Cancel culture
A running catalogue of cancel culture. I’ll keep it up until the hypcorisy has sickened me enough. This should be good.
Number 3: control the media
It’s always good when folks tell you exactly who they are. As Maya Angelou so succinctly pointed out:
When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
Today its the turn of hard right wing, now visibly neo fascist Tory MP, Steve Baker.
There would be howls of outrage from the the right wing at the use of the term fascist here. But let’s see history clearly: controlling the media is well down the road for the fascist playbook. Attack and control the media. For 120 years the Daily Mail has published disgusting, poisononous lies which have polluted the public discourse, engendered a ridiculous sense of entitled grievance among a wide spectrum of British people, pointed the finger completely disingenuously at a range of minority and vulnerable groups with the clear intention of diverting attention away from the folks who have diverted power and money into their own pockets.
So the appointment of Paul Dacre is cancellation at it’s finest. The cancellation of any voices seeking to hold the right wing to account.
Boris and James Murdoch have for decades knee-jerked thir accusations of left wing (‘socialist’, ‘communist’) bias against the BBC -even as the BBC’s 3 leading political pundits were all notably right wing (Laura Kunsberg, Michael Burke and Andrew Neill). But the accusation doesn’t have to be true: it is believed. And any attempt to hold totalitarians to accounts is ALWAYS rebutted as left wing activism.
On the other hand, there are many (like myself) who see a regularly displayed, right-wing, conservative bias in the BBC news coverage, the dreadful descent of it’s news quality for reasons of ‘balance’, and we now avoid them. But that’s great for the right wing. Boris and co really don’t care if the BBC is any good or not: that’s why the Tories (the move led by William Hague at the time) destroyed the World Service national language broadcasting all over the world, despite its very low cost and the incredible soft power that Britain wielded through it. A strong and impartial BBC will always be a threat to totalitarian conservatism. As will an engaged, informed and voting public so they will do all they can to avoid that being a reality too.
For the Tories to call for unity - as Boris has done a number of times recently - while appointing Paul Dacre to run Offcom (overseeing the BBC who he is well recorded as being entirely opposed to - a man who is utterly toxic to the centre and left), is disingenuity at it’s heighest.
So fuck you Boris. There can be no unity with fascism. And Boris is a fascist by instinct, a man governs by dictrat where he can, who lies as he breathes, and who avoids scrutiny at all costs. His party is with him. If we do not hold them to account, we deserve what we get. If continue to self indulge by buying the right wing press - what outcome do you think we will get?
Number 2: harrassment of investigative journalists
The UK government is - like the rest of the world’s hard right - great at screaming ‘cancel culture’ when they are being held to account. Not so great at noticing that they are the cancellers par excellence. Harrassment of journalists would be a great example.
This story from the Guardian about the arrest of Andy Aitchison, photograqpher, who was trying to find out what was going on at an immigrant detention centre that burned down later that day.
Number 1: Marjorie Taylor Greene, GOP fascist
The not very lovely AmercianQANON fascist, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a keen screamer of ‘cancel culture’ - here in action.
The question for me is: does she know she’s a hypocrite (ie she is cynical) or…is she just deluded and actually believes her own lies? The result is the same…