BBC newspaper review: scrutiny of the government is treason

One of the classic propaganda tricks used by tyrannical authoritarian regimes all throughout history is to attack any criticism or scrutiny of the government/ruling class as treason.

This kind of tactic is common in Putin's Russia, as well as various other dictatorial regimes, but this dangerously authoritarian propaganda technique is now being used by the British establishment to undermine scrutiny of the government, even when they've been caught out lying.

What's even more worrying than the fact that Boris Johnson has used this grotesque propaganda tactic to derail criticism of his Porton Down lies, is that the BBC is using it too.

Take a look at this clip of the right-wing Daily Telegraph columnist Jane Merrick on a BBC Newspaper review. She actually claims that "Jeremy Corbyn is taking the word of the Russian government rather than the British government." 

Jane Merrick on BBC paper review: "Jeremy Corbyn is taking the word of the Russian government rather than the British government. I think that's quite worrying."

Moral of the story: believe your government, even when it lies.

Scrutiny is treachery.

Journalism 2018. pic.twitter.com/N8oRxOCqcH

— Alex Nunns (@alexnunns) April 4, 2018

So even when a government minister has been caught out lying, the BBC are bitterly attacking the political opposition for holding him to account.

As Alex Nunns pointed out, the propaganda messages the BBC are sending out here are "believe your government, even when it lies" and "scrutiny is treachery".

Then if we actually look at what Jeremy Corbyn actually said, another thing becomes clear. Corbyn didn't "take the word of the Russian government" at all.

What Jeremy Corbyn actually did was take the word of the British Porton Down chemical weapons experts, and then point out the total incompatibility of what they said with what Boris Johnson claimed they had said.

You know what @jeremycorbyn actually said to provoke this latest intense smear-mongering campaign from Boris Johnson & the obsequious Tory sycophants in the mainstream media?

They're furiously attacking him as a traitor just for calling Boris out on the lie he trapped himself in pic.twitter.com/zQ928ZQW5I

— Tom (AAV) (@Angry_Voice) April 5, 2018

It's a massive, and spectacularly dishonest leap to portray Jeremy Corbyn taking the word of the Porton Down chemical weapons experts as "Jeremy Corbyn is taking the word of the Russian government".

If it had been just one right-wing columnist spreading this kind of distorted version of events it would have been bad enough, but all three of the people on the BBC Newspaper review adopt the same anti-Corbyn "scrutiny is treachery" stance. There's no balance at all.

The fact is that this kind of completely one-sided and brazenly dishonest propaganda attack on the political opposition is the kind of thing you'd expect to see from a state broadcaster in Putin's Russia, but it's happening now, in Britain, on the BBC.

And if we allow this kind of extreme "scrutiny of the government is treason" propaganda from the state broadcaster to go unchallenged, then we're clearly strolling down the path towards authoritarianism and tyranny.

Here is a link to the BBC complaints form. Please consider using it if you disagree with the BBC broadcasting this kind of one-sided, fundamentally dishonest, and downright dangerous "scrutiny of the government is treason" propaganda.

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Why are the BBC ignoring the shocking death toll that comes with Tory austerity dogma?

Just imagine the howls of outrage in the mainstream media if the British Medical Journal had published a study that showed that the policies of a Labour government had led to 120,000 deaths, which were described as "economic murder" by one of the study co-authors.

The British Medical Journal have published such a report, but the conclusion is that the excess 120,000 deaths are the result of massive ideologically driven Tory cuts to the NHS and social care system.

Co-author Professor Lawrence King of the Applied Health Research Unit at Cambridge University said that "it is now very clear that austerity does not promote growth or reduce deficits – it is bad economics, but good class politics". He added that the results of the study show that the Tories have overseen "a public health disaster" and claimed that "it is not an exaggeration to call it economic murder".

The report also suggests that without a significant increase in health spending there could be an additional 150,000 excess deaths between 2015 and 2020.

150,000 excess deaths is an awful lot of to imagine, so to put it into perspective, this report suggests that Tory austerity dogma comes with a death toll the equivalent of a September 11th 2001 scale terrorist attack every single month for five punishing years.

I'm sure Tory tribalists will find plenty of excuses for this staggering mass of excess deaths that have been linked to their fixation with hard-right economic policies. 

They'll weave their sick little justification narratives about how the economy is better off without the people who have died because most of the dead were economically inactive elderly and disabled people. Or they'll try to cast doubt on the findings of the study with displays of anti-intellectual sneering towards the experts who worked on it. Or they run disinformation campaigns by bombarding people with misleading statistics designed to distract people from the ideologically driven cuts to health and social care funding their party has been enacting.

But the real issue isn't the sick excuses and distraction tactics spewed by the minority of Tories who find themselves cornered on the subject of the death toll that comes with Tory austerity dogma. The big issue is that swathes of the mainstream media are refusing to publicise the fact that Tory austerity dogma comes with this huge death toll.

The left-leaning Independent and Daily Mirror have covered the story as well as the much maligned Russian state broadcaster RT and (somewhat surprisingly) the right-wing Daily Mail & Metro, but somehow the BBC have completely overlooked it, preferring to fixate on the growing number of sexual indecency allegations against Kevin Spacey as their headline news (as if the actions of one indecent actor somehow outweigh the avoidable loss of 120,000 lives due to Tory austerity dogma).

It's easy to understand why right-wing pro-austerity news outlets like The S*n, Express, Times, and Telegraph might want to ignore an academic report that details the body count of their beloved austerity dogma, but it's quite something else that the supposedly impartial UK state broadcaster has decided to ignore a study that suggests the UK state is responsible for over a hundred thousand excess deaths, and will be responsible for a further 500+ more every week from now until 2020.

So next time you hear anyone droning on about how RT is just Russian propaganda, you don't need to disagree with them, but you really should explain that the BBC runs propaganda for the UK state, and remind them of how the BBC didn't even bother to report the fact that Tory austerity has such an obscene death toll when RT actually did.

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Did RBS Group shut down RT's bank accounts to send a message?

In October 2016 NatWest (which is a subsidiary of the majority taxpayer owned RBS Group) took the extraordinary decision to shut down the bank accounts of the Russian broadcaster RT.

In the week before the RBS Group's NatWest subsidiary took the decision to obstruct the operation of RT by scrapping their bank accounts, one of the banking group's biggest scandals was back in the news. Leaked documents showed that the bank had been systematically destroying and asset stripping thousands of British businesses for their own profit. The leaks revealed that the bank was so brazen about its GRG asset-stripping operation that they even referred to it as the "dash for cash" and offered cash bonuses to bank staff for identifying businesses that were ripe for asset-stripping.

Back in 2014 when the asset-stripping activities of the RBS Global Restructuring Group first came to prominence RT hosted some extraordinary criticism of the bank. In one episode of the Keiser Report the host accused the bank of being "financial terrorists" and then conducted a scathing 15 minute interview with Neil Mitchell who has been fighting for justice ever since the GRG destroyed and asset-stripped his business.

In the wake of the scandal RBS managed to deflect most of the criticism and avoided criminal investigations into their conduct by repeatedly assuring parliament, the financial regulators and the public that the Global Restructuring Group was "not a profit centre" and that they'd just been trying to help the 12,000 UK businesses that went through the process.

After the Global Restructuring Group leak in October 2016 the Keiser Report went into attack mode again pointing out that the leaked documents totally contradicted the assurances given 27 times in parliament by RBS executives that GRG was "not a profit centre". Within a week of RT running this criticism, the RBS subsidiary NatWest decided to shut down all of RT's bank accounts.

It seems extraordinarily unlikely that RBS Group decided to scrap RT's bank accounts for financial reasons. The idea that Russia would ever allow their most influential international broadcaster to get into severe financial difficulties is ludicrous. So if the decision wasn't made for economic reasons, it seems likely it was made for political reasons.
When the news broke speculation abounded that the decision was part of a government strategy of toughening relations with Putin's Russia, but the UK Treasury (which owns a 73% stake in RBS Group) quickly denied responsibility for the decision to obstruct the operation of RT, which, if true, means the decision was entirely in the hands of RBS Group executives.

This is bad for two reasons. The first and most obvious reason is that the decision to shut down the bank accounts of a broadcaster that has been highly critical of their banking group sends a chilling message to the rest of the media: "If you dare to criticise the big banks we can make life very very difficult for you". Even if RBS Group tries to claim* that the decision to scrap RTs banking facilities has nothing to do with RT's strong criticism of the RBS Group and their GRG asset-stripping operation, the message to the rest of the media is still loud and clear.

The second reason this is bad is that the UK Treasury is claiming that it didn't have any say over a decision taken by a bank that is still 73% owned by the taxpayer, despite the obvious political and diplomatic ramifications. The fact that RBS Group could make a decision like this without any form of consultation with the government, despite the fact they're 73% owned by the taxpayer, is yet more proof that the nationalisation of RBS was a catastrophic mistake. Not only did a taxpayer owned bank apparently go around asset-stripping some 12,000 British businesses to boost their own profits, they've now taken to making decisions with major political and diplomatic ramifications without the slightest effort to consult the government.

Maybe the RBS decision to provoke Russia into taking tit-for-tat action against British broadcasters suits maniacs like the Tory MP Andrew Mitchell who wants to trigger World War III by shooting down Russian jets over Syria. But anyone with any sense should know that enraging the Russian bear is a daft idea at the beat of times, but when you've just spent the last six years savagely cutting your conventional military capabilities and you're in the midst of an enormous self-inflicted diplomatic and economic crisis, it's staggeringly idiotic.

The British taxpayer has lost £billions on the RBS "investment", and what is worse is that all of that money was poured into the bank with no strings attached, meaning the very same executives who wrecked the bank in the first place were completely free to carry on inflicting even more carnage on the UK economy and the rest of the world by asset-stripping thousands of British businesses, rigging the Libor rate, rigging currency markets, financing the manufacture of cluster bombs, sanction-busting, misselling complex financial products to members of the public, money laundering, committing fraud against their own customers, tax-dodging and now provoking a major diplomatic incident by shutting down the banking facilities of a critical media organisation without even bothering to check with the government first.

 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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* = Who on earth would be gullible enough to believe the claims of RBS executives after they repeatedly lied to parliament about the GRG not being a profit centre?