“Exclusive: Nigel Farage calls on Labour to rule out pacts with Green Party” ran a headline on the Jewish Chronicle this week, as the august title approvingly reported on an op-ed written for it by Reform’s leader.
Despite Farage being accused last year of singing vile anti-Semitic songs during his schooldays – including “Gas them all, gas them out, gas them all, into the chambers they crawl” – the JC saw no problem in running his piece, titled “Labour must rule out electoral pacts with the Greens who have embraced anti-Semitic dogma”.
It also quoted an – unnamed – former Labour minister backing him, saying: “I’m no fan of Nigel Farage, but he’s absolutely correct here. It is shocking that the party didn’t explicitly rule out an alliance with the Green Party the moment they passed their racist motion.”
The JC also managed to find another – unnamed – Labour MP to say that “the scenes from the Green Party’s conference were worse than anything I’d seen in Labour under Corbyn… we shouldn’t touch them with a bargepole”, and a third – unnamed – ‘senior Labour source’ – to tell it how “it’s hard to see how any deal – at any level – could be done with the Greens now”.
Which might be fair comment – but is the only serving major party leader to have been criticised by Jewish groups for using tropes linked to antisemitic conspiracy theories really the person to spark such calls?
Suggested Reading
What a tool! Reform councillor left exposed on live TV
In 2019, Farage faced strong criticism after it emerged he had repeatedly taken part in interviews with the far-right US talkshow host Alex Jones during which Farage openly discussed conspiracy theories, some of which have been linked to anti-Semitism.
He has appeared at least six times on the show of Jones, who went on to file for personal bankruptcy after families of those killed in the Sandy Hook shooting tragedy – which he claimed was a “false flag” operation perpetrated by gun control advocates and that “no one died” – were awarded a total of $1.487 billion in damages from him.
In his various appearances on Jones’s show Infowars, Farage discussed themes associated with an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that Jewish financiers were behind a plot to replace nation states with a global government.
In December 2009, he appeared on Jones’s Infowars show to tell him how: “We have a political class across the world that are basically aiming for a form of global governance.”
Two months later he told Jones: “Yes, it all fits together, doesn’t it? Hand in glove – the big businesses, the bureaucrats, they have the sole right to make laws. It all fits together. They’re all very happy with the world they’re creating.” He would return to the theme on Jones’s show four months later to talk about “the Bilderberg group” and how “these lunatics genuinely believe that they know what’s best for us, genuinely believe in this concept of global government, and it will be a disaster.”
Suggested Reading
Reform launches own newspaper: here’s what to do with it
In November 2012 he told Jones: “The fact is that the banking system and politics became hand in glove – one and the same thing. And that’s been a complete disaster. The amazing thing is, we have had elected prime ministers in Greece and Italy removed by the bully boy bureaucrats and replaced by former Goldman Sachs employees. You honestly cannot believe what is going on.”
In August 2016, looking forward to a Donald Trump victory in the upcoming presidential election, he told Jones how “if America, as the leader of the western world, once again becomes the leader of the free world, well then I think, basically, we will have done away with the globalists”. And in April 2018 he told Jones how the left “want to abolish the nation state – they want to get rid of it. They want to replace it with the globalist project, and the European Union is the prototype for the new world order”.
When, in 2019, the Guardian compiled a list of these appearances and the conspiracy theories being espoused, a spokesman for the Board of Deputies of British Jews said: “It is vital that our politicians distance themselves from conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists, including those who trade in anti-Semitic tropes. We would call on Nigel Farage to repudiate these ideas and to commit not to dignify oddball nasties like Alex Jones with his presence again.”
Just the very man for the Jewish Chronicle to be giving a platform to so he can lecture other parties about anti-Semitism!
Most popular
Burnham is already winning the new Brexit wars
Reform and the Greens are fading – the real fight is Tory v Labour
I was at Eton with Charles Spencer – this is how it explains his battle with the royals
The uncomfortable truth about Ariana Grande
