Racist or Idiot?

Ben Wildsmith

Given the many threats, legal and otherwise, being directed at Nation.Cymru by far-right loons and Reform UK types, I’m not sure how wise it is to call Nigel Farage a racist.

I mean, granted, people who know him claim that virulent racism has been his defining characteristic
since childhood, but it would be rash simply to take the word of dozens of his acquaintances
over the man himself.

So, I’m not saying that either Nigel, or his mouth-breathing acolytes in Wales, are big old racists. Not in the current climate. That would be irresponsible.

Once one subtracts racism from the Faragiste offering, however, what’s left is threadbare and
difficult to understand. This week, the part-time gold salesman, part-time TV presenter, and sometime MP for Clacton on Sea took aim at Glasgow’s schoolchildren. Noting that a third of Glasgow’s children didn’t learn English as their first language, Farage railed against the ‘cultural smashing’ of Glasgow.

There’s sooooo much to unpack here, isn’t there? Firstly, it’s a bit rich claiming that anywhere outside of England is being ‘smashed’, culturally or otherwise, because people learned a language other than English first.

The presence of English in Scotland and elsewhere around the globe derives from a cultural smashing enterprise unparalleled in history.

‘We gave them the English language!’

Well, my Auntie Floss used to give me an Airfix kit every Christmas, but I don’t recall her breaking in heavily armed, demanding that I play with it and forbidding me to have any other toys.

So, we can agree, I hope, that English is pretty secure as a means of communication on this island, as well as many other areas of the world.

Glaswegian kids haven’t instituted their own ‘English Not’ in the classrooms of that city, so what is Farage’s actual problem?

Well, it’s not that the children can’t or won’t speak English. The Scottish Government’s figures relate to pupils studying English as an additional language, so, by definition, these kids are speaking English. The objection seems to be that it isn’t their mother tongue.

Engaging

Now, think about that for a moment. If Farage is saying that learning English – i.e. actively engaging with the host culture and trying to conform to it – is irrelevant to his notion of who belongs here, then what are his qualifiers?

I’m old enough to remember when Farage was insisting that Brexit wasn’t a racist enterprise because it would open the door to immigration from Commonwealth countries. Now that European exclusion is safely in the bag, it seems that the goalposts have moved.

This argument is all the more astonishing when viewed through a Welsh lens. Imagine bursting into a classroom full of Welsh-learners and accusing them of culturally smashing Wales because they hadn’t learned the language before moving here.

Bullying people who are demonstratively doing their best to fit in is as counterproductive as it is contemptible.

Counterproductive

It’s only counterproductive, however, if your aim is to produce harmony. If your product is division, resentment, and anger, then suggesting that people can do nothing to advance their prospects of being accepted in a country you propose to run is, of course, extremely effective.

But that would be to suggest that Farage and the rest of them are racist, and we mustn’t do that, they might get upset.

So, if we accept that racial division and conflict is the last thing that Farage wants across Britain then there is only one other explanation for this outburst.

If he’s not a racist, he’s an idiot. Take your pick.