Look which way the praise is going

Nick Griffin is the forgotten man of extreme-right politics. Not only was he deposed as the leader of the BNP, that whole party has now completely collapsed into oblivion after UKIP nicked all their support. But despite the UK political landscape being better off without him, mainstream media hacks have suddenly propelled him back in the limelight after he said he supports Jeremy Corbyn's opposition to airstrikes in Syria.

Interestingly just the day before Griffin's comments, it was revealed that actual members of the Tory party youth organisation Activate had been praising the likes of Britain first and the former EDL leader Tommy Robinson, and plotting to use their divisive hate-mongering tactics to win votes for the Tory party.

Any idiot can see that in the case of Activate the praise was coming from inside the Tory party, and being given to disgusting neo-fascist hatemongers who have inspired at least two deadly extreme-right terrorist attacks, and that Nick Griffin's praise was coming from outside the Labour Party.

But somehow one of these things was splashed all over the mainstream news, and the other was only covered on a couple of independent left-wing blogs.

Aside from the fact that it's grotesque for mainstream media hacks to resurrect Nick Griffin from the politically dead solely for the purpose of smearing Labour, there's a massive hypocrisy at play here.

The mainstream media are absolutely fine with actual Tory members praising extreme-right hatemongers, and plotting to use their disgusting tactics in their own Tory propaganda operation. In fact they're so absolutely fine with it that not a single mainstream news organisation even covered this remarkable story.

On the other hand this unwanted praise from the forgotten man of extreme-right politics was exactly the kind of stuff anti-Labour hacks in the mainstream press needed to push their transparent anti-Corbyn propaganda.

If we look at mainstream political parties attracting support from the extreme-right, then who could forget the Britain First leader threatening to attack and intimidate anyone who dares criticise the Tory Brextremist in chief Jacob Rees Mogg?

The mainstream media absolutely refused to cover this story because it didn't fit with their anti-Corbyn agenda, and no pressure was put on Rees-Mogg to condemn Britain First and refuse their offer to serve as his personal storm troopers.

Then there's the fact that the Tories nicked the BNP's propaganda tactics wholesale for their own use in the 2016 London Mayoral election.

Then there's the fact that the Tories had to bribe the sectarian bigots in the DUP with £1 billion in taxpayers' money to cling onto political power after Theresa May threw their parliamentary majority away in her vanity election.

Then there's the fact that the Tory party is absolutely dependent on retaining the support of the extreme-right ultranationalist Blue-kip demographic in order to cling to power. 

Any idiot can see that the Tories have shifted off into the bonkers extreme-right territory, and that any effort by them to move slightly back towards the centre-right territory would drive away the blue-kip demographic and collapse their vote.

Not only do the Tories actively praise the extreme-right and blatantly pinch their propaganda tactics, they know perfectly well that without the extreme-right ultranationalist demographic they nicked from UKIP (who previously pinched it from the BNP) then they're going to get trounced at the next general Election.

Whether the praise is flowing from the Tory party to the extreme-right, or from the extreme-right to the Tory party, the mainstream media ignore it because this growing co-dependency between the Tories and the extreme-right doesn't suit their anti-Corbyn agenda.

Nobody in Labour has ever praised the extreme right or considered using their vile, divisive hate-mongering tactics to promote Labour, but the one time a (near forgotten) fascist agrees with one of Labour's policies, suddenly the press are absolutely up in arms about it.

The reason is absolutely obvious. They desperately want to drive progressive people away from Labour by associating them with right-wing extremism, while they simultaneously give the Tories a total free ride on their ever growing dependency on the extreme-right.

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The mainstream media whitewash of the Nazi-Tory story

On Wednesday 30th August 2017 the right-wing blogger Guido Fawkes landed a massive scoop. He was sent screenshots of an outrageous WhatsApp chat between a load of elitist young Tory activists fantasising about the Nazi policies they would like to impose on "Chavs".
Members of the WhatsApp group behind the shambolic fake-grassroots pro-Tory "Activate" campaign joked about setting up a concentration camp, gassing them, using them to conduct medical experiments on, and forced sterilisation.

We all know that if it had been a bunch of pro-Corbyn Labour members who were caught joking and fantasising about Nazi style genocide against poor people (or anyone else), the story would have been rolling headline news for days, with countless outrage pieces in all the right-wing tabloids, and mainstream media journalists haranguing Jeremy Corbyn to apologise in person for the behaviour of his supporters.

In reality critical mainstream media stories about the Nazi-Tories were only run by The Independent and The Daily Mirror, and nobody has confronted Theresa May in order to demand that she apologise in person for this outrageous behaviour from her supporters.

The Daily Mail even ran an extraordinary cover-up piece in which they made their own excuses, allowed several Tories to make excuses and fake apologies, and didn't include a single critical quote from opposition parties, anti-Nazi activists.

The right-wing tabloid hacks who usually trawl Guido Fawkes looking for stories, and who would spew reams of outrage had the comments been made by Labour or SNP youngsters, have steadfastly ignored and downplayed the Nazi-Tory story in the hope that it will just go away.

The reason of course is that this Guido Fawkes story fails to confirm to the overarching mainstream media narrative that Jeremy Corbyn's brand of centre-left democratic socialism is dangerous and extreme, while Theresa May's neoliberal fanaticism (austerity dogma, privatisation mania, rundown of the NHS, lavish tax cuts for corporations and the mega-rich, brutal social security cuts for the disabled and the working poor ...) is sensible and moderate.

A useful comparison is the way the mainstream media swooped on another Guido Fawkes story about Jeremy Corbyn breaking his so-called promise to eradicate all student debt. It didn't matter a jot to mainstream media hacks that Corbyn never actually made the promise he was accused of breaking, because their primary objective isn't actually to report the news, it's to attack perceived threats to the neoliberal status quo. 

The mainstream media stretched out a fake Guido Fawkes story about Corbyn's so-called promise to eradicate student debt into a week worth of rolling anti-Corbyn news, and their complete bypassing of this real story about the shocking attitudes of a bunch of young Tories. this contrast is extraordinary, but totally predictable.

The way the Nazi-Tory story has been ignored and downplayed is yet another demonstration that significant swathes of the mainstream media are part of the establishment machine, and share exactly the same wealthy and privileged backgrounds as the young Nazis in the Tory party.

These mercenary hacks see their job as the moral guardians of this system of wealth and privilege, so they'll gladly spew faux outrage about a fake anti-Corbyn story for days on end, but when it comes to fellow members of the privileged elite gleefully fantasising about imposing genocidal policies on the "lower orders" they have either ignored it completely, or if they have mentioned it, they've tried to downplay it in terms of being youthful high jinks that got out of hand, or by crudely deflecting onto issues in other political parties (whataboutery).

The fact that the mainstream press have systematically ignored/downplayed the story because it doesn't conform to the overarching narrative that they're trying to push is indicative of a much bigger story: The corporate mainstream media are even more biased than the heavily right-wing biased Guido Fawkes blog that actually broke the story! 
 
There's no way they'd ever try to frame the story as being an indication of the endemic elitism within the Tory party, or of the extreme-right views that have persisted within the Tory party ever since the anti-Semitic Right Club and the pro-Nazi Anglo-German Link group in the 1930s.

They would never frame it in that way because their job is to make Tory elitism and hard-right economic dogma look palatable, and to attack anything that questions the elitist hard-right orthodoxy as terrifyingly dangerous extremism. 

Thus the widespread use of intensely biased ignore/downplay tactics by the mainstream media.  The fact that the story is being downplayed and ignored so systematically is actually a much bigger story than the leaked Nazi fantasies of these horrible little Tory elitists ever actually was because it's a crystal clear demonstration that elitist mainstream media hacks will deliberately ignore or downplay incredibly juicy stories if they don't conform to the overarching narratives they're trying to brainwash the lower orders with.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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