UK Politics

The Mainstream Media Will Never Rebuild Public Trust So Long As It Covers Immigration With Such Overt Bias

Samuel Hooper16 Comments

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If the mainstream media really wants to rebuild public trust in their own reporting and editorial content, they should halt their their insidious campaigning for open borders and hysterical scaremongering about proper border controls and finally cover the immigration debate with impartiality and objectivity

For those who still do not quite understand why so many people are no longer willing to be spoon-fed “facts” and opinions from the mainstream media and their patrons within the establishment, I can do no better than give you this case study from the Sacramento Bee, and that newspaper’s editorial about president-elect Donald Trump’s likely policies on illegal immigration.

From the Editorial Board’s article:

When President-elect Donald Trump vowed at times during his campaign to expel 11 million undocumented immigrants upon taking office, Americans wondered whether he was just opening a negotiation or seriously telling the foreign-born that they should be very afraid.

The answer appears to be some of both. In his post-election interview with “60 Minutes,” Trump lowered his number, saying his administration would focus, at least initially, on “people that are criminal and have criminal records – gang members, drug dealers, we have a lot of these people, probably 2 million, it could be even 3 million.”

“We are getting them out of the country,” he said, “or we are going to incarcerate.”

No one wants gang members and drug dealers to be out committing crimes, with or without papers. But beyond that, Team Trump has offered little to reassure this nation of immigrants.

My emphasis in bold.

The Sacramento Bee is utterly unable (or more likely unwilling) to distinguish between illegal immigrants – people who either entered the United States without permission or else deliberately overstayed their short term residencies – and “the foreign-born” in general.

To aid in that deliberate blurring of the boundaries, the word “undocumented” has been brought in to replace “illegal” as an attempt to bridge the gulf between people who join the back of the queue and emigrate to the United States through the lawful channels and those who (for whatever reason) choose to circumvent the process and make a mockery of those laws and the people who follow them.

(Indeed, elsewhere in the media there are people like despicable propagandist Jorge Rivas who ludicrously try to suggest that “undocumented” is somehow the neutral term while the more accurate “illegal” carries negative connotations that we should somehow swat away and ignore in the name of social justice).

But why should the “foreign-born” as a generic group be afraid of Donald Trump, as the Sacramento Bee suggests? Why should somebody who married a US citizen and completed the proper paperwork to become a legal resident or citizen of the United States fear? Why should somebody whose firm transferred them to the United States for a certain period of time, in compliance with the various visa requirements? Why should future US citizens such as myself – married to an American, with the ultimate intention of settling back in the United States – be concerned that Donald Trump intends to thwart our plans?

The answer, of course, is that none of these groups have any reason to fear the presidency of Donald Trump. The only people who may be immediately impacted by the new administration’s immigration policies will be those currently residing in the United States illegally. But the Sacramento Bee – together with nearly all of the mainstream print and television news media – are determined to suggest otherwise, to imply that the Evil Donald Trump intends to purge America of anyone with dark skin or a funny surname.

The media does this first by softening the language to downplay the lawbreaking aspect of the situation, re-branding illegal immigrants as merely “undocumented immigrants” – people who have every right to remain in the United States, but whose passports, visas and other documents proving their eligibility mysteriously disappeared in a puff of smoke, rendering them sadly undocumented. And then they falsely suggest that Donald Trump’s (and much of America’s) concern about illegal immigration is about immigration in general.

Of course, Britain has experienced a very similar phenomenon, most visible during the EU referendum in Britain. Since the previous Labour government’s refusal to adopt transitory controls on immigration (or even consult the people about such a measure) when the A10 Eastern European countries joined the European Union, net migration to the United Kingdom has increased at a rate far above the previous normal baseline, outstripping the growth of housing, the upgrading of infrastructure and (sometimes) the ability of communities to socially assimilate the new arrivals. Meanwhile, the government’s approach to those immigrants from outside the EU was equally “hands-off”, asking little by way of assimilation or community contribution from those who arrived, many of whom set up parallel communities based on ethnicity or religion, openly refusing the give-and-take of the melting pot in favour of a stubborn refusal to participate in the wider society.

But for over a decade, to even question the inherent virtue of fully open borders was denounced by the hysterical Left as being xenophobic at best, and deeply racist and fascistic at worst. Even when articulate explanations were made that the issue is not a hatred of foreigners but rather the absence of democratic consent and the fact that net migration continues to outstrip our present ability to manage without adverse side-effects, still the leftists roared that the people with concerns were racists hiding behind a thin veneer of respectability.

For me, the real low point came when a Sky News presenter interviewing schoolchildren for a feature about the rise of UKIP just prior to the general election, asked a credulous boy what he would think of an MP in Westminster who “says it is a problem” for people to have Polish or Bulgarian friends (neither of UKIP’s two MPs at the time were remotely racist or had ever expressed opposition to friendship between British people and legal immigrants).

Here was a reporter for a national TV news channel so utterly unaware of his own internal biases (I’ll be kind and refrain from accusing him of deliberate malevolence) that he thought nothing of suggesting to an innocent schoolkid (and millions of viewers watching at home) that the one party seriously committed at the time to controlling immigration volumes was racist and against anybody befriending people of other nationalities.

And this remark went completely unnoticed, unpunished by Ofcom (the regulator) because it was so utterly typical of the mainstream media’s approach to immigration.

And that approach can be described as follows: All immigration, legal and illegal, skilled and unskilled, is to be encouraged to the fullest extent possible. There is no moral difference between coming to live in a (Western) country legally and doing so illegally. If anything, illegal immigrants are to be praised and put on a pedestal for their courage in flouting the law. Any attempts to limit immigration volumes in response to popular concerns are inherently racist, and are to be ignored or shouted down as forcefully as possible, while those people daring to express such views should be publicly demonised and accused of harbouring intolerant, xenophobic opinions. Private citizens demanding controls on immigration are racist. Politicians seeking to respond to public concerns about immigration are irresponsible populists seeking to stir dark and malevolent forces of bigotry.

The thing is, eventually people get sick of being told that they are mean or intolerant or racist simply for wanting to see the law properly enforced, or for the integrity of national borders to be defended. And while half the country (Britain or America) seem happy to lap up the Kool-Aid and parrot the establishment talking points that unlimited immigration is a good thing – usually those Americans who only ever see the positive sides of immigration, and whose economic position insulates them from the negative sides – the other half of the country is increasingly unwilling to let itself be cowed into silence by the moralising minority.

Americans are fully aware that they are a “nation of immigrants”, as the Sacramento Bee insufferably sees fit to remind their readers. And none of those first-generation immigrants who respected the law have the slightest thing to worry about. But the mainstream media and other open borders cheerleaders cannot admit this fact, as their only hope of achieving their open borders dream is by mobilising a political movement based on the false idea that all immigrants are under threat. This is nonsense.

Most Americans are probably willing to be reasonable about illegal immigration. They would be receptive to the argument that were they in the position of poor or desperate migrants looking for a better life for their families, they would probably be tempted to flout immigration law too. Many Americans understand that it is neither feasible nor moral to deport up to 11 million people overnight, and that to attempt to do so would be bad for the people involved, bad for an economy which relies on their labour and bad for the federal budget which would have to burden the cost of increased deportations.

In other words, a reasonable compromise around immigration – involving greater border security, the deportation of those illegal immigrants who have committed other crimes while in the United States and a path toward permanent residency (if not full citizenship) for those involved – was within reach. At least prior to the election of Donald Trump.

But no – the media and their establishment backers overreached. They did not want reasonable compromise (not, it should be noted, that the Republicans presented a tremendously friendly face for negotiating such a deal), preferring to shoot for everything they wanted (de facto open borders, legalisation of all those currently illegally living in the United States and less stringent rules for newcomers) by demonising all of those who dared to oppose that agenda.

And even now they can’t stop. Even now their maximalist position on open borders has helped to deliver Donald Trump to the White House, media outlets like the Sacramento Bee are wringing their hands that Trump intends to persecute all immigrants, and suggesting that there is no moral difference between “undocumented immigrants” and those who seek to become new Americans the legal way.

At this point the mainstream media deserve their fate. The fruits of their hysterical demonising of anybody with doubts about uncontrolled immigration are staring back at them in the form of president-elect Donald J Trump, and even now they are unable or unwilling to change the script, or to concede that perhaps not everybody with qualms about immigration harbours a seething hostility to brown people.

The media’s overt, unapologetic bias on the subject of immigration has helped to deliver Brexit to the United Kingdom and President Donald Trump to the United States – both results which they absolutely feared and detested. So given that their current strategy of overt bias is not working, why do they still refuse to compromise and play it straight with the people? Why will they not realise that openly cheering for one side while demonising the other simply doesn’t work in the age of alternative media and the independent blogosphere?

This is going to get worse before it gets better, unless the mainstream media stops mindlessly reciting the propaganda of the open borders zealots and starts reporting on immigration more objectively and less manipulatively. And right now, there is very little chance of such a miracle occurring.

 

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The Myth Of Post-Factual Politics

Samuel Hooper8 Comments

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The term “post-truth politics” is starting to become an emotional comfort blanket for those people unwilling to examine the reason for legitimate electoral failure

In these interesting times, a lot is being made of the idea that we live in a supposedly “post-truth” or “post-factual” society, where political debates take place and elections are swung not on the basis of evidence and rationality but rather on the basis of bluster and superstition.

Even those of us who supported either Brexit or the election of Donald Trump (this blog was strongly in favour of the former but against the latter) should acknowledge that there is a degree of truth to this criticism of the modern media landscape. As this Buzzfeed article makes clear, when there is a whole industry comprised of people producing inflammatory, fake pro-Trump news articles to earn ad revenue from the clicks of credulous partisans eager to have their existing biases confirmed, something is clearly awry.

But it is also true that dismissing electoral losses as the result of dumb people being duped in a lamentably post-factual world – just as some Trump supporters prepared for defeat by insisting that losing to Hillary Clinton could only be the result of a shadowy conspiracy – is an emotional comfort blanket too easily seized by people who don’t want to do the hard work of understanding why their own ideas were rejected by the public.

I recently attended the debate marking the launch of the 2017 Orwell Prize in London, where the panel – including Polly Toynbee and the excellent Christopher Snowdon – debated the role of the media and of “experts” in the recent EU referendum. Snowdon gives an excellent summary of his own remarks here, and concluded his speech:

Lying may be more morally objectionable, but bullshit is more common and it is just as damaging to public understanding of the world we live in. My argument is not that we are living in a truthful age. On the contrary, there is bullshit everywhere but deliberate political lies make up a very small portion of it – and that portion is not growing.

As long as people have an appetite for having their biases confirmed, newspapers will continue printing bullshit. As long as people think they can get away with it, they’re going to mislead the public. I don’t think we live in the post-truth era because I don’t think there was ever an era of truth. We are still in the pre-truth era and probably always will be.

As the other panellists – Toynbee most forcefully, of course – lamented the way in which the Evil Murdoch Press had supposedly manipulated its uniquely gullible readership with lies and disinformation while Evil politicians like Michael Gove encouraged people to ignore the pro-Remain advice of self-described “experts”, thus causing Brexit, I felt the need to take a stand. So at the appropriate time I seized the microphone and pointed out that wheeling out expert after expert to repeat the establishment line that Brexit would ruin the British economy (as though none of these experts didn’t let their personal biases and preferences colour their opinions) made all other aspects of the decision secondary considerations.

Sky News and the BBC had an endless parade of self-described experts talking about the theoretical economic consequences of Brexit, yet hardly any time was given to experts on governance, democracy, history or constitutional matters. At some point a decision was made that this debate would be All About Economics, and nothing else. One can dispute the dismal predictions of the Remain campaign’s economic “experts” – this blog certainly did – but at least we discussed economics. There was barely a proper discussion about democracy or the constitutional implications of staying or leaving the EU.

This was unfortunately taken by the debate’s moderator to mean that “feelings matter too”, which is not what I was saying at all. My point was that qualitative facts are every bit as important as quantitative ones, and often even more so. I would have expected more sympathy for my viewpoint – among the trendy-lefty, pro-Corbyn crowd at the event were countless people who clearly spend much of their time railing against free markets and capitalism, yet who seem to unquestioningly believe that the slightest potential threat to future GDP growth would make seceding from the European Union in pursuit of democratic renewal a calamitous idea.

When it comes to British membership of the EU, the Remain campaign’s Project Fear spoke only about numbers (and skewed ones at that), with only the occasional bit of fluff about “friendship ‘n cooperation” thrown in as a rhetorical garnish. My point was that in voting for Brexit, it is not that the British people disregarded the numeric facts entirely, but rather that they cared more about other, qualitative facts. Facts to which the Remain campaign never sought to acknowledge, let alone tackle.

The facts vs emotion reduction which met my contribution to the Orwell debate and which now colours nearly all of the media coverage of our supposedly “post-truth society” is therefore a bit too simplistic. There are quantitative facts but there are also qualitative facts – truths which are not based on emotion or hunch or prejudice, but which nonetheless cannot be added up in an Excel spreadsheet, slapped on an infographic and shared on social media.

I voted for Brexit because I believe that the EU actively harms and undermines the democracies of its member states, by deliberate design. I marshalled many facts to back up this position during the campaign – from primary and secondary historical sources, the stated positions of current EU leaders and various other proofs. Just because they are not quantifiable and I could not declare (for example) that leaving the EU will make Britain 11.2% more democratic and give the people 8.4% more control over the decision makers does not make the facts on which I argued my case untrue. And reducing those qualitative facts about democratic control, accountability and the known history and trajectory of the EU as mere “emotion” unfairly diminishes those facts.

When Brexiteers present quotes from EU “founding fathers” speaking of their vision for a federal Europe and tie them to quotes and draft bills from contemporary EU politicians pushing towards the same goals, these are facts. They are not quantifiable, but they are solid facts, much more than mere emotion. And they deserved to be considered and engaged with, yet by and large they were not during the campaign.

Modern politics has become excessively numbers driven. But when the Overton Window is so narrow, the range of policy options so constrained and politics largely reduced to the technocratic management of our public services then that probably becomes inevitable. And we must counter this trend by giving more of a focus to narratives and general principles again. That will lead to greater political engagement.

At present there is far too much self-satisfied criticism of “post-factual politics” in which defeated pro-EU supporters express alarm that people supposedly ignored the only facts available to them and made irrational decisions against their own self interest, and this is not so. There were other, unquantifiable facts which moved people to vote for Brexit. And these pivotal criteria deserve to be acknowledged as legitimate facts, not dismissed as mere emotions.

It is easy and comforting to believe that one’s own side thinks and acts according to reason, logic and evidence while one’s opponents are moved by base emotion, superstition or prejudice. But the divide is very rarely so clear.

And if the “post-truth politics” crowd do not soon realise this and practice some humility, that emotional comfort blanket could all too quickly become a funeral shroud when they next face the electorate.

 

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Problematising Boundary Review Is Just A Way Of Entrenching The Labour Party’s Structural Privilege

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

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There are many obvious reasons for delaying or scrapping the upcoming constituency boundary review changes – but no good ones

See what I did with the headline there? Right-wingers can adopt the wheedling, victimhood-soaked language of the Cult of Social Justice and Identity Politics too, if we think it is going to advance our cause or smite our enemies.

Left Foot Forward editor Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin is in high dudgeon because the coming boundary review and shrinkage of the House of Commons from 650 seats to a slightly more manageable 600 MPs apparently means that too many of those who are left will be on the government payroll.

Ní Mhaoileoin writes:

The government’s plan to cut the size of parliament will increase the proportion of MPs on the government payroll, the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) has flagged.

According to new research, in a 600-seat Commons some 23 per cent of MPs would be on the government payroll, the highest proportion ever. The ERS warns that this could have ‘deeply worrying’ effects on parliamentary scrutiny and is calling for a cap on the number of payroll MPs.

‘This research shows we risk a crisis of scrutiny if the cut in MPs goes ahead without a corresponding cap on the number of payroll MPs,’ ERS chief executive Katie Ghose commented.

Having nearly a quarter of all MPs in the pocket of the PM is not a healthy situation for our democracy.

I think we can all agree that a body tasked with holding the executive to account which itself includes government ministers, parliamentary private secretaries and other hangers-on is always going to struggle to do an effective job – which is why many of us who think and care about constitutional issues all the time (as opposed to only when the system throws up a result we don’t like or disfavours our own preferred party) favour the total separation of the executive and the legislature.

Conservatives and progressives could potentially work together on reducing the size and cost of government while improving oversight by reducing the number of unnecessary junior ministers and official bag carriers, were it not for the leftist desire to have a government minister for everything under the sun, from Culture, Media and Sport to “Children, Young People and Families”. When your political philosophy expects and demands that the state be involved in every aspect of our lives, it inevitably necessitates a large cohort of ministers to do the meddling.

A cap on government payroll MPs would nonetheless be a reasonable (if typically British) compromise, but of course this is not what Ní Mhaoileoin really wants. And what Ní Mhaoileoin really wants is to maintain the current structural privilege currently enjoyed by the Labour Party. As Labour tends to perform best in urban seats, which themselves tend to be smaller and less populated than the suburban and rural constituencies where the Conservatives do well, the net effect for many years has been that it takes far fewer votes to elect a Labour MP than a Conservative MP.

Think of the gross anomaly whereby the SNP won 56 seats in Parliament at the 2015 general election with just 1.5 million votes, while UKIP won just a single seat despite winning 3.9 million votes. In the case of Labour and the Conservatives, the disparity is less pronounced – but it still exists. Boundary reform seeks to equalise constituency sizes, thus addressing the problem (though sadly not helping UKIP, who do not boast the SNP’s narrow geographic concentration of support). And this equalisation will enforce a basic fairness, the value of which makes it worth suffering through any negative side effects, particularly where these can reasonably be mitigated.

The concerns about the upcoming boundary review are well-rehearsed and rapidly becoming tedious. One might take them more seriously if those who raise the concerns showed any interest in solving or overcoming the issues that they raise rather than cynically using them as an excuse to halt something which – despite its inherent merit – is likely to be detrimental to the Labour Party’s electoral fortunes.

In short, this overwrought leftist concern about a toothless Parliament in the pocket of Theresa May is merely an attempt to problematise the issue of boundary reform, throwing a spanner in the works to prevent electoral disadvantage to Labour. Ní Mhaoileoin is doubtless in favour of reducing the size of the Commons as an abstrat theory, and if she were pressed through a hypothetical example would likely object to the current distribution of voters among seats which favours one party over another. But because the currently-favoured party in our system is Labour, and because Labour stands to lose out in relation to the Tories through this particular boundary review, Niamh feels compelled to oppose it.

But how to oppose something that is so self-evidently worthwhile and logical? The only way is to go grasping for every last flaw or possible technical hurdle in the review, inflating them out of all proportion and presenting each one as a show-stopper (or at least as justifiable grounds for interminable delay). As with the British Left’s general approach to Brexit, Ní Mhaoileoin is desperately problematising the boundary review, hoping to scupper it without ever having to reveal her true, grubby, anti-democratic reasons for doing so.

Smart politics? Maybe. The principled, moral, liberal thing to do? Absolutely not. Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin’s position is actually profoundly conservative – and not in a good way.

But apparently any behaviour, no matter how tawdry and self-serving, becomes noble and virtuous when it is performed in the service of the Labour Party.

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Oh, So Now You’re A Liberal?

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

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The vote for Brexit and Donald Trump’s presidential election victory seems to have wrongly convinced an entire army of snarling, leftist authoritarians that they are actually the virtuous defenders of liberalism

Is anybody else getting mighty sick of the constant parade of left-wing, Big Government-supporting authoritarians suddenly rushing to cloak themselves in the veil of “liberalism” as they struggle to process what they see as successive defeats in the EU referendum and the US presidential election?

I can’t think of a word that has been more overused by pundits since everybody got together a couple of years ago and decided that the related N-word (neoliberalism) was this season’s hottest fashion statement, and started accusing everybody whose views they dislike of being an Evil Neoliberal, as though it were some devastatingly intellectual insult.

Here’s the FT, weeping into their cornflakes about the supposed death-throes of liberalism:

Mr Trump’s victory, coming after the Brexit referendum vote in Britain, looks like another grievous blow to the liberal international order. Mr Trump must decide, by his actions and words, whether he intends to contribute to the great unravelling, at incalculable cost to the west.

And the Independent:

Democracy is changing, and not for the better, but those who believe in liberal values, tolerance and protecting the environment can learn from this setback and fight back.

The Independent, of course, promotes liberal tolerance through its courteous and magnanimous treatment of those who dare to dissent from its positions on social issues, climate change and global governance.

Here’s the Spectator:

In her concession speech, Clinton said her goal had been ‘breaking down all the barriers that hold any American back from achieving their dreams‘. This is the dream of liberalism, which seeks freedom from any social or economic constraint. Elites like Clinton feel confident that they can navigate a deregulated society in which class, gender, and race are all fluid. They support deregulated markets as well, confident that free trade and open borders will serve their own interests in the near term and the whole country’s in the longer term.

Freedom from any social constraint? Only if one happens to agree with the elite.

And the Spectator again, covering itself in even more glory:

The challenge to liberalism is still seen as an argument to be won rather than an irreversible sea-change. But, if anything, the scale of the problem has been understated. The core tenets of liberalism are freedom and equality, ideas that are under siege.

Oh, and let’s not forget the prime minister herself, Theresa May, speaking at the Lord Mayor’s banquet on Monday evening:

Change is in the air. And when people demand change, it is the job of politicians to respond.

But it’s also the job of all those in positions of influence and power – politicians, business leaders and others – to understand the drivers of that demand too.

And I think that if we take a step back and look at the world around us, one of the most important drivers becomes clear – the forces of liberalism and globalisation which have held sway in Britain, America and across the Western world for years have left too many people behind.

Let’s be clear: those forces have had – and continue to have – an overwhelmingly positive impact on our world.

It really has come to something quite strange when Theresa May – a flinty eyed authoritarian who gives me pause any time I check a book out of the library, lest her government use my borrowing history as a pretext for throwing me in jail next week – seeks to wrap herself in the mantle of small-L liberalism.

But now everyone seems to be at it, suddenly claiming that they are terribly “liberal” while the people they dislike are not. Politicians and pundits who only months ago could be found calling for people to be banned from entering the country due to their political beliefs are now rending their garments at the election of a man who suggested that people should be banned because of their religious ones. And in so doing, they declare themselves to be the defenders of liberalism, while utterly oblivious to the irony of it all.

People who wanted to usher in national ID cards, strengthen the surveillance state, extend pre-charge detention, ban UKIP voters from fostering or adopting children, throw people in jail for their Facebook and Twitter posts, arrest people for singing the wrong songs at a football match, ban advertisements for being offensive, hike taxes even higher on cigarettes or alcohol or ban them altogether, levy regressive taxes on soft drinks, erect safe spaces on university campuses, slap trigger warnings on academic syllabuses, shame or punish people for the Halloween costumes that they choose to wear, get people fired from their jobs for holding or expressing the wrong opinion, strangle religious freedom and force people to violate their faiths by positively affirming the actions and lifestyle choices of others – these people are suddenly all over the airwaves, lamenting that it is actually those Evil Brexiteers and Donald Trump supporters who have supposedly brought our previously-idyllic liberal age crashing down in flames.

Well sorry, but this pious, self-aggrandising argument is complete baloney. I can’t speak for Donald Trump supporters, not being one myself, but I am very adamant that my vote for Brexit was a liberal vote for strong, globally-engaged nation state democracy. I and millions of others voted to leave the European Union because it sought to impose a degree of supranational government upon us which far outweighs the limited extent to which most Britons consider themselves European and consent to such governance. I did so because I judged that my inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are to this day best defended by a strong nation state with a reinvigorated national democracy, and not a remote supranational union with some of the superficial trappings – but none of the spirit – of democratic accountability. Voting for Brexit was perhaps the most profoundly liberal thing I have done on my thirty-three years on this good Earth.

And yet now I am supposed to sit back while every two-bit authoritarian with a newspaper column publishes tedious identikit dirges alleging that I, a staunch libertarian conservative, am supposedly at the vanguard of a dystopian new illiberal movement sweeping across the world and shrouding humanity in darkness and uncertainty? Hell no.

If liberalism is so great – and by and large, it is – then it would be nice if some of liberalism’s new fair-weather friends tried to remember the ideology’s core principles once they have finished weeping about Trump and Brexit and turned their attention back to more mundane political events. Perhaps they might care to remember the term they so glibly appropriated next time they call for something they disagree with to be banned, or for somebody who offends them to be punished by the criminal justice system. What do you think are the chances that this will happen?

After a week of this incessant, tedious refrain about the “death of liberalism” from the commentariat, I have just about had enough of my liberalism being culturally appropriated by the snarlingly authoritarian Regressive Left. It is only in the reflection of Donald Trump or Nigel Farage’s wildest rhetoric that their own paternalistic, control-freakish, coercive instincts can be even semi-plausibly pitched as being remotely liberal, and those of us with long memories and functioning brains know these pearl-clutchers for what they really are – persistent, deadly enemies to true liberalism.

 

Postscript: In this excellent piece, Pete North slaps down the idea that the West is somehow turning its back on liberalism, drawing a crucial distinction between genuine small-L liberalism which is as popular as ever and its decadent, identity politics and victimhood culture-infused cousin which has indeed been rejected by the electorate.

Money quote:

In a liberal society we appreciate that we all have our distinctions and limitations and we recognise that nobody should endure discrimination or punishment for those facets which cannot be changed. Gender, sexual preference, skin colour. But it goes further than that. We try to open doors for people os that people can break out of predetermined roles and destinies. That to me is social progress, where nobody is limited by class and physical attributes.

But when liberals begin to attack the very foundation of our morality and our values and seek to replace them with an ultra-permissive, anything goes morality we lose any kind of cohesion and moral authority. Moral relativism takes hold to such an extent that we can no longer defend those things we value.

What the left have done is to identify all social norms as inherently evil – which has given rise to the cult of the self which in turn has spawned the now toxic brand of feminism we see on the internet and the perverse social justice movement which processes everything through the prism of identity. It centres around a certain narcissism whereby individual rights become entitlements on the basis of one’s sense of victimhood. From this is born the right not to be offended or triggered – and with that goes the death of free speech. Opposition is inherently oppression it seems.

And this is why the culture war of the last decade goes so heavily with what is happening on a more visible level in politics. In what is now seen as a backlash against political correctness, there is something more seismic happening.

And North’s conclusion:

But then this tyranny of what is laughingly known as progressivism is on borrowed time. It always was a moral and intellectual perversion and it was always a minority view. How it came to be one of the most powerful ideas of a century is for the historians but now it seems the majority have finally lost patience and stood up to the left. In this we are not turning our backs on liberalism. We are merely putting an end to the gradual erosion of those, dare I say it, traditional values on which our modern and open society is built. I think this is what makes Theresa May, herself a church and shires Conservative, the right lady at the right time.

The sad part of this is that there will inevitably be a tiny minority who think we are going back to the old days where rampant and open homophobia is acceptable and we will no doubt see an unfortunate spike in racist incidents. But it is a typical left wing lie to say that mainstream society has suddenly become intolerant and racist. That trick might have worked for the last twenty years but the election of Trump tells you that the majority no longer care what you call them. The more offensive to the left the better.

And it is so telling that across the USA we now see the left spitting venom. We now see the true face of the “tolerant” left in all its bile. We can see that it was never about advancing a better society for all. It was about the minority wielding power over the majority – to impose a twisted morality on society without its consent – from the United Nations to the local primary school.

I repeat: genuine, small-L liberalism has not been rejected by the people, and is only under marginally more serious threat from ignorant authoritarians like Donald Trump than it has been over the past decades from highly learned progressives who sought to impose their “progressive” worldview on an uncertain population while actively criminalising dissent.

Those weeping most loudly today about the supposed death of liberalism have often themselves done as much as anyone to damage liberalism themselves through their decidedly illiberal and intolerant past behaviour.

 

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Will 2017 Be The Year That Independent Political Blogs Make A Comeback?

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

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Now more than ever, we need good political journalism and incisive commentary to make sense of the world and the challenges (and opportunities) facing us in the new Age of Brexit and Donald Trump. And increasingly, the only way one can find good analysis is by turning to independent bloggers

Veteran American television journalist / late-in-life social media champion Dan Rather has shared with his Facebook audience some thoughts on how they can best encourage and reward good journalism in the Age of Trump, following a presidential election campaign in which much of the mainstream media was deemed to have failed in its core duty to provide rigorous, civic-minded coverage and analysis.

Rather, who has provided an articulate and dignified left-wing running commentary on the 2016 presidential election via his Facebook page, writes:

There is no shortage of long, thoughtful articles that are worth a read. The problem is that our current journalism business model doesn’t seem to support the better instincts of the press as much as it should.

So if you want to know what you can do, please choose to support the press. If you find a news source you like and you think it is doing a good job, pay for the subscription. This doesn’t just help the bottom line but it is a vote of confidence in the system. Share smart, thoughtful pieces on social media and in emails to your friends. Let’s run up the clicks and views of the best of journalism. Also, I think we can not be passive with our news any longer. If you like what you see, let the publicans and journalists know through all the digital tools at your disposal. If you don’t like what you’re seeing, let them know as well. Or turn it off, refuse to follow the click bait.

The press is a vital partner in out democratic process. It is under incredible strains from a drastically changing media landscape and a potentially hostile in-coming administration. As citizens we should care deeply about this and vow to do something to help.

Many of us, for various reasons, have cause to be greatly disappointed with the mainstream media – whether we are left-wing or right-wing, British or American, supported Brexit or staying in the EU, preferred Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.

With very few exceptions, television news has become a wasteland of quacking, know-nothing talking heads who specialise in providing visually pleasing, information-lite political gossip and who force their way onto our screens either by virtue of having had some dismal prior political career, fortunate social connections or simply the willingness to wear a bow-tie un-ironically while under the age of sixty.

And the print media is little better. While there are honourable exceptions at many publications, too many venerable titles have either dumbed down to the point where they have become utterly unreadable clickbait, or else sold their inquisitorial souls to the establishment in order to churn out tedious defences of the status quo and scurrilous hit-pieces on those who seek to disrupt it.

In many cases, a combination of scrambling to capture new revenue streams and remain financially viable combined with a fawning desire to be “liked” by the right people in Westminster and Washington D.C. has all but hollowed out the ranks of decent political journalists and de-fanged once-formidable publications.

In this, my good friend and fellow Brexiteer-in-arms Pete North has it exactly right:

In the final analysis the legacy media is dying. Our media was once a luxury liner. It is now a corred garbage scow with corrosion holes in the hull. It is dying a much deserved death and every bit of bad news for the newspapers is good news for us bloggers. I can think of plenty blogs who produce better and more informed content in an afternoon than the usual suspects manage in a week of trying. And there is good reason for that.

Outside of the bubble you have a certain distance from the fray and not in hock to the peer pressure inside it. Outside the bubble is the only place where free thinking can occur. To join them is to become them. And who would want to stunt their intellectual and personal growth in such a way?

This does of course mean that writing is now done largely as a labour of love. There is no money to be made nor recognition to be had. All that matters to me is that for every moment readers spend on advert free blogs is a moment they are not reading the Spectator or any of the other garbage. Every blog post I write is an act of vandalism on an established media whose final gasp cannot come too soon.

[..] This is the year where the word “blogspot” and “wordpress” carries prestige. The low grade tat of the legacy media shouldn’t even be acknowledged. If it didn’t exist at all we would be no worse off in our understanding of events and politics would be all the better for it. The dinosaurs have had their day and we should not mourn their passing. We should do what we can to hasten their demise.

Trust Pete to find the almost John Galt-like nobility in what we bloggers do – it certainly beats “fighting on the internet”, which is how I had previously been describing my nocturnal pastime of ranting into WordPress.

But joking aside, as Dan Rather says, “If you find a news source you like and you think it is doing a good job, pay for the subscription. This doesn’t just help the bottom line but it is a vote of confidence in the system. Share smart, thoughtful pieces on social media and in emails to your friends. Let’s run up the clicks and views of the best of journalism.”

Some of the best political commentary right now comes from independent bloggers who write entirely in their spare time as labour of love, with no hope or expectation of recognition by the failing mainstream media. Therefore, if you have a favourite blogger or bloggers and are in a position to do so, consider making a donation or regular subscription to aid their work and acknowledge their effort. Share their articles with other people who may be interested in reading. It all helps.

I am personally very grateful to all those who have kindly donated to Semi-Partisan Politics over the past year. The vote of confidence you make in me with your PayPal donations and standing orders helps to keep me writing.

But this is much bigger than me and my little old blog. One thing that struck me as I live-blogged the US presidential election results last Tuesday night was she sheer number of outlets providing live coverage. Beyond the usual television stations there were live YouTube channels, Periscope broadcasts, websites, other live-blogs, Twitter and Facebook personalities and more. Newspapers were offering video broadcasts and television broadcasters were offering written analysis. And all of this from every political perspective under the sun, from triumphant Trumpists to crying Clintonites to Bernie Sanders supporters shouting “I told you so!”. From having to rely on a handful of networks and newspapers a generation ago, one is now paralysed by having too much choice.

(Now of course this raises important questions about the bubble effect, and one certainly doesn’t want to saturate oneself with endless sources bias confirmation – but that is a separate discussion).

But of all the cacophonous voices offering independent perspectives on politics today, very few will likely still be around in the same guise to cover the 2020 presidential election in America or general election in Britain. And more than likely, some of the best will have had to hang up their keyboards because of the pesky need to pay rent and buy food, while other, inferior writers and journalists go from strength to strength.

So I’m with Dan Rather. If there are writers or publications which provide you with indispensable or enjoyable analysis or commentary, make sure you vote with your wallet (and the social media sharing buttons) to let them know. And the sum total of these efforts may be a newly flourishing independent political blogosphere which continues to put much of the mainstream media to shame.

 

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