Selective outrage at Farage’s schoolyard slurs is highly revealing

Anyone unfortunate enough to have been bullied at school will know there are different types of tormentors. There are those who are simply thuggish, certainly – but others seem to take grotesque pleasure in meting out suffering. I experienced much of the former, but only one specific example of the latter – and it’s that latter that still stays with me, close to a quarter century later. I went to Jewish schools and still occasionally see that boy – now a man – in north west London. I can see his eyes and know, with stomach-churning certainty, that he has not changed. I pity his wife and children.

The reason I raise this extremely personal example is that I am perhaps not quite as quick to immediately discount allegations of what an individual may have done in school as “something that happened many decades ago”. My reluctance to discount such things is magnified when the person accused aspires to lead this country.

As most people reading this will know, Nigel Farage has recently been accused of extremely vile behaviour while he was at school, half a century ago – including comments of both a racist and antisemitic nature. But some may not be aware of exactly what he has been accused of saying regarding Jews. So let us remedy that here and now.

Last month, The Guardian, a paper I acutely dislike (which is relevant, so let us return to it shortly), reported that Farage would approach Peter Ettedgui, a Jewish contemporary at Dulwich College. “He would sidle up to me and growl: ‘Hitler was right’, or ‘Gas them’”, Ettedgui said, “sometimes adding a long hiss to simulate the sound of the gas showers.” Another Farage contemporary, Jean-Pierre Lihou, subsequently told The Guardian he heard Farage making both racist and antisemitic comments – for example, singing “gas them all” at Jewish pupils. The paper has since published a further story saying that at least another 20 contemporaries report recalling such behaviour by Farage.

It’s at this point that some people will respond with comments like “isn’t it curious how these allegations have come along now that Reform UK is doing so well in the polls?” Well no, not really; allegations about Nigel Farage’s school days are not new. It has been more than a decade, for example, since the first rumours were reported in the national media that he had “shouted Hitler youth songs” with school friends, for example.

If such claims – that allegations have surfaced specifically to damage someone riding high in the polls – sound familiar, though, it’s because they are. Corbynites made the same attempt at an argument, back in the day. “It was only when Jeremy Corbyn was doing well in the polls that the smears against him began”, they used to claim, which showed a childlike lack of understanding as to how life works.

In general, the closer a politician appears to be approaching genuine power, the more his actions – past and present – will be studied closely. No doubt if Zack Polanski manages to significantly grow the Green Party’s presence in the Commons at the next election, reporters will be scouring his record for further examples of attempts to enlarge women’s breasts by means of hypnotherapy. And no doubt at that point his own fervent supporters will similarly claim it is an establishment plot to bring him down. Such is life.

There are some on the right – Jewish and non-Jewish alike – whose antisemitism detection systems, on high alert when Corbyn hove into view, seem to have mysteriously failed

But what is notable is that a number of people within our own community have been so vocally dismissive of the accusations against Farage. And here we return to The Guardian, a paper whose editorial line on Israel I find utterly repulsive. By contrast, the Reform UK position on Israel is perhaps the most supportive of all the major political parties in the UK today. And so, many people on both sides of the political divide are behaving in the way one would automatically assume they would.

Trevor Phillips, writing in The Times, says that he finds it “infuriating that those who slavishly supported the Corbyn ascendancy have only now discovered their inner Simon Wiesenthal.”

That is an entirely fair critique of a certain percentage of the wider left who are now focusing on Farage’s comments. However, there are certainly also some on the right – Jewish and non-Jewish alike – whose antisemitism detection systems, on high alert when Corbyn hove into view, seem to have mysteriously failed now that a politician with whom they feel ideological sympathy is the focus.

A common refrain in some pieces I have read on the Farage issue is one which I find remarkably depressing. It goes: It was a different time, racism was unbelievably rife within society, I myself experienced regular examples of hideous bigotry at school, we should look at Farage for what he is now, not what he was half a century ago. Perhaps it is a generational thing, but I cannot bring myself to agree with that viewpoint. Saying that he may have told Jews they should be gassed 30 years after the Holocaust rather than 80 years afterwards does not sound remotely like mitigation to me. And we are not talking about a real estate agent or a restaurateur. We are discussing the conduct of someone who seeks to lead this country. Is it really so unreasonable to hold them to a higher standard than a run-of-the-mill school bully?

Furthermore, we are talking about someone who has a subsequent record of questionable comments about minority groups – including Jewish people. Whether it was the 2017 radio comments relating to the “Jewish lobby” or the 2020 article citing “unelected globalists shaping the public’s lives based on secret recommendations from the big banks”, specifically citing Goldman Sachs as an example of the latter, Nigel Farage’s time since Dulwich College has hardly been free of any questionable behaviour in this regard.

In today’s climate, where hostility towards Jews is on the rise, some in our community – whether here or abroad – have responded by clutching even more desperately at politicians and others in positions of power who seem broadly supportive towards Jews in general and the Jewish state in particular. But just as antisemitism transcends the political divide, Jews must call out antisemitism wherever it raises its head. Unless people condemn it across the political spectrum – whether from a Corbyn or a Farage – it looks like a deeply cynical attempt to use antisemitism as a cudgel only when it suits.

Maybe Nigel Farage is genuinely sorry. Maybe he was more the first type of bully mentioned in my introduction than the second. So far, however, he has done little to suggest genuine remorse. Dismissing accusations as “playground banter” or saying that he would “never, ever do it in a hurtful or insulting way” is beyond bizarre – it insults the intelligence. How could allegedly telling a Jewish person they should be gassed ever be intended as anything other than hurtful or insulting?

I have no time for those who bent over backwards to dismiss antisemitism under Corbyn who have magically rediscovered their outrage at Jew-hate. But neither do I have patience for those, so outspoken in their alarm at Labour circa 2015-2020, who are now so breezy in their dismissals when antisemitism accusations have arrived far closer to their political home. It should not be unthinkable to expect a basic level of consistency on a subject that is so deeply important to so many of us.