Newly unearthed Nigel Farage videos reveal support for rioter, neo-Nazi event and far-right slogans

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Nigel Farage has sold videos in which he endorsed a neo-Nazi event, repeated extremist slogans and supported a man convicted over his involvement in a far-right riot. The videos are among several highly questionable clips identified by the Guardian in an investigation into the Reform UK leader’s use of the personalised video platform Cameo.

They include videos in which he repeats a motto associated with the UK far right, references antisemitic conspiracy theories and makes misogynistic remarks about leftwing politicians – including a comment about the US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s breasts.

The unearthing of the videos could prove damaging to Farage, whose party is leading in the polls in the UK. They raise questions about his relationship with the far right and who he is willing to take money from.

Farage charged £155 for one video he made in 2025 for a man he was told had received a 16-month sentence for his involvement in a far-right riot. The Reform leader told the man to “keep acting in the right way”.

He was paid £141 for another video in which he promoted an event by a Canadian neo-Nazi group, which used the clip in propaganda alongside fascist salutes and antisemitic imagery. Farage called the event “the best thing that ever happened”.

The Guardian has also identified a series of “outtake” Cameo clips in which Farage appears quick to anger when his recording is interrupted, showing a side to him that contrasts with his amiable public persona.

The Guardian analysed 4,366 clips Farage has produced on Cameo since he joined the platform in 2021. He has become a prolific user of the service, which allows celebrities and high-profile figures to sell short videos to members of the public.

Buyers of Cameo videos are required to write a prompt, which describes who the video is for and what the user wants their chosen celebrity to say.

Farage has charged a total of at least £374,893 for his videos since he joined the platform five years ago and often makes several videos a day. Most are innocuous clips in which he is paid about £85 to send his supporters personalised messages to celebrate birthdays, Christmas or Valentine’s Day.

However, there are dozens of instances in which he has made videos for people who expressed far-right or offensive views. They include clips Farage made for one Cameo user who expressed support for the National Front, a defunct fascist party, and another who asked for a video for a former Ukip supporter who dislikes “the gypsies”.

A spokesperson for the Reform UK leader said: “Mr Farage has recorded many thousands of videos for genuine supporters to celebrate weddings, congratulate friends or send novelty messages. At that scale, the occasional mistake can occur.”

They said Farage’s Cameo videos “should not be treated as political statements or campaign activity” and added: “He has long been clear in his opposition to extremism and political violence.”

‘Keep acting in the right way’, Farage tells man convicted of violent disorder

The Guardian discovered the time and date his videos were uploaded – and how much Farage charges for them – in the publicly available source code embedded in the platform’s website.

The code also reveals the prompts Farage sees when he records his videos, including one he made for Ben Tavener, 37, who had been convicted of violent disorder over his involvement in clashes in Bristol on 3 August 2024.

At the time, following the Southport murders, Farage condemned the widespread rioting across England, much of which targeted hotels housing asylum seekers. “We do not support – I do not support – street protest, violence or thuggery in any way,” he said. “We must deal with violence wherever it comes from and deal with it ruthlessly.”

The following year Farage made a Cameo video for Tavener, which was commissioned and paid for by his family to mark the conclusion of his sentence.

Their prompt asked Farage to record a message for a man called “Ben”, who it described as a “longtime Reform member … who was filmed in the 2024 summer riots breaking up fights and helping stop clashes with police. When objects were thrown at him, he threw a bottle that hit the ground and hurt no one. He received 16 months in prison (off licence in days).”

Despite knowing that he was being offered money to support a man who had received a prison sentence for involvement in the far-right riots, Farage recorded a sympathetic message for Tavener.

He told him he had received an “absolutely outrageous” prison sentence. “I know you’ve really, really been through the mill and I’m sorry. I’m genuinely sorry. You’re not alone, but that’s Cold Comfort Farm. It’s absolutely rotten. All I can say is keep your head up, keep believing in the right things, keep acting in the right way, and in the end, do you know something, Ben, in the end, good triumphs over evil.”

He finished the message by thanking Ben for his support, adding: “I’m with you as well.”

Tavener told the Guardian receiving the video had given him a “good bit of morale”. He denied he had been rioting and said he was not far-right, describing himself as “patriotic”. He was taking part in protests against a hotel housing asylum seekers when, footage shows, he threw a bottle in the vicinity of counter-protesters and mounted police.

However his video for Tavener appears to be at odds with his claim to have “done more than anyone else to defeat the far right in Britain”. He has recently been seeking to soften the image of Reform to appeal to mainstream voters. That effort could be further undermined by a video he was paid to make for neo-Nazis in Canada, which was filmed just 10 days after his election as an MP on 4 July 2024.

A pep talk for Canadian neo-Nazis: ‘They have to go back’

Farage was paid extra for speedy delivery of the video. The prompt said the user wanted him to endorse the “Road Rage Terror Tour”, a Canadian show hosted by “Jeremy MacKenzie, Derek Harrison and Alex Vriend”. A quick Google would have revealed to Farage the extremist nature of the individuals and their event.

MacKenzie, Harrison and Vriend are leaders of Diagolon, a group identified as a “Canadian far-right ‘extremist’ group” by the US state department in 2022.

Diagolon’s website advertised a book alluding to Adolf Hitler called Meme Kampf and the group’s extremist slogan – “they have to go back” – was a nod to the forced repatriation of migrants. At the time Farage recorded the video, there were multiple news reports about Diagolon and its neo-Nazi tour, which it billed as a “comedy show”.

Justin Trudeau, Canada’s then prime minister, had described the group as a “white nationalist violent organisation”. Andrea Horwath, the mayor of Hamilton, the Ontario city where Diagolon was due to bring its show, had said she was “appalled” by the forthcoming event.

It appears that the neo-Nazi group turned to Cameo – and Farage – in an act of retaliation, to troll the female mayor. The prompt asked Farage to give a “pep talk”, adding: “We are trying to get Andrea Horwath to attend the ‘Road Rage Terror Tour’ comedy show. But she is hesitant to go because of the name.” It added: “If Nigel could please start the video with the subtitle of the show ‘They have to go back’ it would be appreciated. Cheers.”

Farage duly obliged, starting his video: “They have to go back.” Farage’s message then encouraged “Andrea” to attend what he said was “the most talked-about show in Canada”. “Why not give it a go?” Farage said. “You never know, you might walk out saying, ‘Road Rage Terror Tour is the best thing that ever happened.’”

Within three hours of Farage uploading the video, the neo-Nazi group had edited the clip and begun circulating it online to promote its event.

Farage’s clip was also incorporated into the neo-Nazi group’s propaganda, including one video in which a leader of Diagolon makes shooting noises and gestures while saying: “I just saw you were brown and I couldn’t help myself.”

In another Diagolon video, Farage’s Cameo clip featured alongside white nationalist and antisemitic messaging, including slides, which appear to be generated by AI, depicting Jewish men as drug dealers “stealing our birthright”, and south Asians as “strangers at our doors, taking what’s ours”.

Farage’s spokesperson said he used the platform “in good faith and without knowledge of the individuals involved beyond what is written for him” in the prompt. They added: “If individuals or groups subsequently choose to misuse or repurpose a Cameo recording, that is clearly outside Mr Farage’s knowledge or control.”

A representative of Diagolon said it disputed the Guardian’s characterisation of the group. They said of Farage: “We used him for a laugh and to cause him this trouble as a consequence for being lazy and stupid enough to say anything for a dollar.”

‘Have a great day. If in doubt, keep them out’

While Farage may claim to have been duped into repeating the Canadian neo-Nazi slogan, it is harder for him to give the same excuse for his use of a phrase used by the British far – right. In the Cameo videos reviewed by the Guardian, Farage uses – or more often alludes to – the hardline anti-immigration phrase “If in doubt, kick them out” more than 20 times.

The slogan, which may have roots in the football saying “If in doubt, kick it out”, has been adopted by the far right as a shorthand for a hardline immigration policy. It was used at a far-right Tommy Robinson rally in October 2024, and again at protests against the housing of asylum seekers in hotels in August and November 2025.

Farage seems to be aware of the connotations – and the risk of adopting the phrase. When he was first asked to record a Cameo video with the words “kick ’em out” in May 2021, Farage appeared reluctant, saying it “could be misconstrued”. And on five subsequent occasions in which Cameo users asked him to use the phrase, Farage did not do so.

But weeks after expressing reluctance to use the phrase, Farage adopted a variation of it when asked to use it when marking an 80th birthday. “This comes, of course, from one Brexit fan to another. So please have a great day. If in doubt, keep them out is a motto you believe in,” he said.

He used the phrase again in June 2022, in reference to an online game, and again in July 2024, when he said: “I’m asked to add if in doubt, kick ’em out. I tell you what, if you come here illegally you should not be staying, simple as.”

On 17 occasions, Farage part-referenced the phrase in a manner that is likely to resonate with his supporters, saying things like “If in doubt, proper border controls,” or more vaguely suggesting “If in doubt, you know what to do.”

Dr Ashton Kingdon, a lecturer in criminology at the University of Southampton, said the phrase was a “a well-established far-right slogan”. She added: “He is choosing to cultivate this audience and to speak its language back to it.”

Farage’s spokesperson said it would be “entirely misleading” to portray his Cameo messages as “evidence of political alignment with the individuals who requested them”.

‘Up the Rhodesia’ and other far-right tropes

Unlike his traditional social media accounts, which have millions of followers and receive intense public scrutiny, Farage’s Cameo videos go largely unnoticed. They are more akin to a direct one-on-one message, although they can then spread organically among groups of supporters who share them among friends on WhatsApp, TikTok or Instagram.

In many of his Cameo videos, Farage deploys references and in-jokes that are unlikely to mean anything to a mainstream audience but resonate with internet subcultures, including some that are linked to the far right.

In one Cameo clip, for which he charged £76, Farage revealed an apparent familiarity with antisemitic conspiracy theories. Asked to “talk about how the world is going to shit and how secret societies are controlling everything”, he volunteered: “Is it the Bilderbergers that are running the world? You know, there are many, many other theories. It could be the Masons. Some think it’s the Rothschilds. Maybe it’s George Soros. I don’t know. What I do know is actually I don’t think any of it is a conspiracy theory.”

Kingdon, the Southampton academic, said references to those four conspiracies together “form a recognised canon of far-right, antisemitic and white nationalist thought: that hidden elites are secretly coordinating to undermine nations and centralise global power”.

In another video appearing to reference a far-right trope, the Reform leader concluded a £78 video: “I’ve got to end this by saying ‘up the Rhodesia’. Now whether this is the old country or a pub, I don’t know, but that’s the message.”

There are no pubs in England called the Rhodesia. Rhodesia, a white minority-rule state that is now Zimbabwe, has become a common reference point for white nationalists.

Dr Robert Topinka, a lecturer in digital media and rhetoric at Birkbeck, University of London, said: “Rhodesia is a key far-right and white nationalist reference point and has been since the 60s. Rhodesia is shorthand for a beleaguered white minority fighting heroically in a doomed battle to preserve an ethnostate.”

This is not the first time Farage’s use of Cameo has caused controversy. In 2021, before becoming the leader of Reform UK, Farage was duped into recording a video in which he used the Irish nationalist phrase “Up the Ra”.

At the time, he said he “would have looked at that as something very innocent, and wouldn’t have even known there was an implication to it”. He also said he rejected video requests on Cameo “if they are crude or offensive”.

However, there are dozens of Cameo videos recorded since then containing crude or offensive language. And there are others which Farage recorded for Cameo users who openly expressed offensive views in their prompts.

For £78, for example, Farage produced a Father’s Day message from a user who included “Ps vote national front” in their request. For £74, Farage also recorded a 70th birthday message for someone called Ken, who he was told was a Ukip supporter who liked GB News but “dislikes – the gypsies”.

Farage was twice paid on Cameo to make misogynistic comments about female politicians. In one, he noted the recipient of the video was “rumoured to have a secret crush on Diane Abbott. Well, I hope that’s not true.” In another, Farage ridiculed someone “simpering for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s big naturals” – a reference to the US congresswoman’s breasts.

Farage also appeared relaxed about receiving money from Cameo users expressing transphobic views, including one who said their friend “slept with a tranny on a lads night out and it’d be so funny if this is how he finds out!! Kept it subtle so the woke brigade don’t lose their marbles. It’d be really funny if you go [a]ll serious with ‘we all know what you did’.”

In an expedited video for which he charged £160, Farage then said: “We all know what you did. We won’t tell anyone if you don’t.”

When asked to provide his political predictions in another video, for which he charged £77, Farage said: “We’ve won the Brexit battle, but we now have to beat the war on woke. The nonsense – the idea that a bloke puts on a dress and calls himself a woman, et cetera.”

Relentless use of Cameo raises questions about focus as an MP

Analysis of the 4,366 videos reviewed by the Guardian suggests Farage has been recording the equivalent of almost three videos a day. (That calculation is likely to be an underestimate, since it does not include the thousands of additional “private” Cameo clips that were not part of the tranche reviewed by the Guardian.)

Indeed, his relentless use of the platform raises questions about his focus as an MP and leader of a major political party. On the day of his election on 4 July 2024, for example, Farage took time out of his political duties to record eight Cameo videos. Within hours of his election the following morning, he recorded two more, fulfilling expedited 24-hour commissions.

His political success has coincided with – and probably contributed to – an uptick in demand for his Cameo videos. The 19 hours in total that Farage has spent recording Cameo clips since taking his seat have mainly occurred when the House of Commons is not sitting. But he appears to have uploaded videos on 212 occasions during parliamentary business in the house.

They include six videos uploaded during the second reading of the renters’ rights bill, and one video – wishing someone a happy 53rd birthday – uploaded during a parliamentary vote that Farage missed.

Farage’s spokesperson said he had voted in the House of Commons “more times than Kemi Badenoch and Keir Starmer combined since July 2024, which does not support the suggestion that recording these brief messages has detracted from his parliamentary responsibilities”.

Nine of Farage’s Cameo videos appear to have been recorded on Christmas Day. Four were seemingly recorded on the day of the queen’s funeral, including one produced for a stag do, and another in which Farage made a vulgar sexual reference to “shenanigans” in a cabin and “Deez Nuts”.

On the surface, most of Farage’s videos project his carefully honed public persona of an amiable well-wisher. However, outtakes from some – which the Guardian discovered by changing some of the text in the URL – show a side to Farage the public do not generally see.

On several occasions, when his money-making sideline is interrupted by a text message or phone call, requiring him to re-record the video, Farage appears quick to anger.

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