Wednesday, March 11, 2009

BBC: Fantasy Oppression > Real Oppression

The BBC was up to its usual tricks on the Jeremy Vine Show today. They had a debate about those jovial 'anti-war protesters' in Luton or, more specifically, about whether or not they should have the right to protest in the first place.

I keed! I keed!

As if the BBC would ever 'debate' anything. The bases were loaded right from the start, with a full-on Islamofascist on one side, while on the other side there was.... another Muslim. So let me get this right: when someone is accused of 'Islamophobia' the BBC interview a Muslim, and when Muslims are accused of Infidelophobia, the BBC interviews a Muslim. A-huh.

Needless to say, not once during the debate did the host feel obliged to mention the name 'Geert Wilders' or the approximately one bazillion 'hate speech' prosecutions in Britain. To the point, did the people who opposed the Jihadist's right to scream abuse at the troops really hate free speech, or they did they just want the law to be applied equally?

Which is where the biggest, fattest bias came in. Unless you were listening closely you wouldn't have picked up that two people were arrested at the demonstration, and you certainly wouldn't know they were people counter-demonstrating. That's the real issue.

You can call for restrictions on free speech or you can call for a First Amendment free for all, there are arguments either way, but what we have here was people allowed to scream abuse at their fellow citizens, while police officers arrested anyone who exercised their right to dissent. There is no objective criteria by which you can judge screaming abuse at soldiers to be 'free speech' but counter-protesting to be 'hate speech'. In so far as the police were discriminating between different groups of demonstrators based purely on the views they were expressing, this was the antithesis of free speech.

Of course, it's no wonder the BBC doesn't see the danger in police officers arresting people for being too harsh on Islamofascists. After all, it's not like that's going to affect anyone at the BBC, is it?

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