The BBC's outright hypocrisy over racism

When Danny Baker Tweeted a picture of a chimp dressed up like an aristocrat in reaction to the royal baby coverage, he was quite rightly criticised.

He later apologised and claimed that he was trying to lampoon inherited privilege, and hadn't even considered the racial connotations, but by then it was too late for him, he'd already been sacked by the BBC.

Having listened to Danny Baker's shows many times in the past I've never heard him say anything remotely racist (it's mainly irreverent nonsense) and given his long broadcasting history of never saying anything even remotely racist or bigoted, my opinion is that his apology should be taken in good faith.

The problem of course is that the BBC's decision to sack Baker betrays barefaced hypocrisy.

You only have to look back to Alan Sugar's brazenly racist Tweet about the Senegal football team last year to find a completely different approach from the BBC. Sugar was completely unapologetic about his racist Tweet, and the BBC somehow decided not to sack the star of their hit show The Apprentice.

Either the BBC's attitude to racism has developed extremely quickly from allowing unapologetic racists to get away with it last year, to sacking people for racist-looking Tweets now, or there's something else at play.

Maybe the BBC considers social media racism to be perfectly fine when it's aimed downwards, at nations like Senegal, and at African beach vendors, but when it's aimed at the royals, even inadvertently, it's an instant sacking offence.

This kind of Nazi-style racism is considered
fine and dandy by the BBC.

Then to exacerbate the hypocrisy on the very evening that Danny Baker was sacked they invited Nigel Farage onto their flagship Question Time show for a record 33rd time. 

Despite Farage's long history of making racist comments about Romanians, using Nazi style propaganda to attack refugees, aligning with outright fascists in the European Parliament, whipping up anti-Muslim sentiments, and wilfully spreading the extreme-right white supremacist "great replacement" conspiracy theory, he's always welcome in BBC studios.

And then there was the time that they invited the extreme-right hate preacher Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) onto Newsnight for a softball interview on the very day one of his acolytes was jailed for a murderous terrorist rampage in Finsbury Park.

And then there was the time that the BBC invited leader of the Generation Identity hate group onto Newsnight on the very day one of their followers had carried out the mass killings in Christchurch, New Zealand.

And then on the day after Danny Baker's sacking, the BBC invited the right-wing polemicist Ben Shapiro onto their Daily Politics show, despite his history of anti-Muslim hatemongering, his racist comments about Arabs, his constant spreading of far-right conspiracy nonsense like Obama birtherism and the Nazi-derived cultural Marxism conspiracy theory, and the fact he inspired the extreme-right terrorist who carried out the Quebec City Mosque shooting (who obsessively viewed Shapiro's Twitter output).

 

If Danny Baker's Tweet was so offensive he had to
be barred from the BBC, why isn't this?

The BBC's warped explanation for platforming Shapiro was to boast about how many Facebook and Twitter followers he has, as if his popularity is somehow a shield against his repulsive political views, and his dangerous extreme-right conspiracy-mongering.

Of course the BBC's 'he's got loads of supporters' argument could have been used in favour of inviting Hitler onto the BBC in 1939, or the murderous Chilean dictator Pinochet in the 1980s, or Osama Bin Laden in the 2000s.

This facile 'he's popular so we have to give him a platform' argument also creates the impression that if Danny Baker had had a few hundred thousand more followers on social media, perhaps he wouldn't just have not been sacked, but he would have actually been invited onto flagship BBC politics shows to talk about his distasteful Tweet!

It seems that if you're an out-and-our racist or an extreme-right polemicist with a long history of spreading racist ideas and far-right conspiracies, the BBC are clamouring to invite you on their shows to help you to widen your profile, and if you're a star of one of their hit shows and you aim your despicable social media racism downwards and then outright refuse to apologise for it, that's perfectly fine too.

But woe betide you if the royal family are the subject of your ridiculously ill-considered Tweet.

I'm not trying to argue that Danny Baker is blameless, or that he didn't deserve criticism for what he Tweeted.

What I'm saying is that the BBC's hypocrisy is absolutely undeniable if they sack him over what he did despite his long broadcasting history on non-racism, and his apology, while they continue to wilfully platform unrepentant racists, and extreme-right polemicists like Alan Sugar, Nigel Farage, 'Tommy Robinson', Generation Identity, and Ben Shapiro.

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