The English Defence League has been mocked after falling for a fake story that a bakery was producing hot cross buns without crosses to avoid upsetting the local community.
Spoof website Southend News Network published a satirical article claiming a bakery had decided to remove the “offensive” cross from the traditional buns.
The article claimed it was in response to “fundamentalist maths teachers”, who felt the cross would confuse children trying to learn the difference between a multiply sign and a plus sign.
But the joke seemed to go over the heads of the people responsible for the English Defence League London Division II Facebook page, who linked to the article with the caption: “Hot cross buns without a cross. Well that's just a bun. We must not upset the islamic invaders must we?”
While some commentators on the link realised it was a spoof article, others felt it was yet another example of the dilution of Christian culture in the UK.
“It only offends a certain type of scum” was the comment from Ian Slater, while Ken Wigston asked: “What next, ''hot crescent bun'' ...?”
Ron Wall simply said: “It's beyond a fuckjng joke now.” [sic]
However, some appeared to have read the story, including the comments from the bakery manager Michael Prove, who said that a maths teacher “accused us of confusing children who are just starting to truly understand the world of mathematics, and to be honest I told him in no uncertain terms that I wouldn’t be willing to remove the cross from the buns.
“He stormed out of the bakery shop area, and at closing time he came back with four other Maths teachers and they used baseball bats to smash everything up. I don’t want any more trouble in my shop, so regretfully we will no longer be putting crosses on our buns.”
Facebook user Dawn Routledge said: “Haha taken in by a satire newspaper, really need to fact check things and stop being so easily misinformed”
A commenter named IRBF said: “This story only offends morons, like you, that can't read properly,” while Nick Moon simply stated” “Gullible fuckwits!”
It wasn't just the EDL page which fell for the spoof.
The March For England page - which has almost 70,000 likes - also posted a link, with the caption "Makes my blood boil".
Mina Williams opined: "We have always had hot cross buns and I for one will still call them that ,and also make sure they have the cross on them .That bakery should be boycotted."
Even after it was pointed out that the article was a joke, Mina maintained her anger: "Joke or not ,that's the sort of thing that's happening all the time here"
The hilarious misunderstanding was flagged up to the Huff Post UK by Twitter user SLATUKIP IMP.