Nigel Farage has taken aim at journalists accusing President Trump of bigotry for laying the blame for the “Chinese virus” at Beijing’s door, saying they are indeed to responsible for it.
The People’s Republic of China and its one-party, communist regime, Farage noted, “seems to be above criticism” as the pandemic rips through the West.
“When President Trump has talked about the ‘Chinese virus’ (others have called it the ‘Wuhan Virus’) he has been met with waves of criticism and accusations of racism,” the Brexit Party leader observed in a Newsweek article.
“In the House of Commons, shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry even said of Trump: ‘Now he’s calling it the foreign virus, blaming it on Europe for its spread and today blaming China.’
“I hate to break it to Ms Thornberry, but Trump is right,” he said bluntly.
“Coronavirus is the third major public health scare this century that I can think of which can be traced back to China,” Farage continued.
“There is nothing to suggest that the Covid-19 virus is a deliberately created virus,” he noted — likely a nod to claims the virus originated in laboratories located in Wuhan — but was clear that this disclaimer “isn’t the same as saying that its emergence is free of all human involvement.”
The veteran political operator noted the appalling hygiene conditions in Chinese wildlife markets” such as Wuhan’s so-called “wet market”, where “living, dead or dying creatures as diverse as bats, pangolins and other [creatures] are held in close proximity, their body fluids and all the bacteria, viruses and parasites they carry mixing and mutating in direct contact with human shoppers.”
More importantly, he recalled how, initially, “China suppressed the truth about the nascent epidemic even among its own people, clamping down on whistleblowers delaying a global response by month, at the cost of thousands upon thousands of lives worldwide.”
“Isn’t it time we in the West had a grown-up conversation about China, beginning with the truth that several layers of the regime — from sanitary inspectors to secret police — are responsible for this nightmare?” he asked.
“Isn’t this the moment when we need to remind ourselves that China is a deeply unpleasant communist dictatorship, a surveillance society that executes thousands of its own people every year? We all need to examine our attitude to the Beijing regime.”