This morning I heard Today's presenter John Humphrys ask BBC North American EditorJon Sopel whether there was any "factual truth, though, in the President's assertion that there was violence on the other side too".
Humphrys wasn't asking a political contributor a devil' s advocate question. He was talking to a fellow BBC journalist who, to his shame, engaged with the question.
So, to recap, your licence fee now pays for senior BBC journalists earnestly to discuss whether anti-racist protesters objecting to an armed and intimidating neo-Nazi and KKK invasion of the public space could be described as 'as violent', and therefore morally reprehensible if not morally equivalent to the Nazis themselves.
I'm no longer sure how John Humphrys would have covered the Second World War - Churchill's speeches say*, Bletchley Park*, the Resistance* - particularly under the editorship of Sarah Sands.
Reflexive neo liberal right-wingery, fueled by hatred of redistribution - oops, I meant the left - in any form, is now chasing its own tale, fouling its own patriotic foundation myth: we are better than them (enter any nationality/value here) because we fought the Nazis/at least we are not Nazis.
Fighting the Nazis is officially a dodgy pursuit not just in Trump's America but also in May's (Brexit) Britain.
*Rabble-rouser, Hackers' Central, violent extremists????
I have no doubt that there was a violent reaction to the Nazi/KKK parades ~ KKK as they were in full regalia. Nazi, as they were chanting slogans and making gestures associated with Hitler's Third Reach. But. But. But. To slide down Trump's disingenuous path is to say that those Jews who fought back against the Gestapo, who blew up arms factories and attacked those guarding the ghettos, were 'violent alt-left terrorists'. Had there been no 3rd Reich, no Nuremberg Race Laws, no Final Solution, there would have been no counter insurgency. Had there been no civil-armed thugs in 'military uniform, with batons, no hateful chanting, no endorsement from the thug in the White House (and before), there would have been no confrontation at Charlottesville.
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