Thursday 31 August 2017

The mainstream media whitewash of the Nazi-Tory story


On Wednesday 30th August 2017 the right-wing blogger Guido Fawkes landed a massive scoop. He was sent screenshots of an outrageous WhatsApp chat between a load of elitist young Tory activists fantasising about the Nazi policies they would like to impose on "Chavs".
Members of the WhatsApp group behind the shambolic fake-grassroots pro-Tory "Activate" campaign joked about setting up a concentration camp, gassing them, using them to conduct medical experiments on, and forced sterilisation.


We all know that if it had been a bunch of pro-Corbyn Labour members who were caught joking and fantasising about Nazi style genocide against poor people (or anyone else), the story would have been rolling headline news for days, with countless outrage pieces in all the right-wing tabloids, and mainstream media journalists haranguing Jeremy Corbyn to apologise in person for the behaviour of his supporters.

In reality critical mainstream media stories about the Nazi-Tories were only run by The Independent and The Daily Mirror, and nobody has confronted Theresa May in order to demand that she apologise in person for this outrageous behaviour from her supporters.

The Daily Mail even ran an extraordinary cover-up piece in which they made their own excuses, allowed several Tories to make excuses and fake apologies, and didn't include a single critical quote from opposition parties, anti-Nazi activists.


The right-wing tabloid hacks who usually trawl Guido Fawkes looking for stories, and who would spew reams of outrage had the comments been made by Labour or SNP youngsters, have steadfastly ignored and downplayed the Nazi-Tory story in the hope that it will just go away.

The reason of course is that this Guido Fawkes story fails to confirm to the overarching mainstream media narrative that Jeremy Corbyn's brand of centre-left democratic socialism is dangerous and extreme, while Theresa May's neoliberal fanaticism (austerity dogma, privatisation mania, rundown of the NHS, lavish tax cuts for corporations and the mega-rich, brutal social security cuts for the disabled and the working poor ...) is sensible and moderate.

A useful comparison is the way the mainstream media swooped on another Guido Fawkes story about Jeremy Corbyn breaking his so-called promise to eradicate all student debt. It didn't matter a jot to mainstream media hacks that Corbyn never actually made the promise he was accused of breaking, because their primary objective isn't actually to report the news, it's to attack perceived threats to the neoliberal status quo. 

The mainstream media stretched out a fake Guido Fawkes story about Corbyn's so-called promise to eradicate student debt into a week worth of rolling anti-Corbyn news, and their complete bypassing of this real story about the shocking attitudes of a bunch of young Tories. this contrast is extraordinary, but totally predictable.

The way the Nazi-Tory story has been ignored and downplayed is yet another demonstration that significant swathes of the mainstream media are part of the establishment machine, and share exactly the same wealthy and privileged backgrounds as the young Nazis in the Tory party.

These mercenary hacks see their job as the moral guardians of this system of wealth and privilege, so they'll gladly spew faux outrage about a fake anti-Corbyn story for days on end, but when it comes to fellow members of the privileged elite gleefully fantasising about imposing genocidal policies on the "lower orders" they have either ignored it completely, or if they have mentioned it, they've tried to downplay it in terms of being youthful high jinks that got out of hand, or by crudely deflecting onto issues in other political parties (whataboutery).

The fact that the mainstream press have systematically ignored/downplayed the story because it doesn't conform to the overarching narrative that they're trying to push is indicative of a much bigger story: The corporate mainstream media are even more biased than the heavily right-wing biased Guido Fawkes blog that actually broke the story! 
 
There's no way they'd ever try to frame the story as being an indication of the endemic elitism within the Tory party, or of the extreme-right views that have persisted within the Tory party ever since the anti-Semitic Right Club and the pro-Nazi Anglo-German Link group in the 1930s.

They would never frame it in that way because their job is to make Tory elitism and hard-right economic dogma look palatable, and to attack anything that questions the elitist hard-right orthodoxy as terrifyingly dangerous extremism. 

Thus the widespread use of intensely biased ignore/downplay tactics by the mainstream media.  The fact that the story is being downplayed and ignored so systematically is actually a much bigger story than the leaked Nazi fantasies of these horrible little Tory elitists ever actually was because it's a crystal clear demonstration that elitist mainstream media hacks will deliberately ignore or downplay incredibly juicy stories if they don't conform to the overarching narratives they're trying to brainwash the lower orders with.



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