“Rodents”: Five Other Times Katie Hopkins Should Have Been Fired

It’s not been a great year for motor-mouthed Twitter troll Katie Hopkins.

After being losing a libel case earlier this year, Hopkins has now also lost her job at LBC Radio over a controversial tweet that used a Nazi-era phrase that appeared to insinuate a call for a Muslim Holocaust.

Her sacking follows countless controversies surrounding her views on Muslims, immigrants, and other minority groups.

Here are five times that Hopkins avoided the axe, despite her inflammatory rhetoric.

1. ‘Muslim sods’

After a man was apprehended on his way to London’s Downing Street armed with a knife in April, Hopkins took to twitter to unleash another Islamophobic tirade:

“Explosion in France, shooting at a German hospital, knife attack in London,” Hopkins wrote. “And Ramadan has not yet begun.”

“Without food these sods get nasty,” she added.

The tweet was later reported to London’s Metropolitan Police by several users, after it was described as “hate speech” that could “incite racial violence”.

This wasn’t the first time that Hopkins had linked Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting, to violence.

In a previous post, the 42-year-old said:

“Ramadan typically brings a spike in violence in Middle East. I get grumpy when I don’t eat – but I don’t blow things up. Religion of peace?”

2. ‘Palestinian rodents’Amid a spike in violence between Palestinians and Israelis in 2014, Hopkins courted controversy by describing Palestinians as “dirty rodents”.

“2 state solution my arse. Filthy rodents burrowing beneath Israel. Time to restart the bombing campaign,” she wrote on Twitter.

The tweet led to calls for her prosecution for inciting racial hatred. While such tirades are well in keeping with the Hopkins brand, lawyers at the time said that this particular tweet had a chance of leading to a succcessful prosecution.

Hopkins avoided prosection on this occasion, however was successfully sued for £131,000 in a libel case in 2017.

3. ‘Dear black people’

While perhaps resting from taking shots at Muslims, Hopkins took a moment to deliver a shocking generalisation about people of colour.

In a tweet about Netflix show Dear White People, Hopkins said:

“Dear Black People. If your lives matter why do you stab and shoot each other so much.”

As usual, Hopkins swiftly deleted the tweet, however it was captured by Twitter users before she could quietly retract her words.

4. ‘Migrant cockroaches’

In 2015, Hopkins faced yet more calls for prosecution after describing migrants and refugees as “cockroaches” and “feral humans” in her column for MailOnline, the website of the Daily Mail, which openly supported the Blackshirts and Fascists in the 1930s.

The article, which was titled, “Rescue boats? I’d use gunships to stop migrants,” was reported to police by the Society of Black Lawyers (SBL) chairman Peter Herbert, who complained that her words were “offensive” and “xenophobic”.

Charges were not pressed against Hopkins, who later said: “I will not and will never apologise for standing up for what I believe in. People are not really sorry. They are sorry to be disliked.”

5. Which way to assalamu alaykum?When a spoof picture of a British road sign with Arabic “translations” was posted online, Hopkins boiled over with anger at the alleged evidence of the Islamification of Britain.

The Arabic text, it turned out, actually said:

“Peace be upon you,

Refugees welcome,

May women’s genitilia swallow you whole,

May God be with you”.

Perhaps Hopkins’ trip-up in this instance is forgivable, as we’re all liable to fall for a bit of fake news once in a while. 

Though are we wrong to expect more from a woman described by Donald Trump as a “respected columnist”?