The BBC’s film ‘Madness in the Desert: Paris to Dakar’ is a fine example of how to make a pig’s ear out of a silk purse….a race that has all the adventure, drama and excitement that any film maker could ask for turns out to be a dreary, dull and tedious affair in the hands of the BBC.
One thing though that did catch my attention was this phrase from the introduction:
‘How the West took on the continent of Africa and lost.’
That simple phrase captures in one telling comment the BBC’s world view. It encapsulates everything that drives how the BBC presents the world to its viewers and the pleasure it takes in seeing ‘The West’ ‘defeated’.
The BBC uses ‘The West’ in much the same way as anti-Semites use ‘The Jews’…it is a term loaded with negative, pejorative meanings and references.
For the BBC ‘The West’ is a Society that is guilty for existing, guilty for being successful, guilty for being progressive, inventive and productive.
The BBC likes nothing better than to see what it calls ‘The West’ apparently humiliated and defeated by less sophisticated, backward societies much as George Galloway gloried in the brave Iraqi rebel rabble waving only their AK47s in the face of Allied tanks and jets encouraging them to kill British soldiers:
‘These poor Iraqis — ragged people, with their sandals, with their Kalashnikovs, with the lightest and most basic of weapons are writing the names of their cities and towns in the stars, with 145 military operations every day, which has made the country ungovernable by the people who occupy it.’
Such a way of looking at the world and ‘The West’ colours how the BBC reports just about every major political, social or cultural event from immigration, Islam, Europe, the British Empire, climate change and the economy…and of course Israel.
‘The West’ is essentially at heart bad, exploiting, oppressing and harming the rest of the World…both the population and the environment.…whilst ‘The Rest’ are either noble savages or brave, admirable peasants grinding out an existence in the face of not just a harsh natural environment but also rapacious Western businesses and governments.
But it raises a couple of questions….what exactly is ‘The West’ and is it really ‘bad’?
Is ‘The West’ a physical place, or a cultural, scientific, industrial depository, is it more an idea, a philosophy than a place or a people…that is, is it more somewhere that values and upholds intangibles such as Liberty, freedom of speech, a particular legal structure, mass education and Democracy?
Is there any such place as ‘The West’ because in reality isn’t such a creature the result of a long period of amalgamating ideas, science, culture and political thought from around the world from every culture? Such a coalescence may have reached a tipping point in Europe but such ideas and industries that resulted soon spread around the world so much so that it must be almost impossible to define what ‘The West’ is in any meaningful way…unless you are the BBC and use it in a pejorative fashion to mean any country with a white population.
Look at the Dakar Race.….I have never once looked at that and thought there goes ‘The West’. For the BBC it represents everything it believes the West does…an industrialised, inhuman machine riding roughshod over the lives of hapless native cultures.
But most of the vehicles are probably Japanese or even Korean, running on fuel and oils produced by Middle Eastern countries, riding on tyres made from Far Eastern rubber…competitors themselves come from every country around the world.
Is Japan ‘The West’, or Korea, or Taiwan or China, or Brazil, as they adopt the same industrial and economic policies and slowly move towards political and social ideologies that might be termed ‘enlightened’?
‘The West’ means one thing for the BBC…an Anglo-Saxon, white male using military, industrial, or economic power to exploit and control other Peoples. There is no upside to having ‘the West’ move into town in the simplistic ideology of the BBC.
Perhaps the BBC might like to reflect on the Rawandans, Black on Black, slaughtering each other with machetes, knives, clubs and fire.
Or Islam…for one thousand years it has condemned the lands and Peoples it conquered and colonised to a cultural and scientific Dark Ages.…a desert not just of sand but of ideas and technological progress.
The British Empire brought Democracy and the Railway, two civilising features that allow any society to develop and prosper with the rule of law and a transport system to faciliate industry.
Hurrah for ‘The West’.
Simon Jenkins in the Guardian thinks we might be better served by people who had a clearer idea of what British, and world, history was and how it effects us now:
The BBC would not then be able to peddle its propaganda quite so easily to a knowledgeable and more sceptical audience.
You should watch the Japanese animation “Steamboy” for an example of an exaggerated and blatant celebration of the Britain’s Industrial Revolution and the glories of British Imperialism in the Victorian era.
The Japanese animated film Steamboy deviated from the Cultural Marxist propaganda of the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics, where in the cartoon are the black men in top hats who helped build the Industrial Revolution for us ?
Don’t be stupid – they were all black in those days. White people didn’t exist except when bad things happened. Tsk, didn’t they teach you that in school?
Showing Tower Bridge (finished 1894) as being contemporary with the opening of the Great Exhibition (1851) – I thought these Japanese paid attention to detail.
I remember a BBC series made in 1985 called ”The Triumph of the West” presented by the historian John Roberts. Somehow I doubt that would get made today, too white, too Christian, too European, and of course, we cant have that !
Yes, probably made in 83/84 just at the limits of when the BBC was half acceptable and concentrating on what it was created to do.
The British Empire brought Democracy and the Railway
The Telephone and Electricity too.
This epic link pretty much sums it.
very good…what did the Romans ever do for us?
I looked at the programme and could stomach no more than the first two minutes, however, during that time I spotted a certain Western Imperialist Lacky called Singh, I can’t recall his first name, who won the East African Safari Rally on more than one occasion and, if I recall correctly was born and brought up in Kenya. The event, once established, very rapidly became a very International Event with people from not only Europe and Africa taking part but from such places as Japan, Russia and many other areas.
On occassions the Rally destination had to be changed in order to aviod purely African War Zones and was finally moved out of Africa, not as a result of the involvement of all those nasty Capitalist Imperialist Companies becoming involved but because the Rally, as a result of it’s wide coverage, came under threat of attacks by terrorists intent on gaining easy publicity. The organisers, quite sensibly, and as a result of occurrences since then, quite rightly decided to move elsewhere for the safety of those involved.
The Paris Dakar was not forced out of Africa because of anything the Rally did but because the Africans could not provide any reasonable guarantee of the safety of those involved from people with an intent on either murder or hostage taking. The problems which caused the removal of the Rally from Africa were of purely African origin rather than anything created by the West. But when has trivial details like that ever stopped the BBC Propaganda Machine.
The facts behind the moving of the P/D rally are well established and well publicised; were the BBC trying to say otherwise?
Well, lots, according to the BBC. And the Vikings, too, apparently. Not to mention the Normans, of course.
Whereas all we racist Brits ever did was murder and pillage (according to the BBC).
”as a result of it’s wide coverage, came under threat of attacks by terrorists intent on gaining easy publicity.”
And they had to avoid the African practice of burning witches.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5qYhmf-boE&list=HL1362217385
Re- Senegal (pop about 11 million, 95% Muslim) –
“Senegal: Islamic schools force child begging, inflict abuse; children living in slave conditions” 2010).
http://vladtepesblog.com/?p=21525
good job they didn’t go near the paradise that is mandelaland
if the competitors had been caught committing minor traffic violations in that utopia,they might have ended up being taken to the cop shop BEHIND a police car instead of IN the back of one
I bet you won’t be able to move for the protests in central london today………or is that tumbleweed holding up the traffic?
‘Is there any such place as ‘The West’
It appears a conceit of certain journalists; probably those prone to writing headlines with ‘we’ rather too all-inclusively in them when presuming to lump folk into their world view with little justification.
Didn`t that rally once go through Mali/Mauretania type countries?
And would I be wrong to assume that the route has now changed to reflect current political realities…possibly involving the BBCs favoured Religion of Loveliness…one named after that Teddy Bear in 2007(PBUH)?
Hope I can be guided along here…me and cars?…not for me!
Any ho-ho mentions of Mark Thatcher, perchance ? ‘Cos that’s never less than completely fascinating.
The West is a position on the compass.
“The West is a position on the compass”
—
Plenty of leeway there for latera.. Longitudinal thinking then.
I’ve always figured it was meant to start to the left of the Bosphorus, but that kind of snags in some interesting chunks of Africa & South America en route to Oz.
No. It is a direction on a compass and a position on a map.
INBBC: stum on Islamic Libyans’ continuing persecution of Christians.
What does INBBC’s Cairo Bureau and INBBC Arabic TV Service do all day?:-
“Sharia in action in Libya: 100 Christians arrested for proselytizing”
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/03/sharia-in-action-in-libya-100-christians-arrested-for-proselytizing.html
And, in Egypt (‘missed’ by INBBC):-
“Sharia in action in Egypt: Islamic morality police unleashed”
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/03/sharia-in-action-in-egypt-islamic-morality-police-unleashed.html