Skip to main content

Editorial Saluting Gary Lineker: challenge state racism. Don't conform to it

THE BBC has reportedly rebuked Gary Lineker for describing the government’s anti-refugee rhetoric as “language not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the ’30s.”

The famous footballer and presenter’s tweet has enraged Tory MPs, some of whom have called for him to be sacked. But he is not the first to have called out the grim historical precedent.

It was child Holocaust survivor Joan Salter who confronted Home Secretary Suella Braverman earlier this year, pointing to exactly the same parallels between Nazi demonisation of Jews and the language she uses when attacking refugees.

Relevant too is the role such propaganda played in closing Britain’s doors to Jews trying to flee Nazi Germany, with newspapers such as the Daily Mail campaigning to keep them out with headlines like German Jews Pouring Into This Country.

Our own right-wing media routinely scaremongers over the numbers of asylum-seekers entering Britain today. Yet challenging it — as Lineker did with his entirely accurate observation that “we take far fewer refugees than other major European countries” — is beyond the pale, even though Lineker’s point was made in a private tweet and not in his capacity as a BBC presenter.

BBC bosses have good reasons to avoid offending the Tories, of course.

One is that quite a few of them are Tories. Chairman Richard Sharp has been a major donor to the party, as well as a handy go-between when ex-PM Boris Johnson needs a loan. Director-general Tim Davie is a former Conservative politician.

Another is that the Conservative Party has grown increasingly brazen in its demands for sycophantic press coverage. 

The BBC is no friend of the left. The state broadcaster exhibited consistent hostility to the Jeremy Corbyn leadership of Labour, editing his interviews to mislead viewers about what he had said, depicting him against a backdrop of the Moscow cityscape when covering the Salisbury poisonings, arranging the resignation of one of his shadow cabinet members live on show in a bid to undermine and humiliate Labour.

Its news themes reflect Britain’s foreign policy priorities with admirable synchronicity. 

Protests in Venezuela in 2019? Days on end of crisis coverage. Protests met with far heavier-handed police violence the same year in then US ally Colombia? Not so much. 

The same double standard applies today: victims of war in Ukraine get airtime, those in Yemen do not. Allegations of persecution of Muslims in Xinjiang is headline news; in Assam or Kashmir there’s nothing to see.

Even so, No 10 was so incensed by BBC presenter Andrew Neil criticising ex-PM Johnson for being the only party leader not to turn up for a pre-election interview that it immediately threatened its funding. Soon after it tried to deny critical publications access to Downing Street briefings.

This extraordinary intolerance for any off-script narrative is not some quirk of character from an irrelevant former PM. The media scene is becoming more conformist across the board: and anyone who thinks that will change with a change of government should ask whether a Labour leader who sends CLPs lists of topics they are forbidden to discuss, and says anyone who criticises Nato has no place in the party, is likely to be a breath of fresh air.

This Tory administration is extremist. Braverman admits she thinks it more likely than not her plans breach the European Convention on Human Rights, which we as a country are obliged to respect: she doesn’t care. 

But the countering voice for a more compassionate, principled approach is absent from Westminster. Labour scaremongers over boat crossings as well to claim the Tories have lost control.

We need to counter the propaganda of the enemy, not echo it. That’s up to labour movement media like the Morning Star of course — but the odd truth-bomb from an independent minded BBC presenter doesn’t hurt.

OWNED BY OUR READERS

We're a reader-owned co-operative, which means you can become part of the paper too by buying shares in the People’s Press Printing Society.

 

 

Become a supporter

Fighting fund

You've Raised:£ 13,288
We need:£ 4,712
3 Days remaining
Donate today