The resistible rise of Nigel Farage | Jonathan Jones

Ukip’s leader is revealed as a true Machiavellian in this US publicity shot. It shows a dangerous man: anyone who underestimates his threat to British decency is a fool

Looking at Nigel Farage posing like a movie gangster in a publicity photo for his American trip – the cosy pint he affects for British audiences replaced by a macho cigar – I found myself thinking of Bertolt Brecht’s play The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. In his 1941 satire on the far, far right, Brecht portrays Adolf Hitler as a Chicago mobster whose thuggish rise to power is made possible by his enemies’ weakness – his rise was “resistible”.

Farage is not Hitler, of course – I would not dream of giving him that much historical significance – but he looks a hell of a lot like Arturo Ui in this photograph. It appears on publicity material in the US, where he has gone down like a stormtrooper – sorry, a storm! – at a conservative Republican rally with his ramped-up rhetoric about the west’s “Judeo-Christian values” being undermined by an Islamist “fifth column”.

Related: Nigel Farage's anti-immigration chant strikes a chord with US Republicans

Like Arturo Ui or Richard III, he wears the right mask for the occasion. A normal guy, a nasty guy – whatever it takes

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