[davesmith1983]

Well a lot of this is due to how this has been presented to by the media beforehand.

e.g. There is a scare story at least once a week that is plastered over newspapers/news sites such as "Having a bacon sandwich could lead to bum cancer!!!!", when the headline is clearly salacious. The actual research probably had a sensible conclusion of "Those who have had consistently more red meat, have an increased chance of cancer". If you hear see the same story hundreds of times, you are likely to ignore it or even despise it.

The same happens with the populist politicians. Take someone that isn't as controversial as Bolsonaro such as Nigel Farage in my home country.

A fair description of his political stance is a Patriotic Thatcherite that is anti-mass-immigration. When he was first becoming well known (back in the mid-2000s) he was constantly branded a racist and a fascist (there was no evidence of this) in an attempt to conflate his position with the likes of actual fascists of old like Oswald Mosley.

Now Whether or not you agree with his politics isn't important. In these attempts to constantly smear him he has become one of the most effective UK politicians in recent memory. To many he can simply do no wrong because they will dismiss any criticism of immediately, disregarding its validity.

[benj111]

The same newpapers that declare "Having a bacon sandwich could lead to bum cancer!!!!" Are also the ones most enamoured with Farage. So the readership is supposed to be disenfranchised over how they're lied to over the cancer scare stories but then believe the stories about how wonderful Farage is?

That said, I don't think I disagree with your greater point.

[davesmith1983]

Nigel Farage himself puts a lot of his success down to Facebook and Youtube and not the UK papers. Some of his speeches/rants (depends how you view it) against the EU in the Parliament went viral in the late 2000s.

[sorokod]

There is a sizable intersection between the set of populists and the set of racists. Often the naming of people close or in this intersection is a judgment call.

[toyg]

This would be the same Farage that made sure his anti-immigration message in the 2016 Brexit campaign had "the only prominent white person in the photograph obscured by a box of text": https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/16/nigel-farag...

Also, how can you brand somebody as "patriotic" when his party is a US-based corporation with links to the Russian government and tax havens?

Sad to see this rubbish on HN. Farage plays to the same racist tendencies as Trump and Bolsonaro do, with constant dog-whistling. He's absolutely controversial and hardly effective: he still has no MP in the UK Parliament after 15 years of trying, and has accomplished absolutely nothing over two mandates in the EU Parliament beyond annoying even his own allies.

It's not the "smearing" that build his success, but a situation of sustained economic weakness of the white working classes that fosters a climate of anger against migrants (who are seen as cheaper competition). That BNP fella was similarly successful for a while. Also, Farage's support is built on social networks, where his messages are spread without a debate, let alone "smears".

[davesmith1983]

Unfortunately I should have guessed I would have someone miss the entire point I was trying to make (How the media constantly mis-represent things to the point that the public doesn't trust even if they accurately present the truth) because I was trying to be objective and politically neutral about a successful politician.

> This would be the same Farage that made sure his anti-immigration message in the 2016 Brexit campaign had "the only prominent white person in the photograph obscured by a box of text": https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/16/nigel-farag....

You just did the very thing I was complaining about!

They are claiming that how an image was cropped and where text was placed somehow indicates racism. You are concentrating on nonsense and not actually making an argument against any of his policies or any of the assumption of the advert.

As for my descriptions of Farage. They come from other Journalists such as Brendan O'Neill (runs Spiked!). As for the rest of my description they are fairly objective.

> Sad to see this rubbish on HN. Farage plays to the same racist tendencies as Trump and Bolsonaro do, with constant dog-whistling.

When someone says "Dog whistling" that is the same as when someone runs out of arguments and says "Well you know it true and you aren't admitting it". It isn't an argument of any sort.

You just did the very thing I was complaining about, and I don't think you even knew you were doing it.

[defterGoose]

> "Well you know it true and you aren't admitting it". It isn't an argument of any sort.

Most unfortunately, it's becomes impossible to make what we previously conceived of as an "argument" when one or more of the parties involved refuses to acknowledge the validity of objective reality (more commonly referred to as "facts").

[toyg]

> I was trying to be objective and politically neutral about a successful politician.

No, you were not -- you were (and still are) trying to pass your biases (Farage "patriotic" and unfairly portraited while being "uncontroversial") as objective, by attacking straw men in how public debate arrives at objective conclusions about him. I pointed you at one of many examples of why that is not the case, and you doubled-down on it while completely ignoring the bits of my post that are inconvenient to your biases.

> not actually making an argument

Because there is no argument to make: Farage's "policies" are just a hodgepodge of badly-thought-out slogans designed to appeal to the worst instincts of the electorate. Like on Brexit, which he campaigned for but for which (like all "hard brexiteers") he has no practical or coherent plan.

The main problem with populists is precisely that their policies are unassailable, because they are completely devoid of details. They sell emotions, typically negative ones.

> When someone says "Dog whistling" that is the same as when someone runs out of arguments

As sad as it might make you, dog-whistling is a widely understood term in political debate, and there is little doubt that it is precisely what the likes of Trump and Farage do. (Well, to be fair, Trump has gone beyond that in recent days, turning to out-and-out discriminatory language.)

[davesmith1983]

> No, you were not -- you were (and still are) trying to pass your biases (Farage "patriotic" and unfairly portraited while being "uncontroversial") as objective, by attacking straw men in how public debate arrives at objective conclusions about him. I pointed you at one of many examples of why that is not the case, and you doubled-down on it while completely ignoring the bits of my post that are inconvenient to your biases.

In my original post I said something along the lines of "He was less controversial than Bolsonaro" not that he was uncontroversial.

You didn't point me at anything objective. The best you linked me to a guardian article about an ad-campaign that claimed it was racist because one white person was removed from the photo. I think that sort of logic is ridiculous.

As for me ignoring parts of your post, yes I ignored parts of your post because I thought they were irrelevant to the point I was originally trying to convey.

> Because there is no argument to make: Farage's "policies" are just a hodgepodge of badly-thought-out slogans designed to appeal to the worst instincts of the electorate. Like on Brexit, which he campaigned for but for which (like all "hard brexiteers") he has no practical or coherent plan.

Well UKIP's manifesto of 2015 is a 76 page document according to the BBC:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32318683

I chose this because this is the last time I believe they fought a general election with Farage as Leader. So this would be indicative of his policies (as he would have had a fair amount of input in the process).

From the BBC summary it seems quite comprehensive. It seems to cover a similar number of areas as Labour's manifesto of 2015.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32284159

So I think your characterisation is quite unfair.

> As sad as it might make you, dog-whistling is a widely understood term in political debate, and there is little doubt that it is precisely what the likes of Trump and Farage do. (Well, to be fair, Trump has gone beyond that in recent days, turning to out-and-out discriminatory language.)

I know what the term means. However many of those that use the term do so as an accusation. They don't mention who they are whistling at and what terms they are using to do that.

[toyg]

Farage is as controversial as any of the recent populist leaders, otherwise we wouldn't have the rivers of ink his outbursts command. Trying to paint one as less controversial than the other is just an attempt at making him more acceptable.

> You didn't point me at anything objective.

Want more? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11465505/Nigel-Far...

Refusing to accept that Farage's campaigns are fundamentally based on discrimination, is just denying reality.

> Well UKIP's manifesto of 2015 is a 76 page document

Yeah, and no UKIP supporter would likely be able to describe any of it, except the bits on discriminating foreigners and closing borders. Because, frankly, that's pretty much the only thing they care about. Farage's latest outfit, the brexit party, smashes together old marxists and capitalist cronies, in single-minded pursuit of discrimination.

> They don't mention who they are whistling at and what terms they are using to do that

Because it becomes tedious to do that after a while. The targets of dog-whistling are almost inevitably minorities, because they are the ones who cannot be attacked directly without falling openly into discriminatory language - commonly known as "racist".

[polotics]

@Toyg, you write: "otherwise we wouldn't have the rivers of ink his outbursts command". Is this argument not backwards? Seeing an outsider, who will most likely remain so, get shot down with lots of ink, fits a pattern of repression does it not? Is no one in your country feeling also repressed? This was davesmith1983's point I believe. There is co-dependency between TINA (there is no alternative) technocracies and populists: both use the other as a scarecrow. May I suggest you both ramp up on political economics? eg. Yanis Varoufakis is most readable / YouTube watchable.

[davesmith1983]

> Yeah, and no UKIP supporter would likely be able to describe any of it, except the bits on discriminating foreigners and closing borders. Because, frankly, that's pretty much the only thing they care about. Farage's latest outfit, the brexit party, smashes together old marxists and capitalist cronies, in single-minded pursuit of discrimination.

Well you've just changed the goalposts again. After being quite clearly confronted with evidence that doesn't support your assertions (a summary of a manifesto with a clear set of policies) you change the goalposts to the UKIP supporter being thick or bigoted.

Have you actually talked to many UKIP supporters? I've spoken to UKIP when they knocked on the door and they seemed like pretty normal people.

> Because it becomes tedious to do that after a while. The targets of dog-whistling are almost inevitably minorities, because they are the ones who cannot be attacked directly without falling openly into discriminatory language - commonly known as "racist".

Right so you have plenty of energy to throw endless accusations around, accuse me of all sorts because I don't agree with you but when asked for specifics it is too tedious. Okay with that I think I will leave you to it. Bye.