“Profondamente scioccante”: Nigel Farage affronta nuove accuse di razzismo e antisemitismo a scuola

I’m shocked. Who would ever have guessed Nigel Farage of all people would be a racist piece of shit?

How is this news? People vote for Farage *because* he’s racist, not because they had no idea he might be racist.

“I have never known or even met Peter Ettedgui at any point in my life”

I loathe Farage but he’s not an aberration. Nearly every public figure of any age describes having to deal with bullying about any distinguishing feature. The unfortunate reality is that bullying is to the UK what gourmet food is to France or fashion is to Milan. It sounds like Farage took it further than many people did and that’s not unusual for someone who seems to have grown up in the sort of Boris-like privilege that goes along with the belief that consequences are only for other people.

My father was one of those guys and I was horrified to find out about his reputation at school when I went looking online for information after his death.

I’m not saying at all that Farage should escape consequences. Everyone should understand exactly what he is. I doubt it will make much difference to most of his supporters but still it makes sense to discuss what we know about people who want to lead us. My point is that we’re lying to ourselves if we think he is unusual. There’s a reason there’s so much discussion about bullying these days.

I really, really don’t like the man, his politics, and the impact he has had on the UK. I doubt that he is a bastion of open-mindedness and think that he probably holds some bigoted views and expresses them in private.

But I feel deeply uncomfortable with a ‘story’ that he was saying offensive things when he was 13 years old. It’s not just 50 years ago and unprovable. It’s also going into the dangerous territory of making judgements on children, people in their formative years. It’s a really dangerous game to start playing. And if you’re a left-aligned, liberal-minded person that think that Farage is fair game on this front, would you feel the same if someone pulled out a story saying “Rachel Reeves called a schoolmate a dyke when she was 15”, or the repeated stories about left-wingers praising some quite violent activists when they were students back in the 1980s.

Farage has done enough as an adult to legitimately criticise him for.

It might be worse to not be a racist and pander to them, than to actually be a racist and unable to see things differently.

I get the feeling Farage is simply an opportunist who knows that racism is a string you can pull. Cynically, he pulls them.

Anyone who whatabouts this forgets the fact that you can’t deny that Nigel Farage is a racist, he was labelled as such [by The Sun](https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/25s0sm/the_sun_newspaper_calls_nigel_farage_racist/).