British columnist Katie Hopkins labels migrants ‘cockroaches’ in controversial column

SHE calls migrants a ‘plague of feral humans’. Katie Hopkins has been compared to Adolf Hitler for suggesting Europe adopt Australia’s immigration policy.

Katie Hopkins on TV

A CONTROVERSIAL British columnist has been compared to Adolf Hitler after she suggested Europe adopt Australia’s hard-line immigration policy.

Katie Hopkins labelled migrants “cockroaches” and “a plague of feral humans” and championed the Abbott government’s approach to dealing with asylum seekers, which was to “threaten them with violence until they bugger off.”

She credited Australians with having “balls of steel” on the controversial issue.

Her comments have triggered a wave of outrage in the UK, where Hopkins has been embroiled in several controversies — including a live-TV row with the late Peaches Geldof over parenting and famously fat-shaming celebrities — earning her a reputation as a “professional troll.”

“Australians are like British people but with balls of steel, can-do brains, tiny hearts and whacking great gunships,” Hopkins wrote in a column, titled Rescue boats? I’d use gunships to stop migrants, and published in The Sun.

“Their approach to migrant boats is the sort of approach we need in the (Mediterranean). They threaten them with violence until they bugger off, throwing cans of Castlemaine [XXXX] in an Aussie version of sharia stoning.

“And their approach is working. Migrant boats have halved in number since Prime Minister Tony Abbott got tough.

“Make no mistake, these migrants are like cockroaches. They might look a bit “Bob Geldof’s Ethiopia circa 1984”, but they are built to survive a nuclear bomb. They are survivors.”

Her comments appeared just days before a 20-foot boat carrying people seeking asylum capsized off Libya. The boat’s sinking, described as the “worst disaster at sea since WWII”, is believed to have resulted in the deaths of almost 1000 people.

The article was immediately condemned. The Independent compared it to Nazi propaganda.

“In the environment that led to creation of the Third Reich in Germany, Polish people were seen as ‘an East European species of cockroach’, while Jews were rats. When Hutu extremists used radio propaganda to incite violence against the Tutsis during the Rwandan Genocide, they called on people to ‘weed out the cockroaches,’” the UK-based publication wrote.

Hopkins’ opinions “recalled the darkest events in human history”, Guardian columnist Zoe Williams fired back.

“It is no joke when people start talking like this.”

Hopkins was called a “disease” by listeners on British radio and “a vile woman” in a change.org petition to have her removed from The Sun.