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The BBC’s ever shifting far-right goal posts

David Sedgwick
April 26, 2017

The BBC wilfully confuses the policy of extreme right-wing ideologies with just about any party or politician who dares question the sanctity of mass immigration, says David Sedgwick. 

In the run-up to the French elections the BBC have been excelling themselves. Fearing victory for Marine Le Pen's Front National party, our impartial national broadcaster has responded by upping their anti-Le Pen rhetoric to even higher levels, if that were at all possible.

Who's funding France's Far Right? asked Panorama just a week ago. The list goes on, and on. Whether on television, radio or the corporation's website, not a sentence nor utterance goes by wherein Le Pen's name or that of her party is either preceded or predicated by two little words: "far right."

With the Front National riding high in the opinion polls, that's an awful lot of French citizens who, if you listen, watch or read the BBC, seemingly support the extreme policies of a monstrous political ideology. Is it really so? Do a growing number of French citizens seriously support the politics of Nazism and Fascism?

Le Pen's proposal to implement a manageable and moderate system of immigration while promoting France –  its culture, heritage and values – has certainly struck a chord with French voters. Whether such policies can be justified as 'far right' seems highly dubious at best, deliberately misleading and not to mention inflammatory at worst.

Only not according to the BBC who wilfully conflate the policy of extreme right wing ideologies with just about any party or any politician who dares question the sanctity of mass immigration.

The corporation has its own reasons for polarising the debate into this simple for / against dichotomy. Our politically neutral national broadcaster sees as a threat any political party that opposes its own unquestioning support for the neoliberal open borders agenda, and thus expends a considerable amount of its energy and resources attempting to nullify this threat.

But there's a snag. To its horror and not to mention frustration, persuading people to abandon their cultural heritage has been a much trickier task than the corporation could ever have envisaged. For there exists a particularly stubborn section of the populace who appear to value cultural self-determinism much more than they do the open-border globalism so favoured by the BBC.

This predominantly white, working class, populace has always been maddeningly resilient to the so-called 'progressive' politics so beloved of the BBC and their ilk. Certainly, convincing them to vote against their own interests has been no easy task. Brexit proved as much.

That any western European nation would have the temerity to even think they have a culture worth preserving would strike Broadcasting House editorial staff as quaint, indicative of some ghastly, thinly suppressed form of white supremacism.

Furthermore, selling the dubious tenets of social engineering to such people has proved to be an almost impossible task. Much to the BBC's annoyance it appears that a significant majority of people are somewhat attached to their heritage, culture and antecedents, what in the parlance of the cultural Marxists would be disparagingly dismissed as mere nostalgia or sentimentality. Recall for example the corporation's enthusiastic promotion and multi-platform dissemination of the 'Little Englander' meme, calculated to sway opinion during the European Union referendum.

How then to convince a population to vote against its own interests, to surrender its heritage and accept the social upheaval that is a natural consequence of unceasing mass immigration?

Easy. Play the 'far right' card. Smear. After all, pulling out a smear is far less taxing then constructing a compelling enough argument that convinces people to abandon their heritage. Playing the far right card allows the BBC and its fellow travellers to simply bypass potentially bothersome arguments they know they cannot possibly win.

Above all else the BBC do not wish to justify their steadfast enthusiasm for social engineering. How could they possibly sell it to the majority? While mass immigration undoubtedly provides a plentiful supply of extremely cheap nannies, waiters and vegetable pickers – an economic underclass – it also has another unfortunate side effect, one rarely if ever experienced by the Hampstead set: wage stagnation and depression. It makes the poor poorer.

And that's before we even arrive at such thorny issues as social cohesion and provision of essential services. Focus too much attention on these areas and the debate would be over before it had even begun. And the BBC know it.

In order then to avoid analysing the issue in any great depth, the BBC simply turn to a tactic that has served them well – the far right meme. Tried and tested over many decades, it's a smear that has proved remarkably efficacious, one that has paralysed generations of politicians, neutralised too generations of voters who have been intimidated into feeling 'ashamed' of backing their political inclinations at the ballot box.

The far right smear is indeed a powerful one. Mud sticks, as the BBC are only too aware. For those however who dare step outside the field of 'enlightened' opinion even one degree, condemnation and censure await.

Inclusion therefore into the BBC's ubiquitous 'far right' category has never been easier than it is in 2017. Raise even a modicum of objection to unchecked mass immigration into your country, town or neighbourhood and along with a Marine Le Pen, a Nigel Farage or a Viktor Orban, you're in. You are a member of the 'far right.' It really is that simple.

For in BBC land, the question of mass immigration is black or white,  either / or. Support it – nay 'celebrate' it – or be prepared for the full arsenal of BBC insinuation, allusion and implication to be discharged in your direction.

Shockingly, those who should be holding the BBC to account – especially, but not limited to conservatives – are eerily quiet on this deliberate polarisation of a hugely complex subject.

Just the other day, when interviewed over his impeding resignation from frontline politics, George Osborne MP declared his unwavering support of among other things 'diversity' and by implication mass immigration. Yes, the Tory ex-chancellor is a fully paid up member of the multicultural club, which very fortuitously puts him very firmly on the right side of BBC-think. Very convenient.

Following his unexpected career change from politics to journalism, what chance Mr Osborne securing a lucrative senior BBC role in the not too distant future? As such Osborne typifies the influence and reach the BBC has over public life. His case is also a prime example of the type of 'conservative' the BBC just can't get enough of: a centrist, conformist, politically correct Europhile who fully supports the policies of globalisation; in other words, a Liberal. Marine Le Pen, on the other hand…

If you take the BBC at its word, the political landscape, at least on the Right is disarmingly simple. According to Auntie, the European Right manifests itself in two and only two ways: Liberal centrists like Osborne and far right extremists like Le Pen with nought in between. It's a stark choice, deliberately so.

Whether Marine Le Pen wins the French elections or not – and the neutral BBC are hoping and praying she does not – in order to keep the populist genie in its bottle, the corporation's response will be to simply shift its 'far right' goalposts in a few more hectares.

Take care then, because even the merest hint of scepticism towards the cult of mass immigration, diversity and multi-culturalism could land one in the BBC's large and commodious far right net. Mothers, brothers, friends and neighbours, nobody is safe.

Indeed, when the next terrorist atrocity occurs on foreign or British soil as it inevitably must, should she dare do anything more pragmatic than send her 'thoughts and prayers,' the BBC will have yet another member to add to their burgeoning "far right" category: the British prime minister.

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David Sedgwick is an author and university lecturer living between Malaga and Split. His books, 'The Fake News Factory: Tales from BBC-land' and 'BBC: Brainwashing Britain' cover topics as diverse as Cash-for-Questions, Brexit, chlorine-washed chicken and Syrian regime change.
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