Brillo Going Round In Woke Circles

As the launch of Gammon Broadcasting™ News approaches, along with the big reveal of its talent pool, so a little spice has been added to proceedings as Stop Funding Hate has passed adverse comment on the new media entrant, to the clear discomfort of GB News’ great helmsman, former Sunday Times editor Andrew Neil.

We can be sure that Brillo has been discomfited in view of the usual tell-tale sign - he has taken to social media in a display of confected braggadocio, an attempt at mockery that tries a little too hard: “The woke warriors trying to stir up an advertising boycott of GB News, a channel that hasn’t even started broadcasting, are hilarious. Even funnier is their threat to cancel mobile phone contracts of operators who dare to advertise on GB News”.

What he means is customers cancelling mobile contracts: that concise tone many expect from Brillo vanishes in the heat of his petulant moment. Worse is his desperately quote Tweeting Martin “I’m not a racist bigot honestly” Daubney, who simpered “Note to those trying to cancel GB News before it even launches: you're becoming the best advert for people to watch GB News. Keep it up - [Andrew Neil] will be delighted with all the free PR".

Come on Brillo, let’s have a bit of the old wit, then. “I am indeed. I might now be able to save several hundred thousand on our marketing budget. I couldn’t be more grateful to the woke cancel culture mob”. Is that “several hundred thousand on our marketing budget” coming from the same source as the “550 new Spectator subscriptions after the rotten Co-Op said they’d take their advertising elsewhere”? Whatever. But here a problem entered.

As Press Gazette has pointed out, “newspapers on the receiving end of Stop Funding Hate campaigns - which have included the Express, Daily Mail and Sun - have been rattled enough by its impact on advertisers to meet with its representatives … A Twitter-led advertising boycott helped prompt the closure the News of the World in 2011”.

Also, Brillo’s use of the word “Woke” shows he doesn’t know what it means. Benjamin Cohen took issue with his response. "Isn’t it also their free speech to campaign against you if they want to and a free market for them to decide which mobile network to use? Surely that’s exactly what you would believe in? I personally welcome more news, like your channel , but what is wrong with being woke?” He appended a dictionary definition.

What say The Great Man? What is so wrong with being “alert to injustice in society, especially racism”? You’ll love this one. “The original definition of woke is out of date. As a ‘concern for social justice’, nobody could object. But it has morphed into a cancel culture that seeks not just to disagree but to close down ideas and people with which it disagrees. Insidious”. Yes, he redefines “Woke” to mean exactly what he wants it to mean.

Or, as the Tweeter known as Angry Voice put it, “Don't you even feel a tinge of hypocrisy at cancelling the original and intended meaning of a word, in order to replace it with your own pejorative caricature definition which implies others are obsessed with cancelling words and individuals they dislike?” Brillo is the one practising cancel culture.

And he’s generated a glaringly obvious circular reference by redefining “Woke” so that he has a definition that stands up his false claim. If that’s the best GB News can do, maybe the advertisers won’t need lobbying. They just won’t turn up in the first place.

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