Fox & Friends Sunday hosts apologized after two of the show’s guests -- one of whom works for the channel -- floated the possibility of using internment camps to detain terror suspects in the U.K. following the June 3 attack in London.
The day after the attack in London, which killed seven and injured dozens, Fox News’ Fox & Friends Sunday hosted Fox contributor and former U.K. Independent Party leader Nigel Farage and Daily Mail columnist Katie Hopkins. Both guests invoked the idea of internment camps for terror suspects in the U.K. to respond to the attack. Later in the show, the hosts apologized for their guests’ radical suggestions. From the June 4 edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends Sunday:
CLAYTON MORRIS (CO-HOST): Earlier on the show, we had a couple of guests mention the word internment, the idea of internment camps, as a possible solution to this. I think I made it well-known my feeling on that, which I find reprehensible, but on behalf of the network, I think all of us here find that idea reprehensible here at Fox News Channel. Just to be clear.
PETE HEGSETH (CO-HOST): No suggestions of that.
MORRIS: Absolutely.
Farage first brought up the notion of internment camps, saying that “unless we see the government getting tough, you will see public calls for those 3,000 [terror watch list suspects] to be arrested.” Farage added, “if there is not action, then the calls for internment will grow”:
ABBY HUNTSMAN (CO-HOST): Nigel, you have the pulse of the people. You were behind the Brexit movement before anyone really knew that that was actually going to happen. We've got these big elections in the U.K. this week. What is the mood? What is the sense where you are of the people in the U.K. about this threat of terror? [Do] they feel like where they are they have a handle on it?
NIGEL FARAGE: We are as a people very slow to anger. We are remarkably tolerant of things. But I do think, bear in mind this is now the third terrorist incident that has happened in my country in the spate of as many months. And the mood that I get now is we want some real action. We don't just want speeches given outside number 10 Downing Street. We want genuine action. And if there is not action, then the calls for internment will grow. We have over 3,000 people on a sort of known terrorist list, and we’re watching and monitoring their activities, but a further 20,000 people who are persons of interest, mainly they’re linked in some way to extremist organizations. Unless we see the government getting tough, you will see public calls for those 3,000 to be arrested. And I’m not sure, I’m not sure that that is the right approach, because the big danger with that is we might alienate decent, fair-minded Muslims in Britain.
HEGSETH: Of course. Calls for internment --
FARAGE: But whatever happens, we do need action.
HEGSETH: -- would be strong talk.
Later, Hopkins reiterated Farage’s remarks about internment, and even went further, saying that the U.K. “need[s] start incarcerating, deporting, repeating until we clean this country up” and that “we do need internment camps”:
CLAYTON MORRIS (CO-HOST): How do you think her speech resonated? Do you think it hit the mark, or did it miss?
KATIE HOPKINS: It missed the mark. I mean, we were relieved, I think, I was relieved that she didn’t come out and say the stuff that our London Mayor Sadiq Khan has been saying.
[...]
HOPKINS: At least Theresa May came out and said “enough is enough.” What she hasn’t done, what she didn’t do, is tell us what we need to hear. And that is that things are going to change completely. That tomorrow, 3,000 people on the watchlist are going to be rounded up. We need to hear that 650 jihadis that returned to the U.K. are going to be incarcerated and deported. And we need to hear that Saudi-backed mosques and extreme hate preachers and imams within those mosques are also going to be shut down and deported. That’s what regular British people want to hear, what I want to hear. And it is not enough to say we will win against terror, because if this is terror losing, then victory is meaningless because this is horrible.
[...]
MORRIS: Talk about the nuts and bolts of this. Nigel Farage on the show a short time ago bringing up the word “internment,” bringing up the specter here in the United States of internment camps -- Japanese internment camps. You’re mentioning deportation and rounding up and mass incarceration. What would that look like? Do you think that Theresa May, do you think that the British government would actually do that?
HOPKINS: I don't think they've got the stomach to do that. I don’t think they’ve got the political will to do that. I also see how they pander still relentlessly to these preachers who are on the wrong side of this argument. People who are against the prevent strategy for counterterrorism. People like Cage to speak out always in defense of Islam and how great it is. Islamic preachers who speak out about the fact that what we need to be worried about is Islamophobia. We’re not worried about that. We do need internment camps. Before, I would’ve bought the idea that, no, this gets more people radicalized. You know, that’s not the solution. But we’ve gone beyond the tipping point. I tell you this country cannot take another attack.
Farage and Hopkins are both notorious Islamophobes on whom Fox News regularly relies for its post-terror attack fear-mongering about Muslims and immigrants. Farage is a staunch Trump ally, former Breitbart contributor, and anti-Muslim agitator who has accused British Muslims of having a “split of loyalties” and falsely claimed Sweden is the “rape capital of Europe” because of Muslim immigration. Farage frequently appears on Fox to push anti-immigrant rhetoric. Hopkins frequently uses her Daily Mail column to push xenophobic misinformation. Hopkins, who is currently being sued for libel, has called migrants “cockroaches” and falsely accused a Muslim family of being terrorists. In a recent report from Sweden, she claimed without evidence that the country’s news is filled with reports of rape and assault of young women, discussed an unsourced alleged rape of a 12-year-old by an unaccompanied minor immigrant, and told the impossible-to-substantiate story of a girl “terrified of going out alone” because she lives “near a busy shopping centre which draws migrants from no-go zones,” which do not exist in Sweden. Her vitriolic xenophobia has made her a favorite of the “alt-right.”
Fox has a pattern of hosting anti-Muslim guests to fear-monger about refugees and immigration, and, since the election of President Donald Trump, attempting to justify his anti-Muslim policy proposals in the wake of terror attacks, even when it doesn't make sense. Most recently, after the terror attack in Manchester, Fox hosted the architect of the post-9/11 torture program to blame civil rights and invited Farage to use the attack (which was committed by a U.K. native) to justify Trump's Muslim ban. One Fox & Friends host has even admitted that the show only covers terror attacks when they appear to implicate Muslims.
This is not the first time the idea of internment camps to deal with Islamist terrorism has been floated on a Fox show. In 2016, Fox guest Carl Higbie cited Japanese internment camps as a precedent for Trump’s calls for a Muslim registry. And in 2010, then-Fox contributor Liz Trotta seemed to defend the use of Japanese internment camps when discussing outrage over a blog post by Martin Peretz about Muslims.