Don't mention ze war

Or the BBC or The Little Boats, or the Menopause or anything critical

It's been an interesting few days hasn't it? Here in the UK the media, government and sporting population has lost its shit over a tweet former England player and now TV presenter, Gary Lineker, made over the goverment's response to the refugees crossing the English Channel in little boats. I am not on twitter, but here is a screen shot of what has caused so much furore and resulting in a 20 minute silent “premier league highlights” programme being shown on BBC1 this evening.

That's right, Mr Lineker was asked to step back from presenting the BBC's flagship football highlights program (a job he has held since 1999) for giving an opinion. An opinion anyone and everyone is entitled to have or not to have.

The problem is that the BBC is meant to be impartial and the government and therefore by association (the chairman arranged a loan for Boris Johnson before being recommended by said PM to get the chairman's job, allegedly) decided that by attacking government policy, Gary Lineker was not being impartial. However, Lineker is not a journalist, news presenter or indeed directly employed by the BBC, he is a freelancer and therefore does not fall under the impartiality rules. Having said that, being their highest paid presenter, he is subject to certain conditions around expressing an opinion regarding politics. In the words of James Hunt during a famous live commentary I think that's bullshit. There, that is an opinion.

However, the purpose of this post is not to get dragged into the politics of all this, that has been covered to the death and you can read all that yourselves. Instead, I would like to analyse the actual post itself and try and conclude why Lineker decided that the language used by the British government in March 2023 to describe the little boats crossing the channel is not dissimilar to that of 1930's Germany. To do that, we need to go back to 1930's Germany, well actually 1920's Germany

The end of the First World War saw the end of the German Empire and the Kaiser via a revolution in 1918 / 19, thus ending the second reich. Kaiser Wilhelm went to the Netherlands to live in exile until his death in 1941. From the ashes of the empire emerged the German Republic, later known as the Weimar Republic. It lasted until 1933 and the election of the National Socialist German Workers Party.

The Weimar Republic did not get off to the best of starts, hyper inflation, post war compensation, high unemployement and no help from its neighbours. Public dissatisfaction to the new federation was therefore high, the leadership did not have the confidence or competence to see the republic through and therefore opened themselves to opposition and the voting public to look elsewhere for answers to the problems and to make their lives better. The Wall street crash of 1929 was a major catalyst to the fall in 1933 and the rise of Hitler and the National Socialists (they never referred to themselves at Nazis).

The National Socialists throughout the 1920's and 30's appealed to the disillusioned German Citizen by blaming big business, communists, jews and margins of society as the reason for the failure of the Weimar Republic, the party therefore could offer a clean break and solutions to these issues. After the 1933 election Hitler was made Chancellor by President Paul von Hindenberg, Germany was not yet a full blown dictatorship but by the end of 1934 and following the burning of the reichstag, emergency powers were brought in to allow the ruling party and its leadership greater control and make it easier to supress opposition. Selling this to the people was achieved by the dehumanisation of those on the fringes of society or who didn't meet the criteria to be of the ayrian race. I don't need to go any further as to what happened next.

So there is the background and some context.

Where does Gary Linker's tweet come into alll of this? Well, the insinuation is that the UK government's language around boat crossings and invasions is such that it is to create fear in British society and an attack on our way of life. Having said that, any government would quite rightly take offence at being linked to or classed as similar to Nazi Germany. It is to note therfore Lineker did not use the word Nazi in his tweet and as we have seen, pre 1933, there was still a friction in Germany and its population being fed ideas of an enemy causing the situation they are in, rather than the cause being internal from the top.

Remember the phrase, not dissimilar. It is broad and vague, but at the same time, Lineker is intelligent enough to realise where the boundaries are and what would actually cause massive and genuine offence.

This is my opinion, I am not presenting my opinion as fact. I have used facts to create an opinion, you may disagree, that is fine and healthy, but please be respectful.

I think if Lineker really wanted to go for the jugular, he could have actually quoted the language the UK actually used in the 1905 aliens act;

Those who "appeared unable to support themselves" or "likely to become a charge upon the rates" were declared "undesirable". The Act also allowed to turn away potential immigrants on medical grounds. Asylum-seekers fleeing from religious or political persecution were supposedly exempted from the act but, nevertheless, their claims were often ignored. Sometimes you don't need to look to 1930's Germany for language not dissimilar to that being used now.

I think we are now in a period where free speech is only a thing as long as you toe the line or agree with policies of the day. What if Lineker had sided with the government's immigration policy? That would still be displaying an impartial opinion, but would he have had to step away from presenting? In theory he would have had to have done. However why would you punish someone who agrees with you?

This so called free speech or rather nodding dog psych can be seen with the launch of TV channels like GB News, probably the UK equivalent of Fox News in the US. I will always say there is a time and place for multi media outlets and different points of view, it encourages debate. However, to rely on one source of information, no matter where you get it from is dangerous.

So what happens now? Well the BBC is now backed into a corner, Lineker isn't scared about what will happen next or indeed really care. At the moment his colleagues all have his back and if he goes they may well follow, thus leaving the BBC with a dilemma about its sport coverage.

The government will continue to use distraction tactics such as this to bring through other policies or disregard select committe recommendations. Want an example? The other week, the womens and equalities select committee published recommendations to protect women's rights in the work place as they go through the menopause. The select Committee was cross party and led by a conservative MP.

During a session in front of the committe, Kemi Badenoch the women's and equalitiea minister dismissed the recommendations as they were from a left wing leaning perspective. Woment out there, even the women's minister, who is a woman has politicised your menopause. Don't believe me? Look it up. Who criticised that?

I will leave you with this thought

To criticise Gary Lineker's twitter post is not dissimilar to reading Mein Kampf and criticising its prose - you have been competely distracted away from what you should be really offended by.