February 3, 2020
Trumpian British Right Winger Gets Seriously Pranked with Fake 'Campaign to Unify the Nation Trophy'
READ TIME: 2 MIN.
In the recent HBO series "Days and Days," Emma Thompson played a Trump-like populist politician who improbably becomes British Prime Minister. She may have a real-life counterpart in Katie Hopkins, a businesswoman who gained fame from appearing on the British version of "The Apprentice," which she parlayed into becoming a columnist and public figure, hosting a television show called "If Katie Hopkins Ruled the World."
She has been a controversial figure, banned from Twitter for violating free speech rules and forced to pay numerous awards for damages to various individuals. But this past week she had a comeuppance of sorts when she was seriously punk'd by a pair of YouTube pranksters.
Pieters and Manners' ruse began a few months ago, when they set up a free speech organization called Capetown Collective for Freedom of Speech on the Internet, using a pic of the head of the Ku Klux Klan (sans robes) as their president. They then asked Hopkins to accept the Campaign to Unify the Nation Trophy (the "CUNT" award) and accept it in a Prague ceremony at the five-star Four Seasons hotel, for which they hired actors to play members of their invented group to celebrate the clueless honoree.
" 'Without being able to mock other people, without being able to attack people, we are not free,' Pieters said in a short speech, as Hopkins nodded along in agreement," Mediaite writes.
"In Hopkins' acceptance speech, she, true to form, repeatedly bashed Muslims, claiming they are frequently 'raping their own mother,' said epileptics 'are all weirdos, they're up there with the Asians,' and blasted teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg as an 'autistic fucking wench.' "
Asked why he put together such an elaborate prank, Pieters explained that there's "an awful lot of hate in this world, and people like Katie Hopkins spread that hate [and] make money from it. She can do that because she has freedom of speech, but so do I, so I used it to combat her spreading of hatred by playing on her ego and making her look a little bit silly."
