![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/Nigel-Farage.jpg\" "\\"Nigel")
<\/a>Try as I might, I cannot remember a time when Britain\u2019s various elites were as united in fury as they are now over UKIP leader Nigel Farage. In the run-up to this week\u2019s Euro-elections, in which the Eurosceptic UKIP is expected to do well, leaders of every hue, from the true blue to the deep red, and hacks of every persuasion, from the right to the right-on, are as one on the issue of Farage. From Nick<\/strong><\/span> Clegg<\/strong><\/span><\/a> <\/strong><\/span>to the Twitterati that normally gets off on mocking Nick Clegg, from David Cameron to radical student leaders who normally hate David Cameron, fury with Farage has united all. It has brought together usually scrapping sections of the political and media classes into a centre-ground mush of contempt for UKIP. Not even Nick Griffin \u2013 who is a far nastier character than Farage \u2013 attracted such unstinting universal ire. What\u2019s up with this Farage fury?<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s everywhere. You can\u2019t switch on the internet or open a newspaper without being greeted by news reports or op-eds on what a contemptible character Farage is. From the Guardian<\/em> to the Sun<\/em>, a paper you might once have expected to be sympathetic to a Eurosceptic politician yet which now brands some of Farage\u2019s comments as \u2018racism, pure and <\/span><\/strong><\/span>simple\u2019<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, Farage-bashing is thriving. Even right-leaning broadsheet papers, including the supposed newspaper of record, The Times<\/em>, have of late devoted themselves myopically to exposing the idiocies of Farage and his minions. Many of The Times<\/em>\u2019 stories about UKIP\u2019s foot-in-mouth incidents are leaked to it by a <\/strong><\/span>devoted team of UKIP-<\/strong><\/span>watchers<\/strong><\/span><\/a> at Conservative Party HQ. Which means, yes, we now have politicians too cowardly to state their opposition to UKIP openly and a media so compliant, and also so politically influential, that they are more than happy to do one party\u2019s bidding against another \u2013 especially if the other is the apparently terrifying UKIP.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Where Govephobia (an allergy to every comment uttered by Conservative education secretary Michael Gove) only unites the old public-sector left and Guardianistas<\/em>, and anti-Jeremy Clarkson sentiment largely only brings together the time-rich Twitterati and members of the commentariat with 800 words to file pronto, anti-Farage fury is a great deal more far-reaching. It touches all politicians; it invades every dinner party in the land; it freaks out Tory snot and radical leftist alike; it is de rigueur<\/em> everywhere from the horsey shires to the leftish Twitterverse.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n What\u2019s it all about? It can\u2019t simply be down to the arguments Farage espouses. Take immigration. Loads of political and media types are illiberal on immigration, favouring strict border controls. Indeed, it was Labour, whose supporters in the media choke on their macchiatos whenever Farage mentions the word \u2018Romanian\u2019, which took the unusual step of keeping certain Romanians and Bulgarians out of<\/strong><\/span> Britain<\/strong><\/span><\/a> when those two nations joined the EU in January 2007. This instantly turned Romanians and Bulgarians into the second-class citizens of Europe, who did not enjoy the same freedom of movement as Poles and others who had joined the EU in the 2000s. It takes politics to a new low for Labour leaders and Labour-leaning commentators to gasp in horror when Farage says something dumb about Romanians moving in next door, considering it was their party which for seven years physically and legally prevented Romanians from moving in next door. Or consider Farage\u2019s Brussels-bashing, his angst with the EU oligarchy. Lots of people share this view, or a variant of it. spiked<\/em> is anti-EU, but thoroughly pro-Europe, on the basis that the EU is an <\/strong><\/span>anti-democratic <\/strong><\/span>behemoth<\/strong><\/span><\/a> which treats European voters with contempt. Others think similarly. So it can\u2019t be Farage\u2019s Euroscepticism that makes him such a figure of hate for pretty much every politician and observer in the land. What is it, then?<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n The real motor to the anti-Farage outlook, the fuel to this unprecedented fury of the elites, is a powerful feeling that he has connected with the public, or a significant section of it, in a way that mainstream politicians and observers have utterly failed to. The elites see in Farage their own inability to understand the populace or to speak to it in a language it understands. They see in his popularity \u2013 his oh-so-stubborn popularity, so notably undented by the daily furious outpourings of the anti-Farage elites \u2013 their own failure to swing public attitudes in what they consider to be the \u2018right\u2019 direction. That Farage\u2019s popularity in the polls has remained pretty high even as our elites have been attacking him on a daily basis fills them not only with fury but with fear: their arguments seem not to have much traction outside the Westminster bubble, outside of medialand, where despite their best efforts the awkward, annoying little people still remain fairly favourable towards a loudmouth politician who isn\u2019t PC and drinks beer. The fury behind the attacks on Farage is really a fury with the throng, with the masses, whose brains have clearly been made so mushy by UKIP propaganda that even the supposedly enlightened arguments and policies of their betters can now make no impact. It isn\u2019t Farage they hate \u2013 it\u2019s ordinary people, and more importantly their own palpable inability to make inroads into those people\u2019s hearts or minds.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n In short, the true momentum behind both UKIP\u2019s rise in the polls and the rising temperatures it has provoked in pretty much every elite circle in Britain is not the charms or coherent ideologies of Farage himself. (In fact, many take great pleasure in pointing out that most UKIP supporters don\u2019t know UKIP policy on any issue beyond immigration and the EU.) Rather, it is the political class\u2019s alienation from the public, and its existential insecurities, that have propelled UKIP to the top of the political agenda. The aloofness of the old political machine, its growing distance from and contempt for the voters, its view of the public as a blob to be re-educated and made physically fit rather than as sentient beings to be politically engaged, is what has boosted public support for a party like UKIP that seems willing to speak to, and maybe even for, so-called ordinary people. And it is the out-of-touch political class\u2019s subsequent panic at UKIP\u2019s rise, its fear that the success of this party might spell doom for its safe, samey, middle-ground ilk, which leads it to aim its every ideological, political and media gun at Farage, having the unwitting effect of making him both more widely talked-about and possibly even more<\/strong><\/span> popular<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. It is the political class\u2019s crisis of legitimacy and vision which both created and then inflamed the UKIP phenomenon.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n However, it is not enough to describe the support for UKIP as just a protest vote, as just a two-finger salute to the traditional parties. That is part of it, yes, but there\u2019s more \u2013 maybe even something positive. The potentially positive kernel is this: people are investing in Farage, and other populist right-wing parties across Europe, their desire to be heard, their aspiration to be taken seriously, their longing to be treated as adults capable of discussing big, serious issues like sovereignty, nationhood and democracy, rather than as fat bodies to be remoulded and warped minds to be reshaped by enlightened experts, which is what so much of politics consists of today. The unhinged anti-Farage fury of the elites is a good sign, for it is throwing into relief the gaping chasm that currently exists between Us and Them, between the ruled and the rulers, where the former are finally telling the latter that they\u2019ve had enough of being talked down to and treated as children, even if the only way they have found to say this is by putting their support into new, right-leaning populist outfits.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n So the support for UKIP and other populist parties is not simply a reaction against the old politics; it is also an assertion<\/em> of something, of a desire, a sentiment, an idea, however ill-formed it might currently be. Yes, these populist parties in Britain and elsewhere obsess over immigration and want tighter border controls. But the sections of the populace who support those demands do not do so from a traditionally racist perspective but rather from a profound feeling of cultural insecurity. Constantly told to mind their language, police their thoughts, suppress their views, respect all cultures, hide their traditions, be ashamed of their national histories, never wave their national flags, and so on, many constituencies in Europe feel that their surroundings are becoming more culturally alien, hostile to their beliefs and even to their existences, and they see immigration as being responsible for their strong feeling that they now live in something like a foreign land. They\u2019re wrong about that. It was actually the divisive ideology of multiculturalism and the censorious culture of relativism that allowed large parts of Western Europe to become tradition-trouncing, speech-suppressing, alienating places, not immigration itself. But that doesn\u2019t mean that their sensation of cultural insecurity isn\u2019t a legitimate one, and potentially a political force to be reckoned with.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n It remains to be seen just how well UKIP and the other new right-wing populist parties do this week. Politics is so unpredictable these days that even parties that poll fantastically well can end up doing only moderately well in the actual ballot box. But if these parties do perform well, it won\u2019t be evidence that racism has returned to stalk Europe or that neo-fascism is on the rise. Rather, it will represent the expression of a new, as-yet unclarified political sentiment that doesn\u2019t only say \u2018I\u2019m sick of the old political class\u2019, but also: \u2018I want to be heard. I want to be taken seriously. I want control over my life, my community and my nation again.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n