The inflammatory right-wing commentator Katie Hopkins probably thought her day on the internet couldn't get any worse after her Twitter account was suspended for hate speech on Thursday. She was wrong.
Josh Pieters persuaded the controversial opinion-spouter to fly to Prague this week to pick up a fake award from the Capetown Collective for the Freedom of Speech. On Thursday, the YouTuber released the video, showing how her lifetime-achievement award, the Campaign to Unify the Nation Trophy, spells out the C-word very clearly behind her.
It was tough to stay in character
Hopkins, who has rubbed shoulders with the likes of Milo Yiannopoulos, Nigel Farage, and Tommy Robinson, enjoyed a three-course dinner with Pieters, the magician Archie Manners, and a group of thoroughly briefed actors at the five-star Four Seasons hotel in Prague.
Pieters gave a speech to keep up the charade that included a nod to his real occupation as a YouTuber. He made a lot of bold statements that Hopkins clapped along with, including "Without being able to mock other people, without being able to attack people, we are not free," "The intellectual battle against the woke brigade is being won," and "The snowflakes are melting."
He told Insider that the speech was about twice as long as what was shown in the video but that when it was cut together it seemed a lot more ridiculous that Hopkins fell for it.
Now that Katie Hopkins can’t read Twitter, I can tell you that on Monday I made her fly to Prague to pick up a completely fake award. Video up shortly.
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Pieters told Insider that everyone was told they had to stay in character the whole dinner, which made things a little easier. But it was still challenging not to laugh or show disgust at various points in the evening, and he had to keep stepping out of the room.
"I had to go to the bathroom a few times because I couldn't keep it together," he said. "It was a very surreal, in a bad way, night. I felt like we were teleported into an alternative reality where we were all billionaires sitting around a table, drinking wine and being racist."
'Epileptics are all weirdos — they're up there with the Asians'
At one point in the evening, Pieters became concerned that they might have been a little too mean to Hopkins. That is, until she made her speech and said "a number of appalling things," Manners said.
To list a few: "If you call 'Mohammed' in a school playground in the UK, 2,000 f---ing kids come running, and you don't want any of them," "Epileptics are all weirdos — they're up there with the Asians," and "East London is fairly s---ty at the best of times, 82% Muslim, what can I say? Those people are raping their own mother."
After the speeches, Pieters and Manners filled Hopkins' trophy with red wine and chanted at her to drink it in one go — which she did.
Pieters has gained a reputation as one of the most original and daring creators on YouTube right now. Over the past few months, he and Manners have made a handful of inventive videos that are essentially social experiments designed to test the limits of what they can get away with.
That said, they always try to give their marks a chance, Pieters said.
"I think we always try to — not only from a creative point of view, but also from a slightly moral point of view — not completely dupe someone by breaking the law or doing something really wrong," Pieters told Insider. "We always try to give people a bit of a chance."
With Hopkins, for example, the Capetown Collective for the Freedom of Speech's founder was listed on its website as a leader of the Ku Klux Klan.
The power of 'freedom of speech'
Pieters said they picked on Hopkins because he's always been incensed at what she says in the media. But it was her claim that the drowning deaths of young migrant children were a political stunt that got him the most.
"She has freedom of speech, and so have I," he said. "We just let her dig her own grave."
Watch the full video below.
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