In a controversial appearance on a popular BBC television program, British National Party leader Nicholas Griffin denied Thursday that he is a Nazi.

After describing himself as the son of a member of the Royal Air Force who fought during World War II, the far-right political leader said on “Question Time,” “I am not a Nazi, I never have been.”

The father of Labour Party leader Jack Straw, who also appeared on the program, had spent the war years “in prison for refusing to fight Adolf Hitler,” Griffin said.

Griffin’s comments came after Straw had drawn parallels between the BNP and the Nazi Party, which he described as “a party and an ideology based on race, just like another party represented here today.”

But Griffin rejected the comparison. He said, “I am the most loathed man in Britain in the eyes of Britain’s Nazis. There are Nazis in Britain and they loathe me because I have brought the British National Party from being, frankly, an anti-Semitic and racist organization into being the only political party which, in the clashes between Israel and Gaza, stood full-square behind Israel’s right to deal with Hamas terrorists.”

(article and photo source: CNN)