Gatehouse Institutional Bias

Arthur Wagner, an AFD member who converted to Islam, is the subject of a Gabriel Gatehouse investigative report.  Gatehouse is very excited, a little too over-excited for a supposedly seasoned reporter.  It all seems a bit of a game to him rather than a serious report, almost as if he had already got a conclusion in mind and he was just going through the motions to add a bit of colour and body to his script.  Of course Gatehouse has a bit of previous when reporting on those he likes to deem  ‘Far-Right’ as we’ve noted before about a previous Newsnight film by him…

Is the “alt right” on the rise in Europe? And if so, is it a fringe movement – or something bigger than that? BBC Newsnight’s Gabriel Gatehouse reports from Austria and France.

Gatehouse didn’t actually listen to what was being told to him.  He had a narrative and he stuck to it….what we got was a constant drumbeat warning us of the rise of a new Nazi regime….Gatehouse freely used words like ethnic cleansing, Nazis and references to concentration camps…just the usual BBC dangerously dismissive and contemptuous treatment telling us these groups had ideas ‘beyond the boundaries of the acceptable’…..er like controlling immigration and stopping Islamisation?  Very controversial.

A group in France says that if immigrants don’t want to integrate they will offer them money and the chance to go to a country where they will feel more at home…not force them but offer them.  Gatehouse says this is ‘ethnic cleansing’.  Never mind the UK government already does it.

Are you starting to get the idea that Gatehouse doesn’t have a clue what he is saying and what the reality is and has his own agenda to peddle?

You actually struggle to see what the spectre of the 30’s is here…just what are the policies and ideas that Gatehouse says are ‘Far-Right’ or ‘ethnic cleansing’ or have ‘the whiff of the concentration camp’ about them or have ‘scary connotations’?  They all seem fairly mainstream and indeed already put into practise by many governments.  Gatehouse comes with preconceived ideas about these people and completely ignores what they actually say preferring to overlay everything with his own narrative, colouring what they say in the darkest tones when such an interpretation, at least from what they said on film, is far from the mark.

Nothing has changed in Gatehouse’s approach…it’s based on ignorance and a twisting of the narrative to suit his agenda.  For example when Wagner refuses to show him what is probably an SS dagger with a Swastika on it Gatehouse has no idea why he won’t show it and makes an amused face to camera….odd the BBC’s ‘expert’ on the Far-Right wouldn’t know such ‘memorabilia’ is illegal in Germany.  Gatehouse then does a bit of amateur psychology and assesses Wagner as someone who has a ‘love of authority and a fear of the erosion of conservative values.’  Pretty much a Nazi then in BBC parlance.

But the real problem with the film was that it didn’t give us the real reason Wagner converted to Islam, though ironically it does tells us that Wagner thinks there is an affinity between the Far-Right and Islam…yes, don’t say we haven’t told you.  Islam and Fascism have so much in common…but Fascism being the more enlightened and modern as far as women go.  The BBC hates the Far-Right and yet promotes Islam.  Bizarre.

In the Telegraph it is reported that:

A politician from the nationalist Alternative for Germany party (AfD) who shocked colleagues by converting to Islam says he did so because he was unhappy with the church’s acceptance of gay marriage.

Arthur Wagner made headlines around the world last week after it emerged that he had become a Muslim.

The 48-year-old, who has changed his name to Ahmad, initially refused to comment when his conversion became public last week.

But he came forward in an interview to explain his decision in an interview with Bild newspaper.