A party of hate

For a few months now, Ukip have been consistently polling around 16% but just before Christmas they started reaching a new low average of 13%. Following the Paris attack they've had a 5% bounce according to a YouGov Sunday poll. It's depressing but in times like these, angry people are receptive to their message of paranoia and bigotry. Just what the terrorists want. But that's ok. I know how this works. Anger subsides, polls are fickle and Ukip are stupid. Bigotry is more openly expressed when people feel they have permission to do it, and if the feedback is that their racism gives them a boost in the polls they will be more confident in expressing even more extreme and ignorant opinions, eventually sickening even more people.

Ukipists heap praise on Farage for his ill-judged remarks about multiculturalism. Lost on them is the decency aspect. One does not, on the day of a massacre, point to twelve dead people and say "this is why you should vote Ukip". Such is objectively disgusting. Moreover, it isn't about multiculturalism. Underpinning multiculturalism is tolerance of other cultures, and there is nothing whatsoever in the French treatment of the Algerians that can be called tolerant, or in any respect be identified with multiculturalism. Those that argue otherwise are demonstrably wrong, simply by reference to easily verifiable facts.

This points to Ukips abject refusal to engage in research and instead pander to the basest instincts of their loser followers. An intelligent party would have ceased the opportunity to show leadership and set a moral example. Instead it has opted for opportunism and cynicism, egging on their supporters to blame Islam.

Much has been said of Ukip parody Twitter accounts, of which one of them is mine. Unlike the leftist parody accounts, mine is much more subtle, not for the purposes of trolling, but so I get an insight into what ordinary Ukipists are saying. And this week I have been shocked and dismayed. My opinion of Ukip was already low and I did not think it could sink lower, but that is one field where Ukip continues to surprise.

A year ago, Spiked Online ran a piece saying that the likes of UAF were desperate to paint Ukip as a new far right movement because with the collapse of the BNP they were no longer relevant and were seeking a new purpose. This was a piece I was broadly inclined to agree with. But Ukip have been baited by the anti-racist brigade since their overtly xenophobic euro-election posters, and their response has been to give them exactly what they want.

I've had many reasons to dislike Ukip for a long time but have always stopped short of calling them a far right party as per most people's understanding of what that means, but in the wake of the Paris attack, and from the comments from Ukipists over on Breitbart and EUreferendum, I am no longer prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt. Ukip is a thoroughly nasty little tribe of xenophobes, islamophobes and bigots. It is no longer sufficient for them to be defeated at the polls. They must be destroyed.