Sarah B Rogers, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy at the U.S. State Department, used the far-right meme “Da Yookay” throughout a speech Friday at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in west London, listing what she described as examples of British injustice.
“In ‘Da Yookay’, you can be remanded without bail for an inflammatory tweet, while a psychopath who seizes a three-year-old and feeds him to crocodiles walks free,” Rogers told the audience, according to The Guardian. She also claimed that “jury trials for speech crimes are abolished” in the UK and that a girl escaping a rape gang could flag down a police constable only to discover “the cop is in league with the rapists.”
Rogers added: “In ‘Da Yookay’ you get a free car for pretending to be disabled. In ‘Da Yookay’ cops defer to a murderer who calls his victim racist. Then they handcuff you as you bleed to death if you’re white.”
The official also told the audience she was not there to tell them “as your minders do, that it’s all misinformation.”
A UK government spokesperson responded Friday: “Our world-renowned justice system operates without fear or favour to protect all our citizens, and we completely reject this characterisation.”
Rogers, whose role was created in 1999 to strengthen relationships between the US and foreign publics, has become the public face of the State Department’s hostility to European liberal democracies, according to MPs who criticized her remarks. She has publicly attacked policies on hate speech and immigration by US allies and promoted far-right parties abroad.
Max Wilkinson, the Liberal Democrats home affairs spokesperson, said the repeated attempts by Trump officials to undermine the UK’s democracy and justice system were “out of hand” and that ministers should contact U.S. counterparts. “Echoing bizarre online conspiracy theories about the UK is something we might expect from a hostile state rather than a Nato ally,” he added.
Labour MP Stella Creasy said figures like Rogers “should spend less time reading Twitter conspiracy theories about the UK and more time fixing their own problems,” citing gun violence and deportations of children in the United States.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer earlier this month suggested that the United States was trying to interfere in British democracy after Vice President JD Vance blamed the murder of British teenager Henry Nowak on mass immigration.
The ARC conference, headed by Conservative peer Philippa Stroud, drew more than 4,000 delegates from 85 countries. Its advisory board includes Reform UK MP Danny Kruger and James Orr, a Cambridge theologian who is a senior adviser to Nigel Farage. Kruger told delegates in a keynote that Britain’s cultural and political crisis was a battle to defend the “English settlement” — a civilisational inheritance rooted in scripture, national sovereignty and the rule of law.
Farage made an explicit pitch for support at the gathering a day after Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch appeared, likening “family breakdown” to “community breakdown” as populations grew more diverse. Attendees included delegates from European far-right groups such as Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland, Belgium’s Vlaams Belang, Spain’s Vox, and the Netherlands’ Party for Freedom.
Also appearing as an official participant was Carl Benjamin, a rightwing political commentator known by the online pseudonym Sargon of Akkad, who has previously faced controversy for comments about Labour MP Jess Phillips.