the testimony<\/a> of more than a dozen contemporaries at Dulwich college who claimed having witnessed, or been a victim of, \u201cracist\u201d behaviour by Farage.<\/p>\nOne of those who spoke out was the Bafta and Emmy award-winning director Peter Ettedgui.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe would sidle up to me and growl \u2018Hitler was right\u2019 or \u2018Gas them\u2019, sometimes adding a long hiss to simulate the sound of the gas showers,\u201d Ettedgui said.<\/p>\n
Not every former pupil and teacher who spoke to the Guardian recalled Farage as doing or saying racist things. Farage has responded to such claims of teenage bigotry as \u201centirely without foundation\u201d and a \u201csmear\u201d.<\/p>\n
But Lihou claims to have clear recollections of Ettedgui\u2019s torment. \u201c[Farage] used to say things like, you know, \u2018Jude\u2019, to Peter, which is the German for Jew, in the way it was said in the 1930s, a long \u2018u\u2019 in a menacing way, you know? It\u2019s pretty awful.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeter would become quiet. I think he originally said \u2018sod off\u2019, because he\u2019s a fairly robust guy. But he eventually basically went into himself and tried to ignore it. It would subdue him. But he\u2019s a successful film\/production\/drama guy, and I\u2019ve got school magazines full of Peter doing various productions at a young age, so it wasn\u2019t going to put him off, but it did certainly affect him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lihou said he found Farage\u2019s denials of the allegations strange.<\/p>\n
Farage responded to previous claims of racism at school made in 2013 by admitting to saying \u201cridiculous things \u2026 not necessarily racist things \u2026 it depends on how you define it\u201d.<\/p>\n
When Lihou wrote an anonymous open letter to the Independent in 2019 in which he referred to the chanting of Mosley\u2019s name and the \u201cGas em all\u201d song\u2019, Farage responded by saying that the \u201cperiod during which I was at Dulwich was highly politically charged, with the rise of Thatcherism, to the Brixton riots just down the road\u201d and that \u201cthere were many people of that time who were attracted to extreme groups on both sides of the debate\u201d.<\/p>\n
Now, leading in the polls and seemingly even on the way to Downing Street, Farage is definite that he said nothing antisemitic or racist as a young man.<\/p>\n
Lihou, who said he had been moved to put his name to his testimony by Farage\u2019s political success, said: \u201cNigel Farage has said, oh, you know, \u2018I said some outrageous things, but none of them racist\u2019. That\u2019s absolute rubbish. It just isn\u2019t the case.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am talking today because I am worried. He\u2019s a charismatic guy. There\u2019s no doubt about that. A bit like Boris Johnson, it\u2019s very easy to find him an amiable rogue. And obviously a lot of people who feel that they can identify with that just get enchanted by that message, and therefore more and more people do.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Lihou\u2019s view, Farage is \u201cenabling people to be basically openly racist\u201d. Lihou highlighted the Reform politician who said \u201call these black people make me sick\u201d. He fears this kind of language has \u201cbecome normal \u2026 And that\u2019s the thing that, I suppose: [Farage] is the personification of this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lihou is not the only one who claims to recall Ettedgui\u2019s treatment at the hands of a young Farage.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Farage] certainly made comments to the Jewish guy in that class, Peter Ettedgui,\u201d said Martin Rosell, who was in Farage\u2019s year and who is now the chair of the Liberal Democrats in Salisbury.<\/p>\n
\u201cComments like, under his breath, sort of \u2018Jew\u2019, that\u2019s that type of \u2026 and comments about how they \u2018missed you\u2019, that sort of thing. He was noticeably more of those times than the rest. He was known for it across the school.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It had been a fun sleepover at Nigel Farage\u2019s house and Jean-Pierre Lihou, a teenager with an appetite,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-272131","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}