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BBC Flirts With 'Deeper Authority'

The corporation takes an ominous turn

Aug 18, 2021

Witness the hour, for it is late. The British Broadcasting Corporation hails the ghosts of authoritarianism.

"Westminster and the State are two very different things... we should spend less time on the distracting national puppet show and more time thinking about what I might delicately call the deeper sources of authority."

Andrew Marr uses doublespeak in the form of euphemism to make his message more palatable. You may take his words to mean listen to the experts, the deeper sources of authority. But why contrast Westminster as a "distracting national puppet show." To whom does he refer that he should call so delicately?

The BBC’s role in the fast-evolving State was also revealed by the psychological manipulation behind its climate messaging.

Strangely resonant: the BBC’s 1951 “bat wings” logo. Courtesy: BBC.

Aug 18, 2021

It is the intermission. We await the overture that heralds the next distraction. Or as Shakespeare might have said if he'd written Dr Strangelove, "Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun..."

Attention is being switched from Covid. Few people know anyone, outside the nursing homes, who died from the first wave. If the VAERS/Yellow Card figures are fractionally true, trouble is brewing and many will soon know someone who “died from the Delta.” [1]

Someone who lost face — or the use of it — after getting the vaccine will make their voice heard. As will anyone who mourns a pregnancy or a friend. No wonder they want us to stop talking about Covid.

The orchestra settles in the stalls.

Fascism defined away

Did you know Google redefined the word, fascism? In this era you find your zeitgeist detector being pinged by frequent alerts, in this case the news site, Daily Caller. [2]

Although it refers to a change that took place during the 2016 election campaign I had noticed at the time thanks to the moderators of The Guardian newspaper’s comment section.

Fascism was being redefined as far-right thuggery. Then fascism was defined away. Poof! It vanished from our discourse as a going concern. It was no longer disrespect to the millions who gave their lives fighting fascism — or its victims — to hurl the word as a cheap political epithet.

Next, the historical event of the struggle against fascism was buried. In 2019, the Russian head of state was, for the first time, excluded from the 75th anniversary of D-Day — the representative of some of those 26 million fallen Soviet citizens; and of the 80 soldiers who fell for every one American.

In 2015 The Washington Post had written: Don't forget how the Soviet Union saved the world from Hitler. In 2017 the same newspaper published: Putin uses the Soviet defeat of Hitler to show why Russia needs him today. [3]

'Literal Hitler' became an illiterate, incoherent blurt. A meme blotting out reality. An orange smear replacing the sharp angles of black upon white and red.

In 2020, "voters... accept[ed] restrictions on their liberties for the greater good."

In 2021 a BBC reporter says with a straight face: "Westminster and the State are two very different things... we should spend less time on the distracting national puppet show and more time thinking about what I might delicately call the deeper sources of authority."

Soft Cell

The British Broadcasting Corporation summons the ghosts of what would, in another era, have been called fascism.

Marr uses doublespeak in the form of euphemism. Is he saying listen to the experts? Who are these deeper sources of authority counterpoised to Westminster’s “puppet show”. To whom does he appeal that he should, “call delicately”?

To the general reader he is saying trust the NHS. To the insider he is speaking sotto voce in unmistakable allusion to the deep state which was rehabilitated by Joe Biden’s installation in the White House through what Time magazine called, “The Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election.”

Nothing which that Time reporter wrote was spoken on her own authority. She would have been way out of line to type, except by instruction, the words: “They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it. And they believe the public needs to understand the system’s fragility in order to ensure that democracy in America endures.”

Andrew Marr is, likewise, writing less on the nod than to dictation. This man got a first in English at Trinity, Cambridge. He knows the difference between precision and elision.

Marr was also a Maoist, according to his Wikipedia bio, and so he understands the power of the concealed weapon, of disguising one's intent in order to build support among the population — the vanguard only revealing its tendency at the moment of seizing power.

The right are often accused of using 'dog whistles' to call to each other beyond the normal range of hearing. I have seen no clearer example of a dog whistle than Marr's article, which is a barely disguised appeal to supplant the parliamentary system.

If you doubt, then read this section:

"This is a core lesson that needs to be learned, as we hinge from Covid to climate. Public understanding of science has become a security issue. Without it, there will be no public support for the hard decisions on transport, heating and land use. So, when Sir Patrick Vallance calls for the lessons of the one to be applied to the other – evidence-based roadmaps, and the rest – he is spot-on."

I see a position for Sir Patrick as Wehrwirtschaftsführer. Don't be skittish at the German. It simply means leader of a company important for the production of materials directing the nation's economic activity towards preparation for and support of the effort.

Isn't that a precise definition of the role of a government functionary who was recently president, R&D at GlaxoSmithKline?

Tyranny of the average

Assume for a moment that Marr is calling for us to defer to "the state [that] includes the NHS, national science labs, networks of experts."

Cybernetics reduces humans to an average. We already see how a lot of people are not diagnosed or treated unless they have a doctor who is willing to go against the cybernetic technocracy of the advice of Public Health Wales/England/Scotland.

Fakt Cheka: Yes, we know this was supposedly to “flatten the curve” and save the NHS but the hospitals were hardly full and the Nightingale hangars practically never used.

During the vaccination period, governments have stressed that side effects are either to be expected, or rare, and most doctors have complied by blaming adverse reactions on anything but vaccines: neurological problems, mental illness, imagination…

Fakt Cheka: First-hand accounts can be found all over social media, despite efforts to delete them. Indeed, the Centers for Disease Control has added new side effects. [4]

Andrew Marr's worshipful state experts tend to categorize. This is the technique of cybernetics or "the science of control and communication in humans and animals."

People who fall outside the average will be told they're not a match for a condition and can't have the treatment. Or in another situation, that they don't qualify for some service, that their bad experience is an outlier and that adverse reactions (outside the average) are rare.

This phenomenon seems to originate in medicine. Doctors begin with good intent, monitor a particular condition. Their observations become statistics which become averages which they apply to future diagnoses. A feedback loop develops that supports one point, one policy. This is the problem with management by outcome.

This may be why we find medicine at the heart of tyranny and doctors comprising the biggest members of the Nazi party by profession.

Propaganda for the Outer Party

Marr's appeal begins: BBC calling, BBC calling: Grown ups, think no more! Education works. You know enough. Face down doubt. Face down the coronavirus. [5]

By its tone this is clearly an appeal to the Outer Party. The language is compressed, heavy with necessary transmissions from the directorate. It is not an article for the public for it is tough going. It is an update addressed to functionaries who have a role to play.

The message is repeated as it applies to various scenarios:

"... there is, ultimately, not much of a meaningful borderline between domestic and foreign policy."
"The pandemic has freshly reminded us how little nature notices national borders."
"… the pandemic may even have enhanced the reputation of some authoritarian states."
"… the world’s experience during the pandemic relates quite closely to the climate crisis — our human interrelatedness, the importance of effective governance, the centrality of science and its communication."
"… calm and factual bulletins from leading government scientists and vaccine-makers... allowed societies to change direction faster than anyone would have predicted."

There are predictions or evidence of preparation:

"Public exhaustion — and for many, weary irritation — with the same story, the same graphs and the same instructions, will, I think, push Covid-19 away from the tops of websites and broadcasts."
"There will be stories about outbreaks in care homes, or a sudden spike in infections in particular age or ethnic groups."
"Global institutions such as the World Health Organisation have scrabbled for authority. After all this, Western finger-wagging over climate change may not be enormously effective."
"A Glasgow [COP26] conference in which American and Chinese delegations honestly compared notes about those problems, and the wildfires across the western US , would have a good chance of being a successful summit.”

Speaking truth from power

BBC articles no longer read as if the reporters had waited in the corridors outside: they come from the commissar's desk. They no longer sing with the cadence of the interrogative, or the nuance of quest pursued to its probable answer. Rather the tone is certain. They convey instructions.

As a former BBC Trainee and producer for several television stations, including in business news, I could have told Marr to follow the money; that politicians prance on someone else’s stage. Marr began as a business reporter — he knows strings tend to be pulled.

It strains credibility when Marr implies that he knew all along that Westminster was a puppet show. Is he saying he misled us? On whose say-so — those "deeper sources of authority"?

I suspect the latter because he has the analytical brain — though he usually writes better than this. The only explanation in a competitive world is that someone put him up to it or, as Noam Chomsky countered in that famous exchange:

Marr: “How can you know that I’m self-censoring?”

Chomsky: “I’m not saying you’re self-censoring. I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is that if you believe something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.”

More damning is this quote from Marr in 2003, just after British forces had entered Baghdad:

“It would be entirely ungracious, even for [Blair's] critics, not to acknowledge that tonight he stands as a larger man and a stronger prime minister as a result.”

Two decades later he is still arguing from authority: the pandemic will end slowly because only 15 percent of the world's population are jabbed. Stenographing the pharmaceutical industry's marketing mantra that we can't live without an endless line of their products, one needle after another: "Booster jabs will become routine."

So do they work or not? Marr says he came down with Covid after being vaccinated. He probes no further.

Solidarity and Fear

What’s certain is there will be a new narrative, fresh distractions. As The Spectator showed last week, the BBC is less and less a journalistic organization. [6]

From its internal discussions of how to persuade the public on climate change, the BBC is increasingly a mouthpiece for the interests that Andrew Marr refuses to reveal.

The corporation segments the public seven ways, having decided what you think. It then explores how best to influence you and whom to censor/interview.

"The July 28th briefing — which one insider described as being more reminiscent of ‘a campaigning organisation’ — identifies seven different groups of viewers and how to appeal to them: ‘progressive activists,’ ‘civic pragmatists,’ ‘established liberals,’ ‘loyal nationals,’ ‘disengaged battlers,’ ‘backbone conservatives,’ and ‘disengaged traditionalists."

BBC apologists be reminded, that is not how one approaches a news story. To begin with it is issue-based reporting, not news — note the first three letters. Secondly even a hardy perennial requires some hoeing and pruning. The topic, that is, not the viewer.

No-one any longer expects the BBC to do investigative reporting. But a few questions might not go amiss. Instead we learn:

The BBC has decided how you think -- which may or may not be accurate.
The BBC has decided how to influence you
The BBC has decided who to interview (BBC approval scores 5-8)

“Journalists are instructed to ‘build trust’ with ‘disengaged battlers’ by showing how ‘the benefits’ of climate action will help ‘people like them.’ For this ‘fatalistic, isolated, urban group’ a ‘middle class environmentalist lifestyle’ is judged to be an ineffective way of engagement.

Both the ‘disengaged traditionalists’ and ‘backbone conservatives’ are listed in the research alongside the euphemistic label ‘British pride.’ The former group can apparently be won over by changing the messenger and a focus on ‘national pride in practical achievements’, while the latter – sceptical, male and working class – are allegedly susceptible to messages which talk about ‘manufacturing fit for purpose.”

Political machine learning

Marr says “much of what we have learned from Covid-19 — about the state, authority, journalism and civil society — is directly applicable to what’s coming next”:

restricting liberties for the greater good
public sector workers gaining authority
we are all following the science
increasingly interconnected
demonstrating strengths of Western democracies
“procurement had a worse pandemic” (a nod to corruption)

He goes on:

"Yes, there were outbreaks of conspiracy theories spread by new media. But overall, the calm and factual bulletins from leading government scientists and vaccine-makers reached huge and attentive audiences. This shaped how Germans, Americans, the French and British — and many more — responded, and allowed societies to change direction faster than anyone would have predicted."

The timing and subtext of Marr's article tells of doubt. He has been given the task of rallying the functionaries because governments know they are overextended and they are on the brink of a new ploy or, if I had to put my money on it, several new distractions.

In her book, A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic, Laura Dodsworth writes how psychologists have decided two feelings in people's mind — solidarity and fear — are enough for the controllers to plot them on a grid and manipulate the public. [7]

All people need is to rediscover, as former GCHQ analyst Alex Thomson has said, is a genuine feeling for our history and culture in place of the street-clapping on command of the government.

Once people clear their minds of needless fear — orchestrated above all by Marr's colleagues at the BBC — the fear will fall apart.

"So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is... fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." [7]