Alex Vickery-Howe dissects the corpse of the Kamala-Walz campaign, confronts the empty mirage that is Nigel Farage and considers how painful it will be to see history reset to 2016.
ERSTWHILE former U.S. President Joe Biden is not sleepy.
Well, maybe he is, but he’s not a fascist and he doesn’t want to rule Greenland. I think we’re going to miss him.
Biden’s decision to step down was a major turning point in the 2024 American electoral campaign. Some say he should’ve done it sooner, some say he shouldn’t have done it at all, but few can argue that he didn’t do it with a sense of integrity.
In his address to the nation, and the world at large, the outgoing leader of the free world demonstrated that a true leader will put personal ambition to one side for the good of his people.
In doing so, Biden gave us all a timely reminder of what America stands for:
“The great thing about America is here, kings and dictators do not rule. The people do. History is in your hands. The power is in your hands. The idea of America lies in your hands.”
During this historic speech, Biden echoed Benjamin Franklin who, when asked if America was a republic or a monarchy, replied:
“A republic … if you can keep it.”
That quotation has never been more apt.
I count myself among those who believe the pressure on Biden was badly misplaced and the reliance on Hollywood as a barometer for what matters to working people was a critical error that made the Democrats look spineless, disloyal and amateurish. As election night loomed, I warned that Democrats risked losing support in the key states they needed to win over for a successful campaign.
By failing to pitch their message on class terms and counter the “manospheric” petulance of committed class warrior and now Vice President-elect J D ”Mountain Dew” Vance, the Democrats lost their traditional working-class base and gave incoming President Donald Trump the popular vote.
Yes, JD seems nuts to anyone in the political centre or the Left, but he has an audience and that audience isn’t impressed by who George Clooney votes for. The Democrats embarrassed themselves by choosing arrogance and identity politics over grassroots issues.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders said it best:
“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”
Joe Biden was wide awake to the threat. That is why, even as he pulled the knives from his back, he called for party unity and made it clear that democracy is bigger than one man. This is the response of a stable, strategic mind. Hopefully, the final paragraph in his legacy is that the President took the noble path, even as the rumours of his decline were malicious and greatly exaggerated. Nobody can accuse him of falling asleep at the wheel. His successors in the Democratic Party, on the other hand, are looking pretty dozy now.
This should never have happened. A corrupt felon like Trump, with a long list of anti-worker decisions to his name, only becomes the “hero” of blue-collar America through the negligence and the incompetence of his opposition. We’re back to the creepy circus of 2016 – maybe something even worse – not because Trump became brilliant overnight, but because the Democrats lost the trust of the very people they needed.
Thanks to that error, I’ve got Nigel Farage on my bloody television again. And he’s flashing a smile.
In the wake of the assassination attempt against Trump, Farage wrote a self-pitying nonsense column in The Telegraph to ‘implore the Left to think very carefully about how they seek to play politics’. In Nigel’s mind – much drowsier than Biden’s – there remains a link between this attack and “the Left”, even as he himself admits that the motivations of shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks remain opaque.
The evidence thus far suggests that Crooks was researching a variety of potential political targets, including Biden, until Trump came to hold a rally close to the shooter’s home. This would appear to be less a case of “the Left” inspiring a violent political act and more the desperate, fame-seeking behaviour of a young man who never should have had access to a firearm.
Viewed with a sense of balance, this event has more in common with Mark David Chapman murdering John Lennonfor notoriety, or John Hinckley opening fire on President Ronald Reagan in a mad effort to impress Jodie Foster, than it does the politically motivated assassination of civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
It’s, frankly, pathetic to watch political hacks attempt to distort these events for their own personal and ideological gain. Nigel would have more credibility if he blamed the National Rifle Association for this crime, but that’s something the ex-UKIP flunky, Brexiteer and reality TV show nudist could never do. It’s too logical.
It’s also pathetic to watch people try to make Trump a “victim” of violent rhetoric. Didn’t anyone else see his disturbed outburst at the Republican National Convention? This wasn’t a reformed, reflective, magically humane Trump — this was the same deranged xenophobe dishing out hate-speak for his nearest and dearest.
Following the convention, and Trump’s recent threats against Denmark, Nigel’s scolding reads as comical:
We don’t know the motives of the 20-year-old shooter. But we do know that as our political discourse becomes more febrile; and as the Left become more desperate to attack those of us who stand up for what we believe, the more violent it becomes.
It shouldn’t be normal to throw cement, rocks or drinks at me. And yet, for many on the Left, the language of violence has become their last resort. And we’re now seeing the consequences.
Isn’t it strange that Nigel’s sudden turn to political passivism didn’t happen as a result of the violent Far-Right coup of January 6? Did the bloodthirsty rioters escape the jungle flasher’s notice? Or did he simply refuse to see the consequences of Trump’s electoral fraud lies?
Strange too that Nigel wasn’t moved by the Sandy Hook shooting? Or Columbine? Or any of the other mass murder events that have failed to shift the needle on gun ownership in the U.S.. Why has Nigel suddenly transformed into the angel of civil discourse? Could it be that it’s politically expedient to wear a saintly mask in the wake of last year’s many upheavals?
Strangest of all, he thinks the act is convincing. A career bully crying “poor me” is as persuasive as a shark pretending to drown.
The ex-drama lecturer in me loves this new performativity of the Far-Right’s victimhood. The crowds wearing a patch on their ear in solidarity at the RNC were a little less weird than those who wore diapers to feel closer to their leader, but not by much. Suddenly being a snowflake is all the rage in right-wing circles!
When FBI director Christopher Wray – a Trump appointee – speculated that, maybe, Trump wasn’t hit by a bullet at all, the tantrum was immediate. Trump demanded Wray’s resignation, both for questioning the severity of the attempted shooting and for pointing out – as I and many others have – that there was never any real evidence that President Biden suffered from cognitive decline.
Never let the truth spoil a self-indulgent narrative.
There’s a point where all this hypocrisy becomes hilarious. Trump is desperate to beef up his victim status while calling his opponents “wimps”, his followers criticise Biden’s age while celebrating Trump’s (alleged) incontinence, and dutiful mouthpieces like Nigel try to play the voice of “peace” while gleefully supporting horrifically violent Hitler-esque rhetoric, spreading conspiracy theories around the US electoral process, and celebrating tragically weak gun control laws.
When I was in primary school, a maths teacher who shall remain nameless pulled me from class to talk about the “ethics” of my behaviour. I pointed out that he was sleeping with the gym teacher and at least one of them was married. A telling-off from Nigel Farage feels a lot like that. This is a man standing in a glass house with a fistful of pebbles. An insincere man. A smug and stupid man who is on the wrong side of history.
If we want to talk about consequences, let’s talk about the COVID lies and the death threats made against Dr Anthony Fauci for doing his job well.
If we want to talk about consequences, let’s talk about Nigel’s sickening lies surrounding the Russia-Ukraine war, or his history of lies about the EU which led to the Brexit debacle in the first place. Pinocchio would cringe from second-hand embarrassment.
Likewise, we are certainly seeing the consequences of Donnie and Nigel’s bitter anti-immigration platform, soaked in dishonesty, which has seen a steep rise in injuries and deaths at the border wall in the U.S. and the long-standing demonisation of refugees in the UK. People are suffering because these men “play politics” at the expense of rationality, truth and kindness … but now “the Left” isn’t nice enough for them?
How about that time Nigel suggested a Channel 4 news presenter should be “attacked”? Where was the sweet and cuddly version of Mr Farage then? There is no integrity to this transformation and even less consistency.
The crowd who wanted to beat up protesters and grab everyone by the pussy is offended by Tenacious D now? Whatever happened to free speech? Isn’t Nigel a libertarian? This cry for manners and courtesy is beginning to sound as censorious as the politically correct soy latté set Nigel claims to oppose.
And Trump, no longer able to capitalise on President Biden’s age, is looking more than a little tired as he illustrates my favourite article about the victim politics of fascism:
I’m not a fascist! They’re the real fascists!! The students, the Leftists, the woke mob, the anti-fascists, the teachers, the LGBTQ! They’re putting me in danger! They’re taking away my rights!
My rights matter most of all! I’m being persecuted, violently and viciously!! I have a right to be heard — and what I have to say is that I’m superior and they’re inferior! And if you don’t allow me this view, then you’re the real fascist!
Umair Haque’s satirical take on the contemporary fascist is a neat illustration of what we’re going to see from the Far-Right once the dandruff settles and Trump is back at his bully pulpit. It’s not just the tiredness of the candidates themselves that we should be looking at, but the tiredness of their act. Unlike President Biden, who actually kept astride of policy, the Republicans have only ever really had one old song in their repertoire: “I’m not the hater, you’re the hater!”
Trump’s act is exhausted. We’ve been watching him whine since the ‘80s.
No candidate should be physically attacked (obviously), as it’s not just cruel and cowardly, but an admission of defeat by the attacker. It’s a statement of intellectual inferiority. Nigel Farage is correct in disparaging such behaviour. And yet, to project it solely on “the Left” while ignoring countless shootings, an attempted coup, and the incendiary words firing from the mouth of his so-called ”friend“ is ridiculous. It is even more ridiculous when Nigel knows the young man who shot at Trump has not been linked to any political ideology.
If you have to lie repeatedly to make your point, Nigel — maybe you never really had a point to begin with.
Meanwhile, we can only hope that the Democrats have learned from their hubris, their betrayals, their neglect of working-class people and working-class concerns, and their disastrous failure to do the one thing the world counted on them to do…
Keep idiots like Nigel and Donnie out of power.
Dr Alex Vickery-Howe is an award-winning playwright and social commentator. He teaches creative writing, screen and drama at Flinders University.
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