News that Gary Farmer – chair of Brighton and Hove Reform UK – was stepping down was unsurprising given the fact that their electoral results in recent city council by-elections – with results around the 10 percent mark – have been extremely disappointing for a party polling 30 percent nationally.
At Brighton and Hove Stand Up to Racism we like to think we did our bit to contribute to these poor results for Reform UK through the thousands of leaflets exposing Reform UK’s racism and far right politics that we distributed during these elections – and our exposure of Farmer’s own racist and misogynistic personal tweets. While Farmer tried to put a brave spin on the election results it was clear that his days as chair were probably numbered and now we learn this month there will be a new chair of Brighton and Hove Reform UK.
Yet is Farmer with his far right politics going to be completely sidelined now within Reform UK? He claims not – in his resignation statement he says ”I’ll continue working with the committee in a new capacity that aligns with my strengths and draws on the valuable experience and insight I’ve gained, as we focus our efforts toward 2027 local council elections.”
What are these ‘strengths’ Farmer brings one wonders? Well – his passion for using AI to make images for the Brighton and Hove Reform UK facebook page seems to be the most obvious one – but politically they only confirm the far right and racist nature of Reform UK as a political party (something they nationally sometimes try to hide if possible).
Take anti-semitism for example – something Farmer has form with for his depictions of the Jewish Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero Ed Miliband as a vampire (the version of Ed Miliband as Nosferatu was quickly deleted after posting – but the trope is available in another more subtle form see here)
Ed Miliband as a cartoon vampire behind Rachel Reeves
Now with Halloween on 31 October, Gary Farmer has posted for Reform UK Brighton and Hove an attack on the Jewish leader of the Greens Zack Polanski for Halloween which again draws on classic anti-semitic tropes used to dehumanise Jewish people- compare to Svengali for example…
As wikipedia notes, ‘Svengali is a stereotypical antisemitic portrayal of an Ashkenazic (Eastern European) Jew, complete with “bold, black, beady Jew’s eyes” and a “hoarse, rasping, nasal, throaty rook’s caw, his big yellow teeth baring themselves in a mongrel canine snarl”. He is continually filthy yet still “clean enough to suit (his own) kind”. George Orwell wrote that Svengali, who—while cleverer than the Englishmen—is evil, effeminate, and physically repugnant, was “a sinister caricature of the traditional type” and an example of “the prevailing form of antisemitism.”‘
Svengali
Reform UK’s portrayal of Zack Polanski draws on Nazi caricatures of ‘the Jew’ as a menacing, dark-skinned ‘foreigner’ who looms over the viewer, using ‘mind control’ to entrance his victim rather than engaging in rational debate (see the Nazi propaganda film The Eternal Jew, 1940 for example).
These antisemitic themes are common within British fascism. One example is ‘‘Who Are the Mind Benders?” – a 1997 pamphlet produced by the British National Party (BNP) and written by its then fuhrer Nick Griffin, which claimed Jews run the British media and use it to hypnotise the masses.
The inclusion of modern political elements – the Palestinian pin flag for example – deepens the potential harm by linking present day political discourse to these older antisemitic visual tropes. It recycles the conspiratorial notion that Jewish politicians or activists are deceitful, manipulative or malicious in influence. Even if presented as satire or Halloween humour, what matters is that it draws on, and normalises, the same iconography once used to justify the worst persecutions of Jewish communities.
Is this classic anti-semitism from an official Reform UK account acceptable to the leaders of Reform UK? Are they happy to be so openly racist in their propaganda? Is it time they either admitted they are a racist far right party – or if they are not, isn’t it time they cleaned up their act and either suspended or kicked Gary Farmer out of their party completely?