I keep thinking about this. It’s extraordinary that the Mail on Sunday is allowing self-declared Putin admirer Nigel Farage to be given space to talk about anything, let alone to embark on such a poisonous and dangerous agenda.
This is a man who declared his admiration for Putin longer after Grozny had happened. Long after Aleppo had happened. Long after Crimea had happened. Long after the brutal murder in London of Alexander Litvinenko, not to say scores of other Russian dissidents and journalists.
He tries to explain it away by saying he only admired Putin as an “operator”. Meaningless, offensive twaddle. Which other brutal mass murderer is it acceptable to admire as an “operator”? Stalin? Hitler?
Even more recently, when conceding that Putin is no saint, it’s always with that cheeky grin and twinkle in his eye. The grin and the twinkle that tell you there’s a sub-text. What decent person could talk about a man like Putin with such body language?
Just look at him here having a good old giggle with his soul mate @danwootton about how he wouldn’t want to take Putin to see his Mum for tea on a Sunday. Listen to Dan chuckle. All a bit of a laugh, isn’t it, lads? That lovable old rogue Vlad, eh?
I don’t normally waste time tweeting about Farage. It’s a mantra that all publicity is good publicity for the likes of him. But even if that’s true – and I’m not sure it is – where does that leave us? It leaves us unable to fight propaganda by highlighting it and calling it out.
If you know people who admire Farage, ask them – looking them in the eye – if they can think of a single constructive, rather than destructive, thing he has ever said, in his entire career, on anything? They won’t be able to answer. He destroys things. He doesn’t create them.
History will remember Farage for what he is. He is a man who was happy to say he admired a mass murderer, and then pretend that he hadn’t.
He is a man who even today claims that the act of protecting those countries threatened by Russia is an act of aggression by the West.
He is a man who has spent years drip-feeding poison into our political system and culture, infiltrating and infecting the UK’s governing party, and distorting others.
He is a man who is now about to do the same on climate change, the issue on which the very future of our planet hinges.
Yes, history will remember Farage. And it will also remember those who gave him constant air time and coverage, and continue to do so today. He is a danger to us all. We need to fight him and all his friends and everything they stand for. Our futures depend on it.
Originally tweeted by Richard Haviland (@rfhaviland) on 06/03/2022.
