Nigel Farage recently tweeted out a clearly photoshopped image of a pro-refugee protester wearing a sign that said “my legs are open for refugees”. But the journalist who snapped the real photo of the woman in question has since taken to Twitter to hit back at the former UKIP leader.
Looking at the photo, it’s surprising Farage didn’t realise it was fake.
.@Nigel_Farage
1) I am the original photographer of this image which was edited, subsequently retweeted by you, and has since removed from your feed. Here are the real facts of this photograph. pic.twitter.com/Tu59dMtkNt— Lasia Kretzel (@rhymeswpretzel) July 16, 2018
The facts
Journalist Lasia Kretzel took the original photo (see below) at a pro-refugee rally in the city of Saskatoon in Canada. The woman’s sign actually says “my door is open for refugees”.
.@Nigel_Farage
4) A woman, whose name I do not know, was wearing an Amnesty International pre-made sign around her neck which, in the original photo, read "My door is open for refugees." pic.twitter.com/Q5IxInSWXi— Lasia Kretzel (@rhymeswpretzel) July 16, 2018
But Farage didn’t notice the “poor and hastily done editing job”, as Kretzel describes it. (One Reddit user put it more bluntly, saying “How anyone could fall for such a shit Photoshop is beyond me”.) Kretzel added:
.@Nigel_Farage
8) If you're going to criticize something, please make sure what you're distributing is authentic. As a fellow broadcaster, I think you owe it to the public to publish correct information, to apologize, and set the record straight when an error is made.— Lasia Kretzel (@rhymeswpretzel) July 16, 2018
People on social media also pointed out that the woman in the image could sue Farage for libel:
https://twitter.com/adrianshort/status/1018761829407961088
But Farage wasn’t the only person sharing the image. US actor James Woods, for example, was also caught sharing it:
For your consideration, @RealJamesWoods please read the above thread. pic.twitter.com/qVM1YDgRWv
— Lasia Kretzel (@rhymeswpretzel) July 16, 2018
Farage’s anti-immigration propaganda
In his tweet accompanying the photo (now deleted), Farage referenced sexual assaults that took place in the German city of Cologne and cases of rape in the Swedish city of Malmo. But Farage’s claim that sexual crime in Sweden has risen due to increased immigration is highly misleading. As the BBC reported:
Malmo, along with other urban centres in Sweden, has one of the highest levels of reported rapes in proportion to population in the EU, mainly due to the strictness of Swedish laws and how rape is recorded in the country.
The rate of reported rapes in Malmo has not dramatically risen in recent years and has in fact declined from its peak in 2010, before the recent large increases in refugees.
In short, this tweet from Farage is yet another example of how he uses misinformation to support his anti-immigrant rhetoric.
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Featured image via Flickr / Gage Skidmore
