BBC
Nigel Farage Has a Point About Racial Segregation at New York University
Heaven help me, I can’t believe I’m actually defending something tweeted by the Fuhrage. On Saturday Zelo Street put up an article about a series of tweets by the man 2000 AD’s ‘Judge Dredd’ satirised as the anti-immigrant politician, Bilious Barrage. These revealed just how racist Farage is.
The tweets themselves were the standard right-wing stuff going around at the moment. Attacks on the BBC and the Finnish conductor for not singing ‘Rule, Britannia’ because they’re all unpatriotic, woke leftists. Asylum seekers being put up in hotels and defended by lefty activist lawyers, Brexit and the demand that we should be able to control our borders and a rant hyping his piece for the Telegraph about ‘cultural Marxism’. A phrase which has very definite anti-Semitic overtones, coming as it does from the Nazis’ idea of Kulturbolschevismus – cultural Bolshevism – and their conviction that traditional European culture was under attack from within by Commie Jews, as part of the worldwide Jewish conspiracy for world domination.
I agree with Zelo Street’s general point. I think Nige is a racist, and at times his carefully crafted image of being an ordinary bloke fighting to preserve traditional British culture does slip to reveal real Fascism beneath. But in one of the tweets cited by Zelo Street, Nige does have a point.
This tweet linked to a report about New York University now building segregated student housing for Blacks only. Zelo Street followed this up with a quote from Gore Vidal about the leader of American Conservatism, William S. Buckley and his support for racial segregation: To borrow the words of Gore Vidal, Farage, like William F Buckley, would have been over at the Wallace headquarters stitching hoods.
I think this is a misreading and Farage is condemning it. And he’s right to do so.
If this is the same story I’m thinking of, then it’s been around for several months now. It started with a video that was widely shared by Conservative YouTubers of Black students at the uni making statements before the university authorities that they did not feel safe rooming with Whites, and demanding segregated accommodation reserved only for Blacks. This is segregation, even if it is coming from Blacks and is demanded for their benefit. The kids making these statements are clearly genuinely scared, but it is also an expression of anti-White prejudice. The Black students made these representations, I gather, after a series of threatening, anti-Black racist posters were put up around campus.
It isn’t hard to understand their fear, given the history of official racist violence in American culture. Jim Crow and segregations, lynchings and whatever threats these kids and their families may have suffered in their own personal histories. And there does seem a culture of pro-Black racial segregation already on some American campuses. Another video shared by right-wing YouTubers is of an angry Black woman, another student, telling White students to get out of a study area reserved for Blacks and people of colour. It’s more anti-White racism, and what the Financial Times has described as ‘liberal apartheid’. I don’t think we have that culture of liberal racist separatism in British academia here yet, but I’ve no doubt it’s coming. Sargon of Gasbag, the man who broke UKIP, put up a video a few weeks ago reporting that Britain’s first all-Black university has now opened. I don’t doubt that the people behind it are copying the Black American colleges and universities, which began in the 19th and early 20th century by the great founders of the Civil Rights movements to prepare Blacks for taking their rightful place as equal members of society. They appeared during segregation. We didn’t quite have this in Britain and don’t have these colleges. And at a time when academia is under pressure to give more places to Black and Asian students, and open up the profession to more women and ethnic minorities, the founding of such a university looks less anti-racist than simple anti-White racism. It’s segregation with a Black face, and no doubt a lot of verbiage about Black empowerment, diversity and inclusion.
Back to New York University, the demands for racially segregated accommodation would be angrily dismissed and the students making such demands expelled if it came from Whites. It would rightly be seen as racist, and the product of racist views that see Blacks as particularly degraded, animalistic, criminal and a threat to White culture and racial purity. You’d have mass demonstrations and protests by people proclaiming that these views have no place on campus.
But if the construction of such all-Black halls of residence are a response to White racist mischief making, then the White supremacists have won. They’ve played on Black prejudice and racial fears to destroy racial integration and reimpose a kind of apartheid.
If you look at the tweet Farage links to, there’s a piece at the bottom comparing it to the drinking fountains in Black schools during segregation with an ironic line about ‘separate but equal’. This old lie is graphically exposed in the ’80s film, Mississippi Burning, about two White FBI agents breaking up a Klan chapter after the murder of a group of civil rights activists. It’s a great film, but it was also widely criticised itself for racism by having as its heroes White FBI agents, who are shown rescuing powerless Blacks. It was also attacked on the grounds that, while based on a real incident, the FBI at the time under J. Edgar Hoover hated the Civil Rights movement. Hoover believed it was a Communist front, and did everything he could to spy on it and harass its members.
But it opens with a scene showing two children at a water fountain. One’s Black, the others White. The water fountain for Black child is dirty and stained with verdigris and mould. That for the White child is pristine clean. It’s a graphic statement that, whatever else Blacks were under segregation, they were definitely not equal.
Racism needs to be fought, no matter what colour it has or claims to be defending. And Farage, heaven help us! – is right to call it out in this tweet.
Not that it changes what Farage himself is. He’s wretched videos have been widely covered by right-wing radio host Alex Belfield, another one who claims not be racist but the ‘voice of reason’. Belfield has approvingly commented on and defended Farage turning up at hotels putting up asylum seekers. And some how I don’t think it’s an accident – do you? – that the anti-Muslim Fascist outfit Britain First rocked up at one of these hotels to protest.
Belfield claims not be racist. But he and Farage are certainly playing to a racist crowd. Go down the comments section on his videos about immigration, Black Lives Matter and so forth, and you’ll see that while some of them make perfectly reasonable comments and criticism from a mainstream anti-racist viewpoint, there are a sizable number who are bitterly racist, posting venom about immigration and ranting about the Kalergi Plan. This is another conspiracy theory that claims that there’s a secret globalist, proto-EU plan to import Blacks and other non-White immigrants in order to break up the White societies of Europe. And then there’s the related mythology of the ‘Great Replacement’, and its underlying anti-Semitism. This is all being done, according to these poisonous myths, by the Jews. It’s yet another continuation of Nazi ideology.
This is the crowd that Farage and Belfield are playing to. And it’s despicable. But Farage’s own criticism of segregated student housing at New York University is actually anti-racist. It’s just a pity that it comes from him.
Doctor Who: In Praise of Peter Capaldi- The Meta Doctor We Needed
Peter Capaldi doesn't get enough respect. In the modern incarnation of The Doctor, there's a definite fan consensus around the love for David Tennant and Matt Smith, with Jodie Whittaker gaining a larger and growing fanbase. And Christopher Eccleston has his fans, too– he was, after all, the first in this reboot. Don't get me […]
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John Suchet’s Acid Comment on Boris’ Latest Excuse for Exam Fiasco
I’m afraid I don’t have any footage of this, so you’ll have to settle for a written description instead. Last night Channel 4 News’ John Suchet briefly appeared on a trailer for the bulletin, giving his own short, pithy view on Johnson’s latest attempt to blame someone or something else for the downgrading of the schoolchildren’s exam results. Suchet said something like ‘Coming up at Ten, Boris Johnson blames exam results on ‘mutant algorithm’ before adding very clearly, ‘Of course he does.’
This withering comment tells you exactly how much faith Suchet, and probably the rest of the Channel 4 News team, put in Johnson and his waffle. And I don’t doubt that if it the Beeb dared to say it, we’d now be seeing a stream of Tories angrily claiming yet again that the Corporation is massively biased against them and should be privatised, for the benefit of their corporate paymaster, Rupert Murdoch.
Not that their excuses and ranting change anything. It wasn’t a ‘mutant algorithm’ that let down those children. It was a computer programme consciously devised to make poorer pupils in state schools appear to perform worse than rich, privileged public schoolboys and girls. Because the Tories need working and lower middle class people to fail in order for the rich to maintain their dominance in British society, industry, arts and culture.
But that hasn’t been the only devastating observation on Johnson voiced on TV this week. Mike yesterday put up a fine video on his blog of one young lad’s reaction to Johnson appearing at his school to tell them how it was safe for them to return. As Johnson waffles on, you can hear in the background one small voice say ‘asshole’.
Quite. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, I think.
While Johnson blathers about schools being safe, a pupil is caught saying what we all think
BBC Proms Row: ‘Land of Dopes and Tories’
The best comment I’ve seen about the current furore over the BBC’s supposed decision to ban the lyrics of ‘Rule, Britannia’, and ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ at the Last Night of the Proms has come from the Labour MP Wes Streeting He’s said that it’s a distraction to divert attention away from the Tories and their repeated failures. And he’s right. More people are in grinding poverty, the Coronavirus rates appear to be heading back up, they’ve wound up the public body tasked with combating the outbreak right in the middle of the pandemic, and given it to a woman, who has no qualifications for the job apart from the fact that she’s close to Johnson’s coterie, the government’s exam algorithm unfairly marked down 40 per cent of schoolchildren, the vast majority from poor backgrounds, the public deficit has hit over a trillion pounds, thus destroying any credibility the Tories can claim for being the party of sound fiscal management, and they’re still trying to get away with the illegal deportation of the Windrush migrants. While blaming ‘activist lawyers’ of course. Then there’s the cronyism and corruption, as one after another government contracts are given to firms run by or with connections to the Tory party itself and its leaders. The mighty Ash Sarkar of Novara Media has also weighed in on the issue on YouTube with a video describing these claims as ‘a paranoid fantasia’.
But these aren’t the real issues! No! The real issue is that the Beeb is full of evil, unpatriotic, subversive lefties determined to blot out every last trace of British national pride and greatness. And they’re starting by banning the lyrics to ‘Rule, Britannia’ and ‘Land of Hope and Glory’. Except they didn’t. The decision not sing them was due to the general restrictions on singing imposed by the lockdown. It’s for the same reason that, although churches are now open, worshippers can’t sing the hymns. It’s purely for health reasons, nothing more. But never mind, Boris Johnson has appeared and condemned the Beeb’s decision, thus rescuing us all from this latest Black Lives Matter attack on Britishness.
I have absolutely no problem with either of the two songs. I really enjoy them, and enjoyed the Proms itself when I went with a friend years ago. But I also remember that there have also been spoof versions of ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ down the years. One of them was released in the mid-1990s by the Devon band, the Amphibians from Outer Space, fronted by the cryptozoologist Jon Downes. This had the title ‘Land of Dopes and Tories” and was a bitter comment on Britain under the-then Tory government of John Major. I can’t remember the lyrics exactly, but they went something like this:
Land of dopes and Tories,
Game shows and TV.
The land our fathers fought for
Don’t seem the same to me.
Land of idiot violence
Where innocent blood is shed
Land where only the assholes
Heard what Mosley said.
Downes clarified the last line, explaining that it referred to Mosley’s prediction that, who ever won the War, Britain would be finished as a world power. Mosley was right about that, but it still doesn’t make him less of a Fascist ***hole himself, who was responsible for so much of the idiot violence in his time.
The song went on for a few more lines before ending with Downes’ declaration that
Anarchy and freedom is everything I want.
With the recent riots in America and the horrific mess of the former anarchist commune in Seattle, anarchy looks much less attractive. But I think the parody, like so much of the bitter social comment of the 1990s, is still very relevant. Boris Johnson’s government is very like that of Major’s in its sleaze, corruption, privatisations and indifference to real, mass poverty. Except, compared to Johnson, Major seems to be a pillar of competence and statesmanship. And this from someone who was considered mediocre at best when he was actually in power.
The lyrics for ‘Rule, Britannia’ and ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ haven’t been banned for any left-wing ideological reasons. The Tories are lying when they tell you they are. And Downes’ spoof lyrics accurately describe them, and the Britain of hatred and violence they’ve created.
Noughts + Crosses: Malorie Blackman YA Classic Comes to Peacock
Peacock, NBC Universal's streaming service, has been on a BBC buying spree lately. First, they announced Jimmy McGovern's TV movie ANTHONY, now they've released the trailer for the BBC's adaptation of Malorie Blackman's classic Young Adult Science Fiction book series Noughts + Crosses. The series will premiere on September 4th. The book series is considered a […]
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Doctor Who "Survival" Supercut: The 7th Doctor's Finale Still Holds Up
We knew this was coming. The end of the original Doctor Who series came in 1989, and the last supercut of the 7th Doctor's (Sylvester McCoy) stories. The BBC has released a 20-minute cut-down of "Survival" on their YouTube channel. Once again, it's a personal story for Ace (Sophie Aldred). He takes her back to […]
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Mr H Reviews Raves about New Russian SF/Horror Flick ‘Sputnik’
This is something a bit lighter for a Sunday morning. Mr. H Reviews is a YouTuber, who discusses genre film – Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy. In this video he posted the other day, he praises a new Russian SF film, Sputnik. There are no spoilers, but he briefly sums up the plot. It’s set in in the Cold War, and is about a cosmonaut, who returns from space with something alien. It seems to be in line with films like Alien, although it also reminds me of Britain’s own Quatermass.This classic piece of British SF Horror first appeared as a Beeb TV series in the 1950s, before being filmed by Hammer. It was also about an astronaut, Caroon,from a British manned space mission at a time when we did indeed have our own space programme and were the third space power along with the Russians and Americans. He returns alone from space, his two fellow astronauts mysteriously disappeared, in a coma. It then emerges that he too is carrying a hostile visitor, and is slowly mutating into a threat to all life on Earth. Mr. H. also compares it to the much more recent movie, Life, which is also about a group of astronauts discovering and having to deal with a hostile alien entity in orbit.
Mr. H. is impressed by the film’s high production values, especially as it had a budget of 190,000 Roubles, which equates to about $2.5 million. I can’t say I’m surprised. Russia, for all its role as a global superpower, has a much smaller economy. When Simon Reeve toured it in a BBC documentary series a few years ago, I think he said that it’s economy was the size of Italy’s. It’s tiny for such a large country with a similarly large population. But that does mean that films can be made more cheaply there.
And the Russians are certainly capable of producing SF movies of the same quality as Hollywood blockbusters. A year or so ago before the lockdown I found in HMV a Russian superhero movie, Guardians. This was about a group of men and women from across the Russian Federation – one was from a nomadic people from Central Asia, another from one of the countries in the Caucasus, who have been given superpowers through a secret Russian government programme. But they now have to team up against an old threat – the former chief of another underground project, that was shut down by the KGB, who is now determined to take over the country and the world.
It’s rather like contemporary Hollywood SF/ superhero movies with its theme of secret, unethical government experiments. And of course, as it’s a Russian film, it culminates in a battle over Moscow. If it was American, it would obviously be New York or LA. Guardians is a Russian language film, so you have to deal with subtitles, but it does show that the Russians are capable of producing genre movies of the same standard as Hollywood. And it’s also interesting to see how the Russians take over and adapt the plot and tropes of the western superhero genre.
I haven’t seen Sputnik, and so really don’t know anything about it apart from what Mr. H. says in the review, but it looks interesting. Here’s his video.
BBC Chief Says Corporation Could Axe News Programmes
Here’s another piece from yesterday’s I, for 21st August 2020. Written by Adam Sherwin, it reports the comments by the Beeb’s Fran Unsworth in an interview with the Torygraph that the corporation could axe the 6 O’clock and 10 O’clock News from its mainstream channels in a decade. The article runs
The BBC’s News At Six and News At Ten could disappear from television screens as the corporation’s coverage shifts to digital, its head of news has said.
Fran Unsworth said that a push to attract younger viewers meant that the BBC’s flagship bulletins could move from broadcast channels to the iPlayer within a decade.
Ms Unsworth said: “Ultimately, in 10 years’ time, we probably won’t be consuming linear bulletins. I might be wrong about that but I doubt it. There might be one (bulletin) a day, but video will just be in a different space… you know, iPlayer, your tablet, your iPhone.
One of the flagship bulletins, whose audiences have doubled during the pandemic, might survive, she told The Daily Telegraph.
Figures released at the start of lockdown showed news programmes’ ratings had risen.
In the week to 28 March, five of the 10 most-watched broadcasts were editions of the BBC News At Six, with the bulletin on 23 March attracting a TV audience of 8.3 million, nearly double its typical rating so far this year. The 10pm programme had reported audiences of six million.
But Ms Unsworth said that while young viewers had discovered the BBC delivered information they could trust during a crisis, the surge in TV news viewing was a temporary phenomenon.
The corporation has announced already that it will axe the Newsround afternoon bulletin, which has run for nearly 50 years.
The BBC is slashing more than 500 jobs from its news division in a bid to make savings of £80m. Reports and interviews will be shared between BBC outlets.
This is going to delight the Tories and the Murdoch empire, who would like to see the Beeb privatised completely. About 70 per cent of news consumed in the UK comes from the Beeb, and obviously Murdoch and his squalid minions would like to see this greatly reduced so that they can move in. And that means extremely biased right-wing news, like Fox in America. Or Sky News Australia, which is so right-wing it can only get further to the right by beginning with an evocation of the Eureka Stockade and calls for the reintroduction of the White Australia policy.
The Beeb is having trouble attracting a young audience. According to the reports I’ve read, they simply aren’t interested in it. And unless the corporation can find ways of attracting them, that means the Corporation won’t have an audience and so consequently, no future.
However, many young people have learned that the Beeb doesn’t produce information they can trust. Not after its constant, vicious smearing of Jeremy Corbyn and its blatant anti-Labour bias. And Scots viewers, I’ve no doubt, will remember how Nick Robinson very carefully edited down SNP leader Alex Salmond’s full answer to a question about the impact Scottish independence would have on Edinburgh’s financial sector. Salmond stated fully that they’d gone into it, and Edinburgh’s banks would remain in the Scots capital after independence. They wouldn’t leave for London. But this didn’t satisfy the Macclesfield Goebbels, and his answer was first cut so that Robinson claimed he hadn’t properly answered it, and then completely edited out so that he finally claimed that Salmond hadn’t answered it all. It was a piece of propaganda worthy of a totalitarian state. I realise that Salmond, despite his acquittal, is still under the shadow of the multiple rape accusations. But this is a different issue, and shows how desperate the Beeb and the British establishment were to discredit him when it came to Scotland leaving the union.
Millions have learned that the Beeb does not produce information they can trust. That’s why they’re turning to alternative news sources, like those on the Net.
I think it would be disastrous if the Beeb did abandon proper news bulletins on its broadcast channels, leaving that space to be filled by Murdoch and the other media magnates. I want it to get better, not to go completely. But through its concerted campaign against the Labour party, the Beeb has successfully alienated the very people, who would have otherwise supported it the most against Tory demands for its privatisation.
And so the Beeb has only itself to blame for the crisis it is now facing, whatever delusions Unsworth might have about winning back young people.
"It's A Shoe" – The First Field Report From Doctor Who: Time Fracture
The first of the Doctor Who: Time Fracture 'Field Reports' until the immersive experience tickets go on sale widely, has just gone live on the BBC Doctor Who YouTube channel spreading the word of the new London show. It features the Time Crack that ran through Steven Moffat and the Tenth Doctor's run on the […]
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Doctor Who: Time Lord Victorious Immersive Tie-In, Now For February
A lot of people presumed that the Doctor Who: Time Fracture, a new immersive theatrical event planned for this autumn, and tying into the multi-platform Doctor Who event Doctor Who: Time Lord Victorious would not be going ahead, due to the current global situation. Turns out it's just being delayed until February. Doctor Who: Time […]
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