Right – let’s talk about the Farage school of public enlightenment, where every question mark is a crowbar and every shrug hides a wrecking ball. “What aren’t they telling us?” he asks, eyebrows arched like semaphore flags spelling mistrust. He doesn’t need to say what they’re hiding – the beauty of it is that you get to fill in your own fantasy. A secret migrant hotel under Buckingham Palace? EU officials storing wind turbines in Dover? Civil servants plotting to ban St George’s Day? The details don’t matter; only the feeling does.
And if the facts are finally published, dull as dishwater and exactly what anyone sensible expected, that’s just proof of the cover-up. “They had to tell us once we started asking questions!” You can almost hear the victory pint being poured.
The police, terrified of becoming the next culture-war football, now oblige by releasing the ethnicity of every suspect as though it were a plot twist. It’s never enough. If the accused is white, “they’re hiding the real story.” If he isn’t, “they tried to keep it quiet until we forced them.” It’s the circular logic of grievance – no matter what happens, the mob was right all along.
Then come the statistics. Present them with ONS data showing that asylum numbers are lower than a decade ago, or that most small-boat arrivals are genuine refugees, and the reply is instant: “If you can believe these statistics.” If hospital waiting lists go down – “massaged figures.” If they go up – “proof Labour can’t run the NHS.” Climate scientists? “Fiddling the thermometers.” Economists? “In the pay of Brussels.” Judges? “Left-wing activists in wigs.” The only people beyond suspicion are blokes in pubs who “just know how things really are.”
Farage himself is a master of this linguistic judo. “I’m not saying the BBC is lying,” he’ll announce on a channel with ‘GB’ in its name, “but it does make you wonder, doesn’t it?” He did it with the NHS – “Where’s all the money going?” With Covid – “Why weren’t we told the truth?” With net zero – “Who’s really profiting from it?” Each question plants a seed that grows into an oak of paranoia watered by social media and fertilised with pure conjecture.
Meanwhile, institutions – civil service, police, even the Bank of England – twist themselves into transparency knots trying to disprove allegations that were never concrete to begin with. Announce an inquiry too soon, and you’re “covering up fast.” Wait for evidence, and you’re “dragging your feet.” It’s like being interrogated by a drunk who insists your silence proves guilt and your speech proves guiltier.
And this is how language becomes acid. The far-right populist doesn’t shout “Down with democracy!” He smiles and says, “I’m only asking questions.” He doesn’t claim “The statistics are lies”; he purrs, “If you can believe them.” He doesn’t attack judges directly; he sighs, “Funny how these rulings always go one way, isn’t it?” It’s plausible deniability dressed as plain speaking.
The result? A public so marinated in mistrust that when a civil servant quotes a spreadsheet, half the room checks under the table for Soros. Trust evaporates, reason collapses, and up steps the man of “common sense,” pint aloft, offering to bulldoze the whole apparatus of expertise. It’s like watching someone set fire to a library because one book had a typo.
So next time you hear “What aren’t they telling us?” try answering, “Usually, the boring bits you wouldn’t listen to anyway.” When someone sneers “If you can believe these statistics,” smile sweetly and say, “I’ll take peer review over pub review any day.” And when the flag-draped truth-teller demands gratitude for exposing yet another “cover-up,” remember: it isn’t truth he’s selling – it’s suspicion in a pint glass, and the first round’s on you.
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