Nigel Farage insists that merely adopting the “Je Suis Charlie” motto is insufficient to take Europe’s political leadership off the hook for its policy breakdowns.
Europe’s elected leaders must look in the mirror and acknowledge their own failed political decisionmaking as well as being more confident in “standing up for our Judeo-Christian culture,” Farage declared. At the same, he insisted that “We must embrace the vast majority of Muslims who themselves are horrified at the civil war that is going on within Islam.”
Farage is the outspoken and often politically incorrect leader of the populist UK Independence Party (UKIP or Ukip) and member of the European parliament.
Last May, Ukip won the most seats for Britain’s representation in the EU, the first time in about 100 years that a third party won a national election in England. Farage is also a candidate for the British parliament, the House of Commons, in the upcoming May 2015 general election, in which even a modest number of Ukip wins could play a decisive role in forming a governing coalition in Westminster. Many British voters have become disenchanted with the Conservatives/Tories on the right and the Labor Party on the left, and neither is expected to achieve a majority.
In an appearance on the Fox News Channel last week to comment on the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack in Paris (but before the murder of four hostages at the Kosher grocery in that city), Farage insisted that the effort by political elites in Europe to promote multiculturalism through uncontrolled immigration has failed.
Ukip wants to reassert the sovereignty of Britain by exiting the European Union via referendum and leaving behind all its assorted heavy-handed regulations, and also, among other things, to clamp down on massive immigration into the U.K., which has come from both from third-world countries as well as from eastern Europe, the latter as a result of EU decrees. The influx has destabilized social services and pushed wages downward, Ukip and Farage maintain.
In remarks yesterday (see embed below) in the EU parliament in Strasbourg after the chamber observed a moment of silence for the Paris terrorist victims, Farage condemned the murders and extended condolences to the families.
He also lauded the Paris unity rally on Sunday in which millions of citizens marched along with 40 world leaders (although not President Obama).
According to Farage, however, “‘Je suis Charlie’ is simply not enough, because we need now to have an honest admission that actually our political decisions have led to much of what has happened.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDYUZ-O6ePg
He contended that EU foreign policy blunders such as military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria have made things worse by provoking resentment in the Muslim community.
He also again assailed huge waves of immigration into the Eurozone countries with a related failure of assimilation, which in part has led to what he claimed was a fifth column in those nations.
“Perhaps worst of all we have been guilty of weakness, of lack of courage, of lack of assertion in who we are as people, and we have turned a blind eye within many of our minority communities, to practices that would not be tolerated in the rest of the population. And indeed we have allowed preachers of hate to go around saying things that are unacceptable…
“But unless we’re prepared to admit our own culpability in much of what has happened, we are not going to be able to find solutions…”
Do you agree or disagree with Nigel Farage that European politicians bear responsibility for the internal problems that have led to terrorism?
[image credit: Euro Realist Newsletter ]