America’s election has me terrified. Nigel Farage, the interim leader of UKIP (UK Independent Party), is currently holding meetings (even though he denies) with the President-elect himself, Donald Trump, in hopes of mending the “broken” relationship between the US and the UK by being the representative of the whole British Politics, as Theresa May was rumoured to have planned to meet Trump as well after his inauguration on January 20th.
Nigel Farage, being used to leading a party that uses tactics similar to Donald Trump’s campaign – based on homophobia, xenophobia, racism and sexism – hoping to connect with Donald Trump even more by bringing British Politics into it, scares me because it could mean that in the UK, hateful acts will be even more normalised. Even though, most may argue that it’s already normal due to the amount of votes that UKIP gained in the General Election of 2015; they were the third most voted party in the UK, however they only gained one seat due to the First Past The Post System.
UKIP’s campaign was used to smear the perspectives of the public of refugees and immigrants; they amplified the voices of those who still had racist and xenophobic views.
The party gave them the confidence to make those different to them feel like they traveled back in time 60 years. Sounds pretty familiar, right?
These two men together are terrifying, one is the President of the United States – meaning that all eyes are on him, so his malicious comments will be reported by the media, and people will be saying “Oh it’s Trump, he always says things like that” as if everything is alright and no one is getting offended. The other is the current leader of one of the most hateful, right wing and xenophobic parties in the UK, not to mention most of the general public focuses on the party’s controversial actions. The power that these two men have together is easy to imagine after Trump’s win, since their impact would be so influential to the silent racists of both Western countries.
As a woman of colour, I have experienced enough to know a sense of what it would feel like if most people were to vote UKIP as the main party for the UK. I cannot stress enough how their party has encouraged even the youngest of racists to be brave and attack every visible non-white person that they see on public transport. Especially after results of Brexit, not only tensions have heightened, but hate crimes are seem to have been normalised.
Not only will Donald Trump’s presidency encourage more hate towards those who are of colour, who are LGBT+, who are women and who are immigrants in the USA alone, it will also normalise it throughout the Western countries.
