For some god-forsaken reason Nigel Farage is once again on our screens, this time for his bizarre performance on Britain's favourite kids show Good Morning Britain, and his subsequent sacking from Britain’s favourite imbecile helpline LBC.
Like a possessed mole-rat stuck in a U-bend, Btec Trump absolutely refuses to be flushed away, choosing instead to thrash, squeal, convulse, and make disturbing splashes across our media outlets for fear of his opinion not being listened to on every single topic.
This time certified ‘not racist’ patriot Farage, now not even an MEP, decided he absolutely had to voice his concern on the current Black Lives Matter social movement, a movement being discussed on the same episode by actual experts: lawyer Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, and the historian Professor Kate Williams.
The stone-cold liberal take on Mr Brexit is that we should simply stop talking about him, we should stop ‘giving him oxygen’; a view I would be all for were it meant literally. But it’s too late for that now. Real or metaphorical, the oxygen should have been cut off back in 2010, before he had a decade long rampage across the British press and got the ear of millions of Brits. Now, he does have to be listened to, not because it's funny (that joke got old long ago), but because he is a public influencer, a symbol of an ideal, and- dare I say it- a ‘thought leader’.
Yes, the sad truth is millions of people look up to and admire old Nige, because he ‘says it how it is’, or at least, how it is in their head, or how they'd like it to be… basically, he says it how it isn’t. All this begs the question: why was this living-meme given a platform in the first place?
I’m not interested in why Nigel Farage is who he is, I’m interested in what he is, what he represents. Whatever is going on in that head of his, whatever happened throughout his life to cause the man we all know today, is not really relevant to analyzing the role he has played, and continues to play, in British political discourse. We can't read his mind, only judge him on his actions which, as a politician, are his words.
Part 1: ’Balance’
The British media's childlike understanding of ‘balance’ means that when discussing something real, be it racism, climate change, trans people, they feel obliged not only to platform someone who knows about the issue, but also another person who knows so little they deny its existence.This is why people like Farage and his love-child Darren Grimes get onto mainstream news broadcasts, not because they know anything, but because they don’t. This is what we might call the act of ‘both-sidesing’ an issue; presenting all topics as an argument to be had between two equally-valid sides. Want a discussion on climate change? Ok, we’ll get a scientist on to talk about it, but for balance also some guy who says it isn’t happening. You see the problem.
Returning to The Churchillian Frog and his latest appearance on GMB, what’s really striking is how unhinged he seems to have become. 2015 Farage was snappy, emphatic, humorous, and always had a good statistic to misrepresent. He also succeeded in making it seem worse to call someone a racist than to actually be racist, resulting in people being forced to take him seriously when he spoke, as opposed to just saying “bollocks” and moving on as they probably should have (see his 1,346th Question Time appearance).
Part 2: How dare you call me a racist!
Only now, in 2020, are colonial nations like the UK and US starting to talk about racism like adults- with the exception of their leaders. Previous discussions on racism were focused simply on the idea of racism as an act. An act one person could do to another. This notion of ‘doing a racism’ is how you would expect a 10 year old to understand it, and it encourages the view that racism only exists in society when someone shouts a racial slur, and even then they can try and pass it off as a ‘joke’. By virtue of an unholy trinity of events: the murder of George Floyd, a global pandemic, and the morphing of the American culture war into a race-war, the big brains in the media have finally accepted we might have to talk about the thing they’ve kept at bay for years, the thing too complicated to be fun: systemic racism.
For The Steak-Bake Revenant, this is a battle lost. The ‘when ‘av I ever been racist tho?’ argument is fast losing its power. Fully grown adults across the country are starting to think of racism as a somewhat complex issue. They’re starting to think that maybe, just maybe, it’s not enough just to never shout the N-word, or even to have black friends.
Nige can’t handle this. He sees it as an outrage that people are suggesting a country built on racism and slavery may have some bias in favour of white people and maintain some unhelpful stereotypes and phobias against the non-white population. To acknowledge that black Brits are massively over-represented in prisons but also deny that Britain is institutionally racist just doesn’t stack up. If the UK wasn’t racist then the black prison population simply wouldn’t be that high. The ONLY reason a country completely free of systemic racism would have that many black prisoners is if black people were somehow inherently worse, which would be (you guessed it) an extremely racist view, and a view that many people, sadly, hold. Just search the ‘white lives matter’ hashtag and see for yourself.
Which brings us back to the man in question. In mid-2019, when Britain was set to leave the EU on the 31st October, Silenced and Oppressed Farage was on the airwaves actively encouraging civil unrest should Brexit not be delivered. It almost seems too obvious to point out: when white people do it to say fuck you to foreigners, that’s fine. When black people do it to protest racism, that’s not fine.
Part 3: Black Commies and the Art of Chatting Shit
Mid-way through being grilled by two women far more intelligent than himself, Toadmaster General blurted out that Black Lives Matter is a “far-left, Marxist organisation”. Outbursts of this nature are not uncommon among right-wing figures attempting to ‘own’ the lefty tossers. It’s an example of a non sequitur, a response incoherent with the previous statement. Labels are easy, debating is hard. What Nige was doing in saying this is trying to evoke fear towards black people, to make them (all of them) seem like a threat. He knows his audience have a visceral hatred of Marxism, socialism, and other concepts they don’t understand, so he attaches them to his opponent in order to discredit them without having to engage with their arguments. Did he give an example of what makes BLM Marxist? Of course not.
Part 4: Statues of Dead Wankers
If you’ve got this far without exploding with rage I probably don’t need to explain why statues of genocidal maniacs are not necessary to remember history. The fact the rich people of the time decided to honor a slaver is not a reason to insult the black people of this country with its continued presence. The toppling of a statue does not mean we’ll suddenly forget our nation's past, only that we intend to stop celebrating the worst parts of it.
When Champion of the NHS Piers Morgan asked Nige if he thought Germany should have kept their statues of Hitler, he couldn’t answer. Nigel Farage's bullshit argument that the toppling of historic statues is just wrong was so easily exposed it was done by Piers Morgan, the man who led the vanguard against the vegan sausage roll.
All this leads to the conclusion that Nige would prefer to honour Adolf Hitler with a statue than allow black Brits the small victory of throwing a statue of an arse-hole in the sea. Why would that be? When Piers Morgan asked Farage if this was really a hill he wanted to die on, old Nige just got more flustered. One has to wonder why he even felt the need to be there. His whole thing has been Brexit, for 20 years! He’s the guy who wants to leave the EU, so why does he feel compelled to attack BLM, what motivations does he have?
Conclusion: Where does his heart truly lie?
Every cause he chooses to push, every position he has ever taken, has been one with the potential, if not the aim, to harm marginalized groups.
His position on Brexit was not about democracy or sovereignty as it was for some leave-voters, it was entirely focused on immigrants. It was entirely focused on the fact that there were people he considered to be ‘other’ living in a country he perceived to have a higher right to.
His support for libertarianism and low taxes is not because he thinks it will help poor people, but because he thinks poor people deserve to suffer.
His support for tuition fees, his outrage at ‘PC culture’, and his ramblings about university ‘safe-spaces’ is not a result of his concern over the well-being of young people, it’s his anti-intellectualism and his fear that people are learning the kind of critical thinking skills that can pop his arguments like a balloon.
And finally, his sudden championing of law and order amidst the protests, despite calling for Brexit-riots, does not come from a place of civility and seriousness, but as a means of denying black people a voice.
The foreigner
The chav
The liberal young
The wrong-coloured Brit.
These are the issues close to his heart. These constitute the hill he’s willing to die on.
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