Reform’s George Finch, the youngest council leader in Britain, was physically and verbally abused just minutes’ walk from his own Town Hall, an attack party leaders have blamed on the country’s left-wing government priming would-be assailants with lurid rhetoric.
The 19-year-old Nuneaton and Bedworth councillor who became the youngest leader of a county council in the country earlier this year was assaulted on a night out in an unprovoked attack, he said. Police confirmed they are investigating the incident.
George Finch said he and a lady in his company were “physically attacked” in Nuneaton town centre, and that after he was unexpectedly shoved the alleged assailant then unleashed a torrent of insults and tried to follow the two through the town until police were called.
The “man” — no other description was given — was said to have shouted “racist” and “fascist” at Finch.
The choice of words is conspicuous given it is the very language employed in recent coordinated attacks against the Farage-led party, its activists, and supporters by the British left in recent weeks. The intensity and frequency of the claims and their lurid nature invites violence against Reform, senior figures warned at the time, because such accusations may leave some easily influenced people to believe the intended are legitimate targets for political violence.
Party leader Nigel Farage responded to the alleged assault, reports The Daily Mail, to say the potential events he warned of in the wake of the rhetoric of the left were coming to pass. He said: “I’m deeply upset that our young council leader was assaulted. The words used against him echo the Prime Minister’s disgraceful attack on Reform during Labour conference week and wholly irresponsible comments from the leader of the Green Party.”
Finch, for his own part, was cited by the report as having called the alleged sudden, unprovoked attack a “massive shock” that was “completely out of the blue”.
He underlined the view that the rhetoric of left-wing political activists repeating claims of racism and fascism against Reform led to a member of the public believing them, and acting on them. He said: “‘It’s clear that the man who attacked us was wound up and sent into battle by the dangerous rhetoric of Labour and the Greens”.
He continued: “I’m extremely concerned about the state of political discourse in Britain. Reform UK activists at all levels are suffering intimidation and violence at the hands of Left-wing instigators.”
Reform party coordinator Zia Yusuf, who at the time of the Labour Party media blitz against the party warned of stochastic terrorism — a concept in security and counter-terrorism that has received increased attention since the political assassination of Charlie Kirk — further noted: “The assailant shouted “fascist, racist” – exactly the language used by the Prime Minister and the leader of the Green Party. They know exactly what they’re doing.”
Labour, for their part, called it “categorically incorrect” that their party’s coordinated media campaign to smear Reform and its activists as racist or even fascist-adjacent could have had a real world effect like one of its activists being physically attacked while being accused of being a racist and a fascist.
The UK’s governing Labour Party turning its guns on Reform and the Nuneaton incident come amid specific concern about party leader Nigel Farage’s personal security. All British Members of Parliament have tailored security arrangements funded by the state, a relatively new state of affairs introduced after the slayings of who Parliamentarians in the past decade by extremists.
Yet just weeks ago Mr Farage’s security detail was slashed by 75 per cent, leading to accusations that the government is deliberately putting the high-profile politician in harms way. It is not as if Mr Farage is without credible threats against his life: just last week a man was convicted of making death threats to Mr Farage.
After the case concluded it was revealed for the first time that the man, an Afghan migrant who travelled to the UK by people smuggler boat, already has a considerable criminal record in continent Europe including knife and drug offences, and has an outstanding case against him over alleged child pornography
On the so-called stochastic terrorism cited by Mr Yusuf at that time, it was reported:
The notion of so-called “stochastic terrorism” has only recently entered the public consciousness, and has been defined as “the idea that influential individuals may demonise target groups or individuals, inspiring unknown actors to take up terroristic violence against them”. This became a topic of intense discussion in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, as cited by Farage in his remarks today, who was killed after an intense misinformation campaign against him.
Several prominent public figures who had evidently internalised these claims about Kirk and believed them to be true repeated them after the assassination, only to later retract them when the truth became clear to them. The persistent demonisation of U.S. President Donald Trump as a proto-fascist racist has been cited as stochasticallycreating an environment where individuals have attempted to kill the President by gunfire. Indeed, David Lammy, who today linked Nigel Farage to Hitler, formerly called Trump a “woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath”.
The concept of stochastic terrorism has also been invoked in Slovakia, where last year a member of the public repeatedly shot that nation’s Prime Minister, Robert Fico. Fico came close to death but was able to recover, and having done so, said he forgave the shooter himself, stating that he’d merely reacted to an atmosphere of intense hatred created by the demonisation of himself and his government by Slovakia’s legacy liberal media and mega-funder George Soros.
As reported in 2024, Prime Minister Fico said as he recovered: “I feel no hatred towards the stranger who shot me. I will not take any legal action against him” and stated he was only acting as the messenger of hatred stoked by “anti-government media, foreign-funded political non-governmental organisations”.
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