There are wild and delusional claims, and then there’s what Nigel Farage tossed out during a Newsmax appearance on Wednesday night.
Continuing his full-fledged attack against Meghan Markle following her explosive Oprah Winfrey interview, the former Brexit Party leader declared to Newsmax host Greg Kelly that “nobody in the world, in history, has done more for people of color than the British royal family.”
Markle, as you may recall, told Winfrey that someone within the royal family expressed concerns about the potential darkness of her then-unborn son’s skin, suggesting racism was at the root of the remarks. Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, also said she had contemplated suicide yet received no support from the palace over her mental health issues.
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“I don’t for one moment want to downplay the importance of mental health as an issue, but equally we cannot have people claiming mental health issues as a means of closing down debate,” Farage said at one point. “She looked very in control of the interview to me.”
After blasting Markle and her husband Prince Harry for “trashing the U.K’s reputation in the world” with their interview, Farage went on to then take issue with the couple’s allegations of racism by the palace.
“The Queen and the royal family have spent the last seventy years touring around the commonwealth,” the politician turned pundit stated. “The vast majority of those people are Black and Asian.”
He continued: “I would put it to you that nobody in the world, in history, has done more for people of color than the British royal family.”
Apparently, per Farage’s description, the British Empire’s long history of brutal colonialism and slavery should be seen as a positive by people of color the world over, especially in those countries that Britain occupied.
Farage’s remarks quickly went viral on social media, with observers and critics taking the conservative British leader to task for seemingly saying Black and Asian people should be thankful for being colonized and enslaved.
“Replace ‘for’ with ‘to’ and it’s accurate. Prepositions are important!” The Nation’s Jeet Heer noted on Twitter.
“Hey, Nigel. How did those countries end up in the Commonwealth?” asked Barry Malone, executive producer of Al Jazeera's The Stream.
