Nigel Farage was this week forced into a humiliating legal climbdown, when he undertook in a settlement never to repeat false claims that the anti-racism charity and campaign group that I run, Hope Not Hate, pursued “violent and undemocratic means”.

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Agreeing never to encourage anyone else to repeat this statement either, Farage has been made accountable for incredibly damaging comments he threw out on LBC radio on 21 December last year during an argument about statements made over Twitter by Brendan Cox, widower of MP Jo Cox.

After the December terrorist attack on a Christmas market in Berlin, the former Ukip leader had tweeted: “Terrible news from Berlin but no surprise. Events like these will be the Merkel legacy.”

Brendan Cox, whose wife was murdered by a white supremacist and in whose name we have run More In Common and Great Get Together events around the UK, responded on Twitter: “@Nigel_Farage blaming politicians for the actions of extremists? That’s a slippery slope Nigel.”

Asked the following day on the Nick Ferrari show about Brendan’s tweet, Farage responded: “Yes, well, of course he would know more about extremists than me, Mr Cox. He backs organisations like Hope Not Hate, who masquerade as being lovely and peaceful but actually pursue violent and undemocratic means.”

Notwithstanding the tremendous insensitivity to a man who had lost his wife to the most horrific murder, these remarks were picked up across all the mainstream media and our charity received a barrage of messages on social media accusing it of extremism, fascism and violence.

The fact is, we are an entirely peaceful organisation. We do not organise counter-demonstrations or encourage anyone to engage in violent conflict. Our mission is to bring people together and fight extremism. We have some very sensitive work going on in schools, with young people, in very divided communities, and in penetrating violent and extreme hate groups.

Our request to Nigel Farage to apologise and retract his statement was ignored. In the circumstances, the charity as well as our political arm – supported by 16,500 people who responded to a crowdfunding appeal – launched the libel action that led to Farage and his lawyers pushing for a settlement before a libel hearing at the end of this week.

He has now attempted to engage in spin to his own supporters about the result, but the fact is that he lost. He is facing legal costs likely to be in excess of £100,000.

But this case was never about money. It was about holding falsehood to account. Never again can Farage repeat these highly damaging smears. We also hope that he will think twice about casually throwing such words around in the future.

With this victory, Hope Not Hate is also putting purveyors of fake news on notice: no more. There needs to be a line in the sand for those who blithely, and without fear or concern for the consequences, throw out falsity. We will challenge and expose those who seek to pursue the politics of division and intolerance on the back of such tactics.

Of course, we are living in a wider era of fake news. The rise of Trump, and the division and damage that followed the vote for Brexit, which was partly driven by campaign lies and the whipping up of fears about immigration, mean that these are very dangerous times. We are under no illusion that this victory will stop these falsehoods , but it might make people realise that they could be held accountable for their words and, more importantly, give encouragement to others that fake news can be challenged.

I’ve been heartened by the tremendous support we’ve seen for our action. Without the help of thousands of ordinary people, we would never have been able to afford a libel action, which is a difficult, lengthy and costly option not open to many. We now need to build on that energy, and certainly at Hope Not Hate we’ll be redoubling our efforts to expose the fake news cycle and its purveyors.

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We have already called out Breitbart, Infowars and the former English Defence League boss Stephen Lennon (Tommy Robinson) for pushing a torrent of conspiracy and other far-right and anti-Muslim material. And we will be exposing others who engage in pushing harmful memes and concocted stories online.

Last December we told Nigel Farage no more. Today we issue that challenge to others, because we know that failing to do so could have disastrous consequences.

• Nick Lowles is chief executive of the anti-racism and anti-extremism campaign Hope Not Hate