SSSShhhh Don’t Mention the Extreme Left!

Published: 17 June 2020

On encountering this news article¹ about the continuing civil unrest pertaining to Black Lives Matter protests and the scuffles in Westminster on Saturday 13 June, my reaction was that it was a prime example of imbalanced journalism. I am sure it is not intentional. See what you think?

Whilst the headline ‘Ten year jail sentences for desecrating war memorials’¹is encouraging, leading the reader to the erroneous conclusion that the article’s focus will be on bringing to justice vandals and subversives who throw national monuments into rivers or deface statues of national heroes, it transpires that the acts of desecration are disproportionately narrowed down to one clash in Westminster and (at the time this article was written) an alleged act of disrespect, that of a man with ‘far-right connections’, urinating next to a monument.

The first couple of paragraphs look promising, but as the quotes are rolled out the narrative seems to hang on a piece of elastic, which keeps pulling it back in one direction.

‘Robert Buckland, the Justice Secretary, Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, and Suella Braverman, the Attorney General, are understood to be discussing proposals to make it easier to prosecute people who damage monuments to those who died during wars. The measures under discussion could also cover some of the statues currently being targeted by activists.’

Here we see statues being targeted by ‘activists’ but without reference to the political affiliations of the activists, or, indeed, their collective identity. The following paragraph reads:

‘… the Cenotaph daubed with graffiti, while demonstrators pulled down a statue in Bristol and are targeting many others across the country. In another incident last week, paint was found to have been thrown at two memorials in Lincolnshire.’

This paragraph tells us that the Cenotaph was ‘daubed with graffiti’ but it does not tell us who daubed it, the same applies to paint throwing in Lincolnshire.  We are told that it was ‘demonstrators’ who pulled down the statue in Bristol, but we are not told who the demonstrators are and there is no mention of their ideological background.

In itself that would be no problem, if it was not for the fact that no such reticence was exercised in the censorship department when it came to attributing identity to those people who travelled to Westminster on Saturday 13 June 2020 to protect the country’s heritage statues.

‘On Saturday, missiles were thrown at riot police attempting to move far-right activists away from Whitehall as their self-proclaimed mission to protect the Cenotaph and statue of Churchill descended into hours of violence.’

Here we have ‘far-right activists’ ~ a clear and categorical identification attributed to, presumably, all those in attendance. And then something strange (or, rather, not so strange) happens: the entire article pivots on one incident:

‘One man linked to a far right group was seen urinating next to the memorial to PC Keith Palmer, who died protecting Parliament from a terror attack in 2017.’

Forget for a moment the ambiguous ‘linked to’ and the ‘far-right’ label and concentrate on the phrase ‘next to the memorial’, and then read this:

‘Home Secretary Priti Patel condemned the incident. “We have seen some shameful scenes today, including the desecration of Pc Keith Palmer’s memorial in Parliament, in Westminster Square, and quite frankly that is shameful, that is absolutely appalling and shameful,” she said.’

Priti Patel states that ‘we have seen some shameful scenes today’, but then we have seen some shameful scenes all week, not the least of which has been the necessity of boarding up Winston Churchill’s statue and the Cenotaph to protect them from ‘demonstrators’ intent on criminal damage. She also asserts that PC Keith Palmer’s memorial has been desecrated.

At this point in time (when the article was published) the alleged far-right affiliated man had been described as urinating ‘next’ to the statue not on it. So was he being intentionally disrespectful? He was later found guilty of outraging public decency but not of acting with intent.

As disagreeable as this incident was, it should not be used to eclipse offenses of an even more disturbing nature, such as dragging statues off plinths and dumping them into rivers, daubing paint on the Cenotaph, attacking Winston Churchill’s statue and causing widespread civil unrest. Neither should it be used as a pretext for diverting our attention away from the many other distasteful acts committed during the recent period of civil disorder by people who certainly have no right-wing connections or by making tenuous links intended to demonise all counter-protestors as being of far-right extraction.

Back to the article: After a couple of paragraphs in which various commentators refer to the conservatives as the ‘party of law and order’ and the ‘defender of our culture and our heritage’, the article quickly reverts disproportionately to this one protest in Westminster and the ‘shameful behaviour’ of the far-right. Remember that the headline of the article leads one to believe that is about bringing statue violators to justice not just far-right activists in Westminster and a man relieving himself on the street.

‘Mr Johnson said “racist thuggery has no place on our streets”.’ 

Quite right!

‘The violence – which came as Black Lives Matter protestors gathered in mostly peaceful protest elsewhere around the country – were described by Ms Patel as “thoroughly unacceptable”.’

‘In mostly peaceful protest’? So has the Black Lives Matter ‘protest’ been mostly peaceful? According to this BBC article², it would appear so: ‘Some peaceful anti-racism protests also took place in London and across the UK’

Apparently, these peaceful protests took place elsewhere but on the same day as the one in Westminster. But were there any not-so-peaceful protesters from or associated with the Black Lives Matter movement in Westminster on Saturday 13 June?

Moving on:

‘In their public letter to this newspaper, Ms McVey, along with MPs including Lee Anderson and Brendan Clark-Smith, state: “The recent protests have been dominated by criminals who are undermining the very real fight against racism by burning flags, vandalising sacred war memorials and attacking police officers and this has caused outrage in our newly won constituencies in the Midlands and the North.

‘”It’s time for these subversive individuals to be arrested, prosecuted and punished in accordance with the law.” ‘

Here! Here! But who are these people who are ‘burning flags (and which flags?), vanadalising sacred war memorials and attacking police officers’? To whom do they owe their political allegiance?

Quickly wheel on Ken Marsh!

‘Ken Marsh, Chairman of the London Metropolitan Police Federation, called violent protesters to be jailed. “A faction of people only had one intention – to be violent and unlawful, they didn’t come here to protect the statues, it’s just disorder and unruliness.

The first sentence is spot on, but then he has to ruin it by referring specifically to this one protest in Westminster, which, in the context of this article, implies  that the only assaults the police have had to contend with during the Black Lives Matter furore are those from the far-right on Saturday 13 June.

Let us ask the question again? Are we to believe that each and everyone of the counter-protesters (there’s an expression that is typically reserved for the left) were of far-right persuasion and that on this day in Westminster the police had no one else to contend with, that is to say no unruly and violent behaviour from the subversive left?

When it comes to obtaining a clear and credible picture of events, especially when intuition suggests that those events are having difficulty passing the politically correct litmus test, you could do a lot worse than give the UK mainstream media a wide berth and look elsewhere. And, indeed, as I trawled through the UK press in the rapidly disappearing hope of finding something that sounded more tenable, I found myself repeatedly reciting the Rolling Stone’s refrain, “I can’t get no, satisfaction”, and then I went to India*.

It is a bit of a bugger when you have to travel halfway around the world to find something that has a ring of truth about it, but in my opinion I found it here in an article titled ‘Patriots defending statues clash with Black Lives Matter protesters and police in London’, an article which appeared online on The Times of India website*.

The Times of India³ report cuts through the PC soup served up by the UK media, dissolves the ambiguities and provides, in my opinion, a clear and balanced perspective of what shaped the events that day. You will also note that it pulls no PC punches when it comes to identifying who is who.

‘A hundred people were arrested and 27 people including six police officers injured when patriots defending statues clashed with Black Lives Matter protesters and riot police in London.

‘Black Lives Matter (BLM) had officially called off their protest on Saturday when war veterans, football supporters and other groups, including far-right Britain First, announced they would be travelling to the capital to defend its statues and war memorials after many had been daubed in graffiti by Black Lives Matter activists last weekend.’

On the subject of the composition of those who travelled to London to defend its heritage, The Times of India refers to war veterans and uses the all-important word ‘including’, with reference to the presence of the ‘far-right Britain First’: ‘including’ the far-right but not made up exclusively of the far-right. It also states unequivocally who it was who ‘daubed’ the statues.

However, it is the second paragraph that most importantly distinguishes the account of what happened in Westminster on that day from the UK mainstream media narrative:

‘Despite being called off, hundreds of Black Live Matter protesters still did turn up and they ended up facing off against the counter-protesters, causing outbreaks of fights and violence all day.’

The remainder of the article covers something that either was omitted or marginalised by the mainstream UK press, that Britain’s war veterans who had travelled to London to protect the statues from thugs (political affiliation withheld) were not exactly chuffed to learn that they had been labelled “extreme right-wingers“ by London Mayor Sadiq Khan.

But then it is not only Mr Khan who likes to label people ‘extreme right-wingers’. And here is your homework. Flick through the UK media coverage of the past week on this whole sorry episode of civil unrest from when it started to, and including coverage on, the urinating man, and see how many times you can spot references to the ‘far-left, extreme-left’, and how many times the words ‘extreme-right’ and ‘far-right’ crop up. In fact, you can repeat this exercise for news stories from the UK media over a 12-month period in the full and certain knowledge that this is a far less reprehensible hobby than destroying the nation’s heritage.     

It is a sad reflection on the state of the UK’s much-vaunted free press that at a time when it is shouting the loudest against so-called fake news, we, the public, are still attempting to get over the first hurdle and find news that is accurate and that, in order to accomplish this, we have to look elsewhere.

References [accessed 13 & 16 June 2020]
1. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/ten-year-jail-sentences-for-desecrating-war-memorials/ar-BB15rB0n?ocid=spartan-dhp-feeds {link no longer available [12/04/22]
2. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53031072
3. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/uk/patriots-defending-statues-clash-with-black-lives-matter-protesters-and-police-in-london/articleshow/76365525.cms

*The Times of India(TOI) is an Indian daily newspaper owned by The Times Group.

❗Feature image: (Photo credit: Yeshi Kangrang on Unsplash; https://unsplash.com/photos/14RqNPmDOno)

Copyright [Text] © 2018-2022 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.