Tuesday, March 26, 2019

The far-right whip up a nasty style of nationalism

This week's Independent News & Media Irish regional newspapers' column.

Michael Commane
It was good for our souls to hear the kind and empathetic words from New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern after the brutal murder of 50 people praying in two mosques in Christchurch.

She is a beacon in the midst of so much darkness and evil. It’s worth comparing her gentle and kind words with the bombast we hear and see every day on radio and television.

Last week I tuned into the Nigel Farage Show on LBC, which is a London-based national phone-in and talk radio station.

His modus operandi is anything but mannerly and respectful. He sneers at those who think differently than he. It’s non-stop denigration of everything to do with the European Union. 

He manages to whip up a nasty style of nationalism that is very worrying. He harps on on every occasion he gets to tell his listeners that Angela Merkel is the ruler of Europe. 

All the time the innuendo is that mighty Britain twice defeated the Germans and under no circumstances are they now going to surrender to Germany.

It is all shocking and nasty, worrying too.

He also has a trick of calling his opponents by their family names. It’s always Juncker and Tusk. 

Although he is no friend of the prime minister of the UK, nevertheless he refers to her as Mrs Theresa May.

In the United States Patriot Radio, based in Phoenix Arizona, blares out nastiness on a daily basis. 

Presenter Mark Levin has a listenership running into the millions. Every day he hurls abuse at those with whom he disagrees. He is an avid Trump supporter.

He calls people by the nastiest names and comments on the physical appearance of those who have different political views than he.

In mid-March after Democrat Beto O’Rourke announced his candidacy for the Democrat ticket for the 2020 US presidential race, Levin called him Beto O’Dork.

Over St Patrick’s weekend I watched ‘Get me Roger Stone’ on Netflix. The documentary tells the story of Roger Stone and his role in the presidential campaign of Donald Trump.

Roger Stone is a household name in the US. As a young man he worked on Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign.

In January this year he was arrested at his home in Florida by the FBI in connection with the Robert Mueller investigation and charged in an indictment with witness tampering.

The film footage includes clips of Stone speaking foul language and using obscene gestures.
Stone’s mantra is: ‘Attack, attack, attack, never defend’, and: ‘Admit nothing, deny everything, launch counterattack’.

Maybe it is because I am opposed to the right-wing philosophy of the Nigel Farages and Roger Stones of this world that I find their tone and manner most unbecoming. But surely it is abundantly clear that they and their followers are becoming exceedingly vulgar and nasty.

Last week a Conservative Brexiter, who came across to me as arrogant and so full of his own imperial importance, was talking to the BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg. He referred to what Conservative Remainers were doing as ‘political idiocy’. When Kuenssberg challenged him and asked him if he was saying that his fellow Conservatives were idiots he immediately toned down his imperial manner, realising his mask had slipped.

Jacinda Ardern’s decision never to utter the name of the alleged Christchurch murderer is a fine and noble way to treat such barbarity.

It is regularly bandied about that politics is a dirty game but can or should it really be as ‘dirty’ as it has become?

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