The National:

MANY people appeared to have been fooled by a viral fundraiser by the name of “Help Are Own First” doing the rounds today.

At first glance, the Union Jackified crowdfunding page appears to be a call to stop helping refugees fleeing the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan.

While there has been an outpouring of support for Afghans fleeing the terrifying situation there, there has also been divisive and unpleasant rhetoric from the usual suspects.

Former Brexit Party and Ukip leader Nigel Farage barely waited until Kabul had been taken to start spreading claims that “most” refugees from other countries would pretend to be from Afghanistan to improve their chances of claiming asylum, and suggested those fleeing could be “Taliban operatives” or from other terrorist groups.

One Scottish refugee charity hit back, telling The National: “We must not allow hateful, divisive and downright false comments to distract us from this reality and the urgent need to have a serious and grown-up conversation about how the UK must respond to this human tragedy."

Under the misspelled title, today’s crowdfunder’s description reads: “I have started this fundraiser because at the moment too many people seem to have forgotten that WE SHOULD BE HELPING ARE OWN FIRST!!

“All money will be used to help ARE OWN.”

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It certainly appears to be from the Ukip line of thinking. But all was not as it seemed.

When visitors scrolled down a little further to the note section they discovered what the fundraiser was truly all about.

“For the purposes of this appeal ‘ARE OWN’ refers explicitly to Afghan families who are currently being resettled in the United Kingdom,” the page reveals.

“This is because a lot of them risked their lives to help our armed forces and government officials with translation, interpreting and other tasks during the last twenty years, and to be honest if they didn’t, the United Kingdom may have had the teeniest, tiniest, weeniest role to play in this whole s***show.”

The creator of the trolling fundraiser turned out to be blogger Simon Harris, also known as Man Behaving Dadly. The man previously trolled Farage by fundraiser for the RNLI to name a hovercraft after him, following the GB News presenter's heavily criticised claims about the charity.

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At the time of writing, the Help Are Own First fundraiser has brought in nearly £19,000 and will see the cash given to Community Agents Essex, ensuring the arriving families “have everything that they need for a comfortable and dignified new start”.

And people absolutely loved it.

One person commented: “Some beautiful b****** has made a fundraiser titled, simply, 'HELP ARE OWN FIRST', to try and draw in the people who only care about homelessness when arguing against immigration … the money is all going toward Afghan refugees.

“Not everyone is bad it seems.”

Another added: “Saw HELP ARE OWN FIRST trending and thought WTF,” before noting: “Had a read of the Go Fund Me page, it’s genius.”

“This is an absolute blinder,” said @TrinovantesD. “Post this link in any Gammon-dominated thread and help raise funds for those in need in Afghanistan.”

If you’d like to donate yourself you can do so here.