‘Shockingly racist’ UKIP-backed Brexit ad features Donald Trump comparing migrants to snakes
The Brexit campaign backed by top UKIP donor Arron Banks is under fire for an anti-refugee ad that features Donald Trump and attacks refugees.
The Leave.EU group – which lost out in its battle to be named the official campaign to leave the EU – is propped up by a string of senior UKIP figures including Mr Banks.
A video released on the group’s Facebook page this week promotes “Donald Trump’s take on immigration” in a bid to get people to vote to leave the EU.
The ad features footage of migrants arriving across Europe interspersed with moments of ‘violence’, in an apparent bid to get people to back Brexit.
It features an LGBT rights protester holding a rainbow coloured ‘refugees welcome’ ad before featuring unrest. On closer inspection, one of the supposed violent scuffles featured in the ad is actually children reaching into a bag of food.
Trump narrates the ad, re-purposing audio from a Trump rally where the billionaire read the Al Wilson song ‘The Snake’ to oppose refugees and migrants.
He recalls: “On her way to work one morning/Down the path along side the lake/A tender hearted woman saw a poor half frozen snake
“His pretty colored skin had been all frosted with the dew/’Oh well’, she cried, ‘I’ll take you in and I’ll take care of you’
“Take me in oh tender woman/Take me in, for heaven’s sake/Take me in oh tender woman, sighed the snake.”
However, the song ends: “Instead of saying thanks, that snake gave her a vicious bite
“I saved you, cried that woman, and you’ve bit me even, why? You know your bite is poisonous and now I’m going to die.
“Oh shut up, silly woman, said the reptile with a grin/You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.”
Trump’s appropriation of the song has previously been likened to the Nazi tactic of comparing minority groups to snakes and rodents.
Leave.EU’s description of the ad appears to suggest the EU is actually the snake, despite the footage clearly referring to migrants and refugees, and despite Trump overtly referring to Syrian refugees in the original footage.
Labour’s Chuka Umunna said: “This Leave.EU video, complete with Donald Trump soundtrack is vile and disgusting – not what our country is about at all.
“This is really getting down into the gutter – surely Leave campaigners can do better than this vile nonsense.”
Umunna co-signed a letter with Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron and Tory MP Nicholas Soames calling on the Vote Leave campaign, which is not affiliated with Leave.EU, to press for the ad’s removal.
Leave.EU did not clarify how exactly leaving the EU would give the UK more say over the EU’s policies on migration.