful difference in attitudes to terrorism between Muslim (orange) and non-Muslims respondents (blue)4.
There was no suggestion then that Muslims are supportive of terrorism. Also many other surveys found that overall British Muslims very much see themselves as being British, albeit with very conservative social attitudes. In a recent paper IPSOS Mori noted “there are many respects in which the views of the British Muslims are little different from those of the rest of the general public”. This statement and prior surveys flatly contradict Farage’s assertion that many Muslims are actually opposed to British values.
What is also interesting is what findings in the HJS funded survey Nigel Farage chose to ignore. Embarrassingly for HJS, even though a very high share of Muslims believe that Israel is committing genocide (80%), a significant share of the general population (46%) also think this.
My enemy’s enemy
As I covered in my longer note titled The Politics of Division5, there are several right wing provocateurs who seem determined to paint anyone who opposes the Gaza conflict in general, and/or opposes the high level of civilian casualties as “hate marchers” or “Hamas supporters”. This smear is repeated over and over again by the likes of Douglas Murray, Richard Tice and provocateur Mayher Tousi.
Disappointingly for the provocateurs, video footage and media coverage has shown limited evidence of “Hamas support” and much more evidence of reasonable people who are unhappy about the conflict. Of course there are a handful of trouble makers and hotheads, but that is an inevitably at events of that size.
More worryingly, smearing Muslims as a whole could create a narrative that Israel’s geopolitical enemies (mainly Muslim countries) are also our enemies, implying a common struggle against radical Islam. This means that Israel should be supported no matter what, given that it is an ally by virtue of being “my enemy’s enemy”. Smearing a large section of the population in this way is very dangerous and may well lead to ugly confrontation in the U.K. in the future.
The provocateurs leverage genuine concerns over very high levels of net migration (685,000 in 2023, see my last Substack) and the inevitable presence of a small minority of people who are opposed to core British values. They leverage this dissatisfaction to delegitimise anti-war protests and likely to shore-up support for Israeli policy (as an aside, provocateur Mayher Tousi appears to be hijacking this unhappiness to push his own pet cause, which is the restoration of the Pahlavi dynasty in Iran).
In a wider context, talking heads who inflame tensions on any given issue receive significant media coverage. Doubtless their inflammatory rhetoric generates clicks, but it is also very helpful for anyone pursuing a “divide and conquer” strategy. As I discussed with Miri, this many well be the reason that the media is filled with provocateurs riling up their respective audiences. As far as I can see, the right wing provocateurs are no more helpful that radical clerics stirring up their own base. Both are using inflammatory language, lies and half-truths to sow division in support of their own agendas. I hope that people are wary of flag waving provocateurs nominally on the right.
Overall given the Henry Jackson Society funding behind the 46% statistic and given that it is at odds with other surveys, I would not put too much weight on this single figure.
Let me have your thoughts below and please don’t forget to circulate our material!
Thanks
Alex Kriel
Alex Kriel is by training a physicist and was one of the first people to highlight the flawed nature of the Imperial COVID model6, he is a founder of the Thinking Coalition which comprises a group of citizens who are concerned about Government overreach (www.thinkingcoalition.com)
https://x.com/SkyNews/status/1794660412241142257
https://henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/HJS-Deck-200324-Final.pdf
https://henryjacksonsociety.org/international-patrons/