In 2011, Nigel Farage co-chaired the Europe of Freedom and Democracy grouping with Italy’s Francesco Speroni, who described the Norwegian white supremacist mass murderer and unlikely celebrity Top Gear fan Anders Behring Breivik as someone whose “ideas are in defence of western civilisation”. Farage has received £1.5m to appear on ITV’s I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! with Ant and Dec. Do Ant and Dec believe Breivik’s July 2011 shooting of 69 people, most of them teenagers, on the island of Utøya represented a defence of western civilisation? Do Ant and Dec, like Breivik, think Top Gear is “one of the funniest shows on TV… and one of the very few programmes at the Burka Broadcasting Corporation still worth seeing”, or do they prefer Bill Burr’s new anti-woke movie, Old Dads?
In 2017, Farage was invited to address the Alternative für Deutschland party by Beatrix von Storch, the granddaughter of Hitler’s finance minister and a woman who said German border guards should be allowed to shoot migrants (an attitude she shares with Rwanda, treaty or no treaty). Farage has received £1.5m to appear on ITV’s I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! with Ant and Dec. Do Ant and Dec have a joint view on whether it is right to shoot migrants, or do their opinions differ? Would they like to meet Hitler’s friend’s granddaughter?
Farage has been happy, repeatedly, to guest on Infowars with the far-right American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who said that the climate crisis is a hoax initiated by the World Bank, that the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre in Connecticut was faked and that the US government is drugging the water supply to make men gay. Farage has received £1.5m to appear on ITV’s I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! with Ant and Dec. Does Dec believe that the American government is drugging water to gay men up? Does Ant have any opinion about gay water?
In 2016, Brexiters such as Farage claimed Brexit would reduce NHS waiting lists, increase education funding, reduce food costs, boost housing stock, control borders, and strengthen fishing and farming. None of those things happened. And the rivers are full of unregulated post-Brexit shit too. And Farage has received £1.5m to appear on ITV’s I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! with Ant and Dec. Dec looks very clean, but perhaps Ant likes to swim in human excrement. I expect so.
As a teenaged army cadet and Enoch Powell fan, Farage reportedly marched through a Sussex village chanting Hitler youth songs and was recalled by an old schoolfriend singing an unattributed verse beginning: “Gas them all, gas ’em all, gas them all!” While denying the specifics, Farage argues, not entirely unreasonably, that the mid-80s were a volatile time, when people “were attracted to extreme groups on both sides of the debate”. But what specific debate was that, exactly, one wonders? The debate over whether people should be gassed? And what was the “other side” in that debate? The side that believed people shouldn’t be gassed? To be fair, teenagers often don’t understand the seriousness of what they are saying. Nonetheless, Farage has received £1.5m to appear on ITV’s I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! with Ant and Dec. Does the show’s sponsor, Tombola, believe it’s acceptable to gas people? Do Ant and Dec have different views on the matter, democratically echoing both sides of the debate?
In 2016, Farage’s Ukip released a poster of Syrian refugees, captioned “breaking point”, widely viewed, by Unison and the archbishop of Canterbury, for example, as inadvertently echoing Nazi propaganda and likely to incite racial hatred. Farage has received £1.5m to appear on ITV’s I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! with Ant and Dec. Does Tombola feel Nazi undertones in political advertising are acceptable? Does Ant? Is Dec ambivalent?
In How They Broke Britain, James O’Brien points out, perhaps tendentiously, as is his right, that within hours of the “breaking point” poster being unveiled, the remain-supporting MP Jo Cox had been fatally stabbed and shot in the street by a white supremacist terrorist; and that a week later, Farage boasted, his short-term memory perhaps damaged by the terrible 2010 crash he suffered while flying a Ukip banner through some clouds, that Brexit had been achieved “without a single shot being fired”. Farage has received £1.5m to appear on ITV’s I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! with Ant and Dec. Does Ant share Farage’s view that Brexit was achieved without a single shot being fired? Perhaps Dec believes that Jo Cox was, on some level, a casualty of the charged atmosphere the leave campaign fostered? Who knows?
The problem with having Farage on I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! is that most of the jungle twats, and the two perma-grinning apologist pricks who present it, do not have the ability, or the inclination, to offer even the gentlest of informed criticism of Farage’s untenable political positions and unsavoury historical associations. Farage may as well be on BBC News with a bunch of acquiescent BBC News journalists. Thus, ITV provides an uncritical platform for a dangerous demagogue to present himself as a man of the people without being held to account in any meaningful way, paving his way to power. Sound familiar? The Apprentice gave America Donald Trump and Have I Got News for You gave Britain Boris Johnson. If another political assassination follows Farage’s further ascent, Dec will have blood on his hands and Ant will have blood on his face. Yes. I meant to say that. As the blood spatters, see, I imagine both Ant and Dec instinctively trying to shield their faces, but that Ant’s reaction time would be a little slower.
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