In a rather bizarre twist, Hillary Clinton has used Nigel Farage as a token figure of right wing extremism to demonstrate how extreme right wing Donald Trump is. (Video Link here)

Which is kind of odd, because I’m pretty sure on this side of the Atlantic Farage’s appearance alongside Donald Trump would be taken to demonstrate just how far to the right Nigel Farage is to appear on a stage with “extreme right winger” Donald Trump. There are grumblings and murmurings within his own “extreme right wing” party, UKIP, from the Likes of Suzanne Evans, about whether it was a smart thing to do, to appear alongside a figure as far to the right as Donald Trump.

And yet, with no apparent sense of irony, on the other side of the Atlantic, Hillary Clinton is happily asserting that their joint appearance demonstrates how extreme Trump is, because Farage is “extreme right wing”.

Both positions cannot be true. The fact that, on opposite sides of the Atlantic, the same event is made by the political left of both sides to make an almost opposite point should really trouble the left’s supporters a lot more than I suspect it in fact does. It is far too easy, I suspect, for supporters on the left to simply dismiss the whole thing in a hand waving sort of way and say “Oh, what does it matter? It’s a meeting of two two nasty far right wingers”. Well, possibly, but left wing politicians on both sides are not viewing it as such, the left wing spin doctors are spinning the story opposite ways on opposite sides of the Atlantic to suit their narrative.

It goes without saying that Clinton’s quoted “evidences” of Farage’s right wing extremism are grossly misrepresentative, but, for the record let’s just deal with them.

“Farage has called for a bar on the children of legal immigrants from public schools and health services”

This sort of creates the image of Farage supporting some kind of apartheid and throwing second or third generation immigrants out of schools with signs saying “White British Only” being put above the door. What Farage actually said was that new immigrants to the UK should be able to finance their own dependents for an initial period of time (possibly five years) after their arrival into the UK. (Whether that would mean attending private schools or having to pay to attend UK state schools is not clear).

Whether you agree with that or not, it’s clearly a million miles from what Hillary was suggesting. Moreover, the irony is that this is exactly the sort of system the USA currently has after 8 years of Democrat rule: The education and healthcare of dependants of foreign nationals coming to the USA would not be state funded. So Farage is arguing to emulate the system of the Democrat run American Government.

“[Farage] has said Women are…and I quote..worth less than men”

As a general rule, if you actually say “I Quote”, then it’s probably reasonable to expect that what you’re saying is, in fact, a quote…and to get slammed pretty hard for misrepresentation if what you say is not just a quote out of context, but not a quote at all.

So, here’s the video. Go hunt for that quote: “Women are worth less than men” Nope? No luck? That’s because Farage didn’t say it. What he said was a woman was “Worth far less to an employer when she comes back than when she went way”. So A) it was in reference to employment financial “worth”, not a general comment on their worth as human beings and B) the “less” was not less relative men, but less relative to her own employment worth prior to going on a maternity break.

Now again, you may disagree with Farage here, you may even suspect an underlying sexist sentiment to his words, but he simply did not say what Clinton claimed he did.

“[Farage] supports scrapping laws which prevent employers from discriminating based on race”

Now, on this one, Clinton is at least vaguely in the ballpark of truth, although it seems quite clear she is misleading her audience. Her audience, who have probably never heard of Farage, would probably take this to mean that Farage is openly declaring that employers should discriminate based on race: Again, go to the source material and hear what Farage actually said. He said that employers should be able to discriminate based on nationality and preferentially choose a British national over a foreign national. This would not be even slightly controversial to the typical American, even a democrat voter. The idea there would be legislation which compelled an American company to employ a foreigner over an American would be an anathema even the American Left.

He also said that race discrimination legislation in Britain could be repealed because it had run its course and was now outdated. He said it was sensible forty years ago, but was no longer needed. Now, one might believe that Farage has nefarious motives for saying this, but, it is, on the face of it, not an example of being regressive, but rather too progressive. Surely, we would all hope that in another 40 years we would all be saying what Farage is saying now, simply because those laws had become rather odd and quaint because the colour of people’s skin was such a non-issue. In that context, someone in 2060 watching a video of Farage saying this will probably wonder what all the fuss was about.

Again, you might be cynical and think this is really all part of Farage’s plots as a closet racist. However, you must be careful not to engage in circular reasoning for how you justify your belief in his racism : Is the reason you think he is a racist because he wants to scrap discrimination law? Or does he want to scrap discrimination law because he is a racist?

“Farage regularly appears on Russian propaganda programmes”

Slightly odd one this. I assume that this is a reference to Farage appearing on the Russian State funded network “Russia Today”. He has appeared on a programme on that network called Sputnik in which he was interviewed by that well known extreme right winger, George Galloway. Ahem…OK Hillary.

End of fact check…well, that was tiresome…but we’ve got through it. Every one of Hillary’s claims is either gross misrepresentation or simply not true. Moreover, we must remember she will be speaking to an audience who have, in all probability have never heard of Nigel Farage…which raises the level of manipulation here.

Your first impression of nearly anyone is likely to be your lasting one: Clinton, for much of her audience who have never heard of Nigel Farage before, will have given them a lens through which they shall, subtly now always view him, and any story they hear pertaining to him. As such, their beliefs about him become self-perpetuating.

What this all neatly demonstrates is that “Right” and “Left” are largely meaningless labels entirely relative to your own point of view. The use of “Right” or “Extreme Right” in particular is little more than a lazy ad hominem to avoid dealing with actual arguments. (Although in all fairness, others use “leftie” in a similarly pejorative way).

The intriguing thing here is that, if we paint one the same canvas with a slightly different brushstroke, we can easily portray Hillary Clinton as being significantly to the political right of Nigel Farage:

Let’s consider the death penalty. You have to be an absolutely raving right wing nutcase to support capital punishment right? Surely, position on capital punishment is one of the defining points of being “extreme right wing”, right?

Hillary Clinton, for all her pre-conditions and limitations is ultimately in favour of capital punishment.

Nigel Farage, for all his suggestions that it could be put to public vote is against capital punishment on the grounds he does not trust the state to get the decisions right. I suspect this will be surprising to many people. It shouldn’t be, because, in many ways, Farage is closer to being a libertarian than a traditional right winger, but the lexicon simply doesn’t exist for this nuance in most mainstream British political discourse)

So, what we see nearly continuously happen is a desire to press politicians toward right or left wing, as suits the narrative, in the hope that all opinions of that individual will be either accepted or rejected without due analysis.We are all guilty of this. For a long time, i simply did not listen to a word George Galloway said, because I bought into the idea he was a “Far left loonie”. In many ways, he probably is, and I’m no more enamored of him on a personal level, but on both Brexit, and many aspects of Western intervention in the Middle East, particularly in Syria and Libya, he has talked a lot of sense.

Clinton’s comments show she is playing this game of painting people into “right” and “left” corners to suit her own ends as cynically as anyone in politics. Proceed with caution.