I DIDN’T think the BBC had the power to shock me any more but at the start of last week they did, when I read that they had refused Jewish staff permission to attend last Sunday’s march against anti-Semitism. Their specious excuse was it contravened their ‘guidance’ on controversial issues and of breaching impartiality which, when it comes to attending Pride parades, doesn’t count. Of course it doesn’t in the BBC’s woke lefties’ la-la land. But that is not even the point. The BBC crossed a new line. This went beyond their normal ‘on air’ propaganda, and bias by omission and commission, into actively cancelling and silencing certain staff’s freedom of speech.
Jewish staff were told in effect to shut up, not to protest publicly against anti-Semitism (saying much about the BBC’s own position on the matter). Alarmingly, they’ve got away with it. Not even a slap on the wrist from the Culture Secretary. The BBC’s track record, as I have said before, is not great. And for some reason it reminded me of this: the BBC not wanting to transmit Richard Dimbleby’s harrowing report from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp just after its liberation in 1945.
But there was some light as well as dark this week. Who could not but be relieved at the release of some of the hostages from Hamas captivity and torture back to Israel, though their plight made harrowing and almost unbearable reading, as I tweeted on Wednesday. The knowledge that a baby died should remind everyone that none of this would have happened but for Hamas’s depraved and vile attack on southern Israel.
The raft of foreign revolts was really welcome news. Starting with Javier Milei’s election win in Argentina, it was followed by another kick in the teeth to the rest of the West’s globalist leadership club, Geert Wilders’s surprise win at the Dutch polls. Never have the words ‘far right’ and ‘populist’ been so used and abused on the MSM. ‘Madman’ was an epithet a BBC newsreader casually hurled at Milei. But what I enjoyed most was a Guardian commentator trying to come to terms with a European political stage he fears is now so dominated by so-called ‘far right’ parties that ‘right wing’ parties are having to accommodate them. (My italics) What a catastrophe! It’s all because ‘far right’ parties have shifted further to the right, he explained. Immigration is not the problem. The problem, in his world view, is solely the ‘nativist’ discourse that ‘right-wing’ parties have adopted. Of course! Forget all the decades of appeasement of the left by the so-called ‘right’, forget that there has been no such thing as a right-wing politician around for a long time. Forget that the West is still ruled by a globalist cabal that doesn’t have a ‘right-wing’ political principle to its name. Forget indeed the record immigration numbers, not just for here but EU countries too.
For a reality check do read Frederick Edward’s excellent article about the not populist and not far right Senor Milei here on TCW‘s pages.
As for Mr Wilders and his unexpected win at the Dutch polls, well he’s being treated like the devil incarnate for having the gall to say the unsayable and the having the nerve to run on the simple platform of wanting to stop immigration, especially Islamic immigration, into his country. So now he has one big battle on his hands. The MSM I noticed rushed to report the struggle he’s having to form a coalition. His 37 seats are not enough on their own. The so-called ‘right-wing’ parties are not being quite as accommodating as the Guardian feared. Though they should be. They might start listening to the people Janice Davis wrote about in our pages this week. She is right. ‘The people’ are more than fed up. Read her account here of ‘disruption’ across Europe if you missed it. As ever, Mark Steyn is on the money about some of the realities of migration and multi-culturalism that are too unpleasant for the Guardian to touch.
More good news during the week was that people have not given up in Canada; Justin Trudeau has not ground them down I am glad to say. 70,000 plus have called on their Parliament to invoke a vote of no confidence in the man who uncannily looks more like Fidel Castro every day – just try sticking on the beard! But even better than the poll was Alberta’s resounding ‘just say no’ to Trudeau’s undemocratic climate policy demands last week. You can watch the State invoking the Sovereignty Act against Trudeau – three incisive minutes of explanation on the destruction his plans would cause to Alberta’s economy and people – here.
Somewhere too, I saw there was a poll saying three out of four Canadians want the real madman in the world’s midst out.
We are at war, waging many battles and on many fronts against many real ‘madmen’. They are not Milei, Trump or Wilders, but the self confident b….ards at COP 28 who are trying to micro-manage every aspect of our lives. New fronts keep opening up but old ones mustn’t be forgotten. This week for example saw Trump’s gag order reinstated by an appeal court in New York. At least he can get some comfort from Bernie Marcus, the billionaire founder of Home Depot, who threw his more than two penn’orth behind the former President, saying his support would continue even if the GOP frontrunner is convicted. We have to hope there are a few more like him because the ‘have it in for Trump’ Judge Tanya Chutkan (the one who stated in advance of the case that Trump ‘should be prosecuted and imprisoned) on Friday afternoon denied the former President’s motion to dismiss his election interference charges on grounds of presidential immunity. This came just hours after a federal appeals court denied separate efforts from Trump to have multiple lawsuits thrown out that held him liable for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot on the grounds of his immunity.
So at the end of this week it’s not looking so great for Trump, though we should ever remember, adversity is what he thrives on. According to Forbes, it’s likely Trump could appeal the appeals court’s ruling to the Supreme Court. The Democrats should start to worry. If he wins next year the jury is out on the question of whether his retribution will match (or exceed) the injustices he endured as Victor Davis Hanson puts it.
Meanwhile Spain’s protests against the trashing of its constitution continued and still no one cares – except our readers it seems – though their fragile democracy is at stake as a Spanish patriot explained here.
Here at home there was not much to cheer about unless we count Dame Jenny Harries admitting at the Hallett inquiry that masks were useless against Covid and may have made it worse (maybe she’d read this before testifying, the nth such study).Then there was Michael Gove’s great admission that, er, after all, perhaps Covid was made in a lab. And we are expected to be grateful for this ‘honesty’. When exactly did this revelation come to him? And why didn’t he ‘share’ his enlightenment before? Don’t worry, this was no latter day St Paul. Gove not only reaffirmed his ‘belief’ in Lockdown, his criticism was it just should have come earlier. One can see why of course. That covid peaked before Lockdown hit in; that its ‘retreat’ had nothing to do with Lockdown might have been harder to disguise with this timing. Never forget Gove and Harries were two of those centrally responsible for the havoc wreaked on this country when Gove’s ‘exceptional intelligence’ was used for the forces of darkness. I suspect it still is. And no, several people have asked me – he never did answer my letter of November 2020. Here it is again, Michael, lest you’ve forgotten.
I know I haven’t mentioned the dreaded COP 28. Well my week ended as their ghastly week began. Seeing the man who says he is King, the man who said he wouldn’t be political, pontificating from the podium along with all the rest of the world’s uber rich, jet setting, climate scamsters was not a great end to it. If they are not having a laugh, they are mighty pleased with themselves. It was a while before I could reach for the Gordon’s and get a Tonic out of the fridge for an end of the week calm me down.
Updated 11pm, 2nd December