Nigel Farage has attracted spirited criticism for two separate sets of remarks based on the situation in the Ukraine. Some of the criticism was deserved. But not all of it.
It’s understandable that one political operator may admire another one’s technical command of his craft, without necessarily endorsing the ends to which such mastery is applied. This is what the UKIP leader probably meant when saying that Putin is the politician he most admires.
In a similar vein, a writer may admire another writer’s skill while despising his message. A pianist may praise another pianist’s fleet fingers without being enthusiastic about his interpretations. While fining a dangerous driver, a traffic cop may praise his car.
To be fair, Mr Farage explicitly disavowed both Putin’s personality and his policies, and he’s clearly not in favour of imprisoning journalists, although, if he read The Times regularly, he might rethink this position.
I’d also be tempted to add that Col. Putin not only imprisons his opponents, journalists or otherwise, but also occasionally has them bumped off without wasting taxpayers’ money on the pointless casuistry of legal proceedings.
But Mr Farage may not be aware of such details and, if he were, I’m sure he wouldn’t endorse them. Still, public figures must refrain from giving any encouragement to tyrants, and there’s no doubt that Col. Putin is one such.
This goes for politicians of the past as well. Does Mr Farage admire Lenin for coming out of obscurity to take over Russia? Stalin, for his devious skill in outflanking his fellow butchers Trotsky and Bukharin? Hitler, for twisting Hindenburg’s arm to appoint him Chancellor? Mussolini, for doing something similar to King Victor Emmanuel? Mao, for ousting Kuomingdan?
I bet he doesn’t. So it’s best not to shoot from the lip, especially when one is in one’s cups. The absence of such self-restraint smacks of irresponsibility, and this isn’t a quality we like to see in our politicians – even (especially?) in those with whom we agree on many issues.
Farage’s other related remarks, those on the EU having Ukrainian blood on its hands, deserve to be taken more seriously, if not altogether approvingly.
Again, I don’t know how familiar he is with modern history, but the West does have an unenviable record of first encouraging popular uprisings in oppressed countries and then getting cold feet at the last moment – only to see the uprising drowned in blood.
In 1956, through the good offices of the CIA-controlled station Radio Free Europe, the West, spearheaded by the USA, all but called young Hungarian patriots to arms.
They promptly rose, only to find out in short order that the support they were promised didn’t extend beyond hollow speeches. Soviet tanks rolled in, crushing the uprising under their tracks. Thousands died, another 45 years of slavery ensued.
In 1961 the CIA went further than mere encouragement. The Agency funded, trained and armed Brigade 2506, a group of patriotic Cuban paramilitaries yearning to reclaim their country from Castro’s bloodthirsty dictatorship.
On 16 April the 1,500-strong brigade landed at Playa Girón in the Bay of Pigs. Their chances of success were good: the patriots could rely on both public support and, more immediately important, the air support promised by President Kennedy.
Its primary role was to cut off the causeway through which Castro’s Soviet-made tanks could arrive at the beach. Yet at the last moment Kennedy chickened out, as Americans would say. The promised air support didn’t materialise, the causeway wasn’t bombed, the tanks arrived and the brigade was butchered.
In the first instance, the CIA didn’t hang any Hungarian students off Budapest lamp posts. In the second, it didn’t massacre Brigade 2506. Yet from any moral standpoint it can’t be absolved of guilt. In that sense, one would be justified to say that the USA had some blood on its hands.
But most of it was on the hands of the actual perpetrators, those who pulled the triggers, drove the tanks, soaped the ropes, tortured and killed. Above all, covered by blood from head to toe were the evil regimes against which the people rose with self-sacrificial heroism.
It’s tempting to think that such moral distinctions are too fine for all practical purposes. But moral law, like any other, accepts gradations of guilt. Thus, in the examples I cited, it would be wrong to hold the USA solely or even mainly responsible for the massacres. Yet equally wrong would be to absolve it of guilt altogether.
This preamble should explain why Nigel Farage was right in saying that the EU has blood on its hands, meaning the blood of those, mercifully few, Ukrainians so far killed over the last month. But such remarks are spurious unless they are counterbalanced by the sort of nuanced analysis I attempted above.
Yes, the EU was wrong to encourage open resistance against the rule of Putin’s puppets – unless it was prepared to offer tangible support in case of an utterly predictable backlash. No, the EU isn’t the main culprit here. This honour belongs to Putin and his cronies, both inside and outside Russia.
Professing admiration, however qualified, for Col. Putin is ill-suited to the role of such a counterbalance. In general, it’s best to refrain from controversial statements on subjects about which one knows little.
Then again, unlike the three mainstream parties UKIP has a serious argument to make. And any argument is by definition polemical: one argues not only in favour of some proposition but also against another.
Polemical fervour has been known to encourage ill-considered off-the-wall remarks, but serious politicians tend to avoid those. By failing to do so Nigel Farage did his party no favours. Moreover, he may have reinforced its undesirable image of a single-issue campaigner.
This isn’t to say he has no point at all in some of his remarks: the EU can indeed be held partially responsible for the bloodshed. Most of those who attacked Farage probably refuse to admit it.