GB NEWS is upsetting Britain’s delicate ‘broadcast ecology’ and should be shut down, Sky’s Adam Boulton whined just over six months ago.
An unfortunate phrase to use in the circumstances, given that the process most associated with ecosystems is Charles Darwin’s survival of the fittest through natural selection. No doubt, to extend the biological metaphor, Boulton prefers the unhealthy symbiosis that exists between the current media and political classes, but a new apex predator has emerged on the scene, chomping heavily on the lamestream media’s viewing figures. Running scared and perhaps worried about the station’s ever-increasing viewing figures (as well as the political rise of Reform UK, to which it gives a significant platform), the establishment in the shape of Ofcom seems to have GB News firmly in its sights, launching an investigation into Nigel Farage’s evening show.
Banning free speech is a blunt tactic and could be said to show more than a hint of desperation. Far more subtle is the long-standing media tactic of being selective in the speech or even issues you report, or relying on highly dubious sources for your content, such as the BBC’s reporting of the conflict in Gaza. More often, though, the metropolitan media simply sin by omission, burying stories that don’t fit their liberal narrative or agenda. For example, the seemingly endless number of bestial practices such as ‘honour’ killings and misogynistic attacks on women or gay people are reported in cursory manner, if at all, are rarely if ever investigated in detail, as even the decision to do so would mean admitting that the great multicultural experiment had failed and that diversity – especially when it comes to militant Islam – has failed. This is why the establishment is now gunning for GB News: it is becoming harder and harder to sustain the narrative as viewing figures continue to shift.
If all else fails, however, you can always implement outright bans in law, as Labour surely will when it comes to criticising Islam, should they win the next election, on the grounds of ‘Islamophobia’ – a word, as Andrew Cummings said, ‘created by fascists, used by cowards to manipulate morons’. It is more than just physical fear; in a Godless age where the woke elite have replaced Christianity with politics, it is at heart a fear of losing their own faith in the utopia they claim is always just around the corner. Even after the disgusting intimidation of MPs by Islamist pro-Palestinian mobs and activists over the past few weeks, still the liberal elite cling to their high status faith, still they exercise deflection and diversion, still they continue to insist that Britain is a multicultural success story and that high immigration is a wonderful thing with all the blind fundamentalism of the Taliban.
Free speech is even more fundamental to a free society than democracy is. It is possible, though rare, to have free speech without democracy, as colonial-era Hong Kong had, but it is clearly impossible to have any real democratic debate without the means to discuss anything you wish freely and without fear. The attacks and erosion of free speech signify perhaps more than anything else that we no longer live in anything that could pass for a free, let alone democratic, society at all.