It turned into an excuse to bash the Right along the way:
The leader of the far right French National Front, Marine Le Pen, is in the Netherlands today to meet the Dutch far right leader Geert Wilders. The BBC’s Europe correspondent Chris Morris reports. Guy Verhofstadt, former prime minister of Belgium, and leader of the liberal and democrats group in the European parliament, discusses the meeting.
Morris’ choice of words is very careful and designed to trigger certain perceptions.
Morris tells us that there is a surge of populist support for figures on the Far Right like Geert Wilders who knows exactly which buttons to press apparently….the BBC doesn’t say that of Ed Miliband when he is spouting his ‘populist’ policies which are purely designed to catch headlines without actually intending to implement them.
He tells us that cynicism about the European project comes in many guises….linking Eurosceptics in the Uk (wonder whom he means) with the radical Communist Syriza in Greece (lead by ‘led by charismatic young politician Alexis Tsipras‘ as the BBC tells us elsewhere) and what he calls ‘xenophobic populists’ like Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen.
He goes on to call them demagogues, extremist parties…..their views very very unsavoury as one interviewee claimed.
He manages to find two people who don’t find the EU attractive but they both say they are not at all fans of Geert Wilders. Guess he’s just lucky to find them when his report is suggesting Wilders et al are ever more popular.
He brings on Michael Geary from Maastricht University who says that governments need to combat both Far Right and Far Left rhetoric but Morris doesn’t seem concerned about the Far Left despite two of Golden Dawn’s people being killed recently and concentrates solely on disparaging Wilders and Le Pen and linking UKIP to them by mentioning them in the same breathe.
Interesting how the BBC refers to Left and Right:
As above the Greek Syriza leader is ‘charismatic‘, whilst the French ‘Left Front‘ leader is ‘their firebrand leader Jean-Luc Melenchon described his movement as “the people of French revolutions and rebellions”…how romantic…just like cuddly Russell Brand stroking Paxman’s knee.
and Marine Le Pen, not charismatic nor rebellious apparently…..she is smeared with ‘her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, a convicted Holocaust-denier.’
Whilst it’s not Ok for the Daily Mail to look at Ed Miliband’s father’s beliefs when he has stated he was guided by them it is OK to smear Marine Le Pen with her father’s.
There is hardly a mention of any Left Wing parties and their radical views and the dangers they might represent…the BBC seems only concerned with parties that express concern about immigration or Islam…violent revolution and destruction of society seems to be OK.
The BBC’s concern lies essentially with the Right’s success or potential success….Occupy, London riots or George Soros‘ billions pressurising politicians or disrupting the democratic process is presented as the ‘voice of the dispossessed‘ making itself heard.
The Left can do no wrong even when dropping fire extinguishers from roof tops towards people below….that’s probably ‘charismatic’ behaviour.
What’s new though in that from the BBC?
Just enjoy the mental gymnastics, Twister posturing, the rose-tiinted monocles and sheer tumbleweed yarns and knits that the BBC “correspondents” concoct to Ashtons orders or a billet-doux from Dame Shirley Williams Bassey or whoever.
Let`s remind ourselves that Radio 4 at 8am is not playing in anybodys van…just the well manicured sections of the school carpark or the NHS Trusts openplan.
Totally preposterous all this…we all know what the BBC are up to…and the mass of voters read the Sun, Mail and truly hate Radio4.
The last splenetic riffing of Blairs boils and barnacles…Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders are the future…the Europhonies are screwed no matter what they do!
Just give it time to stew…few years max.
I heard this. Where to begin?
Well, both the FN and Freedom Party are big-state social democrats, so hardly ‘right wing’ in any real sense; rather, the BBC doesn’t like them so calls them such.
Plus, I would’ve thought that once you become the third, second or biggest political party in a country, then by default you become ‘mainstream’ rather than ‘far right’. But seemingly not when you don’t want your homeland to be flooded with (even more) foreigners who choose not to integrate.
Even by the BBC’s currently all-time low standards it was a particularly egregious piece of bias from beginning to end.
There is a very high probability that at the forthcoming European elections the parties of Le Pen and Wilders will do very well indeed. It will be interesting to see how the BBC deals with the fact that millions of people across Europe voted for parties that want a stop to immigration , are very concerned about Islam and want a ‘looser’ Europe. Of course UKIP want some of these things but daren’t say anything about Islam and are cautious about immigration, because of the reaction of the BBC. In other words the BBC are effectively muzzling perfectly sensible political views, which millions of people in other countries support, and no doubt would in Britain, if it weren’t for the interference of the anti democratic state broadcaster.
To be honest I think Geert Wilders is an idiot.
Looks like Swiss Tony doesn`t he?
But a friend of Israel-and, God knows there`s few enough of those around as it is.
No wonder the BBC would be happy to pas his address onto the Belgian NazIslam Brigade if only it could.
Yes I said Belgian-for that will be the flashpoint before even Holland.
According to Wikipedia Geert is agnostic. That made me laugh! What a convenient label to give oneself.
“But a friend of Israel-and, God knows there`s few enough of those around as it is.”
Not in America. And Geert is very warmly welcomed by far right Christian fundamentalists over the pond. That’s worrying! I’m not sure a fundamentalist Christian society would be any more appealing than an Islamic one.
Also, he talks about the Islamic threats to peace-loving Jews and Christians, and how following the New Testament is the correct way forward – except, Judaism is based on the Old Testament.
I’m not sure a fundamentalist Christian society would be any more appealing than an Islamic one.
I’m very sure the former would be more appealing. I mean, just look at the number of beheading, stoning, branding, amputations and other executions and punishments carried out by each (not including terrorism): the former none for several hundred years, the latter weekly current occurrences.
lso, he talks about the Islamic threats to peace-loving Jews and Christians, and how following the New Testament is the correct way forward – except, Judaism is based on the Old Testament.
…err, and? What’s your point? Does that negate the threats? Or make those people not peace-loving? Or that somehow it cancels out that he thinks following the New Testament is the correct way forward?
My point refers to Geert Wlders’ claim.
You still need to elaborate: how does Judaism being based on the OT change a claim that Wilders thinks that following the New Testament is the correct way forward? Equally, how does Judaism being based on the OT change his views on Islamic threats to peace-loving Jews and Christians?
Because he is obviously attempting to pitch everyone against Islam (nothing wrong there) but making a fool of himself by alienating Jews at the same time.
Jews do not acknowledge the NT!
Does that make sense now?
Yes, thank you. However I will take issue with your “nothing wrong there”. I’d also say that most Jews (and most other people of whatever or no religion) can ‘follow the NT’ without ‘following the NT’, if you know what I mean. Basically being nice and tolerant, fair and loving, prefer peace to war, doing what is right.
“far right Christian fundamentalists”
By who’s definition Ed, the BBC’s?
As for agnosticism I’m an atheist that thinks the new testament offers a civilised blueprint for society and that many of Europe’s problems are caused by throwing out the spiritual baby with the dogmatic bathwater.
I also support Israel’s right to exist, none of the above positions are mutual exclusive
I am also an atheist who believes that we are mistaken if we think our society is founded on Christian values.
Our society is actually founded on an instinctive bending of religious rules or even a complete disregard of religious teachings. The abolishon of slavery, for example.
Er, William Wilberforce might disagree with you there, for example.
Wrong. slavery was abolished due to the fundamentalist Christian interpretation that men are created in the image of god and therefore all equal .which resulted in a large scale public movement
All the leading abolitionists were committed Christians. The popular hymn ‘amazing grace’ is based on John Newton’s experience as slave trader who later became a prominent abolitionist as a result of his studying scripture
It is telling that there was no similar movement in , atheist ,republican France
Credit where its due old man,
where its due
Exactly! The moral decision to abolish slavery was not taken by God but by a mortal human being’s ‘Christian interpretation’ of the Bible (which is far from ‘fundamentalist’!).
Nevertheless, it took another 200 years for Christians to stop persecuting homosexuals. Oh, actually… THEY HAVEN’T STOPPED!
Er were exactly did god come into it?And why do you have such an issue with a non-existent person?
I thought we were discussing the role Christian faith, specifically scripture, played in the evolution of European civilisation
And what Exactly! do you mean by persecution? not indulging the individuals desire for personal sexual gratification?
Again you make the mistake of assuming that Atheists are automatically sympathetic to the normalisation of homosexuality
Cheers Stuart. LOL!
Where does God come into Christianity?
Thanks again! :o)
Try reading it all Ed
“I thought we were discussing the role Christian faith, specifically scripture, played in the evolution of European civilisation”
perhaps if you had troubled to read past the first line you might have answer my question
“And why do you have such an issue with a non-existent person?”
Well that’s not a problem normally, is it?
To be honest I think Geert Wilders is an idiot.
Anything in particular that brings you to this conclusion? What are your reasons for thinking this?
Geert Wilders on The O’Reilly Factor 02/23/09
They are big fat cowards!
Yeah, not the best description of the appeasing political class but probably near enough without using various strong expletives.
We thought communism was dead…we were wrong. It now comes disguised as a “charity”, a fake one of course.
Perhaps my command of English is at fault, buy aren’t the Beeb contradicting themselves? They call Wilders and Le Pen “xenophobic” and in the same breath tell us that they are meeting each other. Well, in the absence of reliable evidence to the contrary, I’ll assume that they had a perfectly civilised conversation with each other (they probably would if they met a leader from Japan or Chile, for that matter); so they can’t be xenophobic, then, can they?
‘Whilst it’s not Ok for the Daily Mail to look at Ed Miliband’s father’s beliefs when he has stated he was guided by them it is OK to smear Marine Le Pen with her father’s.’
Those unique variances do present now with awesome regularity, don’t they?
I tend to steer clear of bias in references, not because they don’t matter, but because they are so hard to pin-down and/or quantify (the definitive 5:1 payments to Labour MPs for appearances was more my speed).
However, there is value in this area being spotlighted much more, and maybe even seeing tallies taken as the evidence is tangible vs. an FOI-exempted guest invitation or vox-pop edit.
The BBC has been called out for making much of not applying labels such as ‘terrorist’, etc.
However, as stated, what difference is there with ‘far right’?
It is just as judgmental, and clearly deployed in taint.
Hence weighing against outings for ‘far left’, beyond the relative numbers invited on to comment vs. referred to, may well be interesting.