Conservative academic Roger Scruton has been fired as a United Kingdom government adviser for questioning whether Islamophobia is real, stating that George Soros ran an “empire” in Hungary, and suggesting Chinese people were “replicas” of each other.
When discussing Islamophobia in a short interview with the New Statesman magazine, Scruton referred to it as a word “invented by the Muslim Brotherhood in order to stop discussion of a major issue.” Scruton, 75, was also criticized as racist for disparaging the Chinese Communist regime.
“They’re creating robots out of their own people … each Chinese person is a kind of replica of the next one, and that is a very frightening thing,” he said.
Scruton also criticized billionaire George Soros, stating, “Anybody who doesn’t think that there’s a Soros empire in Hungary has not observed the facts.”
A spokesman for the U.K. housing ministry said he had been fired by James Brokenshire, the Communities Secretary in the Conservative government. “Professor Sir Roger Scruton has been dismissed as chairman of the Building Better, Building Beautiful commission with immediate effect, following his unacceptable comments,” he said.
George Eaton, deputy editor at the magazine, portrayed the comments as anti-Semitic in the article, pointing out that Soros is Jewish. Eaton later bragged on Twitter that his interview had gotten Scruton fired.
Entirely appropriate that Roger Scruton was sacked as a government adviser less than four hours after I tweeted my interview with him in tomorrow’s NS. https://t.co/8TwgNh0L2W
— George Eaton (@georgeeaton) April 10, 2019
Scruton is a philosopher and writer known for his work on aesthetics and culture and for his defense of conservative political philosophy. He teaches philosophy at the University of Buckingham and has been a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He is a fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the British Academy. In 2016, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for “services to philosophy, teaching and public education.”
He is the author of more than 50 books from aesthetics, art, and music to popular accounts of conservatism, utopianism, and even drinking wine and hunting.
Scruton fought back against claims that his comments were racist. “I have been offended and hurt by suggestions I am anti-Semitic or in any way ‘Islamophobic.’ Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said in a statement.
“If people actually read my comments regarding the interplay between George Soros and Hungary they will realize they are not in any way anti-Semitic, indeed quite the opposite,” he added. “My statements on Islamic states points only to the failure of these states, which is a fact.”
Prime Minister Theresa May’s spokeswoman said: “These comments are deeply offensive and completely unacceptable, and it is right that he has been dismissed.”
