There is a peculiar talent in modern Western politics, the ability to wrap hatred in silk. To dress venom in polite euphemisms. To call a fist a handshake and hope no one notices the bruises. And nowhere is this talent more meticulously perfected than in the political careers of Nigel Farage, Donald Trump, and Viktor Orbán, three men who have built their legacies by mastering the art of sanitizing bigotry.
The accusations of racism against Nigel Farage are not some shocking revelation emerging from the shadows. They are not sudden earthquakes; they are the steady tremors of a fault line that has always been there. Farage didn’t suddenly become xenophobic because of Brexit or migration. Trump didn’t wake up one day and discover he disliked immigrants. Orbán didn’t slip into authoritarian fantasies by accident. These men were not pushed into extremism, they walked into it proudly, theatrically, applauded by the crowds they had spent years preparing through carefully measured doses of fear, resentment and grievance out of Hitler’s playbook
Yet the media, political analysts and even many of their critics have spent years softening the language around them as if afraid to say the quiet part out loud. Farage’s racist dog whistles become “concerns about immigration.” Trump’s white nationalist winks become “populism.” Orbán’s creeping authoritarianism becomes “illiberal democracy.” And the most insulting euphemism of them all? Calling their flirtations with fascist ideology merely “far-right,” as if adding a hyphen somehow neutralizes the historical weight behind their choices.
The point is that words like xenophobia, Euroscepticism and national conservatism are not neutral descriptions when used in this context. They are linguistic fig leaves. They provide a veneer of legitimacy to ideologies that thrive on division and dehumanization. Farage’s so-called “Euroscepticism” was always just the polite British mask placed over the ugly sneer that immigrants were the problem. Trump’s “America First” was always a smoother slogan for “America for some.” Orbán’s “defence of Christian Europe” was always a sanctimonious way of saying “keep the outsiders out.”
These men did not rise to power despite their hateful rhetoric; they rose because of it. And the more they were rewarded for it, the more shameless they became. But what is even more dangerous is how successfully they manipulated the vocabulary surrounding them, how they convinced the public, the press and even their adversaries to use language that minimized the threat they posed.
Farage’s grinning pub-humour persona was treated as British eccentricity rather than a political strategy designed to normalize hostility. Trump’s theatrical childishness was dismissed as entertainment, even as it emboldened extremists who understood exactly what he stood for. Orbán’s anti-migrant policies were even admired by some European politicians who thought he was simply “tough on borders,” as if toughness is measured by how many vulnerable people one can exclude.
We have become so terrified of naming things for what they are that we’ve allowed political correctness to be hijacked by those who hate it the most. The irony is grotesque; the champions of “saying it like it is” rely entirely on our unwillingness to say what they truly are. They howl about cancel culture while hiding their own ideologies behind carefully curated labels that make their worldviews seem more palatable.
Farage is not simply a Eurosceptic. Trump is not just a populist. Orbán is not merely conservative. These labels do not describe them, they excuse them. And excuses repeated long enough become permission.
But permission comes with consequences. Europe is watching a new generation of hard-right leaders rise, each more openly hostile than the last. The United States is wrestling with the Trump unleashed discriminating antics. Hungary has transformed from a democracy into a laboratory for soft authoritarianism. And through it all we continue to use vocabulary that understates the severity of what is happening.
If someone weaponizes racism, what do we gain by calling it “controversial views on migration”? If someone undermines democratic institutions, what honesty exists in calling it “illiberal democracy,” as if democracy can be prefixed into submission? If someone encourages hostility toward minorities, why package it as “cultural protection”?
This linguistic laundering is not harmless. It helps normalize the intolerable. It helps political leaders walk right up to the line of fascism, wave to the cameras, and walk back without consequence. It allows the public to pretend that these are just “strong personalities” navigating “difficult times,” rather than political actors consciously dragging their countries toward a darker, narrower vision of society.
Enough. If the world is sliding toward extremism, the least we can do is stop lubricating the slope.
We owe ourselves the honesty of calling political ideologies by their real names, not the marketing version. We owe society a vocabulary that reveals rather than conceals. And we owe the victims of these politics, immigrants demonized, minorities targeted, institutions eroded, something more than euphemisms.
Farage, Trump, and Orbán did not stumble into today’s accusations. They have earned them. Through years of dividing, scapegoating, and posturing, they crafted political careers built on fear packaged as patriotism.
It is time to stop pretending their words were ever harmless. It is time to stop pretending the poison wasn’t always there. And it is time to stop calling it medicine.
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