The Papua New Guinea Courier's UK correspondent on Nigel Farage bringing the English media to heil

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To England, where the media have been brought to heil by Nigel Farage.

When Nick Griffin went on Question Time in October 2009 the chattering classes frothed so much that Television Centre was submerged in liberal spume. Nigel has appeared on the program forty times since then.

All right, the comparison is a touch unfair: while the far-right demagogue explicitly calls for the compulsory repatriation of settled immigrants, Nick Griffin only ever suggested it should be voluntary.

The fact that we once argued over whether hate-filled rhetoric sullying the national discourse was acceptable now seems quainter than Laurence Fox’s showreel. The public service broadcaster now harvests clicks and eyeballs for their own sake, while the chances of fear- mongers ever being held to account diminish with every viral claim about swan rustling refugees.

Sudanese asylum seekers are not poaching cygnets from the Serpentine, but Chris Mason does not have the time to debunk that when he’s tiptoeing around Farage’s latest deportation scheme with coughs, caveats and autobiographical claims about his thus-far unevidenced obsession with political detail.

On the other hand, at least the question “Does amplifying racist shits by offering them a massive platform that reaches millions of people instantly, legitimise their ideas and boost their popularity?” got answered. Who knew?

‘Where does all this end?’ we wonder, as Keir Starmer pipes alarmist rhetoric about as persuasively as Madonna’s adopted English accent following her betrothal to mockney cringe merchant and the Right’s main source for notions of ‘Britishness’, Guy Ritchie.

We have reached the point at which if Farage suggested repurposing mothballed fishing boats to facilitate repatriations and dynamiting the Channel Tunnel to stop them coming back, Starmer would promise “a review.”

‘Traditional’ discourse has been interrupted by the news fash, and we’re not returning to the scheduled programming any time soon. But does that mean the Brits must tolerate it?

The oligarchal forces nurturing social disorder thrive on the sense that this descent into bedlam is inevitable and it’s better to keep your head down. It isn’t. Yet. But if they don’t speak up soon, it might be.