Farage, Islam and Freedom

During Mao’s Chinese Cultural Revolution, “struggle sessions” were pivotal in enforcing compliance. These involved publicly humiliating individuals who deviated from approved scripts or expressed impermissible opinions. Anyone accused of holding the wrong views had their life destroyed through public branding. In China, they were paraded through the streets carrying a board with their name written on it. A stroke through the name symbolised their deletion – they were unpersoned.

Today, in the West, we call it “cancel culture” – destroying a person because they’ve said something controversial, such as the truth. Cultural Marxists in the West, especially in English-speaking countries, have studied much of what the Chinese Cultural Revolution had to teach. Many prominent Marxists spearheading cultural change in the US in the 1960s travelled to China to learn about things like “struggle sessions” and the suppression of opposing views, and brought them home.

German communist activist Rudi Dutschke, in 1967, coined the phrase “the long march through the institutions” to explain how the extreme left could rise to power without winning it at the ballot box. In short, it meant taking control of powerful cultural shapers like the media and education system.

The media is key. It carries out “struggle sessions” against those it considers “racist.” Various activities can result in a “racist” designation, but criticising Islam will get you there faster than anything else.

Islam is entirely unique and the left protects it like no other belief system. Why? Because the left absolutely loves Islam, and the more of it injected into the Western capitalist bourgeoisie, the better. Islam despises the West even more than the radical left. Its adherents are mostly brown-skinned, so they can play the racial oppression card, and crucially, for the left’s purposes, it is violent.

Throughout its history, Islam has conquered nation after nation with extreme violence – dating back to Mohammed. In short, Islam is willing and able to destroy Western civilization like nothing else the Marxists have at their disposal, so they will protect it through any and every means – including, of course, “struggle sessions.”

It is against all this backdrop that my venture into anti-sharia politics began. I was a law student when I learned of sharia, and as someone who believes in genuine freedom, and as a woman who values my own, I stood against it. I was young and idealistic, so my initial foray into anti-Islam politics was from a left-wing bent. I was a strong public speaker from the beginning and was invited to event after event. I studied, learned, and always ensured my speeches were based on fact because integrity meant everything to me (and still does).

As I got older and developed my thinking, I began to understand the importance of capitalism and nation-state democracy and expressed that view. I formed the opinion —which I still hold—that mass immigration to the West from the Muslim world would destroy it and the freedoms our ancestors died for.

For this, mainstream secularists, the Labour Party, and people I had considered friends, shunned me – it was like I never existed. This was my first “struggle session,” and after it, I took refuge on the right, particularly Ukip, where I found myself facing the same battles.

This time, it was ok for me to talk about immigration, but not Islam. Again, I was constrained by “You can say this but not that.” I quickly learned that both left and right have permissible speech lists, the only difference is what’s on them.

To be clear, I would understand if I were calling the removal of people’s rights, or for violence, or tyranny, that’s extreme. I did none of that, I just told the provable truth about a religion and its teachings.

When I ran for Ukip leader in 2017, I was up against some of the party’s luminaries – MEPs, spokespeople – but accelerated to the front runner position very quickly. I was the bookies’ favourite, I was riding high … and then Nigel Farage stepped in and I became the target of a smear campaign that would make Antifa envious.

Farage believed I was an extremist and denounced me without understanding my message. From then on, I was “the woman too racist for Nigel Farage.” It was a whole new weapon for the media to shame me with.

In other words, Farage had joined in the discrediting of a woke regime opponent. He has done the same to Tommy Robinson and other truth speakers, and he does it to keep himself out of conflict with the media and avoid finding himself the target of a struggle session.

In China, people often pointed at others to prove that they were sound. “If I join in the shaming of that person, I can avoid being shamed myself.” That’s how it worked then, and that’s how it works now.

The now-leader of Reform recently made headlines, and was hailed a saviour, by highlighting sectarianism in Britain and the shocking behaviour of Muslims during election campaigns such as in Rochdale. Much of the audience acts as if he is the first person brave enough to say it, when in fact he has participated in the defaming of those who said it long before .

It was nothing that hasn’t previously been said, and it wasn’t actually much. Farage’s words indicate that he doesn’t comprehend that Islam is a totalitarian belief system that uses violence to achieve its aims. That is in Islam’s DNA, there’s no getting away from it, and the only way to stop it destroying Britain is to stop Islamic immigration, deport thousands, and reassert commitment to freedom. But, how can one assert true commitment to freedom when one is a prime participant in subjecting others to struggle sessions?

I continue to develop my knowledge and thinking, and something I’ve learned is neither left nor right are committed to true freedom. I have not found freedom on either side, I have found group think and adherence to the media’s will – a media dominated by Marxists putting the long march through the institutions into practice. Farage is just as guilty.

I watched him speak to a female reporter who asked for an example of lack of Muslim integration, and to his great credit, he cited the lack of women’s participation in public life. No women in the room, that’s not British, he told her. She responded saying that respecting other people’s beliefs is a British value, and he did not know how to reply. I see this often, it’s frustrating. If it were me, I would have asked her if she was willing to give up her job, her rights, and her freedom to accommodate Muslim beliefs. It would have stumped her and perhaps taught her what this is about: tolerance of intolerance. Tolerating those who hate you is suicide. I’m with Karl Popper on this – if you tolerate intolerance, intolerance wins, and freedom is over.

Farage does not know this topic, and nor, I suspect, does he really care. He’s saying what he thinks will generate headlines while not going so far as to subject himself to a struggle session. He played the very Marxist game that is eating away at this country. That won’t save it. Intelligence, thought, knowledge, and outright commitment to liberty, that’s what will save it.

It’s undoubtedly a good thing if Reform cracks away at the edges of politics right now, and if it acts as barrier to genuine right- and left-wing extremism (as evil and anti-freedom as each other), that can only be a positive.

As for me, I intend to observe, write, and experience life away from politics for the first time since my teens. In due course, however many years down the line it may be, I will return to the political arena more rounded. I still believe that one day, truth and integrity will matter more than anything else, and I will be there when it does.

Anne Marie Waters is a former politician and the author of Beyond Terror. She writes a Substack here. 

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