"Philanthropy" is acting for the betterment of society as a whole. I can think of two great philanthropist examples.
Role Model: Norman Borlaug
The first is the late Norman Borlaug, who scientifically mastered the growth of crops in India, Mexico and other places suffering from shortages. Borlaug is widely credited with saving over a billion lives from starvation. He is widely remembered as a hero, though many are still ignorant of his name and some on the left still reject the GMO engineering utilised by Borlaug or refuse to acknowledge him. That's lefties for you: some of them would rather children starved than see their ideology defied.
Another example of remarkable generosity and humility is Phillip Wollen. Once a top banking executive, he became so shocked by animal cruelty in slaughterhouses and exploitation of child labour that he pledged to give away his fortune via worldwide philanthropic projects. He has stayed true to his word.
Not a role model
These are the kind of people that put the rest of us to shame. They perform such selfless acts that the rest of us know we should endeavour to follow, but don't. They rarely, if ever, seek publicity for their deeds. They help others in the truest sense: without seeking material rewards.
Then, on the opposite end of the spectrum we have the selfish. Not the usual selfish - which most of us can be guilty of imitating at times - but the charlatan selfish, the self-serving, self enriching cretins who profess to be performing each moment of self-gratification in the name of others. Case in point: Russell Brand.
If you're not a British native, you may never have heard of Russell Brand. That's because his attempts to make his name in film have failed utterly due to his abysmal lack of talent. The former drug addict has, however, remained a constant background feature in British media. Russell makes constant appearances - usually involving juvenile-level political commentary - and publicity stunts. His most memorable incident occurred on radio when, live, he sang a song to an answerphone of elderly actor Andrew Sachs about having sex with his granddaughter while co-host and friend Jonathon Ross yelled: "He f***ked your granddaughter" down the line. Classy, eh?
Brand is nearly forty, he has vast wealth that includes an impressive car, a very large house that he rents for 76k GBP from a tax dodging landlord and he has been involved in drugs and pornography. It all sounds very similar to the stereotype corrupt politician doesn't it? However he is perhaps best known for advising young people on politics:
usually telling them not to vote, not to pay tax, right wingers are '
fascists' and 'racists' and highlighting 'inequality'. Naturally then, he's an icon of the modern left.
His career highlight surely came this week when Brand managed to perform an "interview" with our possible next Prime Minister, Ed Miliband. The interview was a cringe-worthy as the situation might suggest, with the desperate Ed trying to impersonate a London accent ("That's hard, yeh? But you gotta do it.") , and Brand heavily editing the interview - the opening and closing were clearly devised after Miliband was long gone - and full of the vacuous, pretentious and utterly nonsensical comments sprinkled with big words flowing from Russell. All, of course, performed in the name of a man who would tell you not to vote, that politicians are all out of touch and don't understand what it means to be working class.
It's enough to make me want to type an open letter to Russell Brand. The only problem is I couldn't better the man who Russell spoke to on one of his indignant visits to a bank - supported by a publicity crew - when a chap penned this open letter to him. I can't top that.
Watch what you say on the internet. That's not because you could be wrong, mocked or humiliated by a detailed fisking. It's not even because you could just say something plain dumb. Those faults are sub-priority these days: the real danger is the ubiquitous screams, threats and howls of the self-proclaimed "hate speech" monitors.
Now I was always taught "hate" was a strong word and that both "hate" and "bad" were as they did. If you perform a hateful act against someone such as causing them deliberate physical harm, that was self-evident hate. If you lied to someone - for example by sending an email claiming to be a deposed African president in order to scam a few hundred dollars from your gullible victim - that was bad.
But it appears my notions are outdated by progressive definitions of "hate". Nowadays my former example would only qualify as a "hate crime" if the victim was of a different ethnicity or sexuality or perhaps transgender (regardless of the orientation of the assailant) and the latter does not qualify as "bad" , only as an "offence".
The modernised versions of "hate speech" are being flagged across Twitter in their thousands. Take the example of Katie Hopkins - a person I'd never heard of until about a month ago and already I'm sick of her - who commented on the news of a migrant boat sinking and nine-hundred passengers dying by saying we should burn African boats. The left-wing Twittersphere responded with furious indignation: not because of the deaths of innocents or even Katie's stupidity, you understand, but because Katie's comments were deemed anti-immigration and directed against a different race. The outpouring of anger and screams of "hate speech" followed by the customary demands of censorship following her comments was exponentially greater than the sympathy for the women and children who died in terror.
That was two days ago. Yesterday, when a nobody from a government-funded group that fights "fascism" (aka anyone who disagrees with them) stuck his cellphone in a septuagenarian's face, the pensioner slapped his hand away. Said phone-wielder immediately checked the non-incident was caught on camera before crying "assault" to the world via his Twitter page, mainly because the elderly man supported a political group that disagreed with the nobody. When this cowardly action was mocked, derided and verbally spat upon by other Twitter users, the young man recovered from the "assault" to scream "homophobia" backed up by claims of "hate crime" , "report to police" (the tweets, not the non-assault) and "the face of hate", etc. from supporters. The pensioner was cautioned by police, no doubt conscious of the watchful eye of the politically correct. Suggestions the young man's actions and outcry were politically motivated continue to be swatted away with screams of "hate speech".
It gets better. Did you know that singing the national anthem is a greater act of hate than, say, rape? It's true. We know this because London's Metro newspaper gleefully published a letter this week in response to outpourings of letters confirming various local acts of "racism" and "hate speech" in its pages. The letter opened with the line: "I have also been the victim of hate speech.". This shocking revelation went as such: a man got on the tube train, looked at the letter writer and her child...and sung the British national anthem.
If you're confused, the writer explains where the crime occurred and if you've been paying attention, you can already guess: yes, the letter writer was non-white and the singer was white. It's just as well she informed us of this to clarify exactly when singing a song becomes a greater crime than stabbing a person of the same race. The writer also mentioned: "Perhaps I should have sung along [with the national anthem], I know every word, I'm not sure he did." I'm not sure the singer knew every word of 'the national anthem' either, since we don't have a British national anthem.
Now, Is it possible the man on the train was being obnoxious and cruel? Yes. I've felt that when a Vietnamese boy told me: "Get out of my country", when a barman in Hong Kong called me and my friends "ghosts" or when a prejudiced slur was said to my two-year-old son in South-East Asia. We all survived, nobody was mentally scarred, no police time was used and the word "hate" was never invoked.
The list of hate crimes is endless, but luckily we have an equally infinite number of self-appointed thought police bringing them to justice. Just peruse any political disagreement on Twitter and it won't be long before someone whistles for the hate police. Along with ';racism', the word 'hate' stands to be the most exploited, overused and abused term in cyberspace and political discourse, it has become a real-life form of Newspeak, protecting the intellectually lazy, insecure and downright stupid while belittling true victims of hate by relegating them to tools of propaganda.
Perhaps you disagree with me on all of this. Just make sure you are of the same ethnic group and sexuality before sending me threats. Hate crimes are sure to gather a greater punishment.
I read your article on the Yahoo UK News site. At first I honestly thought it was an article by a Guardian columnist. Then I saw it was written by you, a key member of the Finsbury Park Mosque, of which convicted kidnapper and terrorist supporter Abu Hamza was a cleric, so I was very much in the correct ballpark.
I try to avoid the tactic of fisking as I find it leads to animosity rather than quality debate or reading, but as I read your letter I saw so much lazy thinking and simply outrageous statements that I instantly realised fisking would be the only way to deal with it. Forgive my abruptness as we dive in:
Every time the issue of young British Muslims going to Syria is raised, the same question is asked by both the media and the government: Why isn't the Muslim community doing more to stop these young people joining Islamic State (Isis)?
But while the Muslim community should rightly shoulder some responsibility to address this problem, simply putting all the blame and responsibility at the doors of our community will only risk alienating, marginalising and criminalising a new generation of Muslim youth.
Fair enough so far, though it still sticks to the typical line of self-pity over responsibility. It's ultimately saying that being 'picked on' is a greater reason for joining ISIS than upbringing or education.
Impressionable young Muslims who are steered towards extremism are British citizens and our government is duty-bound to engage with both them and the leaders of the Muslim community. The solution is not to issue new counter terrorism bills, a strategy which has largely failed.
No, impressionable young Muslims are joining ISIS from around the world. The only way to correct your sentence would be to add the demonym "British", which would make it a circular statement. This isn't a pedantic jab, I'm pointing it out because you've deliberately phrased it that way to reinforce your idea that a few Muslims in the UK join ISIS because they are alienated. If you focused on the worldwide picture the evidence would show that some Muslims from across the world are doing the same, making your stated motivation unsupported by evidence.
The fact is some young Muslims feel they are second-class citizens in Britain. Many face inequality and discrimination at work, anti-Muslim hatred and even physical attacks.
Really? It happens to many Muslims? Evidence? Data? Eyewitness reports? Neutral testimonies? Or just your word? It may happen in a very small number of incidents, as does the opposite.
It is irresponsible for pundits, politicians and commentators to dismiss outright a link between British foreign policy and radicalisation.
Agreed, it is.
Young Muslims are often politicised and sometimes radicalised by daily news of fellow Muslims attacked, killed, oppressed and denied the freedom to lead their own lives.
Often when I see news of attacks on Muslims, it is by other Muslim states or militaries. While it may be true that western policy has not helped, the argument that this drives ISIS membership from UK citizens is equivalent to saying that young Christians could move to North Korea to launch military strikes against the labor camps that Christians are condemned to, or a rebel group in Somalia, in which Christians are terrorised. Instead most Christians support charities like Open Doors, which support peaceful, practical and helpful support for persecuted Christians as best they can. Your argument, Mister Kozbar, is actually at the level of a child screaming: "He started it". You also fail to see the irony of a UK citizen using their freedom of movement to join a group which seeks to annihilate the nation which they declare has denied them freedom.
Sadly British policy abroad has resulted in some of this, including in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Egypt and Gaza. Young people see the hypocrisy of the West standing by dictators like Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who violently removed Egypt's first democratically elected president, Mohammad Morsi, and has sentenced to death hundreds of his supporters without fair trials.
So just to be clear, the three 'Jihadi brides' left for Syria because of the British government support for Morsi. Not because one of them was fathered by a man who burned our flags and marched with Lee Rigby's killer, not because of your mosque taking in a Imam who was a kidnapper of innocent people and definitely not because of aggressive demonstrations against British soldiers. Instead they were calm, rational people who joined a violent, bloodthirsty, beheading, temple-burning, fire-executing group based on perceived hypocrisy in western foreign relations.
Did those "young people" also see the hypocrisy in citing western-backed dictatorship as a reason for ISIS support when most Islamic states are undemocratic and clearly show the problems linking Islam and democracy?
Muslims are a fundamental part of British society and an important part of the makeup of this diverse nation. The Muslim community has at its core values that are truly British, values such as honesty, justice and equality, all intertwined in their faith and culture.
The vast majority of British Muslims are proud to be British and Muslim and see no contradiction between the two. A BBC survey in February found 95% of Muslims in Britain are against any violent acts and loyal to their country.
I've expressed my views on the BBC before but I like to think you are right with everything you said here. However, a more recent survey showed that thirty-nine percent of UK Muslims felt police were a factor in radicalisation. It also concluded that forty-four percent of British Muslims believed families were responsible for preventing young people heading to Syria, meaning well over half of those interviewed did not believe family played a role. How compatible is the total rejection of family responsibility with British values?
Unfortunately, a minority of extremists on both sides – the Muslim community and the far right – are trying to push the narrative that you cannot be a good Muslim and a British citizen.
A study by Islamophobia network research recently claimed $57m is spent on spreading hate against Muslims in America through the media and by politicians. I wonder how much has been spent here in the UK? We recently saw the case of the so-called Trojan horse scandal – where a "plot" was alleged by which extremist Muslims planned to infiltrate schools. It transpired that there never was a plot in the first place.
Any organisation that calls itself "islamaphobia" - a totally bigoted, politicised and unverifiable piece of terminology in its own right - would strike me as one that is unlikely to conduct good, impartial scientific research without regards to its own income or justification for its existence. Do you have a more reputable, impartial survey to cite?
Key to challenging this is making young Muslims feel that they are part of the solution, not the problem.
We need to engage with young people in a positive way in mosques and universities. At Finsbury Park Mosque, we have worked hard to create a cohesive atmosphere out of one that was previously very hostile and we have managed to return the mosque back in the heart of the community despite the efforts of our detractors in the media and the far right.
Young Muslims could perhaps start by reading this book about Hamza and your mosque and decide if it is the right place to start looking for solutions.
But despite our best efforts, we are still subject to anti-Muslim hate attacks. We have had a pig's head hung on our gates; our mosque has been fire-bombed; white powder sent to our Imam; and we have received numerous death threats.
Your definition of "hate" appears similar to that of Stan Collymore. I don't dispute it's nasty and unpleasant to leave a pig's head outside your place of worship, but does it constitute "hate"? If so, is it an equal crime to that of beheading a person or watching them burn to death? I put it to you that you and many on your side deliberately exploit and overuse the word "hate" and "hate crime" for you own sympathy. I think you attempt to equalise the nasty but relatively petty offences against you and the horrific, sub-human acts committed by terrorists in the name of Islam.
Violence breeds violence and this cycle must stop. There is a desperate need for a dialogue and understanding of the real issues at play in order to find solutions to our problems and challenges. Scapegoating the Muslim community or trying to divide the community on nefarious grounds is not the solution.
A very true and fair statement. On this we can agree.
Let us all start today by acknowledging that Muslims are part of British society and like all communities they need understanding and support, rather than hate and the criminalisation of their faith.
A true statement in itself but carefully loaded to yet again play the "victim" card. There is absolutely no outlawing of the Muslim faith in Britain, the insufferable myth - and the liberal left's wet dream - of a backlash against Muslims never ceases to go away despite all the statistics and studies showing it has not happened. Indeed, your name is the most popular name for a new baby boy in the UK.
To my surprise Mister Kozbar, I actually find myself in agreement with your content and, at times, your tone. What I find extraordinary is that you can be so absolvent of the role your mosque has played in radicalisation. In addition, the spellbinding ignorance of the hypocrisy in your "British foreign policy"' excuses and the use of your British freedoms to complain about Muslims losing their freedoms would be comical, were it not so serious. I also note you never once justified your headline tag of "racism".
You are absolutely right though, we need dialogue, we need understanding and we need to acknowledge the role of different communities. What we also need is responsibility, honesty, clarification of priorities and unification. I can't see that you, your mosque or your line of logic and argument can offer any of these solutions.
As lefties go, you are were definitely one of the best. Up until now you didn’t play the “racist” card every time someone voiced concern over immigration, you drank with Nigel Farage without condemning him to the bottom layer of hell, you even stood up to the deafening silence over the Cyril Smith child abuse scandal and pushed for more investigation. You were also a fellow enthusiast of education. It pains me to say it, but you really were OK.
Until this last fortnight or so, that is.
First of all you were caught favouring porn on Twitter. In a display of your political prowess you actually managed to at least partially turn that into a win, claiming that you are a man of the world and your wife “loves it” (after all ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ is so big right now) and even The Telegraph backed you up. It almost made you appear a man of integrity and honesty. Of course, it would’ve helped if you had not at first denied it and hilariously claimed your iphone was faulty but still, it’s the best Twitter spin I’ve seen since John Denham MP explained to me why he used poor grammar.
And then came the flag incident. You joined in “Pakistan Day” and raised the flag upside down with the rest of the local Cheshire cats. A minor Twitter storm followed. Now on one hand, it’s perfectly reasonable to raise a flag and show “cohesion” within a community. On the other though, Simon, let’s look at the bigger picture and I don’t mean your expenses . You have acknowledged yourself how much concern there is over immigration in the UK and especially your constituency of Rochdale. You have quite rightly promised to consider those fears. That’s all in addition to your local grooming cases that are so disturbing, the politicos work hard to avoid exposure of them. Knowing this, can you at least understand why the British public at large may see this flag incident as a faux pax? Can you fathom the traces of anger and disapproval? We never see the English flag raised by smiling politicians in Pakistan, I personally have never seen you beaming with pride as the English flag is raised. Let’s remember a Labour colleague of yours viewed a display of the English flag with such snideness that she tweeted a photo of it in the belief others would join her in sneering. That’s how out of touch your party is with its working class roots, yet there you stand with a flag of a foreign country.
But in all honesty this still isn’t the rub. That came when someone called Katie Hopkins got a little over-exasperated and sent some silly tweets your way. This is when you choose to play politics again and project the focus onto her. In an astonishing waste of police time you followed the example of Stan Collymore and made a police complaint. How did you justify that waste of tax money? With the one and only word you knew you could use without being laughed at: racism. Yep, you spat on all your talk of “community cohesion” , “understanding concerns” and the other political babble you once believably spouted and played the laziest, most ignorant and exploited card you could.
Only one problem Simon: a guy called Richard Dawkins (you may have heard of him, he’s smarter than you or me) once said: “If you say it’s racist to insult Islam, you are saying Islam is a race. If you say Islam is a race,you are a racist.”
Now just substitute “Pakistan” for “Islam” in that quote and you’ve just been exposed for the hypocrite you are. Pakistan – the nation you profess so much “cohesion” with – is not made up of one “race”, not even close. Yet you committed the sin you accuse the right wing of and made an ignorant, sweeping claim about different ethnic groups that populate one state. By the same token you have implied that a nation is analogous to a single ethnic identity. Care to clarify that, MP Danscyuk? How does it apply to England?
In seeking to defend the indefensible, you put your foot in it with the mother of all “put your foot in it” quotes. You authored an article with the phrase “I’m a strong champion of free speech, BUT…….” followed by a pathetic, cowardly set of excuses for wasting police time. Not your finest moment. You followed it with one last barrel scrape – a tweet lecturing the world about freedom of speech.
For the record, free speech is not an unassailable right. It’s a privilege to be treated with care
You’re a smart man, you probably knew this was wrong already. It raises the question of why you would do it. Could you, by any chance, have one eye on re-election and another long spell of tax-payer funded hotel visits? I’d love an answer to that question, spin free.
Looks like you’ve been making friends again Stan. Your swipes at the QPR players are starting to wear a little thin it seems and some of them have pointed out your double standards. Your constant, albeit reasonable, fixation that everything should be said to your face is on display again. It works both ways though, would you actually approach Rio Ferdinand and the rest of the QPR squad and tell them per your retweet: “If you defended each other on the pitch as well as you do on Twitter then you wouldn’t be going down”? Verisimilitude aside, I’m willing to bet you’d only do so if you were sure it could all be laughed off as banter. Some of the QPR lads don’t look so sure that it’s banter, mind you.
But I understand attention-seeking is something you strive for and I guess it’s fair enough in your career. But when that publicity-hunting crosses the borders of free speech and political correctness, it gets very annoying and hypocritical. Your tirades against what you call ”hate speech” , which you identify as insulting someone because of “race, gender, sexuality or disability” has turned into something of a moral crusade for you.
Let’s quickly put the obvious points to bed first: any football fan over thirty knows your history of drama and publicity-hungry quotes and knows how to take you. One popular discussion thread on a Liverpool forum (Liverpool being an old club of yours, of course) suggested nobody should pay your views much attention in the first place. Secondly, that incident with Ulrika Johnson shows you aren’t well suited to spearhead any campaigns on morality but fair enough, it was ages ago and the media milked it. By the same token, your views and writings on depression are something I have little knowledge or experience of. Perhaps you’ve helped others and done good work in that area. It’s not my focus here.
To the bigger points then. When you made your phony crusade on Twitter, you vigorously defended yourself on radio shows and such with the same line repeated over and over again: “If somebody said this to me on the street, I wouldn’t stand for it, would you?”. Essentially you’re saying that anything you deem hate speech should be made illegal because nobody would say it to your face without fear of being arrested or intimidated by you. (Correct me If I’m wrong but I don’t believe you have approached veterans of the Falklands War or the relatives of those who were KIA and quoted that tweet you have since deleted?). You’re really saying you have the right to dictate that policy to Twitter, although as you put it: “Twitter just hide behind the fact that they are an American company.” That comment alone shows me you don’t really understand how law works.
But here’s the problem Stan: as Spiked have pointed out, people do and always will say things on the internet they wouldn’t say in person and that’s the problem. It doesn’t make it right, but it’s a reality we can’t escape from. When some morons sent you insulting tweets referring to your skin colour, you reported it to the police. The UK police – overloaded and understaffed with serious cases like child abuse, rape and murder to deal with – then dedicated tax-payer money to investigating a tweet because it contained the word “black” in it. I think it’s fair to say they probably felt under pressure to do so because of political correctness and your relatively famous profile. I can’t help but wonder how much time police would have to deal with violent crimes and cases of abuse or cruelty if they had to investigate every comment on the internet that was deemed hateful, as they did for you.
Stan, not so long ago I read a post in a Christian Facebook group from someone claiming that Christianity was a scam invented by an Egyptian king who lived three hundred years before Jesus. I was so amused I posted a slightly childish comment: “Sounds like you need a psychiatrist, LOL”. Now obviously, I didn’t know the person who made the original comment, but apparently he clicked on my profile and saw the only public picture of me, which includes my wife and kids who all happen to be Asian. His response then was to post a reply insulting my appearance and referring to my “mail order wife”, essentially calling the mother of my children a prostitute based on her ethnicity. It’s not the first time someone’s made that same remark.
If you were me Stan, what would you have done? Called the police? Demanded a full investigation? I and my family laughed at the stupidity of the comment, then I posted a reply : “Thanks, please tell me and my mail order wife more about your hilarious theory, we’d love to hear it.”. I never heard from that idiot again, nobody in my family suffered any form of trauma over a Facebook comment and no police time or tax money was consumed.
I’ve also received harassment aimed towards my children from some strange character online who was professing to be from a white supremacists group. He sent me a private message suggesting one of my children “looks like downs syndrome, it’s the mixed genes”. I clicked “block” and forgot about it. But said Nazi must have been banned by Facebook and re-registered under a new profile because he actually took the trouble to find me again and send a copy of the same message. I blocked him again. I guess he got bored or he realised that it takes him far longer to set up profiles than it does for people to click ‘block’, because I never heard from him again and I certainly didn’t bother chasing him. Why would I? He was clearly a hateful coward. He’s punished already.
No doubt you would have approached things differently in those situations. Which of us would have been right? I don’t know, but I do know this: my solution not only saved police time, it’s better for the ‘victims’ in the long run, and I can back that up by experience.
Like you I grew up in a England and went to a typical school. Like any normal school environment we had the ‘fat kid’, the ‘short kid’, the ‘nerdy kid’, the ‘girly kid’ and so on. When anybody wanted to upset a student, they called them the name that they hoped would upset them. Kids can be mean, kids can put labels on people. It’s how they are.
Like everyone else I grew up and forgot about school teasing. I became a teacher and lived in South East Asia. There I learned about cultures and I noticed something: in almost every South East Asian culture, people say what they see. One of the questions people often asked me off the bat is: “Aren’t you a bit small for a foreigner?”
I shook this off as an amusing quirk but when I watched the students do the same to each other in class, I noticed something: kids calling their peers as they see them actually puts them at ease. I’m not saying it’s some kind of cruelty-free Utopia but it’s incredibly rare in a South East Asian school to see the ‘fat’ kid or the ‘small’ kid or whoever hiding away in the corner looking upset because someone just teased them. They’re as happy and sociable as anyone else. And as for the self-proclaimed ‘lady boys’, well they’re often the most popular kids in class! Why? Perhaps it’s because we don’t wrap them in cotton wool, we don’t say: “You musn’t say this! You can’t be prejudiced against this child because of their skin/body/gender/whatever!”. Kids can get on with just being themselves. We put things out in the open and move on.
When we fight that Stan, we’re essentially applying the very same stigmatic labels you profess you are against. We’re sending the message: “This person has something making them different, be sensitive about that”. It’s wrong. It’s wrong logically, morally and socially. It only increases the self-consciousness of it all.
Don’t get me wrong, if there’s a truly dangerous person out there or someone who has the means to find and harm either you, me or any of our family based on some demographic then of course we should get on the phone and call the cops straight away, but that’s because we are in genuine physical danger. Words on the internet – unless they encourage actual, possible violence – cannot hurt us unless we let them.
See Stan, that’s where I stand on it and unlike you I’m basing my outlook on practical experience. I can’t help but wonder if you’ve really thought this all through or if, more likely, you don’t really care that much anyway. Perhaps it’s just about a bit more publicity for you.
I remember one radio call-in show where the presenter asked you “Stan, I like you but what if I called you a ‘numpty‘ who knows nothing about football? Would that be OK?”. You replied: “Of course it would, halleluiah!.”
Well Stan let me pass that test, and the other test you always throw out to back up your argument. Yes, you are a numpty and yes, if you buzz me before the Southampton Vs Tottenham match next month, I’ll gladly repeat all this to you in person.
Thanks to biasedbbc.org for sharing my article on Clarkson yesterday. The post has already received 35 comments and one comment linked to a very important website on licence resistance.
How you see the BBC’s decision to remove the phenomenally popular presenter of its flagship worldwide show could very well depend on your view of the man in question. Those who support Clarkson see him as the last of dying breed of English TV personalities: the stubborn, old-school yet humorous gentlemen who simply enjoys being himself. His detractors see him as obnoxious, offensive and downright ignorant.
But let’s be clear: this was not a moral decision by the BBC management. To believe it was is to believe that a racial slur (“slope”) or a minor physical scuffle are greater crimes against humanity than covering up the sexual abuse of children committed by Jimmy Saville, for which nobody at the ‘Beeb’ has been punished. The BBC’s firing of Clarkson was – or at least should have been – a business decision. That they have made the wrong one is a matter of delight for me, as it should be for anyone who admires Clarkson or appreciates a quality, politically neutral media service.
Realising the BBC has fallen from grace is a bit like realizing Santa Claus doesn’t exist: for some it’s obvious from the first moment, for others it’s a more slow, gradual process. Either way there comes the inevitable moment when you wonder how you didn’t see it earlier. The doubt was eliminated years ago. The BBC themselves have commissioned investigations which confirmed they have a left wing bias (they neglected to investigate if grass is green or the sun is hot) , MPs have addressed it, their own tweets scream it and their interviewsreek of hubris and non-professionalism. In short, you’d be hard pressed to find any group of British society that doesn’t sense the BBC has lost its way.
Undeclared bias is often a symptom of corruption and in case anyone forgot, the BBC is the institution that shielded its personnel from the Jimmy Saville abuse scandal. When its own documentary team exposed this, it seemed for one beautiful moment that a turning point had been reached, or perhaps we’d been wrong all along and the BBC were more open than we’d given them credit for. Those hopes evaporated when the documentary team wereruthlessly punished for exposing their employer’s willingness to ignore and cover-up child abuse
But with the sacking of Clarkson comes hope. The BBC – like any politically corrupt organization- needs continued funding to exist. Any lapse in funding weakens its message which in turn weakens its cause. In an age where the public are swamped for choice of news channels, media outlets and political opinions the BBC has absolutely no choice but to provide a quality product. What shows does it have that still win admiration and respect across the spectrum? Sherlock (3 episodes a year at most), Doctor Who (a recent victim of funding cuts) and Top Gear – the biggest earner – largely thanks to Clarkson and his one million + supporters.
The solution then is simple: every Clarkson or Top Gear fan needs to stop watching the BBC and stop paying their license fee. One or two non-renewals wouldn’t hurt the BBC, one million non-renewals will hurt them. Any more than that will force them to take a long hard look at themselves.
There is no other solution. Academic studies of bias have had no impact. Neither have MPs speeches, petitions, public exposure or internal investigations. Nothing can change bias of people in high places who truly believe they are right and look at dissent with contempt and a sneer.
The bottom line is the BBC management don’t care what you think. They don’t care how you feel or what you believe. There is one way and one way only to change that: don’t give them your money.
‘Sunday diners tell of “screaming rage” of political thugs’
‘I thought they would hurt my family’
’10 year old tells of her fear as father was besieged by hate mob’
One of the hardest points I always struggled to teach high school students was how the press are not only biased, they also condition the weight, severity and amount of fear they place on events they hear about. The usual example I give is the safety of air travel compared to driving.
dailymail.co.uk
I discussed yesterday how a self-proclaimed group of “LGBT, Breast-feeding women, immigrants and ‘climate guys’” (they couldn’t actually find a proper tag for that last section) descended upon a family pub on a Sunday in Kent to terrorise the family of Nigel Farage and his children, aged 10 and 15 years old. The mob deliberately chose the time and location based on Nigel’s family habits, knowing his offspring would be present. As the family tried to flee, at least one protester jumped on their car. All this in the name of showing UKIP how wrong they are, you understand.
The strange thing was, the incident bought very little in the way of mainstream media coverage. Compare it to the outcry over the incident with Chelsea fans in Paris, the latest UKIP member who said something innocuous but silly or other tiny incidents. Yet a politicians family – including a ten year old child – being blatantly intimidated, forced away from a family meal and having their car damaged as they tried to flee barely makes news.
Imagine if the roles were reversed. Suppose the LGBT group, the “immigrant” group or the ‘climate guys’ (no, seriously) were the victims and UKIP members had done the assaulting (actually UKIP employers a higher proportion of non-white, non-heterosexual and female MEPs than any other party, but the left never let the truth get in the way of a chance to be thugs). Who wants to bet against these headlines screaming from above the fold?
Immigrant man tells of pure terror as UKIP hordes assault his family ‘Their hate was shocking’ says bystander
Ten year old child flees in terror as hate mob surround country pub PM promises a full police investigation
Britain’s shame: far right mob attack politician’s family Police to seek maximum jail time for evil thugs
“Family horror as UKIP thugs invade country pub” ‘PM condemns ‘Nazi like’ behaviour
A new low for England – family terrorised by far right scum ‘Kick it Out’ warn of ‘return to Nazi days’
It’s a natural part of growing up to rebel. I still cringe when I remember the way I tried to dress like a rapper in my teens (in the end I settled for rock, which is still the case now) and it’s inevitable that that stage of life involves supporting dumb ideas and telling the older generation just how wrong they are. It’s normal, it’s character-forming in the long term and to some extent, it’s healthy. What’s not healthy is the increasing psyche in western society that believes ideological dissent should not be engaged, debated or even reprimanded, but shouted down and, if necessary, forcefully removed.
It’s occurring with unnerving regularity. Tommy Robinson’s appearance at the Oxford Union was met in some quarters not by articulate objection, academic debate or frank dialogue on the rights or wrongs of it, but by a picket line that were determined to literally shout over Tommy during his engaging two hour talk. Nigel Farage was assaulted by a mob in a Kent pub this weekend as he enjoyed a meal with his family. His two children where terrorised by the mob – who lied that they were attending a party on the premises – as members of the rabble jumped on their car to express their superior morality to the views of the children’s father. In Australia, students stopped a lecture on campus by entering the room and yelling down the speaker, before one protester shouted “anyone here is support Israel.” It’s a disturbing trend in Europe, Australasia and North America to engage in militant “anti-Israel” politics. As if Jewish people hadn’t suffered enough in recent generations, they are now under increasing hostility in the west.
These aren’t isolated incidents, nor are they headline-grabbing, shocking attacks on democracy that are quickly tackled by police. They are regular events committed by people who believe it’s justified. In the name of “anti-fascism” (a term almost always used by people who could never, ever give you a sensible, educated definition of “fascist”) these far-left and liberal groups commit some of the most ‘fascist’ acts that modern society can witness.
The justification works like this:
1) I’m an anti-facist or a left winger, pro-Palestine or feminist. What I believe is right.
2) Since I’m right and anti-fascist,anyone who disagrees must therefore be wrong, or anti-fascist, pro-Israel or hate women.
3) Fascism, or or being wrong, or hating women is bad.
4) Since the opposition is bad, it’s OK to silence or attack them.
..and that’s it. It really is that simple to find a reason to be unpleasant.
Of course, not everyone follows this twisted trail of logic, but those who do so do it with fervor, delighting in the cheap moral excuse to behave like violent thugs or nasty little dictators.It should be no surprise to notice how desperate for recognition and a false sense of power some of them strive for, but there’s a bigger risk at stake. The twisted way of thinking we just observed leads us to look at our enemy as less than us. Essentially they become lower class of life and as Philip Zimbardo has shown, this road of thinking can lead to truly evil crimes against humanity.
But it’s wrong. It’s wrong morally, logically and ethically. The rules governing free speech are established in common law and serve us well. As I’ve already discussed, there are sound academic and logical reasons for doing the exact opposite to our political rivals.
Are there ever any sound reasons for rising up against another section of society? Of course the are,but here’s a hint – if your fight against “fascists” or any other group leads you to a place where you are jumping on a car with two terrified children inside, making up as many slurs as you can to justify an act of censorship or yelling at a class of students that they “support Israel” for attending a lecture, then you’ve probably lost your moral compass on your route to the high ground.
Should politics and ideology ever be allowed to stifle scientific investigation or academic studies?
Of course not.
One of the arguments against any form of national pride in Britain has been the common wisdom from liberals that the British and/or English are a “mongrel” bunch, mixed of Norman, Danish and Anglo-Saxon blood. I clearly remember my Religious Studies teacher telling my class this in Grade 8. With the left citing this “fact” as some kind of magic wand that makes any form of national pride irrelevant. Like most liberal arguments, it is a total non-sequitur. Firstly, pride in culture and history has nothing to do with race unless you are some kind of Nazi, or a liberal.
And secondly, we now know it’s not true.
The excellent study in the Daily Telegraph shows that even in the global age, Britain still has remarkable tribal make up, at least in rural areas (note carefully the conditions of the study). It’s a fascinating insight into our history and geography.
Even the researchers themselves admitted the findings surprised them greatly. If we had left “common wisdom” to decide for us, the research would never have taken place at all. This is why we question everything. This is why we should listen to common knowledge and consider it, but never take it as gospel (unless it actually is!).
And we should certainly never be censored or shouted down in academic buildings by associate professors or ignorant students. Question the motivation of those who do.
Imagine you take two groups of students of equal aptitude. You take one group and tell them: “Find the best economic management system for your country. Consider every system, every philosopher, every study and every possibility.”
You tell the second group: “Find the best economic mode l you can but you will not think about the Keynesian model! You will not discuss it, question it or condone it. If you discuss the Keynesian model in any way you are a badstudent!”.
Which group do you think have a greater chance to produce a better model? Why?
Freedom of speech and freedom of thought are vital. High school economics students might be presented with a scenario similar to the one I just gave. Kindergarten classes might not be ready for classic economics just yet but the principle remains the same. As parents teach their kids right and wrong they have to be careful to also encourage inquisitively. A teacher also bears a responsibility to nurture that wonderful childhood characteristic. Always ask “Why?”.
Groups that stifle freedom of speech and scream down anyone they disagree with are enemies of academia and mental development. The laws that regulate speech in the UK – and in the country where I live- are far from perfect. But they have been built up over many generations and are not subject to the political whims of the day. Nor should they be. That’s why, regardless of personal views, I was pleased that the video of Tommy Robinson speaking at Oxford Union was uploaded to youtube.
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