Katie Hopkins

Katie Hopkins (1975–) is a writer-broadcaster, former British reality TV contestant and singularity of awfulness. She is known for her right-wing views expressed on television, newspapers, and on Twitter. She has been rude about migrants, Scots, Muslims, people with dementia, the lower classes, and many other individuals and groups.[2] In fairness, it's unclear how much of her output is designed to wind up the idiots who'll complain about anything, how much is genuine hatred for those more needy than herself and how much is both.

Parroting squawkbox
Pundits
And a dirty dozen more
v - t - e
“”Having stated that she will never back down or apologise (although she recently was legally required to, and did so at 2am for minimum visibility), it’s clear the thing she fears most is having to take any stance that would bring a fatal blow to the carefully-constructed brand...People pointlessly argue with Katie Hopkins on Twitter like they would with Mickey at Disneyland, as though she’ll suddenly remove her foam head and break character.
—Stuart Millard[1]

Road to fame

Born in 1975 in the old wool port of Barnstaple, Devon, Katie went to convent school, Exeter University, and the prestigious Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, but could not join the army due to epilepsy. Instead she worked as a business consultant and got a marketing job with the Met Office, the UK's state-owned weather forecaster.

Soon after joining the Met Office she took a sabbatical to appear on British reality TV show The Apprentice, a copy of Donald Trump's American program hosted by occasionally-successful electronics entrepreneur Alan SugarFile:Wikipedia's W.svg. She eventually quit the show, citing childcare issues, after making a lot of controversial comments and earning the wrath of Scottish bra guru Michelle MoneFile:Wikipedia's W.svg. Mone, later a member of the House of Lords, was a guest expert on the show and called Hopkins a bad role model for businesswomen. Just after being fake-fired by Sugar, Hopkins was dismissed for real by the Met Office, who said she had failed her probationary period.[2][3]

Media career

After The Apprentice, Hopkins rapidly began to pop up on other TV shows, including popular Jimmy Carr-fronted panel game 8 Out of 10 Cats and terrible pseudo-comedy chat thing The Friday Night Project, where she competed with actor Richard E Grant to see who knew the most about the former Sporty Spice Girl Melanie Chisholm.[4] She came second last in series 7 of I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!File:Wikipedia's W.svg in 2007 and has appeared twice on Question Time, the BBC's flagship current affairs debate show. Most embarrassingly she kept appearing as a guest on British daytime TV show This Morning in one instance saying she would never let her children around other children named after locations, even though her own child is called India. Showing her stupidity and classism. [5]

She has made television programs for TLCFile:Wikipedia's W.svg in the UK, an offshoot of the Discovery Channel, but unlike much of Discovery's cryptozoological nonsense proved herself a very real monster. Her shows included If Katie Hopkins Ruled the World, reportedly dropped after 1 series due to low ratings[2], and the deeply creepy My Fat Story in which she gained 3 stones (19 kg) in weight in an attempt to ridicule fatties understand what it was like to be fat mildly overweight.

She has also written for newspapers including the Exeter Express & Echo, The Sun, and the Daily Mail website.[2]

Political career

She stood as an independent in the 2009 European Parliament elections for South West England Constituency, getting 0.6% of the votes.[2]

Lack of career

After being fired from everywhere, Hopkins has been left clawing for attention by attending far-right rallies with Holocaust deniers[6] and being duped by a YouTuber into flying to Prague to accept the CUNT award.[7] Eventually, after getting mad at Stormzy for saying Britain is racist, and getting mad at Tories trying to insist the Tory Party wasn't racist,[8] she was finally banned from Twitter.[9] Some say people still try to argue with her online from beyond the grave.

Controversies!

Migrants and Muslims
“”22 dead - numbers rising. Schofield.File:Wikipedia's W.svg Don't you even dare. Do not be part of the problem. We need a final solution.
—Adolf Hitler Katie Hopkins on Muslims following the Manchester bombings[10]

She has been critical of migrants on several occasions. In 2015 in The Sun she compared migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea to cockroaches and called for them to be met by gunboats; a petition demanding she be sacked attracted 200,000 signatures.[11] She has also supported Donald Trump, defending his widely-derided claims that parts of Britain are no-go zones due to tough Muslim street gangs intimidating white people.[12] After her "final solution" tweet, she was fired from her job at national talk radio station LBC, to the delight of many others at the station.

Scotland

She was accused of mocking victims of the 2013 helicopter crash in Glasgow which killed ten people.[13]

She also attacked Scottish aid worker Pauline Cafferkey who had contracted ebola in Sierra Leone: Hopkins called Cafferkey an "Ebola bomb" and "sweaty".[14]

Jack Monroe

In 2015 she libelled Jack Monroe, a socialist gender-fluid cookery writer, falsely accusing Monroe of vandalising a war memorial. Apparently another short-haired Guardian journalist had made a disparaging comment about war memorials, and Hopkins put two and two together and made 5000 (pounds sterling, claimed by Monroe).[15]

Camber Sands drownings

She posted a bad-taste joke on Twitter a few hours after 5 people were found drowned at Camber Sands in 2016; there was initial speculation that they were illegal immigrants but it turned out they were all Londoners and she deleted the tweet. Police criticised her insensitivity but declined to make an arrest.[16]

Black Lives Matter

Hopkins is a critic of Black Lives Matter, believing that their equal rights message is secretly a front for anti-white "racism". Hopkins posted in response to a poster of the show Dear White People by stating "Dear black people. If your lives matter why do you stab and shoot each other so much?" She later deleted the tweet, but not before offended followers had taken screenshots and shared the post.[17] Hopkins has called for water cannons to be used against Black Lives Matter protesters at Heathrow Airport.[18]

gollark: If you are *not* using LE, you probably should be.
gollark: I have no idea *what* kind of setup could somehow make it impossible to install nginx, but there are certbot plugins for it and Apache for LetsEncrypt automation, and caddy has it builtin.
gollark: Also, generally what you do is have the reverse proxy handle SSL (well, TLS) connections itself, and then forward it on to backends unencrypted (or possibly encrypted in some situations, I guess).
gollark: Ah, use `ProxyPassReverse` instead.
gollark: Some stuff needs that.

References
  1. Millard, "The Plight of the Professional Contrarian", Frantic Planet 28 Decemer 2016.
  2. See the Wikipedia article on Katie Hopkins.
  3. Apprentice contender Katie fired, BBC, 12 June 2007
  4. See the Wikipedia article on The Sunday Night Project.
  5. Katie embarrasses herself on TV, again
  6. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/sep/23/katie-hopkins-speak-far-right-for-britain-islamophobe-holocaust-denier
  7. https://gizmodo.com/youtuber-gives-fake-award-to-far-right-activist-who-cal-1841376254
  8. https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/12/katie-hopkins-full-tory-english-racist.html "That was made clear as she turned her fire on Sayeeda Warsi, who had urged the party she has served for so many years to deal with its racism problem. Hatey Katie wasn’t having any of that. “It’s our party now Warsi. Time you stepped down, love. Way down”.
  9. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jan/31/katie-hopkins-twitter-account-suspended
  10. Katie Hopkins reported to police after 'final solution' Manchester attack tweet
  11. Katie Hopkins: Sun migrants article petition passes 200,000 mark, The Guardian, 20 Apr 2015
  12. Don't demonise Trump, he speaks for millions of Americans. And who can blame them for not wanting to end up like us?, Katie Hopkins, Daily Mail, 9 Dec 2015
  13. Katie Hopkins Glasgow helicopter crash joke: 68,000 people sign online petition calling for TV ban for outspoken star, Daily Mirror, 3 Dec 2013
  14. Celebs and politicians call for Katie Hopkins to be axed from TV after joking about Scottish Ebola nurse, Daily Mirror, 31 Dec 2014
  15. Katie Hopkins sued by Jack Monroe over vandalism accusation, The Guardian, 18 Jan 2016
  16. Katie Hopkins Camber Sands Deaths 'Poll' Tweet Prompts Police Complaint, Huffington Post, 25 Aug 2016
  17. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/katie-hopkins-dear-white-people-netflix-series-black-lives-matter-racist-tweet-a7713646.html
  18. http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/black-lives-matter-katie-hopkins-causes-outrage-after-calling-for-water-cannon-to-be-used-against-a3313331.html
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