In June 2016, the world was horrified when a British MP was shot and stabbed on the street in a fascist attack in her constituency.
Labour MP Jo Cox, 41, was assaulted in broad daylight by right-wing extremist Thomas Mair.
A witness told the BBC they heard him yell “Britain first” twice before assaulting Cox.
Britain First is the name of a right-wing fascist group and was also a common slogan used in the EU referendum campaign for support of Brexit.
Murdered MP Jo Cox.
Fast-forward to present day and US President Donald Trump has appallingly re-tweeted graphic anti-Islam videos by Britain First’s deputy leader Jayda Fransen to his 43.6 million followers.
Jayda Fransen posted videos captioned “Muslim Destroys a Statue of Virgin Mary!”, “Islamist mob pushes teenage boy off roof and beats him to death!”, and “Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches!”, all of which apparently took Trump’s fancy.
Oh, and here’s the other thing: at least one of the videos is FAKE.
Many are incredulous the president of the United States would tweet unverified videos from racist extremists. Piers Morgan wrote: “I don’t know what on earth possessed Donald Trump to offer such a stunning, shocking and repulsive endorsement of these racist Muslim-despising scumbags.
“Casually tossing videos like this out to tens of millions of people, purely to encourage hatred of Muslims, is almost beyond belief. You might as well have addressed the American people from the Oval Office with a Ku Klux Klan hat on.”
But none are more condemning than the widower of Jo Cox. Brendan Cox has come out to publicly slam Trump:
Speaking to the BBC, Brendan Cox said:
“Almost nothing Trump does surprises us any more. I think this did.
“I think the revulsion that is out there is because the president of our nearest ally is sharing far right hatred, giving them a microphone, and I think people are authentically shocked by that.”
Brendan said shortly after his wife’s murder that she would want people to “unite to fight against the hatred that killed her.”
This is what we must keep doing.
