That's A Nice Little TV Channel You Got Going There...

Taking a look at the mob-like tactics used by the British State and its regulators

I always thought that Britain’s only “right-wing” television channel, GB News, was a bit of an oddity. Then again, the centre right across the Anglo-sphere is an incoherent mess, lumbered with values and ideals that don’t align. Thus, on GB News you’d routinely be provided with content screaming bloody murder at the rate of immigration, only for that segment to be immediately undercut by a Neoliberal shill like Tom Harwood highlighting how many tower blocks could be built for immigrants in the rolling green shires of Middle England.

GB News is there to fill the gap in the market of British news consumption by offering a woke-free alternative to the mainstream. They believed in common sense British notions of free speech and open debate. They weren’t racists, but they weren’t anti-white, though here again, it’s confusing because some presenters “took the knee” during the BLM summer of Floyd.

It’s complicated, I guess.

By and large, the section of the right who inhabit the “danger zone” of the cultural discourse view GB News as a controlled op, a cul-de-sac of containment. However, we live in uncertain times, and the priorities and interests of Power are in flux. GB News is reminiscent of Joe Pesci’s character in Casino — useful for keeping people in line, but in danger of going rogue.

Mark Steyn and Neil Oliver in particular seem to have gone somewhat rogue in relation to what Power wants from a controlled TV station, and the Old Boys from back home have sent in the “cleaners”.

Steyn has spent the best part of a year questioning the narrative around vaccine safety and all those mysterious excess deaths we’ve been seeing since the roll-out. Oliver has become something of a folk hero via his weekly monologues excoriating the sinister technocratic agendas of the elites and the ‘‘It’s a big club, and we’re not in it’’ sentiment that pervades the zeitgeist.

Steyn recently took some time off after suffering two heart attacks in rapid succession. On his return to GB News, he was informed that things had changed. Firstly, he could only host his show if there was a defibrillator in the studio, which wasn’t very difficult to arrange. But then the real meat of the change was revealed — the government communications regulator Ofcom had contacted the GB News management and had, let’s just say a “quiet word”.

What happened next, according to The Guardian, was:

One of GB News’s leading presenters has quit after the channel tried to make him personally responsible for paying fines issued by the media regulator Ofcom.

Mark Steyn, who presented the station’s 8pm peak-time slot, is already subject to two investigations by the media regulator after he used his show to cast doubt on the safety of Covid vaccines.

The presenter’s departure has led some viewers of GB News – which has given airtime to conspiracy theorists warning of a globalist elite takeover – to suggest the channel has itself sold out to shadowy globalist forces.

Questioning medical treatments coerced onto the population now inhabits the too-hot-to-handle quarantine zone along with the Holocaust and racial differences in groups. What I find so utterly farcical about the manner in which Power has deployed Ofcom like a thug is how obviously transparent it is.

Ofcom themselves claim on their website:

We consider that comments made during an interview with author and journalist Dr Naomi Wolf about the coronavirus vaccine roll-out raise potential issues under our Broadcasting Code.

Specifically, our investigation will consider whether this programme broke our rules designed to protect viewers from harmful material.

It could be argued that the degree to which the public has been exposed to ‘‘harmful material’’ was exactly what Steyn was investigating, but that is not what Ofcom or the government mean, naturally. How is “harmful” quantified and by whom? It appears to be entirely arbitrary, simply whatever Power wants it to be. Five years ago, there were no taboos or restrictions with regard to discussing medical treatments, but now there are because the interests of Power changed.

You could be forgiven for feeling that all of this was coordinated and that, dare I say it, there was a conspiracy afoot. And that brings us to Neil Oliver.

With Mark Steyn safely sleeping with the fishes, Ofcom and The Guardian wasted no time in going straight after Neil Oliver. This, by the way, is straight out of Machiavelli. In The Prince, Machiavelli teaches us that:

So it should be noted that when he seizes a state the new ruler must determine all the injuries that he will need to inflict. He must inflict them once for all, and not have to renew then every day, and in that way he will be able to set men's minds at rest and win them over to him when he confers benefits.

Whoever acts otherwise, either through timidity or bad advice, is always forced to have a knife ready to his hand and he can never depend on his subjects because they, suffering fresh and continuous violence, can never feel secure with regard to him.

In the context of the Mafia, this would be going into a bar and killing or maiming the main rivals and then buying everyone else a drink to signal the drama was done and everybody was friends again.

The British power structure followed up the hit on Steyn with this:

The UK’s leading Jewish organisation and a group of MPs have called on GB News and the media regulator Ofcom to tackle the broadcaster’s indulgence of conspiracy theories, warning that some recent segments and guests risked spreading ideas linked to antisemitism.

The criticism comes as the channel faces increasing scrutiny over its mix of serious news with programmes that delve heavily into conspiracies about areas including Covid vaccines and a plot to create a world government.

They weren’t spreading antisemitism. They weren’t spreading ideas linked to antisemitism. They were delving into areas that risked connecting to theories that were linked to antisemitism. And for that rather tenuous reason, we are no longer permitted to discuss whether the billionaire class may well have a sinister agenda.

Neil Oliver’s criticism of “the Elites” is primarily aimed at the Davos set, against Agenda 2030, Covid policies, and the Public/Private Partnerships which openly — and as a matter of policy — coordinate to govern how we little people live. In Oliver’s view, this casual disregard for democratic norms and the rights of the public is a matter of extreme urgency and taking us all to a grim future.

Britain, and the West in general, is being ruled by soulless bureaucrats who casually invent new laws and draft new policies, implementing both via institutional capture and a sprawling network of NGOs. In other words, by institutions such as Ofcom.

Thankfully, then, such thinking is merely the result of misinformation and conspiracy theories online, and just to keep the public safe from “harm”, Ofcom itself will ensure that such dangerous ideas are censored.

Promoting transgenderism to children does not cause harm. Platforming anti-white ideologues such as Afua Hirsch or Kehinde Andrews does not cause harm. But expressing the view that billionaires are manipulating world events to benefit themselves causes such severe harm, the public needs to be prevented from hearing it.

In the process of Power evoking the public interest in order to justify censoring critics, the public themselves are left in a paradoxical state of infantilization. In theory, if not in fact, we in Britain live under a parliamentary democracy, which is to say, we govern ourselves. Ofcom claims to have received just 411 complaints about Mark Steyn’s commentary. A little digging reveals this was actually the handiwork of a BBC minion on Twitter, whipping up a lynch mob — the host of the unironically named show “Free Thinking”, Matthew Sweet.

However, in 2020 Ofcom received 24,000 complaints about the “talent” show Britain’s Got Talent being hijacked by BLM propagandists. These complaints were rejected by Ofcom and no action was taken.

Here once more, we are reminded of Schmitt’s Friend/Enemy distinction. Ofcom censors the enemies of Power and allows its friends a pass. This is what informs the decision-making of Power, not the public interest or the public will, or any other liberal bromide.

The entirety of the British media is regulated by Ofcom, so it is not unreasonable to conclude that all the content it produces is skewed in such a way as to not challenge Power, and if somebody steps too far out of line they get the metaphorical horse’s head in their bed.

And I’m afraid, dear reader, that things are about to get worse. As I type, the “Online Harms Bill” is snaking its way through Parliament, which will hand over regulation of the internet to Ofcom.

The precise weight and shape of that rusty knuckle duster remains to be seen and felt.