Laurence Fox compares Progress Pride flag to Nazi Swastika in paedophile allegation court case
Laurence Fox arrives at the Royal Courts of Justice on 24 November 2023. Fox is being sued by former Stonewall trustee Simon Blake and drag artist Crystal, also known as Colin Seymour, after an online row in October 2020 in which Fox called the claimants ‘paedophiles’. He is counter-suing the pair over tweets calling him a racist (Leon Neal/Getty Images)
Reclaim Party founder and former GB News presenter Laurence Fox compared the Progress Pride flag to the Nazi Swastika during a libel trial over a social media row.
The right-wing personality appeared in court in November after calling Drag Race UK star Crystal, also known as Colin Seymour, Coronation Street actress Nicola Thorp, and former Stonewall trustee Simon Blake “paedophiles”, after they labelled him “racist” for urging his followers to boycott Sainsbury’s in 2020 because it celebrated Black History Month.
Fox, 45, denied being a racist, and after the three launched a defamation case against him due to the “paedophile” comments, he counter-sued them over the racism claims.
While appearing at the High Court on 29 November, Fox defended his use of an image which turned four Progress Pride flags into a Nazi swastika in a conversation about his own social media use.
According to court transcripts seen by PinkNews, Fox said: “I’ve got no objection, actually, to their rainbow flag, because of the persecution that homosexuals suffered…
“What I object to in terms of the Pride flag is the black chevron which is referring to Black Lives Matter specifically… Black Lives Matter is a profiteering Ponzi scheme.
“The chevron below it, the brown one, that is just for all brown people regardless: Mongolia to Manitoba. That is just, ‘Anyone brown, you’re covered there’. Then the baby blue and the baby pink are the symbols of transgenderism and I think transgenderism, especially being pushed on children as it is in this day, is evil and therefore I don’t think there’s anything progressive about this Pride flag.
“To top it all off, this Pride flag is flown in London on every street whether we object to it or not.
“I was saying, ‘You can’t criticise this flag’ and what is the only other flag in history that it was illegal to criticise? The swastika, the German flag as brought about by Adolf Hitler.”
At other points during the court case, Laurence Fox described the Black Lives Matter movement as a “grift” repeated claims of it being “and “a Ponzi scheme”, and revealed he had for a time not seen his family due to his right-wing beliefs.
“I had taken to wearing a Trump 2020 hat or a Make America Great Again hat and this caused so much distress to my sister that she asked me to leave the house,” he told the court.
The Reclaim politician also criticised the campaign, led by footballer Colin Kaepernick, to “take the knee” in a gesture calling for racial justice in America, with Fox claiming that British people should only kneel “to be knighted or given an honour of some kind by the sovereign” or to propose marriage.
“It’s totally anti-British to take the knee… I’m not going to get on this particular fad wagon,” he added.
Patrick Green KC, representing Fox, argued that the social media row had been started by Seymour, Blake and Thorp, and that Fox was defending himself.
“Other than upsetting trolling there wasn’t any harm in any real sense,” Green said.
“What the court is considering is harm to reputation – we say there isn’t any… nobody thought the allegations [that they were paedophiles] to be true. No-one formed an adverse view and indeed there appears to be evidence quite to the contrary.”
Lorna Skinner KC, representing Blake, Seymour and Thorp, said in written submissions that Fox’s explanations behind his social media posts “ranged from the nonsensical to the incredible, revealing a level of arrogance that is frankly insulting to the intelligence of everyone present at the trial”.
Skinner added: “It is notable that the more egregious examples of Mr Fox’s racism are also the most recent, which reveals a trend over time in which Mr Fox becomes increasingly emboldened to speak his mind.”
Laurence Fox previously told the High Court that allegations of racism have left him in financial ruin and unable to get a mortgage.
In a statement, Fox said that the term “racist” is a “career-ending word, and a reputation-destroying allegation” which he claimed left him without an agent and unable to get a mortgage from his bank.
“I felt that one of the most important things I had in this world was my good name, and they were trying to ruin it,” he said.
Fox has made a name for himself as a right-wing activist and has attracted controversy on a number of occasions, including sexist comments that resulted in him being sacked from GB News and sharing photographs of himself in blackface in August.
The trial before Justice Collins Rice ended on Friday (1 December), with a decision expected at a later date.
