These are worrying times for our national broadcaster: the BBC once more stands accused of giving a platform to the far-right, and the criticism seems entirely justified. Last night, Nigel “Thirsty” Farage was, for the 33rd time, given a seat on the Question Time panel. He proceeded to monopolise the broadcast, with host Fiona Bruce totally ineffective, even dismissing Farage’s racist “Breaking Point” poster as “ancient history”.
Ben Shapiro ...
... and his host for today's appearance
Worse was to come this morning, as it was revealed that today’s edition of Politics Live will feature Ben Shapiro. Who he? Well, Shapiro is a Conservative commentator, with a very big C indeed. Moreover, his disdain for Muslims in general and Palestinians in particular is infamous. One skim through his Wikipedia entry gives a flavour of his views.
“In a 2014 YouTube video titled ‘The Myth of the Tiny Radical Muslim Minority’, Shapiro said ‘We're above 800 million Muslims who are radicalised - more than half the Muslims on earth. That's not a minority... the myth of the tiny radical Muslim minority is just that: it's a myth’ … In 2016, Shapiro promoted an article written on The Daily Wire, which described the Muslim presence in Europe as a ‘disease’ and Muslim men as ‘uncivilized’”.
Nice chap, eh? There was more. “Vox describes Shapiro as a polarizing figure, in part due to statements such as ‘Israelis like to build. Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage’ … In 2007, Shapiro argued that ‘the Palestinian-Arab population is rotten to the core’, and as ‘an entire population [is] corrupted by bloodthirsty anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism,’ punishing Palestinian leaders is insufficient: ‘Collective choices require collective treatment’”. An Islamophobic bigot who approves of collective punishment.
So the Beeb should not be surprised at the reaction to news of his presence. Ross McCafferty’s reaction - “Ben Shapiro. Really? really?” was typical. Richard James Conway was on the same page. “Wow! The BBC are having a far right homophobic theocratic racist bigot like Ben Shapiro on Politics Live. Just Wow!”
Rudi Abdallah mused “BBC rightly bins Danny Baker for awful tweet then shows its commitment to fighting racism by ... inviting Nigel Farage on Question Time and *Ben Shapiro* on today's Politics Live”, while the Guardian’s Peter Walker added “I'm really not one for BBC-bashing, but having someone as openly, proudly prejudiced as Ben Shapiro on Politics Live is a terrible error of judgement”. And there was more.
Miqdaad Versi of the Muslim Council of Britain concluded “Truly unbelievable Ben Shapiro is on BBC's Politics Live. He believes most Muslims are radical, is a vile racist about Arabs & his Twitter was visited by the far-right Quebec terrorist 93 times in the month before the shooting … Vile Islamophobia clearly not a barrier for being on”.
And Omar Khan had a disturbing thought to add: “I wish I could say wow, but it's obvious producers at the BBC are sympathetic with the far right”. It’s not about balance. It’s about knowing we have a febrile and combustible political climate right now, and still going ahead with giving a platform to someone about to chuck petrol on the fire.
What’s going on with the BBC right now? We’ll find out, whoever doesn’t want us to know.
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5 comments:
To be fair afneil did challenge him. That was no soft interview.
Didn't take long for Baker to be proved right did it?
Rubbish Fenton. Let's have everything out in the open including proper and thorough examination of the ideology of islam and less of this islamophobia nonsense. If it cannot stand up in an argument and chooses to hide behind this term they themselves invented instead of addressing their attitudes to our genuinely liberal stance on rights of women, homosexuality, religious freedom and other
areas where they are still in the dark ages, then what are we to think.
No one should get a free pass, least of all islam, which has started plenty of fires!
Our genuinely liberal stance? that would be locking up journalists, fighting illegal wars, and arresting peaceful protesters in their hundreds because they are concerned about climate change.
But we behave a little better than some tyranny's, some dictators and some despots, so we should be proud.
That seems to be the establishment argument nowadays, we are not as bad as some country's in our attitude to freedom so we should ignore all the really crappy and totalitarian shit we pull.
We no longer have a free press, a great deal of our populace is going hungry, we have broken international law regularly, broken humanitarium law according to the united nations by killing our disabled people, stifled free speech and we have a parliment who as a matter of course lie on a daily basis.
Our world view is distorted on a daily basis as the BBC decides which news its going to inform us on and which news it is going to hide for our own good.
The idea is that we try to be as good as we can, but our political system is corrupt, one of our allies is Saudia Arabia, a country responsible for mass murder in the Yemen, with our willing aid selling them bombs and refuelling their planes in midflight and training to shoot better so that they kill children in school bus's
more efficently.
A country that exports the very worst version of terrorism, and we support them because they are rich, or maybe its their human rights record that we admire so much.
Israel who murder nurses and aid workers, journalist and women and children, some still in their mothers wombs from behind barbed wire fences
Or America a country that has been at war constantly since day one, running CIA covert operations to undermine democratically elected goverments, invading countrys to protect their citizens whilst killing millions of them, using its financial clout to destroy countries they disagree with and if you step out of line with their capatilist doctrines, expect to be next.
Starting a new cold war with made up stories of how the Russians fixed their election with £4000 dollars worth of facebook ads.
Our genuinely liberal stance - I dont fucking think so
You know you're right wing when you accuse Andrew Neil (who to be fair, did rip Shapiro to bits) of being a lefty.
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