Mike Parry - Fascist Bigot

How presenter Jeremy Vine has fallen: once upon a time he was known as the mini-me to former Newsnight main man Jeremy Paxman, but now he is reduced to the rather less highbrow role of hosting a daytime show on Channel 5. And judging by the latest, shall we say, incident on that show, he won’t be improving his station any time soon.

Mike Parry

Vine’s choice of guests is well-known. It puts him in shock territory: the likes of Laurence Fox and Carole Malone pontificating on Covid-19, for instance, are hardly going to elicit a mainstream response. But giving a platform to fringe Gammonista Mike Parry was always going to tempt fate. And so it came to pass, in no style at all.

Nine seconds was all it took, as Parry vented his spleen at climate change activists. “The problem in this country, in all areas, is that minorities always get the upper hand, because we’re so tolerant. And minorities have to be squashed [at this point he slapped his right hand palm down on the desk], like that”. Because he’s so tolerant.

Parry also claimed “no-one starves in this country”. Well, he personally doesn’t, that much is obvious. Worse, Vine tried to weasel out by Tweeting “This would have been totally unacceptable had Mike been referring to members of ethnic minorities. In fact this snippet does not make clear Mike Parry was actually talking about the eco-protesters who brought the M25 to a halt. He said they represented very few people in the UK”, before deleting it.

You'll have to speak up, I'm a bit Mutt And Jeff

Meanwhile, it was glaringly obvious to anyone with brain plugged in and a hole in their arse that Parry was postulating a genuinely fascist solution to a temporary inconvenience experienced by a small number of people living in a democratic society. Slapping his hand down did at least solve the itchy right arm problem demonstrated by Dr Strangelove.

Inciting violence towards minorities that “get in the way” is giving the green light to the worst forms of hatred. This was easily understood by James Mitchinson, editor of the Yorkshire Post, who said of the former Daily Express news editor “Note the sincerity of the hatred and the solution he proposes - violence”. It was pure hatred and intolerance.

Vine’s attempt to weasel out did not impress Abi Wilkinson. “‘Minorities need to be crushed’ is still a pretty fascist sentiment when it refers to political minorities. And it likely does cover any members ethnic minority groups who’re impertinent to actually advocate for themselves. We’ve seen what BLM get”. Got it in one. And there was more.

One Tweeter made the obvious connection: “Mike Parry finding himself within a hairs breadth of saying ‘in this country in 20 years time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man’”. Louis Allday added “Jeremy Vine not only hosting but then actually publicly defending Mike Parry’s openly genocidal rhetoric about minorities is a pretty good indicator of how mainstream this fascist way of thinking is”. Worrying - because true.

Worst of all, Parry will suffer neither sanction nor hardship for an outburst that could have come straight out of 1930s Germany: if he suffers any blowback, he can go running to the likes of Spiked, the increasingly alt-right Spectator magazine, or the loathsome Toby Young to bleat about being cancelled - while scoring a few more paycheques.

This is how far the country has sunk in the last few years. Welcome to Brexit Britain.

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