We are not the only people who see the bias that so characterises the BBC output. Take the recent Radio 4 programme “The Reunion”. A B-BBC contributor notes…
“I didn’t listen to this programme because you can only take so much…and you know exactly the direction these fellow travellers will take when discussing Communism….lucky for me Charles Moore has done the hard work and has put the BBC well and truly in the stocks and brought such ambivalence toward ideological and actual threats to this nation up to date:
‘When will the BBC ever tell the truth about Anthony Blunt?’ Charles Moore reviews an edition of The Reunion (Radio 4) that focused on the disgraced art critic and his treachery.
‘Blunt was a virtually innocent victim, we were told, and the only villain was the press”.
The Reunion propagated the theory that spying for the Soviets in the Thirties and Forties was nothing worse than an excess of zeal. This is a shocking untruth. Hitler and Stalin were moral equivalents. Indeed, at the time when Blunt signed up for the Soviet Union, Stalin had actually killed far more people than Hitler because the Führer was only just getting into his stride. The BBC would (rightly) never dream of making a programme which sought to excuse traitors who worked for the Nazis.
In our generation, Blunt’s equivalents are the intellectual apologists for Islamist extremism. No doubt it will turn out that some of them worked secretly for countries like Iran, and no doubt, in due time, the BBC will laud them too.’ The BBC already lauds Binyam Mohammed and Mozzam Begg, not to mention the 7/7 bombers who were forced into their actions by our foreign policy and em, ‘discrimination, neglect, fury and resentment, bitter grievances, ignored and demeaned, kept in poverty by a system which cares very little about them.’
Apart from Malcolm Muggeridge’s articles on the USSR journalist Gareth Jones also did his best to expose the horrors of Communism:
What to make of an organisation that refuses to openly debate history from 70 years ago…..could it be that so many of the Labour Party were Communists that it might be a tad embarrassing for a Labour supporting, but impartial, news gatherer?
Then again its recent coverage of Tony Blair’s article on the recent riots was in a similar vein….completely devoid of any reference to the facts. Should that be necessarily a bad thing, or is it perhaps slightly sinister? When you are told that Blair had an important warning to both politicians and the public…namely Cameron is implementing policies merely for political advantage and that the public should not be allowed to have any say influence on such policy…because of course ‘populist politics’ is the last thing you want in a democracy….you have to conclude it is sinister.
Stephen Glover’s take on Blair rewriting history here.
When you follow that link on Gareth Jones, it shows you just how far the BBC have fallen.
Charles Moore really needs to ask “when will the BBC ever tell the truth about ANYTHING?…not just favoured poodles like Blunt.
Moore is one of our better ones too..but a Muggeridge or Jones would eat him for breakfast…dumbed down thinking is now endemic and viral in the MSM.
Strangely we get no names of Jones denouncers I notice…unlike those brave heroes who renounced Joe McCarthy and all his works.
Hope someone will look into the history of the BBC and Russian influence from that era-as well as Lysenko…eugenics…and all the other scientific socialism tricks and traps from back then. They are as relevant today.
Read across to Islam from socialism and you`ll find yourself with Bowen and Ridley, McIntrye and Guerin I`d guess…
We were also treated to the story http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b013y3t0/The_Man_Who_Crossed_Hitler/ of Hans Litten who subpoenaed Hitler in a trial in Berlin in 1931. Not to detract from Litten’s guts in trying to nail Hitler, you would get the impression from this play that the struggle was between heroic democratic communists whose attachment to the rule of law was unshakeable and those despicable nazis who were playing the rules of the Weimar Republic until they achieved power. The facts? Certainly the nazis were – on the face of it – playing by the rules not least to keep their financial backers on board. However, the communists were just as guilty as the nazis at suborning the republic. Whatever might or might not have happened in 1933 it’s pretty certain that the Weimar Republic was doomed and that Germany was fated to sink into a dictatorship (either of the military and/or of the “left” or the “right”). As it was, the country was already being run substantially on the basis of emergency decree by President Hindenburg before Hitler became Chancellor. Sure, the nazis were the scum of the earth but Germans, in the end, had a choice between black nazis and red nazis: they chose (by a plurality, not a majority) the black ones.
I don’t expect the nuances of Hitler’s rise to power to be exhaustively gone into in what is, after all, a play and a play, moreover, which concerns a largely forgotten episode in the history of Weimar. However, even on its own terms, the play failed. For instance, I could have done without the confrontation in a restaurant between a Jewish ex-serviceman (in a yarmulka – puhlease!! – if he was that religious he wouldn’t have eaten anywhere but a kosher restaurant) and Hitler. This “confrontation” was supposed to have taken place 13 years after the end of the war: the ex-serviceman was portrayed as in his late 60s. Unlikely? Virtually impossible! Also – although I stand to be corrected here – tattoos of regimental attachment were virtually unknown – certainly to Jews who are (I believe) forbidden from having them: the dramatic effect (comparison of regimental tattoos and the later concentration camp tattoos?) here is analogous to the “false but true” basis of much of the BBC narrative on other matters.
In all, what could have been a fascinating 30 minutes of documentary and enlightening intelligent and informed discussion morphed into 90 minutes of crap drama and lefty propaganda. A simulacrum of the general trend of BBC offerings to a passive public.
I saw this Hitler show and reckon that it was not much to write home about – most scenes reminded me of those slightly stilted drama clips with bit part actors that they put in now to liven up history documentaries.
I also noted the old Jewish man confronting Hitler in the restaurant – and felt that it was rather levered into the narrative.
His illogical apparant age was a good spot and I believe you are correct about Jews not having tattoos (where’s Rabbi Blue when you need his advice, BBC?) – there was a Curb Your Enthusiasm where Larry David’s mother was barred from burial in an orthodox cemetery because she once had had a tattoo.
I do wish that the BBC could present an historical drama that speaks for itself without feeling the need for such interludes.
Excellent teaching Umbongo!
There’s a couple of comments on this on page 2 of the Open Thread but I am not “A B-BBC contributor notes…I didn’t listen to this programme…”
basically it’s the same old story, the appearance of “debate” and discussion when they all agree anyway.
“What was disgraceful, though, was the structure of the programme. For many, The Reunion‘s version may be the first they have heard of the subject. It is the duty of the BBC to apply to history the impartiality on which its Charter insists. Yet, as with the same programme’s treatment of the 30th anniversary of the Brixton riots (which this column criticised on March 28), the entire panel was on the same side. Blunt was a virtually innocent victim, we were told, and the only villain was the press.”
May I point out that 23rd of August is the European Day of Remembrance ‘black Ribbon Day’ in which the totalitarian crimes of Nazism and Communism are to be remembered as a warning to future generations.
So far this remembrance day is marked in Eastern Europe, Sweden and Canada.
Western EU member states seem ‘reluctant’ to further the Prague Declaration……………. ( copy from Wikipaedia to save time)
“Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism (also known as the Prague Declaration), which was signed on 3 June 2008, was a declaration signed by prominent European politicians, former political prisoners and historians, including past signatories of Charter 77 such as Václav Havel, which called for condemnation of and education about communist crimes.[1] The declaration concluded the conference European Conscience and Communism, an international conference that took place at the Czech Senate from 2 to 3 June 2008, hosted by the Senate Committee on Education, Science, Culture, Human Rights and Petitions, under the auspices of Alexandr Vondra, Deputy Prime Minister of the Czech Republic for European Affairs, and organized by Jana Hybášková MEP and Senator Martin Mejstřík in cooperation with the Office of the Government of the Czech Republic, the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes and the European People’s Party‘s Robert Schuman Foundation. The conference on European Conscience and Communism received letters of support from President Nicolas Sarkozy (France), Lady Margaret Thatcher (UK), Secretary of State Jason Kenney (Canada) and former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski (United States).”
It is vital that the communist fellow traveller’s are made to recognise our revulsion of totalitarianism and hope that they are now ashamed of their support for a criminal systen in utter violation of human rights.
Thanks RGH.
Important to remind ourselves that the Nazi-Soviet Pact turned all our Hitler-hating pals hitherto into appeasers of Hitler on account of Uncle Joe now deciding it was fine to leave him be!
The war then became the capitalist conspiracy aginst the workers, and so the Communists wanted their followers to stay neutral until Uncle Joe gave them the next set of orders.
To watch the lefties of the day in their intellectual and moral somersaults must have been “fascinating”…until you realise that these useful idiots then sentenced countless people to their deaths as a consequence.
No wonder we hear nothing about this deal in the Euro-lovin`media…Barossa was a Maoist and Merckels family did rather well out of Honeckers regime…and such are the opinion formers and policy benders that pull the Beebs chain as they wish!
The BBC ignore the Rohms and Strassers, preferring their Ribbentrops and Goerings…they did back then, and they do these days too!
As long as they are common Purpose types with nice nails…
Good. I blogged this. There has been some ctiticism (mainly becasue the likes of Vaclav Havel etc are…shhh…right wingers! Clearly many on the left have a ceratin fear of the truth being recognised: ie…”millions of victims of Communism and their families are entitled to enjoy justice, sympathy, understanding and recognition for their sufferings in the same way as the victims of Nazism have been morally and politically recognized“
Havel?…right winger?
The man is one of the greats in the world as far as I know!
Suppose that the Left likes its heroes safely under lock and key or on probation at best!
Like Sharansky, Solzhenitsyn and others…all flawed I`m sure, but I find them far more of an inspiration that the trusties of the left like Nelson Mandela!
If the left lib media are so fond of you-chances are they`ve either not understood you, or you`re not really a threat to their interests after all.
cjhartnett, don’t get me wrong. I am a great believer in the tenet that ‘circumstances make the man’ to misquote (“Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him”) had VH he been born and lived in the UK he most probably would have been an insufferable lefty luvvie, (maybe even a champagne socialist!) but fighting for democracy from behind the Iron Curtain he was the right man in the right place.
Hate to say it but you`re right!
Vaclav ticks all the buttons for Labour Luvviedom( 60s performance arts, Velvet Underground, jazz and black jumpers etc)…yet…like Mandela…he played his part in smoothing transitions etc.
His views on the Soviet Union are good though…unlike Nelsons which (to put it kindly) are ambiguous…card carrying or not!
“In our generation, Blunt’s equivalents are the intellectual apologists for Islamist extremism.”
What do the masses of gay, Islamist apologists at the BBC make of these i wonder?
70 years ago anti-semitism was quite fashionable with ‘liberals’.
Some things never change.
I once heard from someone of Blunt’s generation ( now dead) that he was long untouchable despite his communist connections. He would not elaborate but it appeared to have something to do with events in Germany in 1945. He would say nothing more but Blunt is certainly a mysterious character.
On a more general note our ruling class has never possessed much sense. I sometimes wonder if it is a defect of the way they are brought up. Prep school, boarding school and the rest. They then attract to themselves those who missed out on all that and, suffering envy, seek to emulate them.
The truth is there for all to see dave s but not all the detail. The very fact that he was suspected and accused and uncovered years before he actually confessed in 1964 but that the whole can of worms wasn’t opened until 15 (FIFTEEEN) years later means that something VERY BIG was being dealt with…this guy was with the Queen on a regular basis and in ALL top echelons of the State: maybe they hoped he’d get ‘comfortable’ and lead to other moles.
dave s. I think it might be something to do with the retrieval of certain papers/letters that might have compromised members of the then ruling British elite. I wonder if it was something like the ‘Weiss List’ (the recovery of which was the driving force in Len Deighton’s excellent ‘Horse Under Water’) which was a directory of highly-placed Britons prepared to form a puppet government should Hitler have invaded. Mind you we’ve suffered from a number of puppet governments since. New Labour danced to the stringpulling of the Frankfurt School. Perhaps Frankfurt is where Blunty went to? Private Eye’s take on the Blunt affair was Tinker, Tailor, Hello Sailor!
I believe that at the end of the war Blunt is reputed to have been sent to Germany to retrieve papers showing how favourably the King’s brother (ex-Edward VIII) regarded Hitler and the Nazis, and possibly that he would have worked for them if Britain had surrendered.
Not forgetting the Duke of Coburg. Cousin of George V
The Left cannot face up to its past, and you should not expect it to, because the moment they do so they cease to be on the Left.
I recall somebody telling me that the French Revolution was 100% a good thing. What he was doing was telling me that he knew next to nothing about the French Revolution. But he was also revealing something more.
Not knowing about the French Revolution takes some effort. Simon Schama (who told us he is a Democrat voter just enough times for him to be acceptable to the BBC) even wrote a popular book about it.
It is hard work to be that ignorant. The same applies, even more strongly, to the (much more recent) history of the Soviet Union.
Leftists know (even the most stupid ones) that contact with reality hurts their faith. So when the Labour Party faithful at the BBC seem unable to open their mouths without following the Party line, do not be puzzled, it is what the Left have to do to keep their religion intact.
So while it may seem strange that the BBC is still apologising for Stalinists, attacking Capitalists (especially on a free press), and hating Jews, as if the C20th never happened, or you wonder why there is a no analysis of the economic, political, moral and intellectual failures of the Left, or why the old time fervour about higher taxes, more laws, and a bigger State, goes on with the same enthusiasm as before, do not be puzzled. Do not be puzzled that Leftists extract money with threats to pay for a broadcasting service that asks us to think of Stalinists as heroes, just make sure you ask your MP (if you have an MP that is not an member of the BBC Party) to bring the ****** BBC to an end.
I always recommend a quick read of “Can There Be an ”After Socialism'”? by Alan Charles Kors
http://ayn-rand.info/cth–722-Can_There_Be_After_Socialism.aspx
In comparing it to the condemnation of Nazism etc ”
“The West accepts an epochal, monstrous, unforgivable double standard. We rehearse the crimes of Nazism almost daily, we teach them to our children as ultimate historical and moral lessons, and we bear witness to every victim.”
“No cause, ever, in the history of all mankind, has produced more cold-blooded tyrants, more slaughtered innocents, and more orphans than socialism with power. It surpassed, exponentially, all other systems of production in turning out the dead. The bodies are all around us. And here is the problem: No one talks about them. No one honors them. No one does penance for them. No one has committed suicide for having been an apologist for those who did this to them. No one pays for them. No one is hunted down to account for them. It is exactly what Solzhenitsyn foresaw in The Gulag Archipelago: “No, no one would have to answer. No one would be looked into.” Until that happens, there is no “after socialism.”
Absolutely devastating piece of writing….incessant, insistent and so obvious.
Shoulde be nailed to the head of any headteacher or NuLabor quislig in any position of sinecure from serving the Master since 1997.
Of course it remains “our little secret” ,because the whole LibLeft project understands only too well what the truth does to their pretensions of progress.
In fact ,hats off not only to you Mr Ows…but to the other “lecturers” here at the University of the Screamingly Apparent!
I live in hope that we will be seeing “after socialism” sooner than the Beeb would like!
Another thing about Blunt is that he and the Queen Mother were cousins. Her great grandfather and his great grandmother were brother and sister. So to the Royal Family, he was family. I imagine the establishment wasn’t too keen on publicly disgracing a member of the Queen’s family. No doubt he knew many things about the Royals as well and kept secrets.
And just to bring it back to our favourite broadcaster, the man who outed him in a book was once a Beeboid!
If rival Socialists groups such as the Soviet Socialists and the National Socialists call each other Right Wing, then obviously the group that lost the war would for ever be labelled Right Wing. This is what really agitated the former Labour MP and ardent Fabian Oswald Mosley who became the leader of the British Union of Fascists. He always insisted that he was a man of the left. And so Blair shows he has contempt for Democracy, and all because populist politics gives a
political advantage to those who follow the Democratic will. He must be trying to show that he is a true member of the Establishment and a Socialist that would make the most ideal President of Europe.
How so many morphed from left to right demonstrates one clear pattern….the appeal is totalitarian in its sense of vision, emotional to the point of mania.
Both the National Socialists and the international socialists saw themselves as having a monopoly of truth and to hell with all who have the temerity to question their sense of mission driven certainty.
“…would make the most ideal President of Europe.” hehehe exactly right.
I was saying this – and I wasn’t alone – in 1998!
The “re-evaluation” of the Cambridge traitors has been a theme in our public life for some time now. Example:
http://www.anthonygardner.co.uk/features/cambridge_spies.html
Cambridge Spies the TV drama Gardener was covering above was shown on the BBC in 2003 and followed their careers from 1934 to the 1951. The BBC press release for the show read: “Fired by youthful idealism, passionately committed to social justice and to fighting fascism, they are bonded by friendship based on shared conviction and shared sacrifice.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2002/08_august/04/cambridge_spies.shtml
But the truth is obvious. These bastards were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of anti-communists. Now here’s a depressing link where you’ll find current doe-eyed admiration by the army of uninformed:
http://topsy.com/www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0134z00
No doubt the BBC can draw on more pillars of radical chic like Sewell – Blunt’s “pupil” – to re-write history for any future program. The same useful idiots as George Bernard Shaw who became an apologist for Stalin, or even the US State dept who called the murderous Mao an “agrarian reformer” and Owen Lattimore’s label of Mao as a “Town hall democratic”.
Although the Cambridge spies drama was written from the point of view of Britain hating Stalin lovers, this has absolutely no connection with the political views of the people who run the BBC drama department. Their political impartiality was demonstrated by their rejection of a script for a drama on the Falklands War on the grounds that it showed Margaret Thatcher in too favourable a light.
In a statement the BBC drama department said
“Anybody who thinks that the BBC Drama Department does not bend over backwards to achieve political balance is a Tory scumbag.”
What is going on? Yet again Newsnight have some ex Liebore turd on giving us his opinion on Libya as if Liebore are still in Government. The BBC ignoring Tony Bliar’s public blow job to Gaddafi along with the one eyed gits release of old Megrahi.
They also have on Nabila Ramdani spouting complete crap, interesting article on this (in the eyes of the BBC) western Muslim woman
http://sheikyermami.com/2010/10/23/the-despicable-nabila-ramdani/
I watched Nabila Ramdani being treated as the source of all wisdom on BBC News 24, and so assumed she was an anti-Western Islamist mechanoid who writes for The Guardian, Observer, and New Statesmen.
I did not have to wait long.
Not long after being introduced as an impartial commentator on the Middle East, she suddenly launced into an angry rant against American imperalism. As pictures of people celebrating the fall of another Socialist People’s Republic (thanks to Nato) were being relayed live, you have to credit the BBC for supplying yet another comedy moment.
I caught this programme when it was broadcast on the World Service. Anyone with any moral sense couldn’t help but find it ‘unsettling’. Charles Moore, as ever, has it banged to rights.
I did listen to the programme (which deals with BBC defenders who say “how can you attack something you did not listen to”).
The term “BRANDED a traitor” was used. Of course Blunt was a traitor he was not “branded” a traitor.
And (yes) the excuse that it was all about opposing “Fascism” was trotted out (“you can not understand what he did without understanding the rise of Fascism in the 1930s…..). Even the use of the term “Fascism” (by Blunt, in his 1979 nonapology apology, and by his students – with the approval of the BBC presenter) is Marxist agitprop – the line went out from Stalin and co that one was never to call National Socialism, National SOCIALISM – because the word “socialism” was a pure word to be reserved for Marxists.
Blunt was a Marxist – he supported a system that had already murdered tens of millions of human beings.
And for those who say “he did not know” – well my father knew in the 1930s.
But then Harry Marks was just an East End boy – not some Cambridge “intellectual”.
For “understandi”, read “justify”. Typical.