Nigel Farage has warned viewers of Fox News that Western societies are threatened by a “fifth column living within our own countries” that is “out to destroy our whole civilisation and our way of life”. The UKIP leader made his comments during an interview with Neil Cavuto about yesterday’s terrorist attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices.

He said: “The first thing we have to do is recognise the mistakes of the past, let’s be absolutely frank and honest about this. We now have, within many European countries, and dare I say it within the USA too, a fifth column living within our own countries, people mercifully few in numbers, but people who are out to destroy our whole civilisation and our way of life.”

He continued: “The implications on free speech and our democracy are very serious, so let’s recognise the mistakes we’ve made: uncontrolled immigration, just not knowing in many cases who the people were, that were coming into our country.”

Farage blamed the problem on Western governments, for failing to stand up for Christian values. He said countries like Britain had allowed people to come to the country without knowing who they were, and then encouraging them not to integrate or learn English.

He said: “We’ve allowed, and I’m certainly speaking for Britain here, within our Mosques, people coming in, heavily funded by some Middle Eastern states, pushing a deeply unpleasant and anti-Christian heritage culture.

“And we’ve also – and here’s the biggest mistake that governments have made – we have promoted multi-culturalism. We have promoted division within our societies. We have said to large numbers of people: ‘you can come here from any part of the world. By the way please don’t bother to learn our language, don’t integrate in any way at all. You can take over whole parts of our towns and cities and we will say it has made us a wonderful diverse national.’ That hasn’t worked.

“We’ve got to start being a bit more assertive about who we are and what our values are… We come from countries with Christian culture and Christian constitutions and we’ve got to start standing up for that.”

Later in the broadcast he predicted that problems of terrorism would exist for years to come.