Gary Lineker calls out Nigel Farage’s racist Barack Obama comments

When the year began, we'd be lying if we said we expected Gary Lineker to be one of the few mainstream voices standing up against racism.

But 2016 has been a very strange year indeed, and - in a climate that has brought us Brexit, the election of Donald Trump and accusations of the BBC pandering to fascism - the former footballer is a rare voice of reason. The Match of the Day anchor has spoken out against some vile front-page rhetoric, questioning how far the UK has fallen in its attitudes towards refugees and anyone who isn't British. And now he has become one of the first to speak out after UKIP leader Nigel Farage spoke of 'That Obama creature – a loathsome individual who couldn’t stand our country'. Lineker pinpointed the use of 'creature' - dehumanising and racially-charged language used against the United States' first black president - in Farage's TalkRadio interview following the election of Donald Trump as Obama's successor. https://twitter.com/GaryLineker/status/796684015025659904 Others have quickly followed Lineker's example, pointing out that likening a black man to an animal is one of the oldest racist tropes around. As some have pointed out, the statement carries these intonations even without Farage's years of anti-immigrant rhetoric. And yet there are still people who, for whatever reason, have decided Lineker is 'the real racist'. https://twitter.com/sunnysingh_n6/status/796696002292027392 https://twitter.com/SamarthKanal/status/796695722972352512 https://twitter.com/RossMcCaff/status/796670088426455048 https://twitter.com/Lokster71/status/796661364655878144 https://twitter.com/jackiepearcey/status/796695990774407169 https://twitter.com/chrs00/status/796687293897723904