A statement from novelty pop musician turned conspiracy influencer Richard Fairbrass:
Right Said Fred would like to issue the following statement ‘Some may be aware that the tweet below is currently circulating on Twitter and has incited negative attention towards us. We would like to state that this tweet was never posted by Richard and we believe his account has been infiltrated and compromised, not for the first time. We both come from Jewish heritage and find any intimation of antisemitism abhorrent. We regret any offence this tweet may have cause.
The Tweet being disavowed posted an image of the concrete and wire fence line at Auschwitz-Birkenau, above which was written:
“No need for gas chambers when vaccines will do the job slowly and quietly and nobody will even know it’s a holocaust”
The quote is unattributed despite the quotation marks.
The original Tweet was immediately derided as an obvious example of Holocaust trivialisation; Fairbrass’s apparent acknowledgement that as such it carries “an intimation” of antisemitism is in contrast to the position of disgraced MP Andrew Bridgen, who has defended comparing Covid vaccination with the Holocaust on the grounds that an Israeli academic agrees with him. Bridgen is currently suing Matt Hancock for libel after Hancock called the comparison antisemitic.
The original Tweet appeared at 12.25 on 4 June. Fairbrass was active on Twitter in the hours afterwards, including interacting with other users on other subjects. It’s not clear when the Tweet was taken down, but the statement claiming a hack was not published until more than 24 hours later. It is very difficult to understand why it took so long, and the hacker’s motives remain unclear – the Tweet came under particular criticism, but it was not anomalous. For instance, in January Fairbrass defended Bridgen’s Holocaust comparision, calling Sajid Javid an “ill informed wanker” for criticising him; there are other examples from the same period, at least one of which has now been deleted after coming under renewed attention.
In January 2022, Fairbrass and his brother Fred Fairbrass said they had “got it wrong” after promoting a livestream hosted by neo-Nazi Mark Collett; more recently, however, Richard Fairbrass’s output has included supporting Paul Golding’s complaint about a Muslim reciting the adhan outside the Royal Albert Hall as part of an iftar event, and posting a Ukrainian flag with the words “Fuck Ukraine” superimposed over it. None of this damaged their standing within the populist milieu: just last month they appeared on GB News live from Bournemouth, where they were shown larking around with Nigel Farage. It seems that someone, though, judged their more recent Holocaust Tweet to be a more serious matter.
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