The Uni of York UKIP parody Twitter account has run into trouble after a UKIP official asked for it to be taken down.
Edward Richmond, UKIP’s regional Web & Social Media Officer for Yorkshire and Lincolnshire asked for the spoof account to be taken down as he claimed it unfairly linked the party to far right extremism.
The account is best known for satirically portraying the party as a group of sexist, homophobic and immigrant fearing obsessives, with the vast majority of the account being centred on lizard based conspiracy theories.
On May 25 it posed a tweet stating: “Remember UKIP members: If anyone finds out you were at an EDL march claim you were hacked, that shit always works.” Richmond claims that he had no problem with the account per se, but that “the only major issue we have with [it] is that it is linking the party to extreme white nationalist organisations, which is quite clearly unacceptable.
“None of our policies promote racial hatred or ant kind of intolerance,” he added.
“In truth UKIP doesn’t want to close parody accounts because many of our members enjoy them as well. But when parody/comedy turns sour by extension suggesting that the party is akin to the KKK, UKIP cannot stand by and do nothing.”
The account was unapologetic, telling Vision: “If UKIP is going to be a mature political party, it needs to put up with the satire the others get. Mr Richmond’s moral crusade is misguided and probably part of a Bilderberg plot, or Lizards, we not sure which.”
The University appeared happy to completely ignore the matter, with a spokesman telling Vision: This would probably be a matter for Twitter.”
I’d say there’s a difference between satire and false representation.
Personally, I don’t support UKIP as a party aiming to form government. However, I do think that they’re fulfilling the useful function of making the major parties think seriously about issues like immigration and Islamification while pushing them to the right. One or two MPs might not hurt for the sake of furthering this cause…
On the other hand I do worry about them splitting the Tory vote and effectively handing government to Labour which would clearly be counter productive in terms of protectionism…