Big Tech doesn’t much like Nigel Farage, and it doesn’t hide its bias.
In a letter addressed to Campaign, a UK-based advertising and marketing magazine, Silicon Valley bigwigs complained about the magazine’s cover story featuring the leader of the Brexit Party.
“Campaign’s cover story offering lessons from Nigel Farage felt like an insult to the advertising community and what it tries to do every day,” the letter reads.
It was penned by a group called Media For All, with signatures from executives across the tech and advertising industries, including the managing director of Twitter, the marketing director of Google, and the head of sales at Spotify.
Campaign’s profile describes Farage as a man who “knows how to get a simple message across with maximum effect.”
Campaign’s profile describes Farage as a man who “knows how to get a simple message across with maximum effect.” He’s earned the praise, and his victory at the 2019 European Parliament election is proof of that.
The cover story, the tech industry claims, amounted to tacit support for racism – a longstanding, but fabricated charge about Farage and anyone else who isn’t a part of the political mainstream. Leftists in the company’s Twitter post published nasty comments from readers threatening to cancel their subscriptions.
“I will not countenance fascism nor those who promote it. Disgusting,” wrote one particularly irate responder.
Skins screenwriter Camilla Blackett invoked the murder of Jo Cox MP, who was shot and stabbed to death by a mentally ill neo-Nazi in the run up to the Brexit referendum.
“A woman was shot to death because of his ‘brand build’ and you think this is worthy of guffawing with him over,” wrote Blackett. “Despicable and dumb.”
In response to a comment accusing the article of “legitimizing a racist,” Campaign wrote: “The piece examines brand building in the political sphere. It is one feature of many considering the themes of love and hate across the magazine.”
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The Media for All letter characterizes him in a similarly unflattering light, stating outright that it was “wrong” to platform Farage at all.
“No one is disputing Nigel Farage’s political successes or his right to voice his opinions on prominent platforms,” the complaint goes on. “However, the playbook he and his political allies have employed to achieve success is about hate and it is simple: identify people who look different, mobilize anger against them and hold them up as the people everyone else should blame.”
“The only lesson our industry should draw from this playbook is not to have any part in it.”
“The only lesson our industry should draw from this playbook is not to have any part in it,” it continues. "Campaign's failure to understand that is why the feature provoked such dismay."
Big Tech clearly disdains the British public, and the letter – caustic as it is towards Farage – is an insult to anyone who voted for the Brexit Party. It implies that Farage’s political campaign catered not to Britain’s finest men and women in London, but instead pandered to racists who fell for a basic, childish narrative of “us versus them.”
Much like Silicon Valley’s failure to capture the hearts and minds of Middle America, London’s elite likewise fails to understand why Britain made Farage’s Brexit Party the biggest UK party in Brussels.
The fires ignited by the British public are rising, and those tech and marketing executives who sit atop their ivory towers are finally beginning to feel the heat.
Ian Miles Cheong is the managing editor of Human Events
