To think that Nigel Farage should not be allowed any airtime

[crossroads3]

Apologies if there has been a thread but I couldn't find one:

IMO this is the real Nigel Farage

www.newstatesman.com/2016/06/nigel-farage-s-anti-eu-poster-depicting-migrants-resembles-nazi-propaganda

yet we allow him to appear on our television screens and listen to him as if he is a normal person.

Aibu unreasonable to think that beneath his friendly man down the pub veneer lies an out and out racist determined to plant hatred in people's hearts and minds .

And I have added to his publicity by creating a thread about him .

excellent post werksallhours - I wish I could be that eloquent.

Super, happens left, right and centre!

LondonKiwiMummy - so questioning mass immigration at all, is 'racist'?

I personally think that 'racism' is a little more serious than that and you are belittling the term by using it so thoughtlessly and freely.

It goes beyond 'questioning mass immigration at all', Maria; as London says, this poster is a lie. And (deliberately IMO) invokes Nazi imagery. Bit more extreme than simply asking a bit of a question about it.

OK the poster is seriously dodgy, I can see.
But being branded a 'racist' by people like KiwiMummy is a bit galling to be honest.
I can walk down the road in London where my mother and grandparents were brought up and literally not hear a WORD of English.
According to some people even passing a comment on this, is 'racist'.

Well, I'm also a bit sick of the word 'racist' being flung about so am not going to use it. But I don't quite understand what you mean by 'people like KiwiMummy'. And I do find that preoccupation with hearing People Speaking Other Languages odd, in fact incomprehensible. And IME no one who mentions it is just 'passing a comment'.

Thank you LondonKiwi, you've provided the perfect example of the shrieking, left wing, politically correct orthodoxy view. It cannot even hear the need for the conversations the majority of people are desperate to have, over the sound of its bellowing accusations of racism. Identity politics at it worse.

yabu

I hate Farage's negative politics

But I do wish the Labour Party had a leader who listened to what all people are saying many who had voted Labour up until the last election. Labour don't want to address some issues as its not liberal thinking enough for them and opened the door for Farage he listened and took note and took many voters away from Labour more fool us

At its simplest, the OP here wishes to censor any views that are not subordinate to his/her own prefabricated, political agenda. ... Wtf is that, other than totalitarianism defined? The real irony is: they doubtless consider them self a 'progressive' ..

He does get a disproportionate amount of airtime but (to me at least) he never does himself any favours when he speaks, highlighting how unpleasant he is. What I do object to, however, are his props eg ghastly xenophobic poster and appalling 'give us our country back' double decker bus, blasting jingoistic tunes thorough a loudspeaker and manned by ageing white men in blazers with one token woman.

BTW, I'm really tired of hearing how Nigel Farage just "says what everyone is thinking, isn't it good I can speak my mind now". If you hold racist attitudes and decide you'd like to share them with others, then expect to be told you're racist

This is what Farage said on the refugee crisis:

Mr Farage said: "I think refugees are a very different thing to economic migration and I think this country should honour the 1951 declaration on refugee status that was agreed.

"It was agreed with the UN and even through the European Court, which sadly has changed its role.

"But the original ideas of defining what a refugee is were good ones and I think, actually, there is a responsibility on all of us in the free West to try and help some of those people fleeing Syria, literally in fear of their lives."

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25539843

Jeez what a shitty racist calling for the UK and the EU.west to do more to help refugees!

Sapphire And I do find that preoccupation with hearing People Speaking Other Languages odd, in fact incomprehensible. And IME no one who mentions it is just 'passing a comment'. Come to Belgium and you would understand it. Segregation by language is not uncommon here, and there are some people who won't sell their houses to people who don't speak the 'right' language.

For what it's worth, my two cents.

The poster is not about immigration. It shows refugees. Asylum seekers, if you will. Those fleeing rape, murder and torture and hellish wars.

There are international conventions that foresee civilised countries providing shelter to civilians in such circumstances. That didn't start with the EU. And let's hope, a majority doesn't believe it should end with the EU. So "take back control" from the EU not so relevant there.

Or maybe we are to believe that all - or even a majority of those depicted - are in fact economic migrants. That seems to be Farage's line. And if that's the case, then membership of the EU has never stopped the UK from applying whatever policy it likes. Australian points system anyone? Could be applied to non-EEA nationals from tomorrow as a fully paid up EU member. And let's not forget that more than half of the immigration to the UK falls into this category. Immigration that it is fully within the gift of Westminster to control.

But Farage never seems to mention that either. (And nor have his defenders here). But blaming Brussels is so much more convenient, it seems.

Finally, on the refugee crisis, could we hope that the EU would do more to help these poor unfortunates. That's what Scary seems to suggest, for example. What could the EU do to have more refugees treated humanely in more EU countries? Certainly, MSF and other NGOs would agree that the EU should take more refugees. Rather than trying to keep them in Turkey, for example.

But I don't think that's quite the failure that Nige has in mind. More to do with letting fewer refugees in than more.....

So at best, this poster is deceptive with regard to the debate about EU membership. And at worst, the clearest of dog whistles.

Scary was actually suggesting that the EU needs to sort itself out with regards to helping the EU member states like Greece and Italy who are dealing with the brunt of the crisis with finance and personnel. I was also suggesting that the migrant crisis hasn't been well handled with regards to the Central European countries such as the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia and Hungary by the EU.

Summer, I told a few people about that Farage thing and they were surprised. He has undone his better efforts with that poster though.

Scary, I'm intrigued. What should the EU do differently with regards to CEEC countries on refugees? Orban, for example, is on public record refusing to take any refugees. Whose fault is that?

Of course he gets air time. It's a democracy, people can vote who whomever they want.

And others are entitled to pick apart the nonsense he spouts, or turn the tv off, or engage rationally with him, or mock him as they see fit.

We can't silence people just because we don't agree with them. We rebuff their arguments with reasoned arguments of our own.

I think the EU has mishandled it with those particular countries that do not have as diverse a cultural mix as the UK has for example. These countries have not been out from under the yoke of the USSR for that long, and if you compare where we were in 1989 wehn the wall came down, as opposed to those countries, you will see that they have further to go in terms of dealing with multi-culturalism.

I think those in Brussels assume that people are as liberal minded as they are, and forget that in terms of having emerged from behind the Iron Curtain, these nations are fairly new at embracing the pace of change at which we are used to operating for example. The elites might cope, but it is different for the people.

Rather than criticising Slovakia for example for the decision to not admit Muslim refugees, (although they did take Christian ones), and querying the legality and discriminatory nature of the decision, the EU should have sought to discover what the issues are, and how these could best be addressed and fears allayed, and helped the government to do this. As ever, it just rolls on, rather than listening to what are quite legitimate concerns.

Could I vote to ban Yuri Gelled from all tv please if we are starting censorship. He isn't racist, he is just an annoying cunt.

Geller *

and a complete liar charlatan

If we could debate immigration freely then we might even be able to help those who are most impacted. Multi cultrilism is not working imo as it is linked to poverty. Social mobility is getting even harder leaving people scrapping for the dregs from overstretched councils and infer structure. Conversations are so stifled and some people only want to win the battle of morals. Farage becomes powerful when politicians stop listening or become dismissive, the same could be said for trump.

scary, the kind of bigotry you describe is simply not the same issue as people complaining that they don't hear a word of English.

FlashBangandGone nails it for me:

The best way to deal with views we regard as insidious is to win the argument not shut the argument down.

Just thinking about the poster, it's clearly insensitive and provocative, but I didn't link it to the old photos of the Jewish refugees fleeing during the second world war because those images were not already familiar to me. I don't think you can say that his poster purposely uses that imagery to make a Nazi/racist link when most people won't have seen the original WWII photos. The iconic image of people in a line that sprang to mind for me was the old "Labour Isn't Working" poster. Perhaps long, curving lines of people are too generic to make any meaningful connections?