Double deception of the public as teetering Tories move to purge the BBC and lofty liberals rush to defend it

Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries's announcement of a coming end to the BBC licence fee is an obviously cynical effort to distract attention from her now completely disgraced leader and a government in mounting crisis. 

But those rushing to defend the BBC as a bastion of 'balance' and 'impartiality' are also serving to gaslight and deceive the public by shrouding essential truths about the state broadcaster. 

The claim that the BBC is being punished by Johnson for 'holding him and his government to account' is utterly risible. The BBC has played no significant part in exposing this corrupt and criminal administration. On the contrary, as Jonathan Cook shows, its leading 'correspondents' have consistently failed to reveal the deeply-known truths about its illegal and tawdry conduct, keeping safe and secure the privileges of 'access journalism'. 

Yet Tory abuses and contempt for the public is now so blatant that even Johnson's most 'favoured confidante', Laura Kuenssberg, can no longer excuse or mitigate his crimes.

Liberal-minded objections to Tory party pressure on the BBC not only miss these gross journalistic failures, they also overlook the BBC's much more essential function as a protector of the system, not just of this or any other government.

This includes the BBC's:

• Upholding of all state and political structures as fundamentally fit, democratic and decent. BBC Question Time is itself a respectful 'mirror' to Westminster's weekly 'show' of 'democratic accountability'. The suggestion that we actually live in a state of oligarchic rule could never be aired or entertained by the BBC.  
• Reverential promotion and cultural reinforcement of British militarism. In its reporting and features on UK weaponry, the BBC acts as an effective spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence, and PR platform for the corporate arms industry. 
• Solid support for all UK, US and wider Western-led wars, 'interventions' and coups, most notably over Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. As historian Mark Curtis notes: "Many intelligent people still believe the BBC promotes "impartiality in news & current affairs", and not just those personally earning millions from it. The reality - that on UK foreign affairs, BBC is basically straight propaganda, easily demonstrated - shows we have a way to go."
• Unstinting reverence for the institutions of monarchy, promotion of the royal family and mitigation of its crises. Anti-royal and republican feeling, though widespread, is routinely excluded as a valid public viewpoint.
• Default castigation of all official foreign enemies, from the ‘threat/menace' of Russia, China and Iran, to the denigration of anti-neoliberal states like Venezuela and Cuba. The BBC's current amplification of UK/US/NATO talking points on Ukraine is a key case in point, headlining Russia's 'aggressive intent', omitting vital context, and giving primary airtime to Western-supporting commentators and 'think-tanks' like RUSI.
• Soft treatment/selective reporting of official allies. Contrast the kind of deferential coverage of Saudi Arabia and other brutal Gulf states to that reserved for North Korea. We're being "info-bombarded" on Russian 'aggression' in Ukraine, but not UK/Saudi bombing of Yemen. Likewise, BBC North America correspondents may carry reports of social dislocation and violence across the US, but will always hold its system, leaders and 'Shining House on the Hill' in mystical awe. The revelation that BBC executives "wait in fear for the phone call from the Israelis" tells a similar kind of story about states to be 'more carefully treated'. And never forget the BBC'S disgraceful refusal to air the Gaza Appeal.
• Leading role in taking down any serious internal political threat to the established order, the most infamous example being the BBC's key part in the brutal smearing and removing of Jeremy Corbyn, an effective British coup.
• Omission and marginalisation of radical voices, as in the BBC's blanket silence over the prosecution and persecution of true journalist, Julian Assange.
• Rearguard response over any threat to the Union, as seen in the loaded BBC coverage of the Scottish Independence referendum of 2014.
• Very belated efforts to acknowledge the climate emergency, and continuing failure to address the true forces behind it. Why is there still no serious discussion of corporate-driving capitalism as the principal cause? This massive omission takes us well beyond any notion of the BBC as 'neutral observer'. 

The paradox of this latest Tory assault on the BBC is that it is attempting to call time on the signature institution helping to preserve the principal ideas and interests of the ruling class. Yet, while Johnson et al may regard themselves as born-to-rule Etonians with deep roots in the establishment, their first and most self-serving concern is political survival.

While much of the liberal-left appear reluctant to join in any Tory kicking of the BBC, all those blue-tick liberals and vast-salaried BBC employees now rushing to the barricades in it's defence have very little incentive to see the real purpose of the body so fulsomely rewarding them.

Such defenders insist that as the BBC receives complaints of bias from both left and right - or any other opposing sides of an issue - it 'must be doing something correct'; ergo, it cannot be biased. This facile 'logic' amounts to 'testing' a proposition by way of measuring relative claims about it, rather than any rational evaluation of the proposition itself. Claim, if you will, that the BBC is not institutionally biased, but at least attempt to do so with real argument and rigorous evidence. 

Nor do such lines of defence account for the vast differentials of influence brought by major lobby forces in contrast to standard public complaints. The pro-Israel lobby maintain relentless pressure on the BBC to uphold its views and interests. Does this demonstrate, in any meaningful sense, that the BBC is somehow anti-Israel? Or could it, more obviously, signify a level of pressure and intimidation intended to ensure it never actually does go against Israel's interests? 

Tory attacks on the BBC amount to the same kind of pre-emptive calculus: we're powerfully watchful, on your case, and can cause you grief, why take the chance of upsetting us? 

 

Other liberal warnings over the Tory assault on the licence fee reduces us to a dismal ‘choice’ between 'Murdoch or the BBC', as if the only possible provider of our daily diet of news and information could ever come via corporate media or state media. Where, in this 'debate' over the BBC and 'new future' of public media are the wider options on truly independent journalism and its potential funding? 

With dark irony, the very liberal class which so eagerly lined up with the BBC to destroy the Corbyn left now seek that same left's support in saving the BBC. Understandably, it's not readily forthcoming.

It's deeply revealing how those now running appeals for the BBC's 'rescue', while proclaiming its 'inherent values' of 'balance' and 'impartiality', seem so comfortably contained in their liberal bubble. How many will be aware of, or have ever consulted, the academic studies laying out the BBC's support for establishment interests and positions? How many will have ever read or invoked critical writers like MediaLens on such matters? Deeply-conditioned and career-dependent, could any ever contemplate calling the BBC, as John Pilger so incisively does, "the most refined propaganda service in the world"? 

Much easier to live in a state of passive compliance, shielded from uncomfortable explorations and self-reflections. This 'learned restraint' in ever even daring to imagine the BBC as anything other than 'benign Auntie' demonstrates its very efficiency as an establishment institution, serving to nullify 'abnormal' thought, foster conformity and displace awkward questions. 

Thankfully, many still see through the posture and deceptions, resiliently posing the real questions. As MediaLens concisely ask here: "Save the BBC? In whose interests?"

War criminal Blair's knighthood should NOT be revoked - he deserves to be 'honoured' by a criminal establishment

New Year 2022 commences with one of the most egregious acts of elite contempt for public sensibilities one could ever imagine. 

Tony Blair has been awarded a special knighthood - Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter - elevated now to the highest echelons of the British establishment.

One can but wonder how the families of one million dead Iraqi souls will receive this shameless announcement. The UK state's contempt for them is multiple times greater than its blatant disregard for the British public.

For services to British imperialism and mass murder, arise 'Sir Tony'. A state that should be expressing atonement for its historic crimes has conferred its highest award on someone responsible for a million Iraqi deaths. A truly depraved establishment.

Calls are now circulating for Blair's knighthood to be revoked. Though well-meaning, they are deeply misguided. Intent on shaming and punishing Blair, they turn any similar damning attention away from the very system that has conferred this award on him.

One leading petition urges, in deferential tones, that "Her Majesty" rescind Blair's knighthood. Yet it's the monarch and her offices that hold direct responsibility for making this particular award. Are we to believe that she and her court advisers had no understanding of Blair's actions over Iraq and the resultant furore this blatant patronage would cause?

Lamentably, such calls only help validate the Honours system, while lamenting the 'damaged constitution' and showing continued homage to the institution of monarchy. 

Instead, we should be using this announcement not only to denounce Blair, but the ways in which the entire establishment peddles such rewards, providing cover for its villainous own.

War criminal Blair's elevated knighthood from the establishment should NOT be opposed. It helps shine a double damning light on both him AND the rotten 'honours' system. Saying that he's 'not deserving' of the royal system only serves to validate the system itself.

The argument that Blair's 'recognition' 'makes a mockery' of the honours process is deeply blind-sided, serving to excuse the monarch's central role. 

It fails to make what should be an obvious connection between the political crimes of figures like Blair and an institution that has given vital authority to the vast imperialist crimes which so many leaders of an ultra-militarist British state has inflicted on the world.

And while the public express due outrage over 'Sir Tony', those bestowed with royal honours might now be more honestly reflecting on how they see themselves in wearing the baubles of Empire. Will any, one wonders, be so conscientiously inclined to send theirs back?

What kind of system-preserving propaganda manages to have us, and perhaps even some of them, outraged only about the recipient of this award rather than the very institution giving it?

Of course, why WOULDN'T a debased establishment protect and honour one of its debased own? The real question is whether all those already 'honoured' will ever see their own compliance, relinquish their tainted 'honours' and expose that debased system.

Blair's all-knowing part in bringing mass death and suffering to the Middle East cannot be dissociated from an institution that has given its own royal stamp of approval to every murderous regime in the region. The same corporate-produced bombs and armaments visited on Iraqi and other innocents by Blair have been dutifully endorsed and promoted by this same militarist-invested family.   

  

Objecting to warmonger Blair's elevation by a blood-soaked establishment is a bit like expressing indignation over a local crime boss being rendered a 'made man' by the mafia.

Meantime, while Blair is being feted and living it up on his life of crime, Julian Assange, the figure who did most to expose such heinous actions, is festering in high-security Belmarsh jail, an alarmingly opposite form of 'reward' reserved by the establishment for this true public servant.

Where is the due media attention and public backlash against this scandalous anomaly?   

It's also of dark happenstance that Blair's New Year award coincided with the late Archbishop Tutu's state funeral. The moral and humanitarian gulf between the two could not be wider.

With perverse irony, on the day of the great Desmond Tutu's funeral, war criminal Blair was given a knighthood. While hypocritical Western leaders laud Tutu, protect Israel and denounce #BDS, Tutu refused to share the same platform as Blair, supported Palestinians and backed BDS.

Rescinding Blair's knighthood may bring understandable satisfaction in 'taking down' an unrepentant war criminal. It may even help bring closer the hopeful day he and his cohorts get sent to The Hague. 

But it won't bring forward any fuller indictment of the actual system that facilitated his actions and the palace forces that sought to decorate and protect him. 

Perversely, if this award is ultimately revoked, the 'validity' of the honours system and notion of a 'listening' monarch will actually be enhanced. Conversely, the more such 'honours' are conferred on infamous figures like Blair, the more an already depraved system will be further debased, delegitimised and threatened with extinction. 

All of which renders 'Sir Tony' the most welcome and deserving knights of the rotten realm.

It's not just Blair that needs to be exposed and brought to justice, it's the whole nexus of elite institutions and the system of thought control that allows their collective crimes to be hidden and sanitised.