Farage’s main complaint about free speech restrictions relates to the 2024 UK riots. These riots were fuelled by a combination of:
- disinformation from Farage about the identity of the attacker, claims that the police were withhold information;
- and the key role of neo-Nazi Andrew McIntyre in setting the time and location for the initial riot that targeted a mosque in Southport the day after the murders, and he would create the notorious list of 39 locations to be targeted across the UK, predominantly offices of asylum support organisations.
In August 2024, courts gave jail terms to those that posted on social media content that was found guilty of inciting others to violence and for posts that stirred up racial hatred. Later in August, examples of those found guilty: “A 53-year-old woman from northwest England was jailed for 15 months after posting on Facebook that a mosque should be blown up “with the adults inside.” A 45-year-old man was sentenced to 20 months for goading his online followers to torch a hotel that houses refugees.”
In September 2024, more than 30 people had been arrested over social media posts, 17 of these had been charged. The police found that some of those investigated did not meet the threshold for criminality.
Farage and Reform UK promote a far-right narrative that people are being imprisoned merely for posting memes online. In reality, the people convicted were found to be inciting violence or promoting racist ideology.
Can’t say anything or put in prison lie:
At the conservative CPAC conference in Washington, D.C. In February 2025, Farage said: “in my country you can’t say anything or you might get put in prison” and “we’ve had enough of free speech being cracked down upon. We’ve had enough of two-tier policing, two-tier justice, different groups of people being treated differently by the law. We’ve had enough of being told you can’t say that the hell with it within the limits of what free speech gives us, we should be allowed to say whatever the hell we want.”
Starmer is the biggest threat to free speech in our history slogan:
In August 2024, Farage said to Fox News: “Nobody should use any social media platform to genuinely spread hate or incitement to violence, and that free speech rule I think all of us would support and agree with. But what we are allowed to do on social media, or should be allowed to do, is to speculate, is to ask questions, is to try and put facts out, to put facts out that wake up the rest of the community. And when you’re engaged in something like that, you can never, ever guarantee that what you say is 100 percent true… Now Starmer, by cracking down on that, poses, I think, the biggest threat to free speech we’ve seen in our history.”
Response
These two quotes show how Farage changes his rhetoric depending on his audiences and what he thinks he can get away with. The CPAC conference wasn’t covered by UK media and he will know that so can say more extreme things. Farage doesn’t like that half those polled after the riots believed that Farage was responsible and that the Labour government is considering placing a duty on social media companies to restrict “legal but harmful” content. Farage and those on the far-right want to be able to say whatever they want, even if it is hateful, divisive, creates fear and results in violence.
Finally there is an interesting bit of hypocrisy by Farage. Reform UK’s leader claims to be fighting for free speech, but his party has banned a series of critical outlets from their events.
STOP REFORM UK 