Farage and Trump: twins in bigotry, racism and xenophobia
Anyone who seriously believes that there could be something – anything – remotely progressive about Brexit, or who harbours illusions about a possible “lexit” (like these idiots), should watch this:
The Guardian‘s Lucia Graves reports:
“On 23 June, the people of Britain voted to declare their independence – which is what we’re looking to do also, folks! – from international government,” Trump told his audience in Jackson, Mississippi.
Jackson is a place where the memory of the Confederacy is still fresh, and as such a curious one in which to be touting a second independence day, of sorts. But such white nationalist fervour seemed to play well with the overwhelmingly white crowd assembled in the largely black city on Wednesday night.
The architects of Brexit like to frame the vote as a righteous backlash against powerful elites. As Farage put it on Wednesday: “You can beat the pollsters. You can beat the commentators … Anything is possible if enough decent people are prepared to stand up against the establishment.”
According to this oft trotted-out framing, Trump’s reviled Washington establishment is a parallel for Farage’s European Commission. But the hyper-focus on anti-elitism obscures the far less righteous xenophobia, racism and anti-immigrant sentiment that were also elements of the leave campaign
See also: Left Foot Forward, This should end the claim that UKIP is not racist
BBC Radio 4 The Briefing Room on Trump’s shock troops, the ‘Alt Right’
Shiraz Socialist 