Farage appeared with antisemitic pastor on US web radio show

Brexit party leader gave at least six long interviews to Rick Wiles on the TruNews network

Nigel Farage has been interviewed at least six times by a far-right, antisemitic American pastor who recently used his evangelical web radio show to claim that Donald Trump’s impeachment was a “Jew coup” against the president, it has emerged.

The Brexit party leader gave a series of long interviews between 2011 and 2016 to Rick Wiles, who has long used his TruNews broadcasting network to spread conspiracy theories, including the idea that Barack Obama is a Muslim plotting against the US.

In the interviews, unearthed by the anti-racist group Hope Not Hate, Farage repeatedly discussed a supposed plot by bankers and “globalists” to impose a world government, a conspiracy theory strongly linked to antisemitism.

Farage has previously been condemned by leading Jewish groups in the UK for using such tropes in other interviews. The Brexit party has described criticisms as attempts to smear Farage.

The discovery of the appearances on TruNews are likely to increase concerns about Farage’s apparent willingness to discuss such ideas with far-right figures, particularly given the increasingly open nature of Wiles’s antisemitism.

In a TruNews broadcast last month, Wiles described Democrat attempts to impeach Trump as “a Jew coup, plain and simple”. Wiles continued: “America is in the throes of a political coup led by Jews. President Trump is surrounded by a rabid pack of seditious, treacherous Jews who are intent on overthrowing the votes of millions of Christians who elected him in 2016.”

While this was said more than three years after Farage’s last appearance, during the five-year period of the interviews the evangelical broadcaster repeatedly used antisemitic tropes, spread other conspiracy theories and was openly racist.

In one broadcast in 2015, Wiles said the US did not need gun control but “Muslim control”, saying the government should “round up the Muslims and ship them out of this country”. The same year, Wiles said the introduction of equal marriage could see the US destroyed by “a fireball from space”.

In 2016, Wiles warned listeners that Obama was “coming into the schools to rape your children”. Two months later he argued that the Pokémon Go computer game was a Satanic plot to target churches with “virtual, digital, cyber demons”.

Antisemitic tropes were aired on TruNews episodes where Farage had appeared. In 2012, after Farage’s interview was over, Wiles described George Soros, the financier often included in antisemitic conspiracy theories, as one of “our society’s biggest rodents”.

Transcripts of Farage’s interviews show him seemingly willing to indulge Wiles in discussions of ideas often linked to the far right and antisemitism, notably the idea that bankers and other corporations are plotting to create a dictatorial global government.

Speaking to Farage in February 2012 about the Greek debt crisis, Wiles asked him: “Are we going to see some day the central bankers of the world install the prime minister of Great Britain; they’re going to install a future president of the United States? Is this where we’re going?” Farage replied that “anything now is possible”.

In a 2011 discussion, the pair discussed supposed plots for world government by the Bilderberg group of political and industrial leaders, which commonly features in antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Discussing the EU debt crisis, Wiles said: “Nigel, what do you think the Bilderberg boys [are] thinking throughout this? The EU is their little baby.” Farage responded: “Oh, very much so. Of course, the Bilderberg group and the EU have been very close from the start.”

Matthew McGregor, campaigns director for Hope Not Hate, said Farage’s links to Wiles “underlines just how dangerous and divisive the Brexit party is”.

He said: “Wiles has become even more vicious since the election of Donald Trump but his hate was always clear and unapologetic. Nigel Farage frequently appeared on Wiles’s platform up until 2016 and was happy to legitimise and expound radical conspiracy theories, some with antisemitic associations, on an outlet that no mainstream politician should ever have countenanced.

“This was not a one-off or unwitting mistake. This is an individual that Nigel Farage enthusiastically and repeatedly engaged with over several years. His disgraceful behaviour fits in with his wider pattern of collaboration with disreputable and dangerous conspiracy theorists.”

A spokesman for Farage said: “Nigel has done a huge amount of US radio, TV and media appearances over the last decade and more. If Mr Farage did appear on this radio show as the Guardian suggests, then he was certainly not aware of Mr Wiles’s views.”