The BBC’s shameful enabling of fascism
Speymouth
The failure of the BBC to report fairly and without bias on Scottish politics is a regular theme in this blog and amongst other supporters of Scottish independence. The favouritism which the Corporation displays towards Nigel Farage and his ghouls is likewise well documented, especially on the disgrace to political broadcasting that is BBC Question Time. The BBC’s pro-Israel bias over the past couple of years as the Netanyahu regime committed genocide against the people of Gaza, collectively punishing them for the crimes of Hamas, has also been widely discussed – although not on the BBC of course.
Now we see that the BBC is at it again. Trump has deployed the tactics he has successfully used against media outlets in the USA and initiated vexatious litigation against the BBC, suing it for the ludicrous amount of $10 billion for broadcasting words he actually said in his speech to the MAGA mob in Washington DC just before his supporters stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to overturn the presidential election. An election which Trump still refuses to accept that he lost. It’s a naked attempt at extorsion, the tactics of a mob boss, which is being carried out with the twin aims of enriching Trump personally and silencing his critics.
The case has not even made it to court yet, and although many legal observers believe that Trump’s claim for billions in supposed damages is without merit, Trump has already been successful in his aim of cowing the BBC.
After Trump illegally attacked Venezuela and kidnapped its President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, the former president of the Venezuelan National Assembly, hauling them off in handcuffs to face charges of narco-terrorism in a court in New York, the BBC sent instructions to its journalists not to use the word kidnap in relation to America’s kidnapping of Maduro and Flores. After deposing Maduro, Trump unilaterally sidelined the Venezuelan right wing opposition leader María Corina Machado, whose allies claim won the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election, and has refused to give her a role in the Venezuelan transitional government, imperiously declaring that the USA would run Venezuela itself. Trump has made no secret of the fact that he has taken over Venezuela in order to gain control of the country’s huge oil reserves. Meanwhile Maduro’s party remains in charge in Venezuela as America seizes control of the nation’s oil. It’s a shocking act of colonialist aggression the likes of which has not been seen since the 19th century.
The Americans have announced that they will take charge of Venezuela’s oil, the proceeds of which will go into an account which America will control, and America will decide how much is to go back to Venezuela and how it is to be spent. That’s as close to a definition of colonialism as you’re going to get, it’s not at all unlike how Westminster treats Scotland’s oil and gas, the difference being that Venezuela is not a part of the United States but a supposedly independent sovereign state and a member of the United Nations.
Trump’s chief policy advisor Stephen Miller boasts that in the world according to Trump, might is right, power is its own legitimacy. America can do what it wants and no one can stop it. There is no rule of law, there is only the rule of the jungle. This is fascism, pure and simple.
The BBC has, like Starmer and the British Government studiously avoided saying that Trump’s blatantly illegal actions in Venezuela are indeed in breach of international law. It’s like refusing to say that it’s raining when it’s pouring down outside. Trump’s actions were carried out outside of any legal framework and he’s now thieving Venezuela’s national assets. That the BBC and the British Government cannot or will not say that all this is illegal and illegitimate and that the USA now operates outwith the law is a sign of the weakness and irrelevance of post-Brexit Britain. Trump is a criminal and the BBC is too afraid to say so.
The BBC is also soft-pedalling on Trump’s wishes to annexe Greenland. With Trump, it’s hear no evil, see no evil, report no evil as far as the BBC is concerned. The BBC reports on Trump’s designs on Greenland as “Trump’s plans for Greenland” as though the senile criminal in the White House as a right to make plans for a country which is part of another sovereign state, Denmark, a sovereign state which is an ally of the USA and which came to the US’s aid militarily when the Bush administration invoked Article 5 of the NATO Charter following the 9/11 attacks on New York.
The USA has signed international treaties which remain in force, recognising Danish sovereignty in Greenland. In 1917, the United States purchased the US Virgin Islands, then known as the Danish West Indies, from Denmark for $25 million as part of its efforts to secure the Panama Canal. As a condition of the sale, the United States recognised Danish sovereignty over Greenland. However Trump does not regard himself bound by treaties signed by the United States, another sign of his contempt for the rule of law.
Can you imagine the BBC reporting Vladimir Putin’s nakedly imperialist designs on other sovereign nations in such a bland manner which implies it’s part of international business as usual? Of course it wouldn’t. It would make no bones about it being an act of aggression and a breach of international law. The BBC reports Trump’s baseless claim that the US needs Greenland for its national security but glosses over the truth that an agreement signed during the Cold War pact already gives the United States all the room it needs to operate in Greenland, including permission to “construct, install, maintain, and operate” military bases, “house personnel” and “control landings, takeoffs, anchorages, moorings, movements, and operation of ships, aircraft, and waterborne craft.” Trump’s designs on Greenland are about enriching himself and his allies from Greenland’s natural resources and securing a place in history as a president who enlarged American territory.
The BBC is engaged in an Orwellian rewriting of truth in order to avoid calling out Trump’s crimes. Nowhere has the BBC said what is really happening. The USA is a rogue state which runs a coach and horses through international law, and which poses an existential danger to world peace.
With its constant platforming of Nigel Farage and its cowardice in the face of Trump’s corruption and imperialistic law breaking, the BBC is failing in its duty as a public service broadcaster. When the history of the early 21st century comes to be written, the BBC’s role as an enabler will be seen as instrumental in the rise of the new fascism.
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