The ‘noble lies’ of the BBC

As many people who have been following the storm surrounding the BBC will have inferred by now, this is about more than the doctoring of a speech given by Donald Trump, partisanship on the trans issue or bias over Israel. It’s not even just about the BBC. What we are witnessing is the full exposure of an elitist mindset, one that’s been central in driving the worldwide populist revolt of the past 10 years.

The BBC is the epitome of an aloof class that exists in all Western countries. It has behaved mendaciously because it not only believes itself to be more intelligent than the rest of us – it believes it is morally superior to us, too. Those at the corporation who misleadingly spliced the US president’s speech, who have automatically deferred to the trans lobby, and who have mechanically taken the side of the Palestinians, did so for the same reason: they believed they were doing the morally right thing.

Some time ago in the United States, many used to worry about the influence of the conservative Christian ‘moral majority’. But now we have a different type of clique holding sway: those armed with a sense of moral superiority. And a sense of righteousness can be a dangerous thing, because once you possess it, anything is permitted. The ‘noble lie’, a falsehood deliberately circulated to advance a cause deemed ultimately good, may strike many as something that’s only officially sanctioned in totalitarian states. But telling lies is what people with strongly held convictions invariably do.

Over the past fortnight, even when reminded how BBC editors twice doctored a Trump speech from January 2021, the corporation’s most stubborn defenders have sought to justify the manipulation on the basis that Trump was ‘in essence’ inciting the mob violence of the ‘January 6’ riot. What was broadcast on Panorama and Newsnight captured a truth of sorts, they argue. In other words, it’s legitimate to doctor film footage of Donald Trump, if you sincerely believe that Donald Trump is dangerous and evil.

Our overlords have been similarly deceitful over Gaza because they deem Palestinians to be deserving victims who automatically warrant sympathy against Israel, the oppressor. They have propagated falsehoods on the trans issue because this group is also presumed a persecuted minority, and because they feel they have a right to educate the masses in accordance with their ‘compassionate’ vision. In this new counter-factual reality, a man can get pregnant and a woman can rape someone with ‘her penis’. It matters little if this, or any other esoteric truth they take a fancy to, sounds absurd to normal people. Indeed, the more exclusive the ‘luxury belief’, the better.

The elites revel in determining what constitutes knowledge, and making sure everyone knows the righteousness of the truths they dispense. This is why they get so exercised by ‘misinformation’, or have been eager to dictate what ordinary folk say in private through ‘hate speech’ laws, ‘non-crime hate incidents’ or the Online Safety Act. This is why they double down on ‘offensive’ and ‘inappropriate’ language. They don’t like it when words are used without inhibitions and restrictions and when knowledge is diffused without supervision.

This is why they dissemble, mislead and prevaricate over truths that are inconvenient or unpleasant. Hence the cowardice and dishonesty about the rape gangs in the north of England, or their indignation when a newsreader – someone whose job it is to impart facts – rolled her eyes when prompted to read aloud that fraudulent construction: ‘pregnant people’.

The elites say what they like because they like what they say.

The dystopian left

The newly elected mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, symbolises a fresh breed of leftist idealist that has come to the fore of late. This is a man whose politics border on the utopian. Here in Britain, we have Zarah Sultana, who recently launched with Jeremy Corbyn a hard-left outfit by the name of Your Party, and Zack Polanski, the recently elected leader of the UK Green Party.

The fortunes of the UK’s two upstarts so far have contrasted starkly. While Sultana and Corbyn’s new red-and-crescent alliance has been beset by squabbling, infighting and rows over money and ideology, Polanski – always described as ‘charismatic’ – is on a roll, riding high in the opinion polls and his party basking in donations.

Yet between them, Your Party and the Greens represent the two faces of utopianism: chaos and fantasy. Organisations, communes or countries that are founded on the belief in the inherent goodness of human beings always fail. This is because they won’t admit that many people are inherently motivated by selfishness, greed and the desire for power. Your Party is already in a mess because of all three of these timeless human foibles.

The Green Party, while projecting a more libertarian and ethereal form of idealism, also thinks that our problems have simple remedies: by opening up the borders, legalising hard drugs, making most things free, taxing the super-rich and everyone being really nice to each other. That fantasy will turn into a nightmare should the Greens ever get into power. Utopianism always ends in disaster and despotism because if you only assume the best in people, the worst types inevitably rise to the top.

Before any of that happens, these two factions will likely falter, and for two different reasons. Your Party doesn’t understand that multiculturalism and socialism are incompatible; people don’t want to share with strangers who have different values. The Green Party doesn’t understand that liberty and equality represent two mutually antagonistic goals. You can have some of one and some of the other, but never all of both.

Climate activists are to blame for ‘climate anxiety’

On a visit to London last Saturday, I couldn’t help noticing all the posters on the Underground warning people not to behave in a racist way. This led me to wonder: do all these menacing messages actually prevent racist behaviour, or do they just make everyone – not least the capital’s ethnic minorities – feel more fearful and anxious?

This thought returned to me a few days later when I read that, according to a report by the UK Health Security Agency, as a result of climate change, people are now at risk of ‘eco-fear, eco-anger and eco-grief’. These feelings not only potentially affect those who have been victims of flooding, drought and wildfires, but also people with a general ‘overarching awareness’ of climate change.

This is hardly surprising. ‘Climate-change anxiety’, paradoxically, is to a large extent the result of people relentlessly spreading fear about climate change. As with anti-racists, eco-fundamentalists seem oblivious to the miserable consequences of their overriding desire to look important.

Patrick West is a spiked columnist. His latest book, Get Over Yourself: Nietzsche For Our Times, is published by Societas.