"Pop quiz. Of whom did Donald Trump say admiringly: I also learned that he loves his country very much? And: He wrote me beautiful letters. And they are great letters. We fell in love? If you answered Nigel Farage, then I'm sorry. The Reform UK leader might have spent this pre-party conference week in his happy place lodged several feet up the US presidential colon and rhetorically demanding of US lawmakers: At what point did [the UK] become North Korea?"
"We always want what we can't have, of course, which is why Trump this week had to settle for Farage grinning gormlessly next to his Oval Office desk like a competition winner, while Kim laughed it up with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping at a vast military parade in Beijing which featured, among other deranged martial curiosities, robot wolves. Good times."
Donald Trump previously praised Kim Jong-un with admiring phrases about loving his country and sending beautiful letters. Nigel Farage visited Washington to promote a US TV outpost, criticize the UK's free-speech climate, and seek US support while posing beside the Oval Office. Kim Jong-un attended a vast Beijing military parade with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping that included robotic curiosities. The juxtaposition of Farage's US access and authoritarian spectacle highlights unsettling sympathies and performative alliances. These developments raise concerns about affinities between Western populists and authoritarian leaders and about the UK's legal and cultural responses to online speech.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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