As The National (for whom I write, to make my biases clear) has reported this morning:
MOST Scots believe Nigel Farage is a racist, an exclusive poll for The National has found.
The poll by Find Out Now found 47% of people consider the Reform UK leader to be a racist, increasing to 64% with "don't knows" removed.
Just 27% of people felt he was not a racist, increasing to 36% with "don't knows" removed.
It comes after Farage faced a barrage of criticism for attacking schoolchildren in Glasgow that do not have English as a first language.
I doubt many people will be shocked by this finding.
I suspect that if replicated across the UK as a whole, the result would be pretty similar.
Does it, however, mean he is a racist? By itself, it does not. Crowds can be wrong, especially when it comes to opinion.
But here, the late, great James Baldwin comes to our rescue. When commenting on the issue of racism and denials thereof, he said:
I can't believe what you say because I see what you do.
Farage always has, and always will, deny that he is a racist, as will many of his supporters. "So what?" is my response. "See what they do."
Their words condemn Farage and Reform, their desired actions, and the hate they promote. Sixty-four per cent of people with an opinion can see that. But what that means is that a majority are on the side of a politics of care.
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Have the other 53 % been paying attention?
Nope
The disturbing thing about Farage is that his rhetoric is generally more refined than it was when he was the obnoxious schoolboy of the Guardian’s reports. His use of language sets up guardrails to steer his followers toward certain conclusions, but leaves him sufficient plausible deniability to claim he’s been misconstrued – “I was only assterting legitimate concerns! I didn’t encourage people to riot!”. The languages in Glasgow rant is a striking exception to this general rule.
This rather ‘gives the lie’ (shows the methodological errors) of the More in Common MRP poll of Westminster MP election results ‘if there was an election tomorrow’ – with so many Reform wins north of the border.
And they don’t have clear local organisations or candidates in many places, as far as I know: in many, a lot of bluster and individuals taking their cue from the national media noise that Farage creates. In Sheffield, a whole block of people from the local Reform got expelled and have formed a new party (called ‘Advance’: cynical, or what?!)
There’s a simple principle at work here: when someone consistently behaves in a way that signals exclusion, hostility, or division, people will draw conclusions from the pattern. You don’t need to rely on what a person claims about themselves — their actions speak for them. That’s why so many people reach the same judgement: they’re responding to what they’ve seen, not what they’ve been told.
Agreed. That’s what Baldwin taught.
He is probably a racist, but much more a populist cum opportunist who uses racism to stir up his supporters. His other schtick is to come up with easy plausible answers to very difficult societal problems. These answers are invariably wrong as evidenced by the Brexit disaster.
Racism is always bubbling below the surface in the UK because it is shameful to be identified as one.I believe there are probably around 2 million or so unashamedly racists here with another million who are closet racists. That’s perhaps less than 10% of the population. If Farage is relying on racists to get elected, he will be bitterly disappointed. He’s not stupid, so he isn’t; he’s expecting a large chunk of ‘gammons’ and tory defectors to support him. He’s also relying on the former Labour red wall to believe his fairy tales and follow him. Taken together, he might scrape around 25% at most. Not enough, fortunately.
I think there is a mighty lot of speculation in what you say. What I mean is, tne data is more useful.
What the results of this poll might suggest to me is that there are quite a lot of people in Scotland who don’t think Farage is racist, because they hold views similar to his, and they don’t want to acknowledge the possibility that they might be racist themselves. That troubles me.