Written by Tom Secker, with contributions by Keelan Balderson…
The recent furore over UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage’s recent trip to Scotland shows us once again that they are wolves in sheeps clothing. While they might appear to represent an alternative political view, a closer look at their policies and their attitudes reveal that they ultimately have an establishment agenda, and are far from the pro freedom, anti-war, fighters of the globalist oligarchy that they are often positioned as being by elements of the alternative media. The irony of a nationalist anti-EU ideologue who is often (though superficially) labeled right wing and fascist himself; calling Scottish Independence activists racists and fascists, should not be lost on the reader.
UKIP are not as popular as they think they are
UKIP recently made significant gains at the local elections in Britain, heralded by party leader Nigel Farage as a ‘game changer’ in British politics. The numbers suggest otherwise. Though UKIP now have 147 council seats (139 more than in 2009), the major ruling party of the government coalition, the Conservatives, still dominate with over 1100 seats. The swing of votes to UKIP is not even the most significant difference from the 2009 result – that would go to the 450+ seats lost by the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, which were mostly gained by Labour with 291.[1]
UKIP’s rise at least in the low-turnout local elections and even lower-turnout European elections is symptomatic of a general movement of political support away from the big party machines and towards the smaller parties. In the UK this is yet to be reflected on a national scale with the possible exception of the rise of support for the Liberal Democrats in 2010, a bubble that seems to have burst now that the Liberals have made it clear they are power-hungry yuppies and are no different from the other two major parties. UKIP do not have a single MP in the House of Commons, yet during the last general election the Green Party gained their first MP and many other minor parties, including UKIP, gained more votes than ever before. Slowly but surely, the British people are turning away from the big two parties that have dominated the 20th and early 21st centuries.
Despite this phenomenon, visible across Europe and indeed the whole world, in the true test of general public political opinion UKIP have failed spectacularly. They have never managed to get a single MP elected to the House of Commons. Even in the local elections their 147 seats haven’t given them overall control of even a single local council, and that’s with 7 in 10 people not even bothering to vote. Likewise their 11 MEPs, of which they are hypocritically so proud despite their anti-EU ideology, come from an even smaller voting turnout than in the local elections. Winning a few seats in dead-rubber, meaningless votes to get into a parliament from which they draw massive salaries while decrying its massive expenditure does not qualify them to run the country. Well, arguably it does, but only in the sense that it makes them the same kind of egotistical, money-grabbing two-faced cowards that dominate the existing major parties.
What do UKIP stand for?
A fundamental question that is far too often ignored, is what do UKIP actually stand for? What are their policies and what will they do if elected? A phenomenon that is rife amongst those desperate for an alternative, is the projection of one’s own beliefs on to those of the party. For example because Farage has appeared on the Alex Jones show and loosely agreed with some of Jones’ babbling, UKIP are all of a sudden the UK’s anti-NWO party. One needn’t be reminded that politics is about winning votes, and in their position securing some of the low-hanging fruit by pandering to outlets like InfoWars is a pretty obvious strategy. It worked quite well for Ron Paul, much to the chagrin of some of his long term followers who felt association with Jones did their image more harm than good.
UKIP are of course best known for their anti-EU policy, in itself neither a bad thing nor an unpopular idea. UKIP and Farage in particular are often seen as icons of anti-globalism, and their EU speeches are quite charismatic and on point. Yet a closer look at their manifestos suggest they are not anti-globalism nor even against European consolidation in some forms. On the domestic front they are as pro-establishment as any traditional Tory.
Strangely neither their 2010 general election manifesto nor their 2013 local election manifesto can be accessed via their website. Fortunately, backups are available.[2]
The 2013 local manifesto opens by directly seeking to exploit people’s justified fears about ‘austerity’ and the removal of public services, while they’re still forced to superficially pay for those services and the impossible national debt created in their name. Predictably, UKIP did not choose to frame this as a battle between the ruling corporatocracy & central banksters and ordinary people, but between British people and immigrants. Under the title ‘Public Services Under Threat’ they inform us in big scary letters that ‘On January 1st 2014, The UK will open its door to unlimited numbers of people from Romania and Bulgaria’.
That’s right. As far as UKIP are concerned you can forget the globalist billionaires and their lobbyist-style influence, forget the aristocratic multi-millionares in the cabinet who have made a career out of maintaining the status-quo, forget the central banks or the corporate banking cartel around them that have exacerbated the national debt and deficit by gambling with the public purse, and forget the growth, tax and debt-based economic system that is designed to suck the people’s wealth upwards – what really matters is the bleedin’ immigrants.
According to UKIP, the immigrants should be the number one target for your attention and hostility. They are the reason houses are so expensive and why public services aren’t perfect. They are the root of the problem rather than a symptom of it. The rest of the 2013 manifesto is devoted to identikit right-wing ‘common sense’ sloganeering as used by the Tory party since the dawn of time.
Their 2010 manifesto outlines in more detail what they stand for, in terms of what their ideal Britain would look like. They say they would remove income tax for everyone earning under £11,500 per year (currently under the ConDemolition it is £9,440 and rising), a sensible policy on its face but very different when considered in context, because they would also introduce a flat income tax, meaning that everyone earning over £11,500 per year would pay the same proportion. For example a nurse entering their job for the first time earning around £21,000 per year would pay the same amount of their salary in income tax as the incoming governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney, whose basic salary will be £480,000 (a massive 60% increase on outgoing Mervyn King’s salary). Carney will in effect be paid £624,000 per annum to make up for his Goldman Sachs pension, which of course Goldman Sachs will no longer have to pay. Nice ‘work’ if you can get it.
Unlike some branches of the Libertarian perspective – which Farage is often lumped with – who have argued a moral basis for doing away with income tax altogether, there is nothing in either UKIP manifesto even hinting at any questioning of the system of tax and the debt-based monetary system. The implication is rather obvious – what UKIP want is lots and lots of people earning very little, just about scraping by, while the super-rich get a tax cut. Their policy appeases the poorest in society in the short term, but pushes everyone but the ruling classes further down there with them.
They do suggest a division between retail and investment banking, but once again this is in the context of granting more power to the Bank of England for ‘overseeing’ the banking sector. This would actually be an acceleration of existing economic policies, rather than a reversal of them. More QE, more interest rate meddling, more bailouts. Similarly, they say that there has to be a reduction in government spending, but a rise in spending on the military, nuclear power stations, massive flood protections and prisons. So do this mean more Tory style cuts to public services but more poor people in jail and more war? I thought this was the progressive alternative party?
Under the guise of needing to get rid of the bleedin’ immigrants they also advocate scrapping the Human Rights Act, part of a range of policies that amount to an even more rapid expansion of the security state than at present. Using the same old rhetoric of ‘zero tolerance on crime’ they repeat their policy of scrapping the Human Rights act so as to make it easier to deport ‘dangerous Imams, terror suspects and criminals’. However, they can’t deport everyone so they want to double the number of prison places, and lock up more people for longer periods of time, including a ‘three strikes’ policy for ‘persistent offenders’ and ‘boot camps’ for youngsters ‘to stop them spiralling into a life of crime’. Obviously, there is no mention of locking up the war criminals and financial terrorists, because after they’ve got rid of the immigrants UKIP want you blaming petty thieves and small scale drug dealers for society’s ills. As for the terrorists and imams, UKIP have made no mention of making MI5 more transparent, so we can assume those terrorists and imams will still be played like fiddles in the modern strategy of tension…they’ll just get to retire overseas when they’re done.
The 2010 manifesto continues by calling for a 40% increase in military spending, expanding the army by 25%, more nuclear weapons, and perhaps most horrific of all strengthening ‘our commitment to NATO’. That’s right, while UKIP are profoundly anti-EU they have absolutely no problem with a globalist faction of mercenaries running roughshod over the Middle-East and Africa.
Mass immigration and wasting money = bad, but constant war and imperialism = good?
And if riots break out in major cities due to social alienation, cuts, racial profiling and police brutality, then Mr. Farage wants troops on the streets, like the police-state of some tin-pot dictator (see Perfect Storm: The England Riots Documentary). Martial Law! That’s how we fight the New World Order!
Or what about UKIP’s unwavering support for the biggest benefit scroungers in the country? The Saxe-Coburg-Gotha family, the Royals? If Farage really is for freedom and if he really does want to slash public spending, why not start with the very symbol of the undemocratic ruling classes and imperialism? Or does he prefer the plastic Union-Jack flag, tea and scones vote?
With a manifesto of more military and prisons, scapegoating immigrants and low-level criminals, the rapid advancing of the division between rich and poor, a naked and blatant politics of fear, and overt nationalism – is it any surprise that people associate UKIP with fascists?
Nazi Scum?
When UKIP leader Nigel Farage recently visited Scotland he was heckled by a small crowd as he left a pub in which they’d been staging a ‘everyday setting’ PR event. The available video only portrays the crowd calling him ‘UKIP scum’, though this has been widely reported as the protestors shouting ‘racist Nazi scum’. What is certain is that Farage responded by branding the Scottish nationalists who protested and heckled him themselves racists and ‘yobbo, fascist scum’.[3] Takes one to know one, I suppose.
A closer look at Farage’s response to what happened in Scotland betrays the utterly pro-establishment song beating out a rhythm in his heart. He said, ‘It was a demonstration dressed up as being anti-racism but in fact in itself was deeply racist, with a total hatred of the English and a desire for Scotland to be independent from Westminster.’[4] Despite repeated manifesto pledges to give power back to the people to make their own decisions, clearly when those people make decisions UKIP don’t agree with, such as wanting to be independent of Westminster, then those people are scum.
The fact that Farage resorted to calling the protestors racist and saying they hated the English, while supposedly leading the UK Independence Party illustrates the base hatred at the centre of UKIP’s mentality and public psychology. If you’re pro-Europe then you’re anti-British. If you’re pro-Scottish independence then you’re anti-English. By always taking up the obvious contrarian ground, Farage and UKIP appear to be running against the establishment while they are in reality as posh and pro-establishment as any party we’ve ever seen in this country. Furthermore, it speaks to a divide and rule, them and us method of psychological manipulation, an attempt to incite the mob or gang mentality where people define themselves more by what they are opposed to than what they believe in. Just because they are anti-EU doesn’t mean they are anti-EU for the same reasons you are, or that they tick any more of the boxes you believe need to be ticked.
The 2010 manifesto contains a section on ‘Restoring Britishness’, another classic piece of right-wing rhetoric harkening back to some golden era, some time gone by when things were just right (before we had all these bleedin’ immigrants). The fact that for all its faults the UK remains one of the best countries in the world to live in, and that they are blaming the wrong things for what has changed, and that the golden era never actually existed, is not considered important.
Instead, UKIP preferred to declare that it ‘promotes uniculturalism – aiming to create a single British culture embracing all races and religions.’ As before, if you are opposed to multiculturalism (by which they mean mass immigration) then you must be in favour of uniculturalism, of trying to create a single culture to which everyone adheres. Given that UKIP want us to blame immigrants, or criminals, or just ordinary people for all the problems we face, in short anyone except the ruling class, I shudder to think what a single British culture would look like under their leadership. Of course, it isn’t going to happen, but if, as UKIP demand, we should ‘Recognise the numerous threats to British identity and culture’, I’d say a bunch of pro-establishment hypocrites who openly seek to create single unified British culture are among those threats. More significant than global Islamic terrorism, though nowhere near as pressing as the daily exploitation and deception of ordinary people by the ruling class.
Another False Hero
Who is Nigel Farage? What he did before becoming a full-time politician is not something the UKIP websites or his own personal website explain, though his Wikipedia entry briefly outlines that his entire professional career has been as some kind of banker, and that his father was a banker. Though he was active in the Tory party for some years, he split with them in 1992 and became one of the founding members of UKIP. In 2009, when the expenses scandal was front page news, the Guardian reported how Farage had received over £2 million in travel, staff and other expenses on top of his salary as an MEP. If you have ever wondered how it is that a man with essentially no background in politics becomes a minor political celebrity and an icon in the alternative media in only a few years, bear this money and this background in mind.[5]
What is certain is that Farage is another false hero. He does not speak for ordinary people, as far as he’s concerned any ordinary people who disagree with him are either immigrants who should be deported, criminals who should be locked up, or just plain ‘scum’. Nick Clegg ballooned in popularity shortly before the last general election, only to then sell out everything just to be part of a government and thus feather his own nest at the cost of his party’s long term popularity. Just ask the students who naively voted for him. The difference with Farage is that he wouldn’t have to sell out, because he’s a banker who wants to build more prisons and expand the military and use these things to create a single British culture.
These aren’t exaggerations or misquotes or casual remarks or any of the excuses UKIP use when one of their members balks at homosexuality, same-sex adoptions or advocates aborting all disabled babies etc, but are direct from their own party documents. Just to illustrate the point yet further, in one confrontation with a protestor, Farage attempted to show just how mainstream his party is, or at least is trying to be. He cited the party constitution, which he says forbids former members of extreme-right or extreme-left parties from joining UKIP.
While the constitution does not explicitly say this, the implication of the various restrictions on party membership is that UKIP are only looking for disaffected people who fundamentally believe in the status quo and just want to reform it, firstly by getting rid of most if not all of the bleedin’ immigrants. In this respect he is much like Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats were a few years ago, or Ron Paul in the United States – a man who says that if we just use government in a specific kind of way, preferably by scapegoating some easy target sections of society to give the appearance of speaking for the majority, then we can make it all OK again. It is a myth, just like the Zeitgeist Movement’s computer-run plastic-housed mathematically perfect civilisation is a myth. The reality is that when Farage was recently heckled during an interview by someone saying his party were ‘racist homophobes’ he responded, chuckling, ‘I don’t think we’re homophobes’.[6] This is a man playing at political theatre, and doing it moderately well, but he is not speaking for you.
Ultimately, none of these candidates care a jot about dealing with 9/11 or 7/7 truth, or the central banking conspiracy, or the infinite growth, debt and tax-based economic system, or the ongoing march of the security state, or the perpetual war across the world. At best, they are ambivalent and so put up no resistance to the establishment continuing as planned. At worst, they are helping them with those plans. So, I say to you, don’t give these people any money, any votes, or any attention more than necessary. They are not the answer. You are.
Related Posts:
UKIP’s Foot In Mouth Problem
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[1] UK Local council elections results 2013 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21240025, 2009 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/elections/local_council/09/html/region_99999.stm, 2005 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/vote2005/locals/html/region_99999.stm
[2] UKIP main site links (currently unavailable) http://www.ukip.org/media/policies/LocalManifesto2013.pdf, http://www.ukip.org/media/pdf/UKIPmanifesto1304a.pdf, alternative links http://myukip.com/download/i/mark_dl/u/4008530646/4589799537/MANIFESTO_FINAL_2013.pdf, http://www.general-election-2010.co.uk/ukip-manifesto-2010-general-election
[3] ‘UKIP Scum’ footage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6CnVK914Mc, Daily Mail coverage of Scottish protest http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2325679/Nigel-Farage-bundled-police-van-barricaded-inside-pub-going-promote-Scottish-election-candidate.html, Evening Standard coverage of Farage’s response to protestors http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/nigel-farage-brands-antiukip-mob-fascist-scum-8619689.html
[5] Nigel Farage wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Farage, Guardian article on Farage expenses http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/may/24/mps-expenses-ukip-nigel-farage
[6] Farage ‘I don’t think we’re homophobes’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROFveIpkd6w
