So long, Nigel Farage. America deserves you
by Nesrine Malik
There aren’t many things that would make you feel sorry for Steve Bannon, but being introduced this week in Alabama by Nigel Farage as “the greatest political thinker in the western hemisphere” is one of them. If Farage, winner of no parliamentary election, player of no role in Brexit negotiations and head of no political parties thought I was a political genius, I’d keep that quiet. Steve, you were Darth Vader, the genius architect of the Trump victory and fawned over by the media, the brains behind the Muslim ban, the alt-right’s alt-knight. Now you are being introduced by a man who not only has never managed to win a seat in parliament, but also has failed to so many times he has become a sort of superlative metaphor for loss – victory’s anti-matter. There was something awfully David Brenty about it all – two has-beens still trying to stretch their relevance to the absolute limit by making cameo appearances at fringe events ranting at the establishment that has revoked their access.
Bannon, I get. To him, Trump has been defanged by the new Supernanny, babysitter in chief Gen John Kelly, so he’s getting his kicks by supporting as many agents of chaos as he can. But Farage? What the hell was he doing addressing an Alabama state rally to back some random senate campaign? Who do the Americans think they are getting with Farage? Do they see him as some Churchillian English gent who lives in Downton Abbey and has managed to single-handedly secure Brexit against the efforts of the entire political establishment by sheer force of personality and capital?
I can see why Farage is in the US. It makes perfect sense for a man raging against the dying of the light at home. For people like Farage, who occupy that precarious territory where they are ubiquitous but don’t actually do much apart from writing the odd semi-literate column in a tabloid or website, or a brief weekly radio phone-in show, the launch of a US career is the klaxon that things might not be going too well. And if you see them on Fox News then the suspicion is confirmed. Fox News is Britain’s dumping ground for those who would rather be relevant in a garbage can than irrelevant outside one. That’s all I hear when people like Farage talk about how many supporters or followers they have on social media. I am relevant! Who cares how I got there or what I have to keep doing, if I don’t get attention then what am I? Merely a husk who has abandoned all sense of self and moral responsibility in exchange for some limelight. I cannot go back now, the breadcrumb trail to redemption has been lost and so I must press on.
Nothing is too putrid for Farage, from backing a virulently rightwing homophobe running for senate to addressing far right rallies in Germany.
more
https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/27/nigel-farage-america-ukip-steve-bannon
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