Spectator columnist says refugees come to Europe for white women and benefits

African refugees come to Europe in search of "white women" and to live off benefits, Greek-born Spectator columnist Taki Theodoracopulos has said.

The opening paragraph of the most recent High Life column, ‘Austerity in Britain is the EU’s fault’, reads:

Now it takes a heart of stone to be against poor refugees, especially Syrians, unless they’re North Africans or Somalis who are over here in order to find white women or live off our welfare system.

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, more than 1m people have had to flee Somalia in the last 25 years thanks to war and ongoing violence.

Libya, in north Africa, has also descended into chaos since Muammar Gaddafi was outed with the help of Nato airstrikes in 2011.

The article goes on to say that a member of the Saudi ruling family and Eritrean migrants both have "no business" being in Switzerland, and that "The decline of the West is as real as [German historian Oswald Spengler's] The Decline of the West was a book."

Non-western cultures, he writes, are of "non-importance."

It's not the first time Taki - who has called himself a "soi-disant anti-Semite" - has been criticised for his writing about race.

In 2013 the magazine came under fire for publishing a Taki article which appeared to endorse the Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn. Editor Fraser Nelson defended publishing the column.

A 2003 Taki article which inspired death threats against a leading black lawyer was investigated by Scotland Yard over the possibility it stirred up racial hatred.

The Spectator's then editor, Boris Johnson, apologised for the publication of the story, calling it a "terrible thing" which "should never have gone in". The CPS did not bring any charges.

indy100 has contacted The Spectator for comment.

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