On @bbcquestiontime tonight, the Govt's Immigration Minister, Robert Jenrick, who - like his boss & UK PM, Rishi Sunak - in November distanced himself from Suella Braverman's disgusting "invasion" rhetoric.
Here's a #THREAD of important contextual factors about Jenrick.
The far-right attacked Robert Jenrick after he rejected Braverman's rhetoric, accusing him on the right-wing Traditional Britain Group Telegram channel of “treason”, & referring to his Jewish faith alongside the alt-right image of Pepe the Frog.
On #bbcqt in April 2022, Jenrick INSISTED that #Rwanda was "a safe country".
Bullshit.
The truth is, Rwanda is one of the most autocratic, authoritarian, & repressive regimes ON EARTH, ranked 150th out of 179 countries on the Index of Liberal Democracy.
Last time Jenrick was on #bbcqt, Fiona Bruce allowed him to speak about immigration for a full ten minutes - panellist Stephen Kinnock was allowed 3mins & 30 seconds, Ian Hislop & Lionel Shriver 2 minutes each, & Ruth Wishart was given just 30 seconds.
In May 2020, Jenrick conceded his approval of a £1 billion luxury housing development on the Isle of Dogs, had been unlawful. The 1,500-home development was proposed by ex-porn-seller Richard Desmond, Tory Party donor, & owner of Northern & Shell.
By December 2021, at least 11 cabinet members of Johnson's Government had broken the Ministerial Code, including Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, Priti Patel, Michael Gove, Matt Hancock, Dominic Raab, Grant Shapps, Liz Truss - and Robert Jenrick.
Then in Parliament on 24th October 2022, Robert Jenrick - then Minister of State (Dept of Health & Social Care) - made the absurd claim that: "The Government is committed to building 40 new hospitals by 2030. Six are currently under construction & one is now completed."
The @BBC in 2020, & again in 2021, confirmed the personal @Twitter accounts of freelancers (eg Lineker, Packham, & Andrew Neil) are "unrelated to" the BBC, & "the BBC is not responsible for its content".
Davie's new (October 2020) social media guidelines stated @BBC staff should, on their own personal social media accounts, 'avoid expressing personal views on current issues of political controversy', which as a right-winger he described using the pejorative 'virtue signalling'.
However, the response to a complaint about Chris Packham, which came in September 2021 - almost a year after Tim Davie had set out his new social media guidelines for '@BBC staff' in October 2020 - stated Chris's "personal social media account has no connection to the @BBC." 🤔
I've written before about the uncanny parallels between the rise of the Boris Johnson regime & the rise of the Nazi regime, both ushered in by a third of the electorate.
Imho, if anything, Gary Lineker was too restrained in his tweet about Govt rhetoric.
When Adolf Hitler took power in 1933, the Nazis controlled less than 3% of Germany’s newspapers.
In contemporary Britain, the overwhelming majority of national newspapers exist to neutralize any threat from the Left to corporate interests, which includes defending a failed Govt.
In early 1933, the Nazi regime deployed radio, press, & newsreels to stoke fears of a pending “Communist uprising” - a sort of ideological “invasion” from within - then channeled popular anxieties into political measures that eradicated civil liberties.
Anyone who supports free speech - & everyone should support it - should be apoplectic.
If ALL @BBC presenters are to be BANNED from saying ANYTHING political - and almost everything IS political on @Twitter - then almost every presenter will be silenced.
The highly selective outrage from the @BBC, from the "pro-free speech" @Conservatives, & from their "pro-free speech" billionaire-owned right-wing press & media, reveals them as the pathetic, intolerant, anti-free-speech hypocrites they really are.
The @BBC will not broadcast an episode of David Attenborough’s flagship new series on British wildlife #WildIsles because of fears its themes of the destruction of nature would risk a backlash from Tory politicians & the billionaire-owned press.
This is symptomatic of something terrible happening to Britain - a rapid slide away from a relatively open, unified, welcoming, forward-looking mature democracy, toward an insular, unwelcoming, backward-looking, polarised, infantilising authoritarian oligarchy.
The decision has angered the programme-makers & some insiders at the @BBC, who fear the corporation has bowed to pressure from lobbying groups with “dinosaurian ways”.
The latest row focuses on #WildIsles, narrated by David Attenborough, which is likely to be extremely popular.
That time Rishi Sunak distanced himself from Suella Braverman’s inflammatory claim the UK was facing an “invasion”, after far-right terrorist Andrew Leak firebombed an immigration processing centre & Robert Jenrick warned Ministers to choose their words more carefully.
Braverman said: “the British people deserve to know which party is serious about stopping the INVASION on our southern coast”. Shortly after, Sunak claimed the UK would always be a “compassionate, welcoming country”, & No. 10 emphasised her words had not been cleared with No. 10.
Lord Dubs, who came to the UK as a child refugee in 1939, said about Braverman’s comments “It [language] is very important because it influences public opinion. It influences the way people see refugees. It shows hostility to people who are fleeing for safety.”
But curiously not by Jacob Rees-Mogg accusing Tory Jews of being "illuminati", nor by Boris Johnson's book saying 'Jews control media', nor by Bridgen comparing vaccines to the actual #Holocaust, nor by his wife's use of the antisemitic conspiracy theory of 'Cultural Marxism'.