Some of her "good work". The social class one with her daughter's name just sums her intelligence.
Views and controversies
Since appearing on
The Apprentice, Hopkins has frequently featured in the media for making controversial remarks, being described in
The Guardian,
HuffPost, and
MTV as a "professional
troll".
[80][81][82] She has described herself as a "conduit for truth", declaring "what other people think but are too scared to say"'.
[83]
Islam
Hopkins is
anti-Islam.
[84][85][86] After the
2016 Nice truck attack, Hopkins stated "Islam disgusts me",
[87] declaring the statement was "entirely rational" and not
Islamophobic.
[88] She is in favour of a
burqa ban and has labelled
Islamic culture as homophobic.
[89] In March 2017, Hopkins gave a speech at a
David Horowitz Freedom Center event, in which she criticised Muslims, stating that a "Muslim mafia" controlled areas of Britain, and describing London Mayor
Sadiq Khan as the "Muslim mayor of Londonistan".
[90][91] Calling on people to "fight for your country" against Muslims, Hopkins stated that "we can commit to arm ourselves, not just with the help of the
NRA," adding "get furious and fight back".
[92][93]
Multiculturalism
Hopkins is
against multiculturalism.
[94] Referencing a so-called "multicultural mafia",
[95][96] she has said that increased crime is directly linked to it.
[97] Criticising the
Notting Hill Carnival in 2016, she said: "I don't buy multiculturalism at all", stating that a "London bubble" believed in it and "the liberal left wing press, the
BBC, they love it! They can't get enough of it."
[98] Following the
2017 London Bridge attack, Hopkins criticised "Liberals in London", saying they "actually think multiculturalism means we all die together", and that they were "so desperately wedded to the multicultural illusion that [they] can only fight those who love the country the most, blame those who are most proud to be British."
[99]
White genocide
Hopkins promotes the antisemitic
white genocide conspiracy theory.
[100][101] She has contended that immigration and multiculturalism are intended to make white people minorities.
[102] In February 2018,
Yahoo News reported that "her intention was to 'expose' the white genocide" happening to farmers in South Africa.
[103][104][105] She also visited South Africa to report on 'anti-white racism'.
[106]
Feminism
On the television show
Question Time, Hopkins said of
feminism: "Women don't want equal treatment, they couldn't handle it if they got it. It's a tough world out there. What a lot of women are actually looking for is special treatment. What women need to realise is that they have to toughen up."
[107]
Tattoos
Hopkins has expressed her views on
tattoos on television shows including
The Nolan Show and
If Katie Hopkins Ruled the World. She has stated: "I really think if you have a tattoo you have to wonder about what kind of future you have ahead of you. As an employer, I wouldn't employ someone with tattoos as I would wonder what customers would think about them. For me, tattoos are just a way for people to find attention who haven't found another way in their life to achieve it by conventional means."
[107]
Social class
During an appearance on
ITV's This Morning in July 2013, Hopkins said she would stop her children playing with their classmates based on their
given names. She expressed a particular dislike for "lower class" names like Charmaine, Chantelle, and Chardonnay, which met with disapproval from co-host
Holly Willoughby.
[108] Hopkins said that she did not like "geographical location names" either. After Willoughby's colleague,
Phillip Schofield, said that she had given the name
India to one of her daughters, Hopkins said that India is "not related to a place".
[109] A viewers' poll conducted by the
This Morning programme indicated that 91 per cent of respondents disagreed with Hopkins's opinion.
[109]
Appearing as a panellist on
Channel 5's
The Big Benefits Row: Live in February 2014, she was accused by
Terry Christian and others of only expressing her controversial opinions to make money from media appearances.
[110] Hopkins has said that financial motives are not the reason she speaks out, and received a "relatively modest" fee of £300 when she was on
This Morning speaking about children's names.
[83]
In a February 2014 interview with
Decca Aitkenhead for
The Guardian, Hopkins was asked if she is a snob: "Oh, definitely yeah, 100%. I think it's really important to be snobby".
[17]
Illness and fatalities in the UK
Hopkins posted a tweet referring to Scottish
life expectancy predictions based upon a 2011
NHS Scotland report, "Healthy Life Expectancy in Scotland: Update of trends to 2010". This tweet was posted following a heated debate on Scottish Independence during an edition of
The Wright Stuff on which Hopkins was a panellist. In the wake of the
2013 Glasgow helicopter crash, the tweet raised widespread condemnation among Twitter users. Hopkins retorted "Following Independence I will only be the Biggest Bitch in England", and described people's reactions as "
PC tastic".
[111] An online petition to ban Hopkins from shows such as ITV's
This Morning and
The Wright Stuff on Channel 5 gained over 75,000 signatures. Hopkins issued an apology the following Monday, restating that her original remark was in reference to the NHS report and was simply bad timing.
[112] ITV said on 5 December 2013 that "We have no plans for Katie Hopkins to appear on
This Morning at this present time".
[113]
On 31 December 2014, police announced they were investigating complaints they had received concerning Hopkins's tweets about
Pauline Cafferkey, a Scottish aid worker who was diagnosed with
Ebola after returning to the UK from
Sierra Leone. Hopkins had tweeted: "Little sweaty jocks, sending us Ebola bombs in the form of sweaty Glaswegians just isn't cricket. Scottish NHS sucks."
[114] No evidence of criminality was found by the police.
[115] On 7 April 2015, Hopkins made a series of tweets suggesting that people with
dementia are "bed blockers" who take up scarce hospital beds and implied they would be better off dead. Her comments were condemned by leading British Alzheimer's charities.
[116]
After five Londoners drowned at
Camber Sands in August 2016, Hopkins tweeted a poll mocking the identities of the deceased.
[117] Sussex Police reported the tweet to Twitter under the headings of "abusive or harmful" and "disrespectful or offensive".
[117] They decided while the tweet was distasteful it was not criminal.
[117] The tweet was deleted.
[117]
Obesity
Hopkins has been accused of
fat-shaming by journalists. When appearing on
ITV's
This Morning, Hopkins expressed her views on
obesity stating: "Would I employ you if you were obese? No I would not. You would give the wrong impression to the clients of my business. I need people to look energetic, professional and efficient. If you are obese, you look lazy", and "To call yourself 'plus size' is just a euphemism for being fat. Life is much easier when you're thinner. Big is not beautiful, of course a job comes down to how you look."
[107]
In 2014, Hopkins took part in a
TLC two-part documentary,
Katie Hopkins: Fat and Back, where she gained and lost nearly 50 pounds (22 kilograms) of weight.
[118] Initially, she ridiculed an overweight woman for being 'a wreck of a human being'. When the TLC show aired in January 2015, Hopkins acknowledged that losing excess weight "actually turned out to be a real ordeal...now I know how hard it is to be fat and carry that weight around and I know no one wants to be fat by choice,"
[118] she said.
Pakistani men and Rochdale
Hopkins objected to Rochdale commemorating National Pakistan Day on 23 March 2015 and said that she based her objection on a
Rochdale sex trafficking case involving nine predominantly Pakistani men.
[119] In a series of tweets, she posted images of the felons with the caption "are these your friends too?" On 29 March 2015, Hopkins was reported to the police by Labour MP
Simon Danczuk for possible race hate crimes.
[120] In response, Hopkins said: "I asked fair questions and I think it's important that someone has the balls to speak out".
[121]
Migrants
On 17 April 2015, Hopkins wrote a column in
The Sun comparing migrants to "cockroaches" and "feral humans" and said they were "spreading like the norovirus". She wrote that gunships should be used to stop migrants from crossing the Mediterranean.
[122][123][124] Her remarks were condemned by the
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights,
Prince Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein.
[125] In a statement released on 24 April 2015, he urged the UK to "curb incitement to hatred" by its "tabloid newspapers".
[126] He stated that Hopkins used "language very similar to that employed by Rwanda's
Kangura newspaper and
Radio Mille Collines during the run up to the
1994 genocide", and said that both media organisations were subsequently convicted by an international tribunal of
incitement to genocide.
[125]
Hopkins's column also drew criticism on Twitter, including from
Russell Brand, to whom Hopkins responded by accusing Brand's "
champagne socialist humanity" of neglecting taxpayers.
[124] Simon Usborne, writing in
The Independent, compared her use of the word "cockroach" to previous uses by the
Nazis and just before the
Rwandan genocide by its perpetrators.
[127] He suspected that if any other contributor had written the piece, it would not have been published, and questioned her continued employment by the newspaper.
[127] Zoe Williams commented in
The Guardian: "It is no joke when people start talking like this. We are not 'giving her what she wants' when we make manifest our disgust. It is not a free speech issue. I'm not saying gag her: I'm saying fight her".
[128]
In 2015 a
Change.org petition was initiated with the aim of getting
The Sun to sack Hopkins. By 26 April, it had attracted over 310,000 signatures.
[129] In early September,
The Sun retweeted an earlier comment from Hopkins expressing her disinterest in migrants. The tweet was pulled after the Prime Minister
David Cameron publicly announced Britain would do more to help those seeking asylum in the UK.
[130] A further Change.org petition for Hopkins to be replaced with 50,000 Syrian refugees gained more than 20,000 signatures in less than 48 hours in September 2015.
[131][132][133]
In November 2015, Peter Herbert, chair of the Society of Black Lawyers, reported Hopkins and
The Sun to Sir
Bernard Hogan-Howe, the
Metropolitan Police Commissioner. Hopkins was questioned and not charged, and subsequently criticised the police for purportedly criminalising opinion, and stated that she would set up a Society of White Lawyers.
[134] By December 2016, the original article had been removed from
The Sun's website.
[135]
Romani people
On 21 May 2014, Hopkins tweeted "
Gypsies are not travellers. Travellers are people that commute to work or go on holiday. Gypsies are ferrel [sic] humans - we have no duty to them". Jenn Selby, a writer for
The Independent, described her comment as incredibly racist.
[136]
Donald Trump
Hopkins supported
Donald Trump's Republican presidential nomination in the
Daily Mail during December 2016: "I hear cries that he is a blithering idiot. I have often been called a deranged fool. But if this were true you could ignore me, ignore us, imaging [
sic] the two of us shouting naked at the rain. It's because we articulate sentiments repressed by the politically correct consensus that we have a voice".
[137] Hopkins defended Trump's
remarks that all Muslims should be banned from entering the United States. Trump later thanked Hopkins for her support and for her "powerful writing on the U.K.'s Muslim problems", calling her a "respected journalist",
[138][139] although the
Metropolitan Police and the
Mayor of London,
Boris Johnson among others, rejected his comments that there are 'no go' areas of London for non-Muslims. Hopkins stated that Britain is in part "radicalised" and "it does nobody any favours to deny the obvious".
[138][140] When asked by BBC's
Daily Politics presenter
Andrew Neil in a December 2015 interview to name the "swathes" of Britain that are no-go areas for non-Muslims, Hopkins replied that she couldn't for "legal reasons". When Neil said there could be no legal problems with identifying an area she continued to refuse, saying only: "I know those places exist".
[141]
Racism, racial profiling, and Black Lives Matter
In January 2017, a caller to her LBC programme named Joseph said she came over as racist, following which she said: "I genuinely believe 'racist' as a word has been used so much. I am sorry for the word racist in a way. I love language so much ... it's like a regular word now, it's lost all meaning to me". When tweeting the clip she added, "Call me racist. I don't care. I will stand up for white women being raped because you're scared to offend Muslims".
[142] Hopkins tweeted shortly afterwards: "Racial profiling is a good thing, call me racist. I don't care... it has lost all meaning". She later briefly retweeted a favourable response from an account named Anti Juden SS, whose avatar featured the
Swastika (and the United States flag), later stating that she had not looked at the handle.
[143][144]
Sharing a poster on Twitter for the
Netflix series
Dear White People at the beginning of May 2017, Hopkins added: "Dear black people. If your lives matter why do you stab and shoot each other so much". Although the tweet was deleted, users of the social media site circulated screenshots of what appeared to be a reference to the
Black Lives Matter movement in the United States.
[145] In August 2016 she urged the London Mayor
Sadiq Khan to use
water cannon against Black Lives Matter protesters at
Heathrow Airport, who had chained themselves to the tarmac of an approach road.
[146]
In February 2018, Hopkins was detained and had her passport briefly confiscated in South Africa for allegedly spreading racial hatred.
[147]
Manchester Arena bombing
On the morning following the 2017
Manchester Arena bombing at an
Ariana Grande concert, Hopkins tweeted about the need for a "final solution", the
Nazis' term for
the Holocaust:
[148]
22 dead - number rising. Schofield. Don't you even dare. Do not be part of the problem. We need a final solution. #Machester [
sic]
The tweet was soon deleted and reworded as a "true solution". Hopkins said the original was a typographical error (she had also misspelled "Manchester").
[149] The motive for the attack, and the background of the suicide bomber, was unknown at the time Hopkins made the comment.
[150][151]
The journalist
Nick Cohen was among those who responded on Twitter: "Even if Hopkins knows nothing of Nazism – which I doubt – her "final solution" can only mean
ethnic cleansing". Others, such as
Owen Jones, called for a boycott of the LBC radio station while they employ her.
[149] Interviewed later on Fox News by
Tucker Carlson, she called for people to insist on deportations among other responses to terrorist acts. She said: "I used the word 'final solution' in a tweet, and I would not in any way want to use that term and the inference other people lay on that. What I meant was, we need a lasting solution, a resolution to this".
[139] The incident led to Hopkins leaving LBC.
[152]
Following the
June 2017 London Bridge attack almost a fortnight later, Hopkins called for
internment camps to be used for those suspected of being Muslim extremists on Fox News'
Fox & Friends. The host
Clayton Morris said, on behalf of the network staff, that everyone considered the "idea reprehensible".
[153][154][155]
Hopkins' comments have been linked in the media with a
hate crime against a Muslim in 2017. A Muslim man in
Heckmondwike stated that he was attacked by assailants who graffitied his house with Hopkins' tweet, including her misspelling "#Machester".
[156]
Refugees and migrants in the Mediterranean
In July 2017, Hopkins flew to
Catania in Sicily to visit a ship known as the C-Star hired by the
Defend Europe movement, which has the intention of hindering the work of "search and rescue" vessels in the Mediterranean used by charities such as
Save the Children to save trafficked migrants and refugees.
[157] Defend Europe is supported by the American white-nationalist
David Duke and the neo-Nazi
Daily Stormer website.
[158]
Hopkins tweeted: "Looking forward to meeting the crew of the C-Star in Catania tomorrow. Setting out to defend the Med. All this week @MailOnline". She tweeted, and then deleted, an image of herself with a Defend Europe activist also present in Sicily at the time, a man known as Peter Sweden, initially reported to be an active
Holocaust denier.
[158][159]
An article headlined "Katie Hopkins on NGOs colluding with traffickers in Sicily" was briefly published on the
Mailonline website in mid-July 2017.
[157] According to a report on
HuffPost website, the article offered no evidence to match the title. Shortly after her article was deleted, Save the Children rejected Hopkins' claim that she had "spent time" with the crew of one of their ships. "Nor will she set sail with us on any of our rescue missions", they stated.
[160] The deleted
Mailonline article was her only contribution to the planned series.
[161]
Hopkins' opinions on Mediterranean migrants resurfaced in 2018 after the
Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. Hopkins suggested that Chief Rabbi of the UK's "support for mass migration across the Med″ explained the shooting. She later deleted the tweet.
[162]