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Nigel Farage in the Jewish Chronicle? Oy, gevalt...

  • Alex Kanefsky
  • 4 days ago
  • 5 min read
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About 18 months ago I was interviewed by the Jewish Chronicle about Cable Street, the musical I’d co-written about fighting 1930s British fascism.


The JC is an august newspaper, founded 1841, which, (Wikipedia tells me) makes it the longest running Jewish paper in the world. In the 1930s, it was concerned with presenting an appearance of respectability for British Jews, in the face of a frequently hostile press that saw Jews as inherently alien, subversive and dangerous. When Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists converged on the Jewish East End in October 1936, the paper urged Jews to “stay away”, so as not to provide ammunition for Jews’ enemies. Hundreds of thousands didn’t, and the rest is (slightly niche) history.


More recently, the paper has maintained a largely conservative editorial line (both big and small ‘C’), whether enthusiastically defending the actions of Israel, or commenting on UK politics. For all that I find myself on the opposing side of the argument much of the time, the paper remains an important marker for the UK Jewish community; committing to some plurality of opinion, as well as connecting UK Jews through current affairs, food, sports and culture. It meant that when I did the interview I could say “look mum, I’m in the JC!”, and feel a connection to a community I’m somewhat removed from, partly through isolation caused by poor health.


So it’s with a mixture of shock, anger, and ultimately, disappointment, that I saw the unflushable Nigel Farage handed a leading column to mark the two-year anniversary of the 7th October attacks in Israel, in the same week that convicted fraudster, football hooligan, Luton Town (and low-grade cocaine) fan Steven ‘Tommy Robinson’ Yaxley-Lennon was invited to Israel by the government. This last move was so controversial it led to a very public spat between the (other) voice of the Jewish establishment: the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and Amichai Chikli, minister for the diaspora.


In some ways I shouldn’t be surprised at these two far-right islamophobes being given prominence by both the JC and Israel respectively. After all, the paper still gives column inches to the venomous Melanie Phillips (think a more articulate Katie Hopkins, dressed in disguise as a kindly primary schoolteacher), and “Robinson”s politics mesh neatly with Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. But giving Farage prime space in the unofficially-official voice of the Jewish media feels like crossing a Rubicon.


Firstly, given the amount of scrutiny in the same paper for possible antisemitism (some real, some not) applied to anyone who ever waved hello to Jeremy Corbyn in Tesco’s, you’d think that some due diligence would be carried out on the CEO of Reform UK plc, who is no stranger to antisemitic controversy in his role as UK politics’ Overton-window-shover in Chief.


Whether it’s giving airtime to thinly-veiled antisemitic conspiracy theories on his radio shows, talking and writing about the “Jewish lobby”[1], “(((Globalists)))” pulling invisible strings (Jews)[2], “Cultural Marxism” (derived from Nazi propaganda), the Great Replacement Theory (Jews again), attacking George Soros[3] (rich Jew and prime target of the far-right), or singling out Goldman Sachs (the Jewiest of all investment banks) as secretly undermining the West, (do you see a pattern?)[4] Farage has serious form at flirting with a nudge and a wink, or just outright repeating, some of the most dangerous extreme-right content on the internet.


These conspiracy theories are directly implicated in Neo-Nazi violence and ideology; culminating in the Tree of Life synagogue shooting[5], along with countless others around the world. Ironically, it’s the ubiquity of these conspiracies (standing on the shoulders of centuries of antisemitism) that is truly global.


And this isn’t to mention some extremely disturbing claims about Farage’s Public Schoolboy racism (singing Hitler Youth songs, yelling “gas them all” at Jews etc etc).[6]


But no such scrutiny for the Honourable Member for Clacton, who writes in his column that the Jewish community has “contributed enormously to our Judeo-Christian culture”, a tellingly supersessionist term, that cheerfully ignores the 365 years Jews were expelled from the UK and implies that Jews are only useful inasmuch as they serve Christianity.


He then has the chutzpah to refer unironically to Pro-Palestinian demonstrations as ‘hate-marches’ with no mention whatsoever of the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ march last month that saw flag-waving racists fighting with police and calling for those assembled to “fight back or die.”[7]


At first, this new alliance of far-right racists like “Robinson” and the Jewish Right seems an odd one. But in Robinson’s meandering rant attacking the “woke, liberal” Board of Deputies, it becomes clear. Just like in Trump’s pre-election speech, where he warns that if he loses the election it’ll be the fault of liberal Jews[8] – the old antisemitism is still there: it’s just now applied to liberal Jews only. These Jews, according to Robinson are “woke”, “weak”, “elitist”, “pathetic”, and are “the reason all these problems are happening.”[9] Sound familiar?


Now Robinson and Farage are rivals for the Right, and Farage (in public) distances himself from Robinson – as have the BOD and establishment British Jews. But both wallow in the same murky waters, and the pollution reaches everyone downstream. Jews should be more careful of who they get into political bed with.


Most offensive of Stockbroker-Of-The-People Farage’s rant in the JC, is his weaponisation of the horrific Yom Kippur Manchester terrorist attack, which he blames on “the toxic cocktail of multiculturalism” – this same multiculturalism which has allowed Jews – once all foreigners – to build lives in Britain. Some Jews must have extremely short memories.


Farage has spent his political career fostering division and suspicion in our country, and now he models himself openly on MAGA; promising to deport hundreds of thousands of people with a force mimicking ICE, the masked military thugs snatching brown people off the streets across the USA.


Our Cable Street musical holds up a 1930s mirror to today’s (yes, multicultural) Britain. Those Jewish antifascists who fought at Cable Street (shoulder to shoulder with Irish Catholics and Somali sailors), and then consequently against Fascism in Europe, would be spinning in their graves to discover that 89 years and 3 days after that famous street battle, the oldest Jewish paper would be invoking the spirit of Mosley with the same language once deployed against them.


If British Jews of 2025 can’t see the similarities between this fag-smoking Temu-Trump demonising muslims, migrants and refugees - and the overt racism our parents and grandparents faced, then we are truly lost.

 


 

 

 

[4] See previous


 

 

 

 

 


 

 
 
 

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