I’m not often in the UK – perhaps once or twice a year. When I do I sometimes watch the BBC News at 10. (Only because I visit family and some family members watch it). It is always interesting to watch the multi-layered 100% propaganda show which they have the temerity to call “News” at 10.00.
The most striking aspect about tonight’s edition was not what was said, so much, but what was not said. At a time when the war in Ukraine is entering a new phase, with Ukraine’s incursion into Russia, and Russia poised to take a key town in Donetsk and, in the Middle East, the war between Israel and Hezbollah escalating, Iran threatening a “ground attack” on Israel, and even threats from Türkiye of attacking Israel, the BBC led on a yachting accident in the Mediterranean in which a rich businessman and a small number of his friends and relatives have lost their lives. Neither Ukraine not the Middle East were even mentioned – despite these being two wars tending towards instability, both of which the West in general and the UK in particular are heavily involved in. Amazing.
The point of course about giving so much time to the yachting accident is the same reason why the BBC gives so much time to Royal matters. People are being conditioned to think of the lives of the rich and privileged as being all-important. It is conditioning people to accept class and wealth differences.
The second main item on the news today was a piece by the BBC’s “investigations unit” (are they copying Al-Jazeera ?) into the recent anti-immigration riots. The “investigation” was nothing of the sort. It was the most shameless piece of propaganda I have seen on the BBC in a long time. The “investigation” was in fact the creation of a narrative that linked the riots to far-right terrorism. The entire point was to propagate a narrative that the riots were the work of far right “extremists”. This narrative is contradicted by the facts; the people being convicted are ordinary working class people, many who have not been in trouble with the law before, and certainly not for “terrorism”. The point of the narrative is to “de-voice” the protestors, to delegitimise their political viewpoint, which, crude though it is, a valid point of view, from communities, who are affected by large-scale immigration, that there is too much immigration. The working class people who object to large-scale immigration, because they perceive (rightly to some extent no doubt) that they lose out as a result, at least in the short-term, are denied a voice. Their viewpoint does not fit the official position, which favours large-scale immigration (because it expands the labour force and keeps wages low and makes Britain competitive on the world stage) and so it is silenced. It is not debated; it is shut down. This is the usual method the authorities use in our democracy; Hamas is a terrorist group, so we don’t have to think about the legitimacy of the Palestinian cause, the war in Eastern Ukraine between 2014 and 2022 was caused by “Russian infiltration”, not by local discontent, so we didn’t have to admit that there was a real question about valid minority rights being attacked by the far-right putschists in Kiev. As far as this goes, it is obvious; if the authorities keep denying the voice of those who are affected by immigration then they will feel that and their resentment will grow and the problem will not go away. But, probably, the authorities are aware of this and plan just to ride it out – rather like they plan to deny the legitimate interests of those in Eastern Ukraine who wanted to keep their links with Russia, and just stream-roller their narrative through. They think, in all these cases, that they create the narrative, and that the narrative they create is reality.
(And, just to prove that the medium really is the message, the BBC uses active social engineering to pick the news readers to promote their political ideology of “inclusiveness” or “diversity”. Today, was a relatively mild example, with two women presenters and a female weather person making up the main presenters in the studio).
Update 22/8/24
The following night; the BBC once again leads on the sinking yacht. Tragedy though it is, there is something very odd that the main UK state TV channel gives 5 minutes to this, and largely ignores the Ukraine war (see below) or the Middle East war, again. The second item on the BBC concerns the sacking of a BBC presenter for allegedly sending ‘inappropriate texts’.
The BBC ‘news’ team, have some very, very strange priorities.
There is a piece of news – on the US Presidential campaign. This, however, is pure propaganda for the Democrats, showing a rousing staged Democrat convention and contrasting this with a public walk about by the Republican Vice President which did not go well. The narration articulates the Democrat story, but only mocks the Republicans. It is shameless support for the Democrats, blatantly without ‘balance’. I don’t suppose though that OFCOM would censure them.
The next piece is a pharma puff for a new Alzheimers drug, with serious side-effects and “modest benefits”; mainstream media is fully aligned with the pharmaceutical industry.
The next piece is a legitimization piece of the school exam system. The BBC focuses on low achievers. This is supposed to be an example of how the BBC is on the side of the progressive agenda. In reality, it is using those people who are most disadvantaged by the hierarchical exam system, to legitimize it. Pretty cynical.
Next up is a story about 2 dogs which attacked a man and then got loose and the police are trying to find. The dogs are treated as if they were human fugitives. This story is probably here to distract people, but, in treating the animals as human fugitives there is an element of bestialism, the doctrine that human beings are defined purely by emotions, not intellect, and are thus on the same level as animals.
Next there is a piece about suicide websites. They focus on an angle that such websites are also used to attack women. They need presumably, to reinforce publically, that they are aligned with the current women as victim ideology. An obvious immigrant with poor English is interviewed for the story. Another piece of performative ideological signaling.
The Ukraine war finally gets a mention at the end, but there is no analysis of the politics of the international situation. The idea is to use Ukraine’s incursion to mock Russia, on their national holiday, flag day. The interview is with a dissident outside of Russia, (who knows who funds these people), and the narrative is based on a standard Radio Free Europe template; the authorities are trying to project a sense of normality but the population is worried. There is a vox pop, allegedly with a real Russian citizen, who supplies another part of the trope, as she says she is worried, but Ukraine will be completely wiped out. (The Russian authorities are disconnected from their people who are worried about the war. Also, Russians are inherently aggressive). I don’t know if these pieces are scripted by the intelligence services directly, but it could just be the BBC showing that they can do the bidding of the intelligence services even without being told to.
This is not just propaganda. It is third-rate propaganda.
And they make people pay for this, sending hundreds to jail, mostly poor women, (so much for their feminist and progressive values!), for not paying their fines for not paying….
