On Saturday and Sunday, thousands of people took the streets of the UK to march in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter protests in the United States following the death of George Floyd who was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis.
In Bristol, a statue of the slave trader Edward Colston was torn down and pushed into a river, meanwhile, in London landmarks such as the Winston Churchill statue in Parliament Square were defaced with graffiti.
As you can imagine, the treatment of these two statues, with Colston in particular dividing opinion with many feeling that it was the right thing to do. Unsurprisingly, Nigel Farage wasn't a fan of the actions of the protesters and compared them to the Sunni Islamic fundamentalists and Afghan military organisation the Taliban.
A new form of the Taliban was born in the UK today. Unless we get moral leadership quickly our cities won't be worth living in.— Nigel Farage (@Nigel Farage) 1591552888
It's not entirely clear why Farage has drawn comparisons between the protestors and the Taliban but we can only presume he believes that the Taliban tore down the statue of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003, which was actually carried out by Iraqi citizens after his regime had been toppled.
Regardless, Farage's tweet has been completely shredded by people telling him to read a history book and accusing him of inciting hatred.
Nigel Farage exemplifies how White people WHITEWASH the oppression of Black people as their own so they can accuse… https://t.co/SBvu36HsR5— Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu (@Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu) 1591566256
This is incredibly inaccurate and rather inflammatory Nigel ... you're acting like a total s***-stirrer https://t.co/AIF8kJdvgE— Zora Suleman (@Zora Suleman) 1591562450
COUNTERPOINT: Bristol will continue to be a very good place to live, next week, next year/decade, without the statu… https://t.co/8mM7t8UWw4— Mark Watson (@Mark Watson) 1591557429
@Nigel_Farage The Bristol Taliban. Well known for their Massive Attacks.— The Great Keithulhu (@The Great Keithulhu) 1591565129
I grew up in Karachi, Pakistan when the Taliban was at its prime. I have witnessed the devastation they caused - li… https://t.co/4Mkz2CWPO7— Shahmir Sanni (@Shahmir Sanni) 1591562461
Famous anti-slavery campaigners, the Taliban https://t.co/u7l6zDjyKC— Ronan Burtenshaw (@Ronan Burtenshaw) 1591565314
Does @Nigel_Farage realise that the vast majority of those in Bristol were white? Of course he does. In tweet one w… https://t.co/S3rOqR77Hv— Adil Ray OBE (@Adil Ray OBE) 1591565055
Amazingly, Farage wasn't the only one to make these comparisons. During an apperance on TalkRadio, the outspoke journalist Brendan O'Neill called the pulling down of the statue "a politically correct tantrum" adding "that it was like a woke Taliban."