Nigel Farage's Racism: From Dulwich College to Reform UK Leadership
There is a story, now seared into the public consciousness, that serves as a perfect, chilling prologue to the political career of Nigel Farage. It is a story of a schoolboy, not yet a man, but already fluent in the language of casual cruelty. It is the story of Yinka Bankole, a nine-year-old boy, new to the imposing world of Dulwich College, being confronted by a towering 17-year-old Farage. “Where are you from?” Farage demanded, before pointing down a country lane and declaring, “That’s the way back to Africa” (Boffey, Blacklock and Dyer, 2025).
This was not a one-off, a fleeting moment of youthful indiscretion. Bankole recalls Farage waiting for him at the school gates to repeat the slur, a daily ritual of humiliation. This was not “banter,” as Farage and his defenders have so desperately tried to frame it. It was a calculated act of racialised bullying, a deliberate and repeated assertion of dominance. It was, in short, the perfect microcosm of the political career that would follow.
Bankole, now 54, an engineer who has voted for multiple parties over his lifetime and holds no political axe to grind, was compelled to speak out after watching Farage’s press conference response to the allegations. He was angered by what he saw as Farage’s attempt to “deny or dismiss” the hurt of his alleged targets. In his account to The Guardian, Bankole described the look of hatred in Farage’s eyes, a look that seemed to be rooted in nothing more than the colour of his skin. “I will leave it to the reader to decide whether this was ‘malicious or non-malicious’, ‘meant with intent or not with intent’, ‘direct or non-direct’,” Bankole said. “I know how I experienced it. It certainly felt malicious to me” (Boffey, Blacklock and Dyer, 2025).
This article will argue that Farage’s racism is not a phase, a youthful folly, or a series of unfortunate gaffes. It is the central, organising principle of his political identity. It is the through-line that connects the schoolboy bully to the man who now stands on the precipice of power in the United Kingdom. To understand Farage, one must understand that the cruelty is the point. It always has been.
The Dulwich Allegations: A Pattern of Behaviour
The account of Yinka Bankole does not exist in a vacuum. It is part of a wider, deeply disturbing pattern of behaviour that was so pronounced, so undeniable, that it was documented by his own teachers. A letter from Dulwich College, unearthed by Channel 4 News reporter Michael Crick in 2013, reveals that teachers opposed Farage’s appointment as a prefect due to his “publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views” (Crick, 2013). This was not a secret. It was a known, documented fact. The man who now presents himself as a champion of the people was, in his youth, a self-proclaimed fascist.
But the allegations go far deeper than a single schoolboy’s testimony. By December 2025, 28 former pupils and teachers at Dulwich College had come forward to corroborate accounts of Farage’s racist and antisemitic behaviour. All are named individuals, many of whom have put their reputations on the line to speak the truth (Menendez, 2025).
Peter Ettedgui, a BAFTA and Emmy-award-winning director who is Jewish, gave a detailed account of Farage’s antisemitic abuse. Ettedgui described how Farage would “sidle up” to him and growl, “Hitler was right” or “Gas them,” sometimes adding “a long hiss to simulate the sound of the gas showers” (Menendez, 2025). This was not playground mockery. This was the deliberate, calculated invocation of the Holocaust, the systematic murder of six million Jews, as a tool of humiliation against a Jewish schoolmate.
Stefan Benarroch, another Jewish contemporary of Farage’s, corroborated Ettedgui’s account. Benarroch told ITV News that Farage was the “leader” of a group of teenagers who would wait for Jewish boys as they came out of prayers to “taunt” them. “I would have been hanging out with Peter and then Nigel Farage would just come up to him in a random sort of way and say, ‘Hitler should have gassssed you all,’” Benarroch recalled. “And I remember, as of course does Peter, this whole thing with the ‘s’ being the sound of the gas. It was really, really deeply unpleasant” (Menendez, 2025).
Jean-Pierre Lihou, another former classmate, claimed he heard Farage making racist and antisemitic comments and singing “gas them all” at Jewish pupils. He said Farage would chant “Oswald Mosley” in the playground, a reference to the 1930s leader of the British Union of Fascists (Menendez, 2025). A deliberate invocation of fascism, a celebration of one of Britain’s most notorious fascists.
Farage’s response to these allegations has been a masterclass in deflection and denial. He has claimed he doesn’t recall the incidents, that it was all just “schoolboy banter,” that there was “no intent to offend” (Menendez, 2025). This is the classic playbook of the racist who refuses to be held accountable. The focus on “intent” is a deliberate and cynical attempt to shift the burden of proof onto the victim. It is a rhetorical trick designed to minimise the harm caused by racist acts. When a powerful, privileged white boy tells a Black child to “go back to Africa,” the intent is irrelevant. The harm is the point.
At a press conference in December 2025, when confronted with these allegations by journalists, Farage responded not with contrition or even engagement, but with a tirade against the BBC and ITV. He accused the broadcasters of “double standards” and suggested they had aired programmes that would now be considered racist. When ITV News Political Correspondent Harry Horton put Stefan Benarroch’s allegations to Farage, Farage interjected dismissively: “Good for you. Let’s move on to The Times, shall we... You are wasting your time” (Menendez, 2025). This was the response of a man who knows he is guilty, and who has decided that contempt for his accusers is a more effective strategy than denial.
From the Playground to the Political Stage: The Continuity of Cruelty
The line from the schoolyard bully to the political demagogue is a straight one. The same instincts that drove Farage to torment a nine-year-old boy are the same instincts that have guided his political career. The othering of EU migrants, the demonisation of Muslims, the relentless campaign against refugees: these are not new tactics. They are the same strategies of division and grievance, scaled up for a national audience.
Consider the 2016 “Breaking Point” poster, which depicted a long queue of predominantly non-white migrants and refugees stretching into the distance, with the slogan “Breaking Point: the EU has failed us all.” It was the Dulwich playground writ large on a national stage. It was the same message, delivered with the same sneering contempt: You are not one of us. You do not belong here. The poster was so inflammatory, so obviously designed to incite racial hatred, that it was reported to the police (Stewart and Mason, 2016).
The image used in the poster was taken at the Croatia-Slovenia border in 2015, showing Syrian refugees and migrants in desperate circumstances. Farage’s use of this photograph was not accidental, but a deliberate choice to exploit human suffering for political gain. The only prominent white person in the photograph was deliberately obscured by a box of text, ensuring that the message was clear: this is about brown and black people invading our country (Stewart and Mason, 2016).
When challenged about the poster, Farage defended it with the same contempt he had shown for his schoolmates. He claimed it was an “accurate, undoctored photograph” and suggested that most of the people coming to Europe were “young males” from “poorer” countries. He invoked security concerns, citing the Dusseldorf bomb plot and suggesting that ISIS would “use the migrant crisis to flood the continent with their jihadi terrorists” (Stewart and Mason, 2016). This is the rhetoric of the demagogue, the language of fear and division.
The poster was so offensive that even Boris Johnson, hardly a paragon of progressive politics, felt compelled to distance himself from it. Johnson said the poster was “not our campaign” and “not my politics” (Stewart and Mason, 2016). This is a remarkable statement. When even Boris Johnson thinks you’ve gone too far, you have crossed a line. And yet, Farage has never apologised. He has never shown a shred of remorse. Because for Farage, the cruelty is the point.
His political career has been a long and sorry history of anti-refugee stunts and hostile rhetoric. In 2024, Farage came under fire for claiming that Muslims do not share British values and “loathe much of what we stand for” (Menendez, 2025). This is the language of exclusion, the language that says: You will never truly belong here. It is the language he learned in the schoolyard, now deployed on a national stage.
More recently, Farage has continued to exploit vulnerable populations for political gain. In a social media video shared in December 2025, he claimed that one in three schoolchildren in Glasgow do not speak English as their first language, referring to this as the “cultural smashing of Glasgow” (Menendez, 2025). This not a policy argument, or a serious engagement with the complexities of immigration and integration. Rather, this is simply the language of othering from a man who sees difference as a threat.
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The Intent Fallacy: Why Harm, Not Intent, Is What Matters
One of the most insidious aspects of Farage’s defence is his repeated claim that he never said these things “with intent” to hurt anybody, or that he never said them “directly” to anyone. This is a rhetorical sleight of hand, a deliberate attempt to shift the focus from the harm caused to the supposed intentions of the perpetrator. It is a classic tactic used by those who wish to evade accountability for racist behaviour.
But racism is not a matter of intent. It is a matter of impact. When Yinka Bankole was told to “go back to Africa” by a towering 17-year-old, the intent was irrelevant. The impact was clear: a nine-year-old boy was made to feel that he did not belong, that his very presence was an affront, that he was less than human. This is what racism does. It harms. And the harm is not negated by claims of good intentions or lack of malice.
Holocaust survivors, some of whom lost entire families in the Nazi genocide, understood this principle clearly. In December 2025, a group of 11 Holocaust survivors signed a letter calling on Farage to apologise for his alleged antisemitic comments. “Let us be clear: praising Hitler, mocking gas chambers, or hurling racist abuse is not banter. Not in a playground. Not anywhere,” they wrote. They went on to ask Farage directly: “Did you say ‘Hitler was right’ and ‘gas them’, mimicking gas chambers? Did you subject your classmates to antisemitic abuse? If you deny saying those words, are you saying that 20 former classmates and teachers are lying? If you did say them, now is the time to acknowledge you were wrong, and apologise” (Menendez, 2025).
The survivors, including Hedi Argent, who fled Austria and lost 27 members of her family, and Simon Winston, who was held in a ghetto, understood something that Farage and his defenders do not: that words matter, that the invocation of Hitler and gas chambers is not a joke, and that the harm caused by such words cannot be undone by claims of lack of intent.
The Corrosion of British Values
Farage’s racism is not ‘anti-woke,’ as his supporters would have you believe. It is anti-British. It is a direct assault on the values of decency, fairness, and tolerance that this country, at its best, has always strived to uphold. To tell a Black Briton to “go back to Africa” is to deny their very identity, to erase their history, to tell them that they will never truly belong. It is a poison that corrodes the social fabric of this nation.
Yinka Bankole’s parents came to the United Kingdom from Nigeria in the 1950s. His father was an osteopath, his mother a nurse. They came to build a life, to contribute to their adopted country. They celebrated when their son was accepted to Dulwich College, one of Britain’s most prestigious schools. And yet, their son was subjected to relentless racial abuse by a boy whose family had been in Britain for generations. This is not a story about ‘integration’ or ‘cultural clash.’ This is a story about a privileged, white, British boy asserting his dominance over a child of colour, using racism as a tool of control.
What Farage is selling as a defence of ‘Englishness’ is, in fact, a grotesque caricature of it. It is a narrow, exclusionary, and deeply insecure vision of national identity, one that is defined not by what it loves, but by what it hates. It is a vision that has no place in a modern, multicultural Britain. It is a vision that would have told Yinka Bankole’s parents: You are not welcome here. It is a vision that would have told Peter Ettedgui’s family: You do not belong. It is a vision that is fundamentally at odds with the best of British values.
The Danger of Normalisation
For too long, Farage has been treated as a harmless eccentric, a charming rogue, a political disruptor. The media has been complicit in this normalisation, giving him a platform to spout his hateful bile, often without serious challenge. The political establishment, too, has failed to confront him, treating him as a legitimate political actor rather than the dangerous demagogue that he is.
This normalisation has allowed Farage to sanitise his racist past, to dismiss it as “schoolboy antics.” It has allowed him to present himself as an anti-establishment hero, when in reality he is a product of the most privileged and elitist corners of British society. Dulwich College is one of Britain’s most exclusive and expensive private schools. Farage was not a working-class boy fighting against the system. He was a privileged boy, educated at one of the country’s most elite institutions, using his privilege to bully those he saw as beneath him.
The danger of this normalisation cannot be overstated. It is what has brought us to this perilous moment, with a man who has a documented history of racist behaviour now a serious contender for the highest office in the land. Reform UK, the party Farage now leads, has received the biggest single donation in history to a political party - £9 million - and is leading the polls (Menendez, 2025). The prospect of Farage becoming Prime Minister is a real and present danger.
And yet, the response from the political establishment has been muted. Some have called for an apology. Some have expressed concern. But there has been no serious reckoning with what it would mean to elect a man with Farage’s documented history of racism to lead this country. There has been no serious engagement with the question: what does it say about us, as a nation, if we choose to put this man in power?
The Cruelty Is the Point
What unites all of Farage’s actions, from the schoolyard to the political stage, is a consistent pattern of cruelty. It is not accidental. It is not a side effect of his political project. It is the project itself. Farage’s politics are built on humiliation, on the assertion of dominance, on the deliberate infliction of pain on those he sees as beneath him or as threats to his vision of Britain.
This is what the “Breaking Point” poster was about. It was not a serious policy argument. It was not a genuine engagement with the complexities of immigration. It was simply an act of cruelty, a deliberate attempt to humiliate and dehumanise migrants and refugees. It was designed to make people afraid, to make them angry, to make them feel that their country was being invaded by people who did not belong. And it worked. It worked because Farage understood, instinctively, that cruelty resonates with a certain segment of the population.
This is what his comments about Muslims are about. They are not policy proposals. They are acts of cruelty, designed to make Muslims feel unwelcome, to make them feel that they do not belong, to make them feel that they are the enemy. This is what his comments about Glasgow are about. They are not serious arguments about education policy or integration. They are acts of cruelty, designed to stoke fear and resentment.
And this is what his response to the allegations has been about. Rather than engaging with the substance of the accusations, rather than showing any sign of remorse or reflection, Farage has responded with contempt. He has attacked the journalists who reported the allegations. He has dismissed the accounts of 28 former classmates and teachers as politically motivated. He has treated the pain of his victims with the same casual cruelty that he showed in the schoolyard.
Conclusion: A Warning
The story of Nigel Farage is a warning about the dangers of unchecked privilege, of casual cruelty, of the normalisation of hate. It is also a warning about what happens when a nation loses its moral compass, when it allows itself to be seduced by the siren song of a demagogue.
Yinka Bankole, reflecting on the prospect of Farage becoming Prime Minister, expressed a thought that should worry every person in this country: “The thought terrifies me of what could have happened if I was there the following year when the bully would have had even more authority. The prospect of him having infinitely more of that in a few years’ time is truly a chilling thought” (Boffey, Blacklock and Dyer, 2025).
Britain now faces a choice. It can choose to confront the racism and nativism that Farage represents, to stand up for the values of decency and tolerance that he so despises. Or it can choose to look the other way, to pretend that his past is irrelevant, to allow him to complete his long and sordid journey from the schoolyard bully to the leader of this nation.
The story from Dulwich is not ancient history. It is a warning; one we ignore at our peril. A person who told a Black child to “go back to Africa” and taunted Jewish children about Hitler and the Holocaust must face scrutiny, not sympathy, when seeking national leadership. Britain owes it to itself to confront Farage’s record honestly. The cruelty is not a phase. It is who he is. And we must decide whether that is who we want to lead us.
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References
Boffey, D., Blacklock, M. and Dyer, H. (2025) ‘Former Dulwich pupil says Farage told him: ‘That’s the way back to Africa’‘, The Guardian, 5 December. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/dec/05/nigel-farage-former-dulwich-college-pupil-alleges-said-thats-the-way-back-to-africa [Accessed: 6 December 2025].
Crick, M. (2013) ‘Nigel Farage schooldays letter reveals concerns over fascism’, Channel 4 News, 19 September. Available at: https://www.channel4.com/news/nigel-farage-ukip-letter-school-concerns-racism-fascism [Accessed: 6 December 2025].
Menendez, E. (2025) ‘Timeline of allegations of racism against Nigel Farage and his responses’, ITV News, 5 December. Available at: https://www.itv.com/news/2025-12-05/timeline-of-allegations-of-racism-against-nigel-farage-and-his-responses [Accessed: 6 December 2025].
Stewart, H. and Mason, R. (2016) ‘Nigel Farage’s anti-migrant poster reported to police’, The Guardian, 16 June. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/16/nigel-farage-defends-ukip-breaking-point-poster-queue-of-migrants [Accessed: 6 December 2025].