A word about Nigel Farage: he is like a super corrupt Reince Preibus. He's head of the loony anti-immigrant party in England (UKIP) and he has stood for election to the House of Commons seven times, in five general elections and two by-elections, and lost every single time.
He's now under investigation for using actual European Union funds for campaign activities related to Brexit. No, really. Taking money from the EU to campaign to kick out the EU.
UKIP has misspent almost half a million euros of EU funding on its own electioneering and to help boost their Brexit campaign, according to a leaked audit seen by Sky News.
[Said one Green Party MP,] "UKIP have spent years accusing the EU of being run by corrupt elites wasting taxpayer's money. They have now been caught out engaging in the very behavior they have spent years denouncing. Worst of all, they used this money to effectively manipulate the British public, spending large quantities of it on [push] polling designed specifically to support their anti-EU stance, with disastrous effects for the UK and the rest of the EU."
But because the US right wing media likes to think of Brexit as the British version of Trump's "beautiful wall with Mexico," Fox calls him "British Leader of Brexit Nigel Farage" when he's a total doofus loser in the UK. So of course he wants to hang around Trump and go on Fox instead of actually facing the music at home.
Reagan must be spinning in his grave that not only has Russia allied with the Republican Party, but vice versa. The Republicans have been 100% welcoming of a foreign nation interfering with our democracy.
So to bring in a friendly "foreign opinion" Tucker Carlson interviews Farage to deny Russia's meddling and pretend this is sore losing by the Democrats. Farage has no expertise in hacking, international policy, or the US electoral system, But because he's somebody the low-information Fox audience has heard of as a "success" with Brexit, and he's willing to say what Fox News wants to push, he's welcomed as if he's an honored member of the Queen's cabinet.
And to put a cherry on it, Tucker Carlson, heir to a frozen food empire, has suddenly gone populist.
CARLSON: ...the people in charge are not interested in hearing from voters and so they are making excuses for what is obviously no voter desire; as expressed at the ballot box and then blaming someone else. The Russians. (as they should Tucker).
FARAGE: You can try as hard as you want to say that it's all some, you know, cooked up conspiracy by Putin, nobody believes it. They just look like bad losers.
In the world of the poorly educated and misinformed pro-Brexit, Stormfront, White nationalist-Fox-watching troglodytes, facts do not matter. These anti-intellectualists deny that far too many reputable sources have confirmed the hacks as a reality. It is confirmed by countless sources, even Trump himself, that the hacks occurred, There's also no question they made an electoral outcome difference.
No flag waving Republicans spoke out about this foreign intervention. Paul Krugman correctly asserts that the Republican Party has become a "radical institution that is ready to violate democratic norms in the pursuit of power."
It's also no surprise the hackers appeal to base nationalist impulses in countries it seeks to destabilize. A Member of Parliament from the Labour Party reminded the governing body about nationalist forces in France who simply went directly to Russia. MP Ben Bradshaw
pointed to French elections where Marine Le Pen’s National Front asked Russia for a £23m loan to help it fight presidential and parliamentary campaigns in 2017.
MP Bradshaw is well aware of the hacking from the Russians which is designed to create instability and facilitate Russian hegemony. It's what they do, they simply engage in cyber warfare, then deny. After President's last press conference, I suppose we have to deal with that reality and the relevant parties need to take action.
Mr Bradshaw went on: “When will we realise that Russia’s strategy is to weaken and divide the free world and that driving the biggest refugee flows into Europe since World War Two is a deliberate, a deliberate, part of that plan.
“When will we admit that what Putin can’t achieve militarily he is already achieving using cyber and propaganda warfare.”
Farage, like Carlson, ignores the fact that the nationalism they espouse is much the same as the far right fascism that Europe knows only too well. Farage's myopic views are downright dangerous. He thinks NATO is under siege by the EU and anyone that may be an enemy to Russia is his enemy too.
They are shameless about their cheating, but worse yet, evil liars like Tucker and Nigel are just playing pretend that this was all on the up and up. Why not? Post-fact Trump's America can create any reality they want, until they blow up world diplomacy. And then what? Nobody's certain of what comes next, but I think it would be safe to say that we can call post 1/20/17 'the threshold of hell.' These two think Europe, America and Putin's growing empire will all coexist without incident or conflict. Just do what Putin and his puppet say, and no one will get hurt.
FARAGE: But let's be aware that NATO is now directly under threat, not from Donald Trump, but from UNICA and the European Union who want their own army... they call it nationalism, nation-ism. They, they talk about these things in pejorative terms of course Putin doesn't like the European project because the European project wants to make Ukraine, his next-door neighbor, a member of an alternative political and military alliance. You know, come on, you can't blame him for that.
Of course he wants to control Ukraine, he invaded Georgia, and Crimea. It's only a matter of time until he tries to recapture all of the old USSR republics, and he'll start with those who are largely allied with Putin anyway, especially Belarus and oil-rich Kazakhstan. NATO is the only firewall to stop his ambitions, and now that he controls the U.S. Government, sadly, he is the most powerful person on the planet. Comforting, right? If you're Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, this election has made the world a much more dangerous place suddenly.
The dissolution of NATO would be far easier without the UK and with a United States governed by Putin Puppet Trump aka No Puppet. The EU was just the beginning.
