Asymmetric censorship

 I remain dismissive of the significance of Tweets. However, if the BBC places so much importance on them, why have they suspended Gary Lineker over an emotional response to misdirected legislation, when they allowed Nigel Farage free rein on the network, even after a succession of lying and occasionally defamatory Tweets about our membership of the European Union?

I am not old enough to remember what Goebbels and company said about racial minorities, but then neither is Lineker. It is unlikely that the rhetoric of Braverman, Patel and Sunak was of the same nature, let alone the extent, of the Nazi propaganda. What a pity Lineker did not know a little bit more history, or he could have unearthed the following:

We are still of opinion that great evils have followed in the train of unrestricted alien immigration, the gravity of which it is impossible to deny, and that in certain contingencies, by no means impossible, the dangers and inconveniences attending that immigration might suddenly and rapidly increase. We think it is anomalous that in this country, almost alone I think among civilised countries, no power should exist of excluding or expelling any alien or class of aliens, however injurious their presence may be to the community, and we remain of opinion that that anomaly is not one which can be allowed permanently to continue. 

There is more in the same vein, not from ministers in a fascist state, but from Conservative ministers and back-benchers in the UK parliament at the turn of the last century. The excerpt is from a 1902 speech by Gerald Balfour, President of the Board of Trade and the prime minister's brother. The main target of the hostility was the enormous number of Jews who were victims of Russian pogroms and who were seeking refuge throughout the Western world. (One should also remember that the initial response of a later Conservative government to Jewish immigration - as a result of Nazi persecution - was to send the refugees to the Isle of Man in a kind of concentration camp.) The hostile environment culminated in the Aliens Act of 1904. The populism did the government no good. The Liberals swept to power in 1906.

But the fact that the presenter overstated his case does not justify the action that the corporation has taken. They should remember that Lineker made his comment on a personal account in a personal capacity. He did not use a BBC programme as a platform for his views. 

Meanwhile, the BBC has denied allegations that it dropped one episode of the upcoming new David Attenborough series as a result of pressure from politicians and fossil-fuel lobbyists. Auntie claims that Wild Isles was always intended to be a five-programme series and that the iPlayer episode in question was an extra. That is plausible, given that two major Attenborough series, Planet Earth and Life in Cold Blood, were 5-episode productions. and that the composition of other series has not been consistent, varying from 2 episodes to 10. However, the Guardian understands from unnamed sources at the BBC that the decision to restrict the broadcast series was taken in order to forestall political criticism.

It will surely be some time before we hear again the blue parrot-cry that the BBC is the mouthpiece of socialism.