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The reason that the Russian attack on the 2016 election worked so effectively is because of the way that the internet abhors moderation. From massive waves of false information spread virally on Facebook to the dark web corners where QAnon was born, the hands-off ideology allowed fascism and the alt-right to, in their own words, meme a president into office. Its not the only reason that Donald Trump sits in the Oval Office, but it is a massive factor that cannot be overstated. If we want 2020 and politics beyond to be different, we have to begin the process of cleaning the radiation off the wasteland of the internet.

The question is: how do we do that? With Kamala Harris out of the race, the Democrats seem to have lost the only candidate who wished to tackle online hate speech and fake news as a major issue, maybe because Harris was the candidate who drew so much of it herself that an entire sub-culture grew just to debunk it. That means that whatever happens will have to be because of pressure that the people put on the next leader, whoever she may be.

But its not an easy thing. Even as someone who never misses an episode of Ian Danskins Alt-Right Playbook I can tell you that as hard as it is to understand the alt-right, knowing how to combat them is even more difficult. I spent a little time in my own head and talking with experts, and here is what I can propose for the coming year.

First, if you are dealing with an individual that you actually know such as a family member and close friend, you might be able to deprogram them after a lot of time and effort. Deprogram might seem like a loaded word, but as Danskin points out in How to Radicalize a Normie and the Endnote video supplement, many aspects of the alt-right and QAnon especially are essentially cult-like and will require dedication to combat. Much like how many people do not want to admit a substance use problem in the house, the desire to play down alt-right radicalization of a loved one as merely a difference of opinion is strong.

Most of us are not licensed counselors, and the idea of kidnapping someone to deprogram them went out of vogue in the 1970s. As a person who wants to help, its important to forge a relationship with the affected party by connecting with them through other things like mutual interests. In-person hate group participation dropped dramatically in 2013 as white nationalists and other reactionaries realized that a decentralized, leaderless movement housed on message boards and other spaces would keep them from falling prey to the usual state controls that ended previous groups. One year later, Gamergate happened as a test of the theory with pleasing results to hateful bigots, and it's now become the standard. In-person groups still exist, and there is a lot of overlap, but its this approach that led to things like 8chan becoming a place that has been directly linked to multiple murders.

Opposition to the things your affected loved one says will only reinforce their problems. As a general guide, its best to either steer them away from those topics of conversation and onto things that belong to the two of you instead of the alt-right. If they insist on engaging, ask questions calmly and non-judgmentally without trying to debunk. The alt-right deals in memetic content and in-jokes as an isolation mechanism. Forcing people to articulate why a pizzeria is secretly a child sex ring run by Hillary Clinton often makes them realize how stupid it sounds. If youre very patient and very lucky, you might be able to eventually nudge them into counseling and get your loved one back.

Thats unfortunately the only way to fight this as individuals, but what about as a society? Thats even harder, and it will require a lot of activism.

The primary opposition right how is will. Companies like Facebook simply feel no need to tackle the issue, and with 8chan the current owner is mostly immune to financial repercussions (8chan has never made any money) and legal ones (owner Jim Watkins currently lives in the Philippines so good luck serving a subpoena). On top of that is Americas fervent dedication to an absolutist interpretation of free speech despite the fact that American fascists and hate groups have consistently reframed the argument about what they say as an attack on their right to say it. The average American is for free speech, with no desire to look at the fine print of the matter.

Because of that, I wouldnt start trying to jail Mark Zuckerberg over not fighting hate speech or fake news too much. Even if you take on people much further down the food chain such as Mark Meechan (Count Dankula) who taught his dog to give a Nazi salute when asked "Do you wanna gas the Jews?" you often end up starting a giant backlash that empowers people who use free speech arguments to protect white nationalism. As a Gamergate target myself, it is frustrating that there seems to be little to no legal repercussion for the online hate mobs, but often the case is that its just practically more harm than its worth to prosecute even when laws are broken.

Nonetheless, these companies can be influenced by the free market to change and it is probably the best path forward. Twitter, for example, has taken a much harder line against white supremacy content after years of being bashed for allowing it to thrive. Reddit as well has cleaned up its act considerably, recognizing that the constant bad press for being home to so many racists was hurting its image. They are far more careful about banning boards or quarantining sub-reddits. Its definitely a step in the right direction, small as it may seem to people who still get attacked through the sites.

8chan is currently down because even though its hard to hit Watkins for his work personally, the people who have to host the site increasingly want nothing to do with it. Storm Front as well, the traditional home of neo-Nazis online, has found it much harder to find a home for their brand of rancid mayonnaise. All of that comes from pressure on the people who control where the platforms are hosted. These are conservative companies that generally dont want any trouble, and they have every right to tell a client no thank you without raising the specter of official censorship.

Companies like PayPal, Patreon, and Venmo are also susceptible to pressure. Groups like the Proud Boys and people like Milo Yiannopoulos have systematically found themselves ousted from platforms that enable them to raise money for hateful causes. As their reach declines, so does their influence. Fighting hate by going after their servers and payment sources has been a proven tactic over the last couple of years. It should continue in earnest.

Legislation has a place as well as a way to put public pressure on companies. Its a bit early to see if grilling by members of Congress like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will have much of an effect on Facebook, but its a start. One law I would personally like to see is something mandating a certain amount of human moderators per number of users, and also mandating they be regionally distributed wisely. Non-English speakers should not be the primary moderators of American content, for instance.

Its important to understand that companies like Facebook are perfectly capable of fixing a good chunk of the problem. They simply dont want to. There is this idea that all this can be solved with a better algorithm to automatically shut down hate speech. Algorithms have their place. Facebook launched a great one after the Christchurch shooting to take down content. That said, there is no substitution for human oversight as any woman who reacted to a rape threat with men are trash and ended up with a suspended account will tell you. I landed in Facebook jail for a week over sharing this with a text description for the blind. We need people, not cost-saving bots.

Theres this misconception that we can improve technology to deal with the alt-right and hate speech. While monitoring bots can get better, they only care about what we teach them and they do not contextualize adequately. Well build a machine that can beat nearly anyone at chess but well probably never build one that can beat hardly anyone at Dungeons and Dragons. There must be an increased human presence on the ground that has adequate incentive to fight the problem. A corps of workers in this country who have the human capacity to understand the problems and the ability to fight it, will change the argument in ways that mindless machines built to replace human thought never will.

We have to care if anything is going to be done because left to their own devices companies will just do whatever is profitable no matter the risk to everyone else. Make no mistake, the rise of the alt-right and the new fascist movement in America is big, powerful, and mostly operating un-checked right now. These spaces have already bred multiple killers. And they continue to empower far-right interests by inundating our public consciousness with hate and falsehoods. Its not censorship to demand that lies be treated like lies and its not the death of free speech if Nazis arent allowed to have a 100,000-member Facebook group.

But it will only stop if we start to agree that there is a problem and demand that people who can make a difference do so. The loved ones in your life who have been led astray by toxic online communities deserve and need your compassion to be free of them. The corporations that make millions off these highly-engaged groups and the radical right politicians who benefit from fake news and hate speech do not. They must be pressured into doing something about it with every tool we have at our disposal as a democracy and a free market. If a large enough shift occurs, it will become the new, less-hateful normal.

And that is poor ground to grow the next fascist leader in.

Jef Rouner is a contributing writer who covers politics, pop culture, social justice, video games, and online behavior. He is often a professional annoyance to the ignorant and hurtful.

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How to Fight the Alt-Right Online in 2020 - Houston Press

When I was 13, I was convinced that Jews controlled global financial networks and that black Americans committed homicide at a higher rate than whites. I believed that the wage gap was a fallacy fabricated by feminists, and I was an avid supporter of the mens rights movement. I accepted all of the alt-right maxims I saw as a Reddit moderator, despite my Jewish upbringing in a liberal household with a tight-knit family that taught me compassion, empathy, and respect for others.

Now, Im 16, and Ive been able to reflect on how I got sucked into that voidand how others do, too. My brief infatuation with the alt-right has helped me understand the ways big tech companies and their algorithms are contributing to the problem of radicalizationand why its so important to be skeptical of what you read online.

My own transformation started when I switched into a new school in the middle of eighth grade. Like anyone pushed into unfamiliar territory, I was lonely and friendless and looking for validation and social connection. But unlike others, I found that validation on the alt-right corners of the internet. The alt-right and the tech platforms that enable it became the community I neededuntil I finally opened my eyes and realized it was turning me into someone who I never wanted to be.

A few weeks after I started going to my new school, I noticed that a bunch of the guys in my class were browsing a website called Reddit. I didnt understand what the site was or how it worked, but I was desperate to fit in and make a mark in my new environment. I went up to one of those guys during study hall and asked how to use Reddit. He helped me set up an account and subscribe to subreddits, or mini communities within the Reddit domain. I spent the rest of that period scrolling through Reddit and selecting the communities I wanted to join.

The alt-right and the tech platforms that enable it became the community I neededuntil I finally opened my eyes.

Thats how I discovered r/dankmemes. At first, I only understood about half of the posts that I saw. A lot of the content referenced political happenings that I had never heard of. There were hundreds of sarcastically written posts that echoed the same general themes and ideas, like there are only 2 genders, or feminists hate men. Since I had always been taught that feminism and social justice were positive, I first dismissed those memes as abhorrently wrong.

But while a quick burst of radiation probably wont give you cancer, prolonged exposure is far more dangerous. The same is true for the alt-right. I knew that the messages I was seeing were wrong, but the more I saw them, the more curious I became. I was unfamiliar with most of the popular discussion topics on Reddit. And when you want to know more about something, what do you do? You probably dont think to go to the library and check out a book on that subject, and then fact check and cross reference what you find. If you just google what you want to know, you can get the information you want within seconds.

So thats what I did. I started googling things like Illegal immigration, Sandy Hook actors, and Black crime rate. And I found exactly what I was looking for.

The articles and videos I first found all backed up what I was seeing on Redditposts that asserted a skewed version of actual reality, using carefully selected, out-of-context, and dubiously sourced statistics that propped up a hateful world view. On top of that, my online results were heavily influenced by something called an algorithm. I understand algorithms to be secretive bits of code that a website like YouTube will use to prioritize content that you are more likely to click on first. Because all of the content I was reading or watching was from far-right sources, all of the links that the algorithms dangled on my screen for me to click were from far-right perspectives.

I liked Reddit so much that after around a month of lurking, I applied for a moderator position on r/dankmemes. Suddenly, I was looking at far-right memes 24/7, with an obligation to review 100 posts a day as a moderator. I was the person deciding whether to allow a meme onto the subreddit or keep it off. Every day, for hours on end, I had complete control of what content was allowed on r/dankmemes. That made me even more curious about what I was seeing, leading to more Google searchesall of which showed me exactly what I already believed to be trueand subsequently shoving me deeper into the rabbit hole of far-right media. I spent months isolated in my room, hunched over my computer, removing and approving memes on Reddit and watching conservative comedians that YouTube served up to me.

It slowly hammered hatred into my mind like a railroad spike into limestone.

In my case, the alt-right did what it does best. It slowly hammered hatred into my mind like a railroad spike into limestone. The inflammatory language and radical viewpoints used by the alt-right worked to YouTube and Googles favorthe more videos and links I clicked on, the more ads I saw, and in turn, the more ad revenue they generated.

Some of the other moderators were under the influence of this poison, too. They started to focus on the same issues that alt-right forums and online media pushed into the headlines, and we would sometimes discuss how women who abort their children belong in jail, or how trauma actors would be used to fake school shooting events like the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary. Granted, not all of the moderators took part in these talks. It only takes a few though, and those were the few that I admired the most. It soon felt like a brotherhood or a secret society, like we were the few conscious humans that managed to escape the matrix. We understood what we believed to be the truth, and no one could convince us otherwise.

The alt-rights appeal started to dissipate that summer, when I took a month-long technology break to go to sleepaway camp before the start of my ninth grade year. But the biggest step in my recovery came when I attended a pro-Trump rally in Washington, D.C., in September 2017, about a month after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where counter-protester Heather Heyer was murdered by a white supremacist. I wanted to show my support of Trump while being able to finally meet the people behind the internet forums where I had found my community. After many tries, I finally managed to convince my mom to take me, telling her I simply wanted to watch history unfold (she wrote about the experience in the Washingtonian). But really, I was excited to meet the flesh-and-blood people who espoused alt-right ideas, instead of talking to them online.

We understood what we believed to be the truth, and no one could convince us otherwise.

The difference between the online persona of someone who identifies as alt-right and the real thing is so extreme that you would think they are different people. Online, they have the power of fake and biased news to form their arguments. They sound confident and usually deliver their standard messages strongly. When I met them in person at the rally, they were awkward and struggled to back up their statements. They tripped over their own words, and when they were called out by any counter protestors in the crowd, they would immediately use a stock response such as Youre just triggered. They couldnt come up with any coherent arguments; they rambled and repeated talking points.

The rally left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Seeing for myself that the people I was talking to online were weak, confused, and backwards was the turning point for me. It wasnt immediate, but I slowly and gradually began to reduce my time on Reddit, and I eventually messaged the other moderators and told them that I was going to quit to focus on school. They all said that they wanted me to stay and pleaded with me to just take a break and come back later. I stayed on as a moderator in name only, no longer making decisions about any of the content assigned to me. A few months later, Reddit sent me a message with the subject line: You have been removed as a moderator of r/dankmemes. I felt like the character James Franco plays in 127 Hours as he walks out of the canyon that had imprisoned him for days on end, bloodied but alive nonetheless.

At this point, were too far gone to reverse the damage that the alt-right has done to the internet and to naive adolescents who dont know any betterchildren like the 13-year-old boy I was. Its convenient for a massive internet company like Google to deliberately ignore why people like me get misinformed in the first place, as their profit-oriented algorithms continue to steer ignorant, malleable people into the jaws of the far-right. My own situation was personally very difficult but had no wider consequences. But dont forget that Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who murdered nine people in a Charleston, South Carolina, church in 2015, was radicalized by far-right groups that spread misinformation with the aid of Googles algorithms. It all started when Roof asked Google about black-on-white crime.

Tech companies need to be held accountable for the radicalization that results from their systems and standards.

YouTube is an especially egregious offender. Over the past couple months, Ive been getting anti-immigration YouTube ads that feature an incident presented as a news story, about two immigrants who raped an American girl. The ad offers no context or sources, and uses heated language to denounce immigration and call for our county to allow ICE to seek out illegal immigrants within our area. I wasnt watching a video about immigration or even politics when those ads came on; I was watching the old Monty Python Cheese Shopsketch. How does British satire, circa 1972, relate to Americas current immigration debate? It doesnt.

If we want to stop destructive, far-right, and alt-right ideologies from spawning domestic terrorism incidents in the future, tech companies need to be held accountable for the radicalization that results from their systems and standards. Google and YouTube should own up to their part in this epidemic, but I doubt they will. Ethics and morals have no meaning when millions of dollars are at stake. Thats the America that I, along with millions of other Gen Z kids, are growing up in.

During my ordeal into and out of the online alt-right, Ive learned that anyone can be manipulated like I was. Its so easy to find information online that we collectively forget that so much of the content the internet offers us is biased. Everyone has ulterior motives when they try to persuade you to come over to their way of thinking, and its our job as human beings to understand what those motives are.

View original post here:
I became part of the alt-right at age 13, thanks to Reddit and Google - Fast Company

Posted December 10, 2019 10:54:45

He's been the subject of alt-right conspiracy theories, labelled an "errand boy" for Hillary Clinton, even accused of being a leftist spy.

Australian diplomat Alexander Downer's warning to his US counterpart in London was the "tipping point" for an FBI probe into Russia's interference in the 2016 US election and, even now, may form part of impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.

Now, thanks to the release of a watchdog report, we know what he said.

It started with a night out at the Kensington Wine Room, a posh bar in London, in May 2016.

As Australia's High Commissioner to the UK, Mr Downer was meeting with a member of Mr Trump's campaign team, George Papadopoulos.

According to Mr Downer's account of the night, Papadopoulos revealed information about Russia's plans to interfere in the US election before the release of tens of thousands of emails authored by Mr Trump's opponent Hillary Clinton, a claim Papadopoulos has denied.

"[Papadopoulos] said one of the reasons [Trump would win] was that the Russians might release some information which could be damaging to Hillary Clinton," Mr Downer said previously.

In a diplomatic cable to Canberra, Mr Downer downplayed the significance of Papadopoulos' apparent prediction.

But when Wikileaks subsequently dumped the Clinton emails, Mr Downer requested a meeting about an "urgent matter" with his counterpart at the US Embassy in London.

A report by US Department of Justice inspector-general Michael Horowitz has today revealed exactly what the then-high commissioner said.

Referred to in the report only as a "friendly foreign government official", Mr Downer said that Papadopoulos "suggested the Trump team had received some kind of suggestion from Russia that it could assist this process with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Mrs Clinton (and President Obama)."

Deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe characterised Mr Downer's statement as a "tipping point" in the July 2016 decision to open an investigation into Russia's attempts to interfere with the 2016 election.

"Because not only was there information that Russia was targeting US political institutions," the report states.

"Now the FBI had received an allegation from a trusted partner that there had been some sort of contact between the Russians and the Trump campaign."

The FBI's probe led to US special counsel Robert Mueller's two-year investigation into election meddling, which congressional democrats may now use as evidence that Mr Trump obstructed justice as they start drawing up articles of impeachment.

In short, Mr Downer's suggestion that the Trump campaign "received some kind of suggestion from Russia" set off a chain of events that, along with more recent claims about Ukraine, are likely to see Mr Trump impeached by the democrat-controlled House of Representatives and tried in the Senate.

It's no wonder Trump allies have gone after the former Australian foreign minister.

Many of the theories that spread in right-wing chatrooms originated with Papadopoulos himself. He has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that Mr Downer recorded their now-infamous wine bar meeting on his smartphone.

Papadopoulos and other Trump supporters often cite a theory that the intelligence services of several countries, including Australia, had a secret plan to disrupt Mr Trump's campaign.

Mr Papadopoulos served a 14-day prison sentence last year after admitting he had lied in a 2017 interview with the FBI, hindering their investigation.

The wild theories have made it all the way into the halls of power.

Republican senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch Trump supporter, gave credence to the tale, suggesting in October that Mr Downer was "directed" to seek a meeting with Papadopoulos.

He wrote that "US intelligence communities" accepted "information from an Australian diplomat who was also directed to contact Papadopoulos and relay information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation".

In a letter to Senator Graham, published on Twitter, US ambassador Joe Hockey rejected the assertion.

There were also claims that by reporting the matter directly to the US Embassy in London, Mr Downer did not go through the correct diplomatic channels.

Mr Graham even implied Australia might be working against Mr Trump by initially refusing to release the text of Mr Downer's report.

Today's report offered a 476-page deep-dive on the origins of the Mueller probe. Mr Downer's role as the "friendly foreign government" (FFG) official is scattered throughout, but the main focus is the FBI's propriety.

There's no criticism of Mr Downer or Australia's role, and it's conceivable that, had the inspector-general discovered wrongdoing, he would have found the space to mention it in such a sweeping report.

US Attorney-General William Barr told The Australian that Mr Downer "did the right thing in supplying that information; the FFG has acted at all times just as we would hope a close ally would".

"We are grateful that we have such friends," he said. "What was subsequently done with that information by the FBI presents a separate question."

Only time will tell whether the Australia/Downer conspiracy theories will fizzle out, starved of fuel.

In the meantime, Mr Trump's allies may find alternative sources of ammunition in the report's pages.

The inspector-general ultimately "did not find any documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the FBI's decision to conduct these operations," which contradicts Mr Trump's 'witch hunt' narrative.

However, a substantial portion of the report criticises the FBI for failing to meet its own standards of accuracy and completeness in filing applications for surveillance into a member of the Trump campaign.

One low-ranking FBI lawyer may even face prosecution for altering a document related to FBI wiretaps.

Mr Trump described the report's findings as "a disgrace".

"It's far worse than I would've ever thought possible. It's an embarrassment to our country. It's dishonest."

A separate review is also underway, led by prosecutor John Durham, who was handpicked by the President's ally, Mr Barr.

In a rare statement, Mr Durham publicly said he disagreed with today's report, as did the Attorney-General.

The President says he is waiting for Mr Durham's report.

Topics:donald-trump,government-and-politics,world-politics,us-elections,united-states

Originally posted here:
How Alexander Downer set off a chain of events that may lead to Donald Trump's impeachment - ABC News

Is irony or despair the best way to process the news that real was the most used word on Tinder bios in 2019? People are constructing advertisements for their hearts on a platform where their face will be viewed by thousands of people for the fraction of a second it takes to totally reject them. All the while, they say things like Im real, or Im looking for something real or you better be real.

Tinder released a summary of all the data it collected from its users over the past year. And leaving out all of the creepy stuff it keeps tabs on like, your exact location when you get horny for attention and affection, what you do on other apps like Facebook and Instagram, and the exact phrasing of your awkward attempts at flirting with strangers and then sells to advertisers, it presented us with The Year in Swipe: What 2019 Taught Us About the Future of Dating.

And what does it tell us about dating? Other than its a hell we all acknowledge but cant seem to escape? The big revelations includes the fact that Generation Z someone please come up with a better name for this reference politics more than travel, probably because the generation includes those 24 or younger and most of them dont have any money at the moment. Believing in something is free, after all. And people like to spell out their particular dietary preferences, with kombucha, vegan, and avocado all increasing in usage from the previous year.

What that actually says about dating is that it is the same as it always was. People tend to date and mate with people who share the same political beliefs, so flashing AOC or RBGs initials on your profile, a very popular thing to do in 2019, is just a quick way to weed out all the alt-right or Trump supporters in the sea of daters. If you do fight on your first date, if a message on the app leads to a date which it most likely wont, its probably going to be about whether the Irishman was the most boring movie of the year. (I dont know, I think I lost consciousness for like an hour of it, nothing was happening. The Irishman is a profound study of a mans inability to participate in the intimacy... Date picks up their phone and starts texting.)

People also tend to date people with similar socioeconomic backgrounds, and food has become an easy way to determine which class you belong to, without just announcing your salary to all other Tinder users. Kombucha is about five or six times the price of a can of soda, avocado prices have almost doubled over the past year, and vegans tend to be more financially affluent than meat eaters. Food preferences then become a kind of class signifier, a nicer way of saying No poors, no fattys. And Ive seen language like that on the app a lot, but that will never make one of these surveys.

In other words, people couple (or throuple or whatever poly people do) up in the same way they have for generations, the app simply changes the way that coupling looks. A much more entertaining, and illuminating, survey of Tinder data might be how people actually experience the app. How many people experience soul death when they log into their accounts, how many people have been sexually assaulted by people they met through the app, how the whole format of Tinder creates obstacles to commitment or intimacy, how many unsolicited dick pics and harassing messages and emotional abuse people have to wade through on their journey to love.

But its the word real in an incredibly fake environment where you know the vast majority of people are using face-tuned selfies and photos from when they were five years younger and outright deception in their bios that gets to me. Real bios, real photos, real height if youre a man, unless you really are tall and hot and fascinating, are only going to get you discarded faster.

A few weeks after we met on Tinder, Nicols told me a friend ran an intervention on his Tinder bio. He wasnt getting much attention, and his wise female friend informed him that he was too honest about his belief in social justice, his experiences as an immigrant in the United States, his passion for soccer and jiu jitsu. He needed to tone it down. His profile, when I came across it, was much pared down. It kind of just said he liked coffee. He disclosed his height because that was frequently the first question women asked and he was tired of answering it over and over. He added a picture of himself with a cat.

And it worked. Flattening himself out into a couple of pictures taken at a flattering angle and saying he liked a thing that everyone likes got him more responses, and it got him the first interaction that led to an actual date. And it led to you and me, he said. Because two weeks after we met on Tinder, we were wed.

I didnt have the heart to tell him at the time that I didnt even read the part about him liking coffee. I thought he was hot, and I was looking for a one night stand and figured he would do. The fact that it worked out so well was due to all the ways that courtship has always worked: the mystery of chemistry, the discovery of shared values and political beliefs, and a love for David Fincher movies (always important for any relationship).

Love is and always will be a great, big puzzle. No amount of data analysis will ever reveal the mystery at the heart of it.

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Why are people on Tinder swiping right on Kombucha and 'realness'? - The Guardian

We should have known better. When the Brexit party was launched in a metal workshop just outside Coventry back in April, it looked like we were seeing a new Nigel Farage. A perma-tanned, more professional, healthier version of the boozy chancer who had hot-footed into the embrace of Donald Trump and the US alt-right chatshow circuit after leading Ukip into oblivion. The louder bigots and racists appeared to have been sidelined, to be replaced by leavers from the left and right who felt disenfranchised by the traditional parties and were ready to swear allegiance to King Nigel instead.

And when the Brexit party topped the polls in the European elections, helping to steer the Conservatives further to the right and toppling Theresa May in the process, it seemed that this time Farage might be here to stay. At least for a while. He was the one man who had the clout to keep the Tories even when led by someone as slippery as Boris Johnson honest in his tireless pursuit of a hard and damaging Brexit. A power behind the throne.

Yet we and his followers had all forgotten just one thing. The man himself. Because Nigels unique talent is to destroy everything he creates. He craves power but is unable to delegate or share it. People who disagree with him are cast out and crushed. Like Trump and Boris, he is a political narcissist who can see no further than his own reflection. He has no friends or equals. Only willing acolytes who are, from time to time, granted a slot as his warm-up act. Nigel makes the rules and Nigel changes them.

It was Nigel who chose not to stand as an MP in this election. Why bother when theres so much more money to be made elsewhere? It was Nigel who arbitrarily decided to stand down 317 Brexit party candidates, all of whom had paid 100 for the privilege, in Tory held seats. It was Nigel who oversaw his party plummet in the polls from 17% to 4%. It was Nigel who turned Nigel and the Nigel party into an irrelevance.

And now it was slowly dawning on some of his most faithful retainers that they had been had. No one would call Brexit MEPs Lance Forman, Lucy Harris, John Longworth and Annunziata Rees-Mogg the brightest kids on the block, but even they had finally decided to call it a day by holding a central London press conference in which they would call on any Brexit party supporters to vote Tory instead.

The spirit of Nigel lives on, though. So it was entirely fitting that the press conference was a total shitshow. First it was delayed for 20 minutes because a Brexit party spokesman chose to have a rival press conference denouncing the breakaway four in an adjacent room.

Youre all slags, shouted the spokesman.

Youre the slag, the scabs yelled back.

Who are you calling a slag, slags.

We could have been back in the Ukip days. Euphoric recall and all that. A member of the press offered to get both sides together for a spot of mediation and couples counselling, but no one could agree on where it should take place. So it was left to the not-nice-but-dim four to cope as best they could. As in badly. There really was no explaining why they were now backing Boriss Brexit deal that they had all described as a crock of a shit a few weeks ago. There again, they had all found a smidgeon of self-worth in finally finding a voice and standing up to Nigel, so I guess it was worth it. Baby steps and all that. Coherence might come later.

None of which was quite how Farage had envisaged his TV swansong in his interview with Andrew Neil. Then Nigels Last Stand was probably never going to end well, even if he hadnt self-immolated over the preceding six weeks. After all the one rule of an Andrew Neil interview is that Andrew Neil always wins. End of.

Youve barely got a walk-on part in this election, Neil said, his eyes barely open. Youre going nowhere. From the off, it sounded as if he was a bit bored. As if this really wasnt a good use of half an hour of his time. Several times he had to check his pulse to reassure himself he was actually still alive. He was like a cat toying with a limbless mouse. Disappointed not to be getting any real pushback, and only going through the motions out of professional instinct.

Not that Neil was acting out of pity. He doesnt do that. He cant access that emotion. Just that it was all too easy. Teasing Nigel over his numerous mis-steps, his idiotic immigration policies, Islamophobia, his stated desire to privatise the NHS and his apparent support for Donald Trumps right to talk about sexually assaulting whoever he liked. Youre going to end up with no MPs and could be remembered as the man who thwarted Brexit, he yawned. Nigel could do little but contradict himself, admit there was nothing he could do about Boris betraying Brexit and scarper out of the studio in search of a large Scotch and a revolver. Never to be seen again.

Neil only really came alive once Nigel had left. Then he addressed the camera and listed the questions of trust, propriety, Brexit and the NHS that he would like to ask Johnson if only the prime minister had the guts to be interviewed. Now that would be worth Neils time. Over in Downing Street, Boris quietly projectile vomited. It was the first honest thing he had done in weeks.

John Craces new book, Decline and Fail: Read in Case of Political Apocalypse, is published by Guardian Faber. To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over 15, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of 1.99.

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A bad day for Farage as Brexit party MEPs realise they've been had - The Guardian