Reform UK candidate defends Hitler remarks

A Reform UK election candidate has defended himself after it emerged that he had described Adolf Hitler as “brilliant” at using personality traits to “inspire people to action”.

Jack Aaron, standing for Nigel Farage’s party against Grant Shapps in Welwyn Hatfield, made the remarks as he promoted socionics, which critics call a pseudo-scientific theory about personality types.

In online posts, the psychologist also described Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator, as “gentle by nature” and suggested that Vladimir Putin’s use of force in Ukraine was “legitimate”. He said his comments were psychological analyses, not endorsements of their actions.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, in 2022, he wrote that Hitler was “brilliant in using Fe+Ni [socionics personality traits] to inspire people into action” while criticising his “basically incoherent […] writing and rationale”.

Speaking to The Telegraph, Mr Aaron said: “I was doing a personality type analysis, and as I do that I look at their natural strengths and their natural weaknesses.

“I’m not looking at Hitler as a good person or bad person. In my personal view, he’s the most evil person to exist. He killed multiple members of my own family. My grandfather fled Vienna in order to escape the Holocaust. So naturally I’m a bit upset about the suggestion that I’m admiring Adolf Hitler.”

Mr Aaron, the founder of the World Socionics Society, described socionics as a “pre-science” and said his “key contribution” was “rooting out pseudo-science” from it.

Three days after Russia invaded Ukraine, he said it was incorrect to claim that Putin was “insane”, adding: “The motivation to acquire and wield force is legitimate, and there is a whole group of personality types inclined to this, and they have historically shaped the world we live in.”

However, he insisted he was “not pro-Putin, I’m pro-Ukraine”, adding: “When I said he was legitimate, I’m not saying Putin breaking the international order to invade Ukraine was a perfectly nice thing to do. Absolutely not.

“The idea of using force to take things… is still a legitimate point of view in history because you look at Alexander the Great, you look at Julius Caesar, every single conqueror. The idea of conquerors has shaped our history so, rather than calling Putin insane, put him in the context of world history.”

Last year, on Reddit, Mr Aaron said Assad was “gentle by nature” and not “some bloodthirsty tyrant who exercises control over his people with an iron fist”.

He stood by the comments, saying: “Bashar Al-Assad is a gentle, even quite weak, individual. Not to say he is a nice man but that he is a gentle man but, because of his weakness, he can’t fight off the situation he’s been born into. He’s a puppet.”

Mr Aaron is the second Reform candidate to have been found to have made comments about Hitler. Ian Gribbin, the party’s Bexhill and Battle candidate, apologised after saying that Britain should have been neutral in the Second World War.

Mr Farage said he could not deselect Mr Gribbin because he was “legally on the ballot paper” and that his remarks had been “ordinary folk down the pub-speak”.

On Monday, the Reform leader said his party had been “let down” by a vetting company, and that he would reveal more information on Tuesday.

Mr Farage and Richard Tice, the party’s previous leader, have previously said vetting had started before the election was called but that the calling of an early polling date meant the process was not completed.