Say-anything provocateur Katie Hopkins has pulled a retweet of praise from a neo-Nazi Twitter account after prompting outrage.
The columnist - who was last month forced to apologise for a string of mistruths and defamatory claims about a British Muslim family barred from travelling to the United States - was sharing a recording of her radio show on LBC in which she said the word ‘racist’ is over-used.
During a peroration in response to a caller called Joseph suggesting she came across as “racist”, she said:
“I genuinely believe ‘racist’ as a word has been used so much. I’m sorry for the word racist in a way. I love language.”
She later later doubled down on Twitter:
And endorsement from an account featuring the Nazi swastika earned a re-tweet:
The share was seized on across Twitter:
She latterly ditched the RT, explaining she didn’t “look at the Twitter handle”:
On LBC, she had said:
“I genuinely believe ‘racist’ as a word has been used so much, Joseph, I’m sorry for the word racist in a way. I love language.
“It’s become used so much, it’s like a regular word now, it’s lost all meaning to me.
“If I’m called racist, it’s just the same as someone offering me a tea or a coffee, it’s such a mundane word. I think that’s unfortunate, don’t you Joseph, when we overuse a word?”
Joseph responded:
“No, I don’t think that’s unfortunate. ‘Racist’ is used so often because it’s occurring so often.”