BBC Bias by Design, Dostoevsky and so on

Excellent short piece by former BBC journalist Robert Aiken, author of Can We Trust the BBC, and The Noble Liar: How and Why the BBC Distorts the News to Promote a Liberal Agenda.

And from the same site

I have probably very much overly avoided the world of current affairs over the past good few years, more or less as it seemed to be an arena devoid of any reason for optimism, with both sides of whatever supposed spectrum, regardless of the supposed disparities, ultimately propelled and ‘owned’ by the same very powerful elements. There have been some extremely surprising developments however, one would imagine surely outside of the scripted agenda, such as Britain seemingly leaving the EU, and from outside of the normal political establishment in the US Donald Trump becoming President, vowing to “drain the swamp” and so we’ve had the astonishing situation of the US President actually calling out the mainstream corporate media as ‘fake’ and utterly corrupt - which of course they are. This is almost unimaginable given how condensed and impenetrable the political power structures had seemingly become to infiltration from outside. Such above developments of course have been relentlessly assaulted by the mainstream Western media outlets as catastrophic scenarios, even if for the sake of appearances more right-wing outlets have I presume had to seem positive about Trump.

However the point I had hoped to make, and why I included the second video above about the rolling over of the UK establishment to ‘woke’ ultra-liberal’ elements, is how all this brings to mind Russia of the 1860s onwards, particularly through the fulcrum of the great writer Dostoevsky. What had begun as a laudable movement towards liberty and idealism was instead leading as the years passed towards attitudes amongst the ever more radicalised elements of total nihilism towards existing societal structures, culture and beliefs, especially religious beliefs. The original liberals, educated, refined and with reverence towards higher ideals, looked with growing horror at how the next generations were far more driven by attitudes of nihilistic destruction than for reverence for such effeminate luxuries as art, and of course the highest ideals of the spiritual were beneath contempt. This especially shown in Dostoevsky’s novel Demons which focused very much on the revolutionary movement, its underlying core and where it would most likely lead, namely tyrannical and absolute totalitarianism. Within it and elsewhere the use of the media as a propagandist tool of subversion and intimidation is also touched on, then of course very much in the printed form. That last point about the increasing extremism within the ‘liberal’ leftist movement came to mind recently in a video I saw recently with a former Antifa member.

In ‘The Idiot ‘Dostoevsky in one section focused in on how these elements expected complete liberty of expression for themselves, particularly when accusing others of whatever reactionary vices, but then on the other hand a complete closing down of freedom of expression to elements contrary to themselves. Since by their own definition they themselves were virtuous and anyone at odds to themselves were of course without virtue, then this oppression of these others’ rights to free speech was of course a self-justified process towards the realisation of their already perfectly understood just society, run by themselves. All this is especially relevant to the second video above and its discussion of immense totalitarian powers of prosecution regarding Hate Speech being enshrined within the UK justice system, if in conflict with the ‘woke’ view of things. 

A quick mention also is within Crime and Punishment in the mid 1860s Dostoevsky focused and satirised that movement’s intentional subversion of sexual dynamics and especially the ideal of the family structure in favour of a very liberalised unattached sexuality, where for example an ardent but naive believer in the new ideology proclaims unfaithfulness by one’s wife should even be applauded by the husband as an expression of her liberated spirit and exaltation over moral and institutional bigotry!

This has gone on much longer than intended, and I’m certainly not for now at least going to read it back so apologies for any hypothetical readers out there for both grammatical errors and overall shapelessness.