Nigel Farage. Doing Putin's work in the UK and the EU, he is.

Note the bits about him and about Tories running to the continent to get nationalist governments to nix May's plea for a delay in the British crashout.

To ignore Nigel Farage and the populist right is complacent

Nigel Farage spreads fear of Muslims

Nigel Farage says London blighted by 'wholly Muslim areas' as he defends Donald Trump's response to the attack

He endorses Trump's attacks on the Mayor of London and on PC, and supports Trump's demand the US courts allow his travel ban to go through.

Nigel Farage is a paid political commentator and expert on Brit affairs on Fox News.

Echoing the Trump line, he says Britain has been "hidebound by political correctness" and blames both the Mayor and Theresa May for not doing enough.

‘Calls for internment will grow’: Fox contributor linked to Russia scandal suggests camps for British Muslims

“This is now the third terrorist incident that has happened in my country in the space of as many months,” he explained. 

“And the mood that I get now is we want some real action. We don’t just want speeches.”

“And if there is not action, the calls for internment will grow,” Farage added. 

“We have 3,000 people on sort of a known terrorist list. And we’re watching their actions. But a further 20,000 people who are persons of interests, namely they’re linked by some way to extremist organizations. Unless we see the public getting tough, you will see public calls for those 3,000 to be arrested.”

Farage admitted that the move “might alienate decent fair-minded Muslims.”

Later in the morning, Daily Mail columnist Katie Hopkins also told Fox & Friends that “we do need interment camps.”

Bozo has a personal foreign policy, hidden behind the conventional internationalism of his national security front men

While his official, "grownup" advisors continue to pledge America to its historic military internationalism, to NATO, and to a strong and prosperous EU, Trump seems to continue with his own agenda, the white nationalist and America First Buchananism of his campaign days, at least as regards Europe.

The agenda beloved of Steve Bannon, Pat Buchanan, the likes of Nigel Farage, and Vladimir Putin.

The Fix Is In; Nato Is Out

[T]his cluster of signs and provocations suggests strongly that we are still in the same place, still in a position where the President of the United States is actively seeking to undermine NATO and – through different modalities and for slightly different reasons – the EU as well.

Each of these aims, each of these goals lines up more or less perfectly with the strategic ambitions of the Russian Federation, which sees NATO as a bulwark of Western/US military strength hemming Russia in behind borderlands it sees as within its proper sphere of influence and with the EU, representing a liberal internationalist order which it has set itself against. 

A lot of this thinking comes from the Bannonite/”nationalist” part of the Trump crew, though Trump has espoused elements of this vision for years. 

That group, in turn has deep ties to various European rightist parties which share this anti-NATO, anti-EU, politically illiberal stance. Many or most are funded by Russia. 

Whether or not this is being done on Putin’s behalf, it clearly lines up within Putin’s and Russia’s aims. 

Putin wants a fragmented Europe; Trump does too.

We should not lose sight of this elemental fact in what seems like a herky-jerky parade of provocations and gaffes on this latter portion of Trump’s trip. 

The Russia story isn’t just what happened last year. 

It continues.

Josh Marshall.

Or maybe all of this is just a colossal distraction at the end of a trip that was itself a distraction - from the ongoing Russia scandals, sure, but also from the CBO score of the health care bill, from the horrific budget, and from the godawful tax proposals of the Congressional Republicans.

Buchananites are not happy about the Syria attack

Trump’s Disillusioned Supporters

Ann Coulter, Milo Y, and others.

Can't find anything from Pat Buchanan, himself, yet.

It is being urged by many that such an aggressive, interventionist act is contrary to the America First policy he campaigned for.

And it is.

But Bozo's campaign was not particularly consistent on this.

He also campaigned on beefing up the military so America would be respected and not be pushed around any more.

And he specifically and repeated mocked Obama, during the campaign, for drawing a red line in the sands of Syria, telling Assad he dare not cross it by using chemical weapons - though at the time he himself was no hawk - and then wussing out when Assad called his bluff.

Assad went ahead and used chemical weapons and Obama, despite the urging of Kerry and others in and out of his administration, did nothing very much but complain.

The threatened punitive military action did not occur.

Bozo repeatedly and joyfully chided Obama for this during his campaign, and there was simply no way he was going to do anything that appeared retrospectively to ratify or justify O's failure to act.

That, probably, more than anything else, is why he did it.

Update, 040817, 1513 hrs EDT.

After Syria strike, populist supporters abandon Trump at home and abroad

Check out the reactions from Nigel Farage and Marine Le Pen.

And this is about right.

Populists who applauded Trump for his disdain for US interventions overseas and his campaign declaration that the US "cannot be the policeman of the world" were aghast by the strike. 

In contrast, an international community that has often held Trump at arm's length stepped up to declare their rock-solid support for the new US president.

Oh, and why hasn't anyone but Pat Buchanan, himself, called Bozo for, again contrary to the America First thing, being as firm as he has been about standing up for Japan and South Korea?

If you're serious about Buchananism in foreign affairs you need to start withdrawing American troops from Korea, Japan, and the entire Pacific west of Hawaii.

Or at least planning for it.

And nobody is even talking about that.

But Bozo wants to increase military spending by some 50+ billion dollars.

Who thinks that makes the least sense if your plan is to draw back from all our global military commitments?

The international assholes club, palling around with the Russians

The Fuse Is Burning

Let's walk through this chain of events today that mixes together Julian Assange, President Trump, Nigel Farage and Sean Spicer.

Trump's 'Advisor' Visits Wikileaks Embassy, Can't Recall Why

But then you have unelectable twit, Trump "unofficial advisor" and Brexit side-of-a-bus liar Nigel Farage going to visit the Ecuadoran Embassy two days after the latest dump, disappearing into the building for 40 minutes, and then claiming he "can't remember" why he was there as he gets in his car after.

And this is a good thing?

Buchananites of all countries seem to be unanimous on wanting to destroy, and not merely remove their own countries from, the EU.

Even in America, they want to destroy the EU.

Why?

FARAGE: If Le Pen Wins, The EU Is Over

Possible Trump Chief of Staff and Buchananite leader hires FN leader

Steve Bannon hires Marion Marechal-Le Pen for Breitbart

They already have Farage and Wilders on board.

Best Buds

Nigel Farage arrives in New York ahead of possible Trump meeting

Lot of stories about these two in The Guardian.

Brexit leader Farage threatens violence in the streets

How very like the Trump he so admires, and who so admires him.

Make no mistake: these are threats, not warnings.

Jeremy Corbyn forced to clarify Labour will not block the triggering of Article 50

Brexiters won by a hair in a single, foolish referendum.

A single, one-time vote by a simple popular majority is to make the most momentous constitutional and political decision for the UK since The Second World War.

The Framers of the American Constitiution would have absolutely flipped out at such a ludicrous and terrifying idea.

And many Brits feel the same way.

The Brexiters rightly fear a second referendum.

But Corbyn and the anti-Brexit politicians don't have the political courage to take advantage of the opportunity presented by the court decision that Theresa May cannot trigger Article 50 on her own, and must allow Parliament to decide what to do about Brexit and how to move ahead.

Speaking to the Sunday Mirror, Mr Corbyn said Labour would vote against Mrs May unless she adopted the "Brexit bottom lines".

He said: "These must be the basis of the negotiations. And it doesn't necessarily cause a delay.

"The court has thrown a big spanner in the works by saying Parliament must be consulted. We accept the result of the referendum.

"We are not challenging the referendum. We are not calling for a second referendum. We're calling for market access for British industry to Europe."

Mrs May has issued a stern warning to MPs and peers who "regret the referendum result" that said that they "need to accept what the people decided". 

. . . .

Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, warned this morning that any attempts to overturn the results of the referendum risked "political anger the likes of which none of us in our lifetimes have ever witnessed".

He told the BBC's Andrew Marr show: "We may have seen Bob Geldof and 40,000 people in Parliament Square moaning about Brexit," he said. 

"But believe you me if people in this country think that they're going to be cheated, they're going to be betrayed, then we will see political anger the likes of which none of us in our lifetimes have ever witnessed in this country.

"The temperature of this is very, very high. I'm going to say to everybody watching this who was on the Brexit side, let's try and get even, let's have peaceful protest and let's make sure in any form of election we don't support people who want to overturn this process."

Asked whether that could mean "disturbances in the street", he replied: "Yeah, I think that's right." 

Brexit advocate Farage warns there could be riots if EU exit is blocked

Not a surprise

Nigel Farage supports Trump at a rally

Farage Trump

A very quick double-cross

Carswell and Hannan Freeze Out Farage, Say They WON’T Lower Immigration

The single most important issue to the Leave campaign and, once again, the politicians are planning to stiff the voters.

Amazing.

Their very own Donald Trumps

This clown is favored to succeed David Cameron as Tory PM?

Boris Johnson branded 'racist' and likened to the right-wing Tea Party after his attack on the 'part Kenyan' Barack Obama

He and Nigel Farage, both in favor of Brexit to which O is opposed, both refer to the removal of the bust of Churchill from the Oval Office and O's Kenyan ancestry as evidence of anti-British sentiment, specifically anti-British Empire sentiment.

Referring to the removal of Sir Winston's bust, Mr Johnson wrote in The Sun today : 'No one was sure whether the President had himself been involved in the decision,' he said.

'Some said it was a snub to Britain. Some said it was a symbol of the part-Kenyan President's ancestral dislike of the British empire - of which Churchill had been such a fervent defender.' 

. . . .

Ukip leader Nigel Farage backed up Mr Johnson's claims.

He told The Guardian: 'Look, I know his family's background. Kenya. Colonialism. There is clearly something going on there.

'It's just that you know people emerge from colonialism with different views of the British. Some thought that they were really rather benign and rather good, and others saw them as foreign invaders.

'Obama's family come from that second school of thought and it hasn't quite left him yet.' 

The White House has previously insisted there was no basis to suggestions that the removal of Sir Winston's statue was influenced by Mr Obama's views on colonialism. 

The facts about the bust in question are not what you might think, anyway.

The story that O had the bust removed is an American, and now British, right wing canard.

About those European elections

Will

Like George Will, media comment in general on the rise of the EU-rejectionists conflates patriotism with political ethnic nationalism.

Let's clear this up a bit.

The world is full of sovereign states that are not nation-states in the generally accepted, biological / cultural / linguistic sense of that term.

Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, and even the UK are among the most markedly non-national states in Europe.

India is among the most markedly non-national states outside Europe, and very few of the settler states left by European colonialism around the world are even close to being that.

Swiss patriotism is not Swiss nationalism since the Swiss people is not in the requisite sense a nation, and the same is true of the US, Argentina, Colombia, South Africa, and many other countries around the world.

And the same is true of the countries making up the EU, none of which is without some ethnic diversity and most of which are very far from the uniformity required by the 19th Century ideal.

Too, ethnic nationalism isn't even always political, being sometimes a sentiment or a loyalty similar to familial attachment, which rarely aspires to political sovereignty.

And political ethnic nationalism is itself a diverse thing, its aims being sometimes no more than acceptance of diversity within a non-national state, sometimes preservation of majority status within an ethnically diverse state, sometimes secession and creation of a separate state in which one's own ethnos can dominate, sometimes unification of separate states of the same ethnos into a single, encompassing national state, and notoriously sometimes conquest of neighboring peoples to reduce them to permanent servitude to one's own.

Contrast, for instance, the political aspirations of ethnic Russians for language rights as an accepted minority within some mostly non-Russian states that became independent with the breakup of the Soviet Union with the aspirations of those Germans and Austrians who together welcomed the Anschluss.

On the other hand, Will is right that nationalism is something different from racism and does not entail it.

It is perfectly possible for a Slovak nationalist to be in no sense a racist, either as regards positive sentiment, loyalty, or political aspiration regarding whites or negative sentiment or aspiration regarding those of other races.

And anyway racism, either positive or negative, can involve a variety of political aspirations or none at all, being again something similar to familial feeling.

As to the matter at hand, EU-rejectionism is overwhelmingly motivated by a mix of patriotism, nationalism, and racism, and not at all exclusively by the last or even the second.

Nigel Farage has been at pains to demonstrate that his party and its program are patriotic but not racist; and I believe its domestic politics are opposed to those of both Welsh and Scottish nationalists.

And that is at the root of his wish to remain distant from Marine Le Pen's Front National since the latter, as inherited from her irrepressible and inconvenient father, is heavily influenced by leaders and supporters whose politics are indeed a brew of patriotism combined with nationalism, racism, and anti-Semitism - those last being a legacy, however, she seems to be trying to overcome.

All the same, the aims of his movement and hers largely coincide: withdrawing from the EU to restore national sovereignty and shutting off immigration for economic, but also nationalist and sometimes racist reasons, as well as reasons of national security and domestic tranquility.

All of this, of course, Will distorts, spinning popular rejection of the EU like mad into some sort of Thatcherite rebellion of free-market devotees, as have many others on the American right.

And here again the FN, with its frank protectionism and support for France's family-friendly welfare state and customary dirigisme, is an inconvenient reality.

Meanwhile, others of both left and right, for exactly contrary reasons, depict the anti-EU movement as motivated entirely by various forms of tribalism of which, say, Pat Buchanan approves and those who got him fired disapprove.

The Goldilocks rule

Cameron on Farage and Clegg

One is too hot, the other is too cold, but I am just right.

Is anti-EU anti-NATO?

For some, maybe.

Farage stands by EU 'blood' claim

Maybe the scariest part is how far his opponent demonizes Putin and Russia.