Reform UK leader Nigel Farage accepted an award from a US far-right activist who had just launched a racist rant calling for migrant boats to be “sunk” in the English channel.

Farage claims he didn’t hear the vile views of young Republican Nathan Berger expressed just 45 seconds before he joined him on the stage at a gala dinner in New York last month. Video of the New York Young Republican Club gala dinner shows Farage being introduced on stage by Berger, the club’s vice president, who makes an unhinged assault on British politics.

Berger said that Britain had “forgotten the virtue of empire and the valour of conquest” and called on the British Government to “sink the ships” of “invaders” as there was “plenty of room at the bottom of the Channel”. It was a clear reference to the small boats of migrants crossing the English Channel. Last year was believed to be the deadliest year for such crossings, with 53 migrant deaths according to the French coastguard. He also claimed the UK was being “pillaged” by migrants from former British colonies.

Georgina Laming of HOPE not hate said: “Nathan Berger’s words are undeniably racist, far right and extreme, any reasonable person would have called them out for what they are. Nigel Farage continues to deny that he leads a far-right party, but you can judge a man by the company he keeps.”

Farage accepted from Berger the John Foster Dulles award, which is awarded by the club each year to “an individual that best embodies the anti-Communist spirit” of Dulles, a Cold War era Republican politician. Recent winners include US mercenary boss Eric Prince and far right Hungarian leader Viktor Orban.