BNP and followers embarrassingly fall for NewsThump article

The British Nationalist Party made quite the blooper this week after sharing a satirical article from a popular political parody website on their Facebook page, apparently under the belief that the article was real.

Far right organisations like Britain First and the now largely redundant British Nationalist Party have been known in the past for failing to do their research before sharing information online, but this incident seems a little more embarrassing than most.

And that is because the post that the far-right group shared on their Facebook newsfeed this week was from a popular satirical website in the UK known as NewsThump.com, titled “Terrorists should be made to sit on naughty step until they’re sorry, insists Corbyn.” The article claimed that Corbyn wanted to implement a “Hug a Jihadi” policy where Islamic extremists would be given “stern words” as opposed to a violent response against terrorist attacks.

NewsThump is a popular satirical blog that focuses on the subject of UK politics, and even they seemed surprised when then the BNP shared their post, stating on their Facebook page ” It seems the BNP think we’re a reputable news source. Oh how we do enjoy it when the people we’re mocking share our stuff for us…”

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Perhaps more disconcerting were the comments from followers of the BNP Facebook page on the post. “So why isn’t he on a naughty step idiot traitor” asked Edward. “Will ever vote Labour again until this clown is gone”[sic] exclaimed Jim. “What a stupid, inbred tosser” asserted Amanda, who took a more blunt, direct approach.

Despite plenty of people apparently taking the article at face value (and probably not reading it properly either) there were many quick to point out to the BNP that it was, in fact, a satire article. Yet even when commenters were pointing out it was all just a joke, some still didn’t quite get it, as Edwina asked “So Corbyn thinks this is all a joke, does he?”.

The post is still live at the time of writing.