It is a Sunday. For my sanity I try very hard not to think on a Sunday, but these are strange times, and strange things are happening. Dark things. The national propaganda campaign about current events in the Middle East seems to be of a different nature than any other occasion I can think of in my adult life.
If you don’t believe me, fire up a search engine of your choice and try the following. First type in the words ‘Gaza Yougov opinion poll ceasefire’. This is an opinion poll from Thursday which shows that 76 per cent of the British population want an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
But if you want to know that you need to read either the National or the Morning Star, the only UK newspapers to cover the story, various publications from the Middle East or a number of blogs or news analysis sites.
Now try this Type in ‘Amnesty International report Gaza Israel war crimes’. You can find the report from Amnesty here. It is the result of days of very detailed evidence gathering from multiple sources on the ground in Gaza. They identified widespread evidence of clear and systematic war crimes being carried out by Isreal.
But I can’t find a single reference to it in any UK news media outlet. This is utterly remarkable. If Amnesty International accidentally sneezed the words ‘war crime’ and ‘Russia’ in the same sentence it gets covered. This is a very substantial piece of work that is being hidden.
Now take a shot at ‘letter Muslims no confidence Keir Starmer’. Just to be clear, thousands of Muslims in Britain signed a letter of no confidence in Keir Starmer’s leadership because of his comments on Gaza. But not a single news outlet in the UK ran this as a story. It got mentioned in a couple of other stories and there has been a little bit of analysis about a mini-rebellion in Labour.
And a few media outlets ran a story about some councillors resigning earlier in the week. Except there has been an almost constant stream of resignations of elected politicians, office bearers and other figures from Labour and these are not being reported. It is being made to go away.
This is really remarkable. It’s almost as if they don’t want you to know that your view that there should be a ceasefire doesn’t make you an outlier but one of the massive, overwhelming majority. It’s like they don’t want to you know what Israel is actually doing. It’s like the successful operation to remove anyone with any sympathies for Palestine from the Labour Party is not to be undermined by reporting facts.
This isn’t marginal stuff we’re talking about here, this is a ground-shaking opinion poll from one of the most respected polling companies in Britain. This is a report by the world’s most respected human rights monitoring body. This is a ruction in the Labour Party every bit as big as what happened under Corbyn. And yet you’re not being allowed to know it.
(Incidentally, just go back and stick the words ‘Jewish leaders letter no confidence Corbyn’ and tell me there is no hierarchy of racism for London centrists. The Guardian has been lecturing us about race solidly for years now – and yet it is very clearly institutionally racist itself.)
There is nothing more dangerous than a failing empire; it will do anything to protect itself, and it is absolutely doing everything it can to protect itself
Don’t kid yourselves on about what is happening here. This is an Archduke Ferdinand moment. The US has been losing its grip as the world’s hegemon for years (certainly since the Iraq War) but now it’s becoming obvious. The ‘American Century’ is over and we’re already into a multipolar world. Everyone apart from us can see it.
And there is nothing more dangerous than a failing empire. It will do anything to protect itself. And it is absolutely doing everything it can to protect itself. Do not for a fraction of a second think that you are being told the truth. Just assume that if (say) the UK was holding conclusive evidence that the hospital boming was Israel (I’m not saying it was, it’s just a thought experiment), you wouldn’t hear it for five years.
I could go on like this for ages. There is now systematic terrorism taking place in the West Bank. Armed settlers are going down to Palestinian villages every night and shooting unarmed civilians at random. The Israeli military are helping them. You can find this in first person testimonies, but the Guardian describes this as ‘78 Palestinians died in clashes with the IDF‘.
Clashes? Between one of the most sophisticated armies in the world and unarmed civilians?
Like I say, I’ve seen plenty of media manipulation in my life but I have never seen virtually every publication in Britain instantly and willingly convert into being propaganda machines for the British state.
Am I wrong? Is it normal these stories aren’t being reported? If you’re a Scottish (or a British) journalist and you think I’m wrong, I offer you a slot here to put me straight. Fire me over a rebuttal and I’ll put it up.
I don’t mean one of those self-glorification pieces you do about how you are all that is standing between us and barbarism and how without a ‘free’ press it would all go to hell. I mean explain to me why your newspaper didn’t cover an opinion poll that showed that the UK’s foreign policy establishment has never, ever been so out of step with the public.
These are dark times and the UK is getting darker by the minute. Ten minutes ago the ‘liberal media’ was pointing at Russia, Hungary, Belarus and the rest and telling you that we were a last bastion of freedom. Now?
Perhaps this is the talk of social media. Perhaps you’re all over this. But I can tell you this – most of Britain isn’t on political Twitter. So most of Britain is in the dark about what is happening in the world right now. Deliberately so.