This is regarding a comment from Dez on an open thread which had already dropped off the main page by the time I noticed it. I haven’t had time to put together the response his comment deserves, and since I think there is an important point to be made here, I’m making it a main post rather than continuing the discussion in the middle of an old thread.
A week ago on a previous Open Thread, John Horne Tooke commented in response to a criticism of BBC reporting by “As I See It” that the BBC’s biased coverage of the US had convinced his college-educated daughter that Republicans “do not believe in science”. It was on Page 7 of this Open Thread (Js-kit/Echo won’t allow linking directly to a comment).
That’s obviously about either Creationsim or Warmism, or both, on which the BBC has form. Basically this is based on the assumption that all Republicans are “climate deniers” and Christians who believe that the Earth is 6000 years old. The BBC has declared that skepticism that human activity is the driving factor in Global Warming is “anti-science”, and so all Republicans get tarred with that epithet, even though there are plenty who buy into Warmism. As for Creationsim, people like Justin Webb and Nicky Campbell (R5L Sept. 8, 2011) have conflated a belief in God as Creator (a very broad term) with the belief that the Earth is only 6000 years old, and suggested that, for example, both Sarah Palin and Rick Perry are unfit for high public office because of it. In the case of JHT’s daughter, she got it from Chris Evans. There’s probably also something there about opposition to embryonic stem-cell research being anti-science. It’s easy for the BBC audience to assume that this is the case for all Republicans, since the Beeboids themselves keep reinforcing that opinion. In short, biased BBC reporting, along with constant partisan attacks from BBC Light Entertainment personalities, forms incorrect opinions.
So I extrapolated from that to a pet peeve of mine, and replied that if JHT’s daughter also thought that the Tea Party movement was driven by crypto-racism, he’d know whom to blame. I was of course referring to the BBC US President, Mark Mardell, along with the fact that the majority of BBC reporting about the Tea Party movement has suggested that opposition to the President was based more on the color of his skin than on any policies. There’s plenty of evidence for this, which I’ll get to in due course. Dez disagreed with me. His comment in full is below the fold.
Hell Yeah! Because it can’t be anything to do with the idiots pictured here:
http://snotrockets.net/politics/tea-party/the-tea-party-are-a-bunch-of-racists-there-ive-said-it/
And it can’t be anything to do with The Patriot Freedom Alliance:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2073094/Racism-row-erupts-Tea-Party-calls-Barack-Obama-skunk.htmlOr Marilyn Davenport:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1378380/Official-apologizes-Obama-chimpanzee-email-Tea-party-member-fired.htmlNo! It’s all the fault of Mark Mardell because he told the BBC College of Journalism that; “I’ve been to lots of Tea Party meetings and I honestly don’t think most of them are racist… I think for them it is about the Government spending their money…”
Bascially, Dez’s argument is that since others besides the BBC have pointed to fringe elements and isolated incidents, the BBC cannot be blamed for influencing public opinion on this matter. I won’t put words in his mouth and say that Dez also believes that the Tea Party is driven by racism. I think he does, although I’m happy to be corrected if he chooses to explain himself. Furthermore, he’s also misrepresenting what Mardell actually said at the BBC CoJ.
First of all, let’s discuss who influences public opinion. 50% of the UK public watch the BBC for their news. The BBC has far more influence there than any other television news organization. BBC News Online is Britain’s most popular news website, especially seeing a 109% boost in visitors during the last two years from that desirable 18-24 year old demographic. Nobody has as much influence in online news as the BBC. Outside of that, while Radio 4 has lost some of its audience share, Chris Evans has nearly 9 million listeners. So when he says the Tea Party is racist, he reaches more people at the same time – including JHT’s daughter – than just about anyone else in Britain who isn’t an athlete, royalty, or on X/Strictly whatever. Then there are all the Left-wing comedy programmes and news quizzes, on both radio and tv. The Beeboids at the Today Programme believe they set the agenda for the nation’s news each day. No other media organization has anything like the number of channels or online presence or audience figures of the BBC. It’s not even close. The BBC has by far more influence on public opinion than the rest of them.
The Daily Mail may have passed the New York Times as the top online news source, but how much is that due to celebrity gossip and photos of women in bikinis, never mind the fact that the NY Times has a pay wall which cuts readership short? The Mail got 45.3 million unique visitors in December, Those figures are worldwide, not only British readers. The BBC suggests that’s more about “popular journalism”, big photos, an search engine optimization than the quality of the actual hard news, so it’s difficult to claim that the Mail has more influence on public opinion than the BBC. Sure, the Mail can raise a fuss sometimes and affect a tiny bit of change, as Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross found out. But do 50% of the public get their serious news from the Mail, or do more of the British public read their website for news than BBC? Clearly not.
So I think it’s fair to say that the BBC has more influence on public opinion than any other media outlet. Does the BBC overwhelmingly try to tell you that the Tea Party movement is racist, inspired by racism, or is filled with racists? Yes. The list is seemingly endless.
Jonny Dymond recently made a dishonest report about how hate groups are on the rise because there’s a black President. This was part of the BBC Narrative which began in 2008, that opposition to The Obamessiah can be due only to skin color and not policy.
In one of his earliest blog posts since taking over for Justin Webb, Mark Mardell was openly asking if opposition to the President was driven by racism. He said that, considering how important racism has been in US political history, “it would be strange if it now mattered not a jot”. In his first weeks on the job, Mardell was already ignoring the main economic policy points of the Tea Party movement and Republican opposition to a Democrat President, and focusing instead on a suspicion he has, based on small evidence.
Not long after that, Kevin “Teabagger” Connolly was pushing the same Maureen Dowd article from the NY Times that Mardell waas. In that same post, David Vance also tells us about Gavin Essler in the Daily Mail scowling at those Hitler signs, and whipping up fear that someone might assassinate the President. So even if the Mail does have a negative influence on the public, we can partly blame Beeboids for that, too.
There have been plenty of comments on this blog about Richard Bacon and Victoria Derbyshire pushing this same Narrative, never mind all those edgy comedians who make a good living working the Left-wing tropes.
The next issue is whether or not Dez is correct that the outliers his examples highlight are enough to convince someone that the Tea Party movement is, in fact, racist. I’ve spent a lot of time on this blog trying to show that, contrary to BBC reporting, the movement is actually driven by people’s unhappiness with the President’s and the Democrats’ economic policies, and there’s no need to get into all that here.
The short answer is that every large gathering and movement is going to have its parasitical fringe element, people who ride the coat tails of the larger movement to push their own issues. It’s become a cliché that every Left-wing protest march will feature someone with a “Free Palestine” sign or a “Troops out of Iraq” placard or a hoodie with that “A” for Anarchy symbol, regardless of the issue of the day. But we don’t say that the student riots protests against tuition fees were driven by support for the Palestinian cause. The same thing goes for Right-wing gatherings and pro-life supporters or similar. So there are obviously going to be some racists somewhere who see protests against the President as an opportunity to bare their own racist grievances. It can’t be helped. Hell, there might even be people who actually are racist, but are also legitimately concerned about the destructive economic policies.
However, I’d say that it’s impossible for a grassroots movement which grew into a national phenomenon to be largely driven by racism if Herman Cain and Col. Allen West got so much support from them. The second Tea Party protest I attended back in 2009 was hosted by a black man. And how racist can people be who vote for Bobby Jindal or Marco Rubio? Or are there actual racists who hate black people but have no problem with Indians or Hispanics?
But I think it would me more informative to instead answer a question with a question.
If we’re supposed to accept that the Tea Party movement is driven by racism based on a few outliers and isolated incidents, would Mardell and Connolly and John Horne Tooke’s daugher and Dez equally say that the Occupy Wall St. movement is driven by anti-Semitism if I provided several examples? Would they do what we’re so often instructed not to about Muslims and extremism or young black men and crime, and stain the majority for the behavior of the few? Would, then, the following be enough evidence to declare that anti-Jewish sentiment does matter a jot in the Occupy movement:
Anti-Semitic Protester at Occupy Wall St LA
Occupier shouting “Go back to Israel” to a Jew
Pete Sutherland traveled to Zuccotti Park all the way from Georgia Friday, shivering as he wielded a handmade sign that read, “The Reason the Arabs Hate Us.”
“Jews are the smartest people in the world,” said Sutherland, 79. Not in a good way.
“They control the media.”
But no one tells the truth about the Hebrew people, as he sees it, because “the media doesn’t want to commit suicide by losing the Jewish advertisers.’’
“I’m not anti-Semitic,” he finished.
The New York Times thought the Occupy movement was getting such a bad reputation that they went out to make a story defending them. The Times instructs us not to smear the majority for the acts of a few.
Occupy Wall Street Has an Anti-Semitism Problem
A quick sampling of the anti-Semitism on display among the Occupy Wall Street set yields the flamboyant and aggressive protester who yells,“You’re a bum, Jew” at his yarmulke-wearing interlocutor; the conspiracy theorist who laments that “Jewish money controls American politics,” and warns the Russians not to let the Jews take over Russia too; and the self-described Nazi with the swastika tattoo who regrets that America has been handed over to “other people.” Ah, people power.
I could go on. So do we declare that the Occupy movement is mainly anti-Semitic, or that it’s fair for people to get that idea? I didn’t say so after my encounter with the Occupiers at Zuccotti. In fact, I said that, despite the videos I’d seen and reports I’d read, I hadn’t seen any real anti-Semitism there, and so wouldn’t declare the entire movement tainted. Which brings me to my final point: Dez’s misrepresentation of Mardell’s CoJ appearance and misunderstanding and mischaracterization of my comment.
You can watch Mardell speak for himself here. (@ around 54:20 if the link isn’t direct)
Mardell mocks a Southern white woman while confirming his off-camera colleague’s opinion that racism was certainly a factor in the 2008 election. “You knew exactly what it was,” he chortles. He then says that he doesn’t think “most” of the people at Tea Party protests he’s been to are racists. “Certainly not in a straightforward sense.” Dez conveniently elided that bit. Which leads to his error about what I said. Mardell isn’t saying that most of us aren’t racists, he’s saying that it’s there underneath the surface of the economic issues. “Deeper than that, it’s about the Government spending their money on people who are not like them.” Dez conveniently elided that bit as well. Dishonesty? Or a simple mistake? Only Dez can tell us.
I said at the time, and have repeated many times since, that Mardell believes the Tea Party movement to be driven by crypto-racism. His own words tell you so. Now, I’m not blaming Mardell’s appearance at the CoJ for people being misinformed. That’s a misunderstanding on Dez’s part. What I am saying is that Mardell, the BBC’s top man in the US, believes it to be true, and that it influences his and his fellow Beeboids’ reporting. The question from his colleague presupposes that racism is a factor, and Mardell confirms it. This tells us the editorial opinion of and the conventional wisdom at the BBC, which informs all their reporting on the issue. In other words, they already thought that, long before Mardell’s appearance at the BBC CoJ. This is a problem. Aside from the smear factor, it also causes them to ignore or play down the real economic issues behind the opposition to the President’s and the Democrats’ agenda. Mardell can acknowledge that excessive government spending is a concern, but deep down it’s driven by racism. Even when writing about Herman Cain’s popularity, he actually thinks it’s important to ask if the man’s black skin would “bother any right-wingers”. So Dez’s portrayal of Mardell is absolutely false.
Of course there’s no memo going out telling everyone to push the racism angle or anything. It’s just groupthink, reinforced from the top. They read it in the Washington Post and the New York Times and the HuffingtonPost, and they hear it from their Left-wing associates and friends, and laugh at it with their favorite Left-wing comedians. It’s visceral, and is spread throughout the BBC. That’s why you hear it not only from Mardell and Dymond, but from Bacon and Campbell and all the rest of them.
And that’s why 50% of the public who watch BBC News, as well as heavens knows how many more who rely on BBC News Online – who combined make up the majority of the population – think the Tea Party movement is driven by crypto-racism.
Sorry, but wrong, we are to quick to put left/right in groups.
Are we people before politics or other way round?
abuse me on twitter
Mardell went there with preconceptions, and has diluted them only somewhat.
A true friend of America would vigorously defend the Tea Party movement against the Dem charge of racism – would identify the charge as being a Dem talking point, and would shoot it down in flames. Ergo Mardell is no true friend of America. His reporting from the US is flaccid, inaccurate and shot through with bias.
Mardel is an overtly left wing Marxist coproratist, which is why he loved the EU so much and why he is doing everything he can on BBC America to ensure an Obama second term.
That said, the GOP appear to be doing their best to ensure an Obama second term too. I mean, Gingrich vs Romney?
The only candidate (according to polls) who can unite republicans with dissilusioned democrats in big enough numbers to challenge Obama is Ron Paul. He is also the only candidate to support genuine free-trade, and freedom and liberty. ALL the other candidates, Obama, Gingrich and Romney are blatantly corrupt BIG government corporatists who support lass freedom, less liberty and ever increasing debted servitude to the FED.
Mardell shouldn’t be defending anything. That’s not his job either. He should just open his mind and do something about his prejudices.
Dez doesn’t believe that the Tea Party is driven by racism, he just wants those less politically driven to believe that to be the case.
I don’t think Dez is that clever. I would guess that he truly believes the Tea Party to be racist despite there being no evidence to back up the accusation. I do, however, think Mardell knows the Tea Party is not a racist organisation, so it is people like him who are trying to convince the Dezzies, and other gullible idiots, of these lies.
As in the case of JHT’s daughter, if you repeat a lie often enough enough, even intelligent people can be convinced. That is the BBC’s raison d’être – to be the front line in the propaganda war against decency, democracy and truth.
Dez would kinow all about racism
after all,he clearly frequents pro nazi websites and posted some “helpful” links to those sites in a post about Israel on the blog last year
Demon, Mardell “knows” the Tea Party really is steeped in racism, under the surface. He said so himself. Nothing will change his mind, it seems.
It’s not just the BBC or British news that indulge in this lazy stereotyping. Have a look at this deconstruction of a truly awful CNN reporter covering a Tea Party rally. The hostile level of bias on display is really quite jaw-dropping.
For many on the left, Obama is such an inspirational icon that any criticism, however rationally expressed, must be diminished or de-legitimised, especially if that criticism comes from the enemy – the right. The most effective method is to suggest that there’s actually an alterior motive driving the opposition. Cue shouts of racism, an easy accusation to make considering the lazy assumptions of many regarding those on the right of politics.
Which brings me to this clip of the Larry King Show. Penn Jillette, who always comes across as a reasonable and thoughtful sort of guy, is joined either side by two lefties who have no time for the Tea Party and clearly despise the sort of people involved in the movement. Of course, the left’s weapon of choice in this area – ‘racism’ – is soon deployed. Watch, though, as Mr. Jillette refuses to join in and pushes them both to justify their claims. The woman in particular struggles and stutters and resorts to the extremely lazy fall back of ‘well they’re mostly white‘. Seth MacFarlane just persists with his usual smugness – in interviews he’s always incredibly self-satisfied.
Here’s Penn Jillette’s response to the Larry King moment. Do watch, it’s well worth it. It’s a refreshing exercise in open-mindedness.
The real reason why elites fear the Tea Party is that takes power away from them. No group ever gave up power without a struggle.
Given that the majority of Republicans are Young Earth Creationists and Anthropogenic Climate Change deniers it cannot be denied that they “don’t believe in science”.
Care to back up that assertion? Some of the recent candidates may well fall into that category, but there is a large proportion of moderate Republicans that don’t fit your comfortable prejudice.
I’m an atheist and I don’t sit in that dark sacred of AGW mainly because as a well rounded human I don’t feel the need to separate those I feel different from by their politics or religious beliefs as you do Mick but by their actions and facts or lack of !
Michael, facts, please, backing up your assertion about the majority of Republicans believing that the Earth is 6000 years old?
A Gallup Poll from 2010 reported that 52% of Republicans were Young Earth Creationists.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/145286/four-americans-believe-strict-creationism.aspx
Your link page shows that 34% of Democrats believe in creationism too.
No doubt a similar percentage of Democrats have no faith in the religion of global warming.
Although, of course, you can fool some of the people all of the time.
Refusal to buy into AGW, a transparent attempt to justify the social engineering beloved by the Left is a Good Thing. As for Creationism, well it is my opinion that there are many beliefs considerably more dangerous to the commonwealth, most of which are eagerly embraced by the ‘secularist’ Left.
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/08/17/7399406-climate-controversy-spotlights-gop-stands-on-science
Care to back up your assertion?
You haven’t challenged my assertion – that some of the candidates might indeed be representative of your initial claim, but that you can’t assume that the large section of moderate Republicans have an identical outlook in this area. I’m sure they’re as broad a church as any political party. One shouldn’t assume that the leadership is entirely representative of the party as a whole.
As I said originally, some of the candidates do fit your claim, as is demonstrated by the article you linked to, but you’ve made no mention of the latter point.
Michael, that “science” is falling apart by the day. Do keep up.
“..Young Earth Creationists and Anthropogenic Climate Change deniers…” Michael is clearly of the 1+1=3 School. He wont be able to back it up because he doesn’t do arithmetic. One right plus one wrong equals a Repblican, who by definition is wrong, because Obama is right and black. I suspect we are going to get months and months of this, aren’t we?
Michael also clearly of the world wide church of global warming who abide no heresy whatsoever
they’d probably be burning us heretical “deniers” at the stake if it didn’t add to the “carbon footprint”
what a crock of shit
The BBC and the mainstream “progressive” opinion formers like the EU and the broadsheets all think with one mind.
There is a continual narrative to uphold, and the same destination…basically ID cards under the benign auspices of the UN.
AS long as “hate crimes” trump real ones…that xenophobia matters more that knifing a white kid somewhere rough…the porgressive consensus will talk to themselves about how to do Lennon and Marley…Marx and Monnet…proud.
Far better taht they sort it our rather than the Greeks for example-hence Evan Davis can wonder why a Greek politician would care to argue with a German Treasury Minister about a trifle like “national sovereignty”…“you what ,now?”
So this fine and detailed post of yours shows the mindset and groupthink that the likes of Dez and Mardell show. That it is allowed to swill around around all manner of public debates and places without being rendered harmless or irrelevant is a real worry.
Like marsh gas in WW1, it`s a silent killer…and even when administered in a controlled/appropriate way, it still does the better job of anaesthetising the population.
Makes chipping, pinning and applying barcodes to the forehead so much easier in the end…and the new generation think nothing of it.
The BBC just have the wish to do it and a fair bit of monopolised infrastructure and license to do just this. They learned much from Goebbels, Riefenstahl and would much rather be Heydrich than Friesler…but are much more open now in being the Lime Grove Green Nazi Advocates than ever.
Remember-it was a National Socialist Party…all the BBC want to be is “International Rescue” for the planet.
One Love-One Euro-One Volk…preferably in a revised Esperanto!
“Like marsh gas in WW1, it`s a silent killer…and even when administered in a controlled/appropriate way, it still does the better job of anaesthetising the population. ” Excellent.
“Not to understand religion is not to understand nine-tenths of human history”
BBC Leftism seems bizarre (the constant repetition of the creed and the fanatical intolerance) if you do not share their religious confession, but their mindset is pretty familiar if you look at human history.
It gives meaning to their lives.
I am sure that Dez thinks he is being open minded or rational or scientific, but the relationship between these and a religious mindset (which Dez clearly demonstrates) is tenuous at best.
Of course Dez does not think he is being religious. He just thinks he has the truth – the one way so to speak.
Religions are keen to draw attention to the absurdities of other religions. In the clash of faiths however there is an awful lot of propaganda.
From what I see of the BBC these days it is approximately 95% propaganda.
The BBC is like a “Christian Channel” except that the religion is not Christianity. It is Leftism.
This matters. Not because it is irritating if you do not share their faith. Not because you are forced to pay for it. The reason why it matters is because they want to have their own political Party permanently in power. They want the Leftist establishment to have as much power as possible over your lives. They want to completely dominate the British media.
BBC = Totalitarianism
just as an aside
I found a post on a free range lefty whackjob site from Dezzies’ joined at the groin buddy scotty boy……you know,the bloke with the ugly blog pic
anyway,on that mentalist site whose contributors feel that the bbc is anything but a bunch of leftards,we have this gem from the idiot himself
Posted July 18, 2011 at 10:19 pm | Permalink
I don’t know if you’ve ever taken a look at the BiasedBBC blog but they spout this sort of victim drivel 24/7.
I can’t remember who or where I saw it but there was a comment recently that you can’t win with the right wing purely because they label any news that doesn’t pander to or reinforce their right wing views as ‘Liberal media propaganda’
the post in question was from a thread about Melanie Phillips,with some genuinely pretty nasty stuff being fired in her direction
I notice that neither Billy Bowden nor Michael dared to address the actual issue of whether or not Mardell and the BBC are accurate in their belief that the Tea Party movement is driven by racism, or whether or not we can equally declare the Occupiers to be anti-Semites under the skin.
Well argued post. How right you are about the groupthink. Mardell is like a specially trained pig, hunting truffles. No matter that people are worried about government taxing and spending, Mardell will find a way and keep digging layer by layer, determined that there is raaacism there and he will find it. There! I told you so. They are raaaaacists.
It’s widespread, as you say, and just taken for granted in Beeboidland. I once heard two Beeboids on Radio 4 mention in passing Beeboid radio’s Asian network. Of course, they said airily, the only people who opposed it were raaaaacists. This statement wasn’t dwelt upon, considered or questioned, let alone challenged. It was completely taken as read. Never mind the possibility that it could be a negative, segregating move to go for a separate radio network for “Asians” and that it is the type of issue on which there are no doubt many shades of opinion, and compelling arguments against as well as for it, with views passionately held in good faith either way, just as there are about say, a programme or channel for women or men or elderly, youth or children or disabled people. Some would argue passionately that their interests should be covered within general programming, without the need for special categories of dedicated programme or channel. Others will be equally passionate that something dedicated to a specific group interest is essential. None of that existed or entered a Beeboid head. It was pure knee jerk and unquestioned, unthinking assumption of prejudice and raaaacism by anyone who might think a separate network wasn’t what the Beeboid Corporation should be doing.
David,
“I won’t put words in his mouth and say that Dez also believes that the Tea Party is driven by racism. I think he does…”
Thanks for that ;p
I don’t think that the Tea Party is “driven by racism”, but that it did attract a certain tiny lunatic fringe which weren’t driven out fast enough. You can hardly blame the media for noticing.
I do wonder how much of the whole ‘Birther’ conspiracy is because of nothing more than Obama’s skin colour? I don’t have an answer – but it’s an obvious question mark.
As for the rest of your (long) post; I’m afraid I don’t have the time, nor patience, to go through it point by point. But I do notice you describe Mardell as saying;
‘he doesn’t think “most” of the people at Tea Party protests he’s been to are racists.’
The emphasis of the word “most” is entirely your own – and reads like a pretty desperate attempt (conscious or otherwise) to change what Mardell actually said into something that would fit your argument.
I think this applies:
“if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”
Dez, your dishonesty is depressing. I assume you won’t read this, but I’ll write it anyway.
You know perfectly well how you elided Mardell’s statement, and why you did it. When he qualified the “most” with “at least not in a straightforward sense”, and then went on to add the “Deep down” bit, it was perfectly clear to anyone honest what he thought.
You, Dez, are not honest.
David,
In your original post (that I responded to) you said:
“you need to have a look at this video of Mark Mardell… He very clearly states that he believes the Tea Party to be driven by racism…”
Now you admit he actually said the opposite; but if you put emphasis on a word he didn’t and then read between the lines… “it was perfectly clear to anyone honest what he thought.”
So the entire basis of your argument is reduced to; “Anyone who says they don’t agree with me is a liar”?
Yes dear, whatever you say dear…
Dez, Mardell says that the Tea Party movement is driven by racism under the surface. “Spending money on people who aren’t like them.” That’s clear as day. Not the opposite of what I claim. You are skipping over the key words, and instead focusing on some emphasis of mine as a smokescreen.
You are dishonest, discredited in my view.
David,
“Dez, Mardell says that the Tea Party movement is driven by racism under the surface. “Spending money on people who aren’t like them.” That’s clear as day.
Self identified political/demographic groups see themselves as ‘different’ to other groups all the time: The ‘occupy protesters’ see themselves as different to ‘the bankers’. Many people on this blog see themselves as different to the unemployed ‘scroungers’ living on welfare. Or as Tea Party candidate Carl Paladino is reported as saying;
“Instead of handing out the welfare checks, we’ll teach people how to earn their check. We’ll teach them personal hygiene … the personal things they don’t get when they come from dysfunctional homes.”
You may dispute this. But to suggest that, “people who aren’t like them” can only possibly refer to skin colour and nothing else seems to me (like I said before) that you are are a man with a hammer searching for a nail.