The UKIP Mask Begins to Slip

Another week in the European Parliament election campaign, another story of racism and xenophobia coming from UK candidates. These stories are happening so often now it's almost becoming difficult to keep track – the EU elections really do seem to bring out a special type of crazy that doesn't normally get as much attention during national elections.

The main story during the whole campaign has been that of the United Kingdom Independence Party, or UKIP, who are currently polling in second place, behind the Labour Party, but ahead of the ruling Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties. This popularity, however, comes despite an increasing number of scandals and controversies. One candidate recently suggested shooting gay people in an effort to get them to admit that they 'aren't really gay'; another quite openly claimed that people who vote for the other three parties should be executed for treason.

Of course, these people tend to be rather minor figures, often standing only in local council elections rather than as national figures or potential MEPs. However, the leader of the party, Nigel Farage, is himself no stranger to controversy. In an interview with a London radio station this week he reiterated his position that he would not want to live next door to Romanians; when asked by the presenter what the difference was between Romanians and Germans (Farage's own wife is German), he simply replied 'you know what the difference is' – a reply that seemed so openly racist about 'certain groups of people' that even the notoriously anti-immigrant The Sun newspaper called Farage out over it.

Farage's response comes from a long line of 'unspoken racism' that seems to characterize current British discourse on immigration in many ways. Certain people are seen as 'good', and we have no problem with them immigrating to the UK. Americans, Canadians, Australians, and increasingly even Germans (who are seen as industrious and hard working) and, in Farage's case, Indians (who are presumably seen as less threatening due to usually being Hindu rather than Muslim). Others are seen as 'bad', and must be kept out – Romanians, Albanians, Pakistanis, Somalians, branded as uniformly criminals, thieves, and beggars. But none of this is ever said out loud – it is assumed that anyone with 'common sense' will automatically know it, and will understand what Farage means when he says 'you know what the difference is'.

Perhaps the closest this ideology has come to being said out loud comes in another of Farage's statements – he claims he doesn't have a problem with the quantity of people coming into the country, but rather the quality of those immigrants. This is where the mask covering UKIP's racism really starts to slip – the argument, it seems, has nothing to do with the economic impact of immigration on the British working class, or on the cohesiveness of British culture (the usual arguments made for restricting newcomers). Rather, the problem is that some groups of people are simply seen as having less 'quality' than others.

The saddest thing about Farage's comments is that the ideology they reveal is one that is shared by a significant segment of the British population. Many people have complained about the comments, but many more will have heard them and nodded, and said that this is what everyone is really thinking – that some groups of people are more worthy than others, are somehow inherently 'better'. This is a slippery road to start walking down, and can very quickly lead from genuine worries about economics and social issues into full-blown racism and the demonization of people simply because of their homeland or ancestry. But it seems that for now such a path is popular enough to hand UKIP a spot near the top table in the upcoming European Parliament.

[ European Parliament election campaign, United Kingdom Independence Party, UKIP, Nigel Farage, The Sun newspaperб British working class ]

Right Wing, Wrong Choice

The French municipal elections that have just been held mostly hit the headlines due to the milestone of Paris electing its first ever female mayor – and that's something we should definitely applaud, especially considering our blog about International Women's Day a few weeks ago. But the bigger story in the long-term, despite it being somewhat relegated to secondary articles, is the strong showing by the Front National, the extremely right wing party led by Marine Le Pen. The FN won control of 11 towns around the country, the most successful it has ever been in local elections, despite (or perhaps because of) its anti-immigrant agenda.

Meanwhile, in the upcoming European Parliament elections, it is likely that the United Kingdom Independence Party – who are not proto-fascists like the FN, but do push an anti-immigrant, isolationist vision of Britain – will likely score its strongest ever results and embarrass the ruling Conservative Party. To some extent, this kind of thing is to be expected in mid-term elections like these – people who are unsatisfied with their lives and see no end to the financial crisis vote as a reaction against the ruling government party. But in other ways, this can be seen as part of a recent trend towards right-wing, anti-immigrant, and even outright fascist parties in elections across Europe.

People in countries like the UK and France increasingly resent people from the poorer countries of the EU and from the rest of the world. They feel that their economic prospects are being damaged and that the newcomers are taking jobs that are 'rightfully' theirs. They are worried that their culture is being degraded and replaced when they walk around their towns and see Polish and Romanian shops and when they sit on the bus and hear people speaking languages they don't understand. Many of them will have looked at the recent referendum on restricting immigration to Switzerland and felt jealous of the Swiss – they want the same opportunity to keep foreigners out, and that's why an increasing number vote for parties of the right.

The truth is that these right wing parties with their focus on foreigners and immigrants are deflecting public pressure from the real cause of our collective problems. People in Western Europe are not poor because of Romanians and Bulgarians, or Somalians and Pakistanis – they're poor because of a recession caused by rich capitalists from their own country. Capitalists who destroyed the financial system through speculation, capitalists who have taken the opportunity the recession presents to fire workers and lower wages, and capitalists who actively want cheap labour from other countries to come to France and Britain in order to keep their profits high.

Parties like UKIP and the Front National are an ideal solution for the rich capitalists that rule the developed countries. They know that such parties are too scary for most people to vote for them, but they also know that having them available works as a way to relieve some of the pressure on the capitalist system. The poorer people of France and the UK vote for the right wing parties, who win a few minor elections here and there. The people then think something is being done about the issues they care about, and they turn their anger away from the capitalists and keep it fixed on people who are even poorer than they are. Rather than repeating this cycle over and over again, it's time for those of us who are consistently losing in this system to identify those who are the real winners that are keeping us down, and target our anger on them instead – it's not the Romanians, it's the rich.

[ French municipal elections, Front National, Marine Le Pen, proto-fascists, Conservative Party, cheap labour, UKIP ]

Floods of stupidity

Large parts of the UK are currently completely underwater from floods and storms that have battered the lengthy coastline of this little island. Some people will immediately point out that this demonstrates the power of climate change to impact even the richest countries on the planet. I, however, would argue that the response to the floods merely demonstrates the complete and utter uselessness of politicians in the UK (and possibly elsewhere).

On the absolute stupidest level of complete denial, we have the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). Their leader, Nigel Farage, has claimed that such enormous floods have nothing to do with a changing climate, they're “just weather”. Another member of the same party has managed to appear an even bigger fool, by claiming that the floods are God's punishment for gay marriage – yes, in the year 2014, someone really said that out loud. Meanwhile, the former Conservative chancellor Nigel Lawson has said that the floods demonstrate why we shouldn't build wind turbines in the countryside – I won't insult your intelligence any further by trying to explain his reasoning.

This complete scientific illiteracy coming from marginal politicians would be laughable if it weren't being mirrored in more subtle ways by the government itself. There has been a lot of discussion about how to best avoid future flooding, and a number of Conservatives have claimed that dredging the rivers would do the trick – that is, removing the build up of silt from the banks of the rivers to allow water to flow more freely. In actual fact, this wouldn't do a lot – it would primarily just move the water downstream at a quicker rate, simply flooding a different town. So if it's not actually a useful response, why are so many politicians suddenly pushing it?

The most sensible response to the issue would be to accept that flooding is here to stay. Because of the changing climate, the UK will start to experience more and more bad winter storms like these in the years to come – perhaps not every year, but certainly on a more regular basis than previously. And if flooding is here to stay, we should engineer our rivers to collect flood water on land that has been set aside specifically for the purpose of being flooded – essentially creating a small lake that will flood each year in the winter and then drain in the summer. This will collect most of the flood waters, reducing their impacts on towns and villages.

But that will not be suggested by the politicians, because it would mean converting agricultural land back to natural land – rich landowners wouldn't be able to plant any crops on this new flood land, which means they would lose out on a fraction of the generous subsidies they receive from the British government and the European Union. The rich landowners would rather see the people in rural towns and villages get flooded instead, despite the devastation it causes to these communities. And, because this is the way things happen in the UK, when the rich want something, they get it. Hence, the politicians suggest useless dredging rather than any serious solutions.

In the end, then, this is not so much an issue of climate change as it is an issue of political will. As long as it suits the government and the landowners of the UK to do nothing, nothing will get done, and we will continue to suggest minor changes that will not really impact on the problem. It's time for the UK to understand that these floods are a wake-up call – to realize that climate change is not going away, and eventually we will have to take real action to deal with it, even if it hurts the rich while benefiting the poor.

[ UK climate change, UKIP, Nigel Farage, gay marriage, scientific illiteracy, marginal politicians, UK flooding ]