Guido Fawkes Pwns Faux Libertarians

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I mean, the BBC is so left-wing ... look at the kinds of people they invite on, for a start

The idea of protesting at perceived political bias in social media platforms is absurd. But that is exactly what two supposed libertarians are now doing - bleating that social media is in the hands of rotten lefties, who are shutting them out from inclusion in so-called “trending topics”. Step forward self-promotion specialist and amateur human being Milo Yiannopoulos, and (thankfully) former Tory MP Louise Mensch.

In support of their joining the paranoid tradition in US politics is an exercise by Steve Hilton which claims Facebook, Twitter, Google and Yahoo must all be left-biased, as those associated with them have donated to Democrat, rather than Republican, politicians. But this analysis is in itself biased - Hilton is a former advisor to David Cameron and a director of a right-leaning think tank. It is a highly subjective exercise.

Besides, the political leanings of executives cannot be directly extrapolated onto their employees. But this has not stopped the Mensch and Milo protest bandwagon, with the former MP appearing on BBC Newsnight last night to denounce the Corporation as “left-wing” and rant patronisingly at Dina Rickman, Emily Maitlis, and anyone else who happened to be in the vicinity at the time.

Milo Yiannopoulos, before the snowflake Barnet makeover

And it’s totally pointless: Yiannopoulos’ crowd at Breitbart and Ms Mensch’s merry band at Heat Street trend, or more often do not trend, on the basis of their own merit - or the lack of it. This is nothing more that another lame exercise in self-publicity. And for once, the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog agree.

They have looked at the issue and observed “So what if Facebook is left-of-centre? Are lefties entitled to a meeting with Rupert Murdoch to complain that the Wall Street Journal is right-of-centre?” (Yiannopoulos and Ms Mensch are demanding a meeting with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg). The Fawkes conclusion also matches mine.

“A free press is not required to meet up to some illusory measure of ‘objectivity’. Milo and Mensch should stop whining like snowflakes about how unfair it is. Winners compete, not whine”. In any case, there is no credible metric that Yiannopoulos and Ms Mensch can cite which would back up their claims. And it’s not as if Breitbart and Heat Street are short of resources to push their presence. They’re not doing very well. So they’re moaning.

And, as if to demonstrate the point, after Ms Mensch’s late-night tantrum on Newsnight, she briefly trended. That’s because there was some interest generated by her appearance. That’s how it works. Pity most of that interest was folks laughing at her idiocy, mind.