The BBC has finally presented us with a statistic that we can believe. There are one and a half million useful idiots living in Britain. No, poor old Huw Edwards did not actually say that on News at Ten last night. But he did announce with some relish that over one and half million people (and growing) have signed a petition objecting to Donald Trump’s state visit to Britain.
It was reported as all but a BBC achievement. It certainly would appear to be the upshot of the BBC’s rabble-rousing war against Trump’s (unbearable to them) anti-liberal sensibilities agenda.
According to the BBC, the petition is the justifiable reaction to Trump banning visitors from seven mainly Muslim countries, including Syria, for 90 days – a view shared by CNN and other US media outlets who have been spouting much of the same so-called facts and anti-Trump bile.
The idiot tally amongst the demonstrating Democrats on the streets of America is similarly high. Like the mob here, they cannot wait to cast their new President as an evil fascist, never mind that the particular ‘fascist’ order that’s got them so hot and bothered is based on and a continuation of immigration controls instigated by their beloved Obama.
Personally, I find their brand of liberal fascist intolerance of anyone who doesn’t share in their virtue-signalling outrage a damn sight more alarming than Mr Trump’s patriotism, concern for his country’s security and refusal to let his country be taken for a fool or sold down the river any longer.
When the ‘great and the good’ join in, it reeks of hypocrisy and double standards. But then what can be expected when you cannot rely either on the BBC or a Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University to actually read the executive order they are pontificating about.
You would have hoped a former Conservative Foreign Secretary or a Senate Minority Leader would have checked before holding forth. Both had plenty of opportunity. But no, Chuck Schumer was too busy crying for the cameras and Sir Malcolm Rifkind rushing between BBC studios. At no point did I hear Sir Malcolm explain what the President’s executive order actually said let alone that, in fact, it was the Obama administration that had made this so-called Muslim ban possible.
How easy to point out that it was US policy under Obama to restrict and target people “who have been present in Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, at any time on or after March 1, 2011 (with limited government/military exceptions).”
Instead Sir Malcolm opined this was “the most foolish thing a President has done”, saying how he shared Ed Miliband’s distaste for him.
So the Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015 (two years before Trump), a kind of “Muslim ban” before the Muslim ban, was never explained. The BBC was not asked why it did not critique this at the time. Perhaps because it was Obama’s administration overseeing it?
Whether instructions on the administration of this order at American border posts and in UN asylum seeker centres fell short, as various commentators have claimed, I don’t know. But my suspicion is that much of the reported travel ban chaos and Green Card uncertainty had more to with whipped up media hysteria, for which the gullible and incontinent ‘Diana and Jo Cox emoting’ part of the public is ready primed.
Mo Farah and Nadhim Zahawi of “For the first time in my life I feel discriminated against” fame stoked the hype, stepping up as victims before they even knew whether this ‘ban’ applied to them. Perhaps I should not be so hard on them given there is nothing that Mr Trump has not been publicly accused of.
The FT’s reference to “Trump’s worst excesses” was but the tip of an iceberg of hyperbole. He has barely been in power a week.
A string of senior Tories said Trump should be barred from addressing Parliament – shame on them – as though he is the living reincarnation of Hitler about to send America’s 3 million Muslims to a newly opened concentration camp on Ellis Island. I won’t begin on Merkel’s reprimands.
What he is doing is acting on his promise to get Muslim immigration under control until he has the security checks in place.
Is it so unreasonable? The US admitted a record number of Muslim refugees in 2016 and extended refugee status to a further 12,587 Syrians in addition to asylum seeker figures. Of these, 99 per cent were Muslim and fewer than 1 per cent were Christian, a fact that had shocked President Trump (given the persecution of Christians in Syria) but which the BBC, at one point on Sunday, accused him of having no evidence for.
The BBC should be careful of the flames they fan. The rise of Trump and the constant allusions they make or let be made of him to Hitler give the Left the perfect bogeyman to excuse anything. This is more than bias; it is irresponsibility. As Dave Rubin pointed out in one of his reports, if your opponent is (presented as) a vile racist then you are ‘allowed’ to use violence and any means necessary to stop him.
Trump’s win was a huge rejection of the identity politics of the Left on show through the Presidential campaign and since his inauguration. They will continue to be as long as the media keeps giving them oxygen. Yet it is this regressive ideology and intolerance, not Trump’s unfashionable patriotism, that is the biggest threat to freedom today.
It is not fascist of him to take a stand on behalf of his country or to challenge a Europe that’s happy to sponge on it for its defence, but blames it for every conceivable ill in the world and is still affronted when this destination of choice does not continue to keep its arms open to world.
If President Trump is calling time on these double standards, who can blame him? Instead of trying to influence him, the rest of the West might just have to learn to step in line, however much the ‘not so liberal’ media hate it.
