01-10-2021, 04:24 PM
PETER HITCHENS: I am, for the first time, afraid for the future of freedom in my country
‘On January 4, the same [former senior BBC journalist Paul] Mason tweeted: ‘I don’t just want Johnson to say “Stay home, save lives” etc. I want him to call out and ridicule the bull**** anti-maskers, lockdown skeptics and denialists in his own party – and order social media platforms to suppress/label Covid disinformation. That’s leadership.
’This is plainly a call for censorship. By ‘disinformation’, such people always mean ‘things I disagree with’. When I challenge them, they can come up with no examples of untruths. I mention Mr Mason because he is unusually frank about his real aims. Unlike many establishment Left-wingers he has always been open about his revolutionary views. But he says plainly what many in the Left-wing elite feel in private.And this explains their rather odd enthusiasm for Johnson’s closure of the country. I’m sure they are moved by deep compassion for sufferers from Covid. But they are also excited, more excited than they have been at any time since 1997, when the Blair victory swept the Cultural Revolution to power.That revolution is now about 90 per cent complete.
But there were obstacles: a Parliament with a real opposition, an independent Civil Service, an independent, conservative press, courts that stood up to the state, a BBC that at least permitted some dissent on its airwaves, a police force that at least tried to police by consent, independent universities.Lockdown, with amazing speed, showed that all these seemingly mighty defences were paper tigers. We now have (with tiny exceptions) a lifeless rubber-stamp parliament, doormat judges, monolithic state broadcasting, a nearly-unanimous media, and a shouty, bossy state militia which obeys government rather than law.’
https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/...untry.html
‘On January 4, the same [former senior BBC journalist Paul] Mason tweeted: ‘I don’t just want Johnson to say “Stay home, save lives” etc. I want him to call out and ridicule the bull**** anti-maskers, lockdown skeptics and denialists in his own party – and order social media platforms to suppress/label Covid disinformation. That’s leadership.
’This is plainly a call for censorship. By ‘disinformation’, such people always mean ‘things I disagree with’. When I challenge them, they can come up with no examples of untruths. I mention Mr Mason because he is unusually frank about his real aims. Unlike many establishment Left-wingers he has always been open about his revolutionary views. But he says plainly what many in the Left-wing elite feel in private.And this explains their rather odd enthusiasm for Johnson’s closure of the country. I’m sure they are moved by deep compassion for sufferers from Covid. But they are also excited, more excited than they have been at any time since 1997, when the Blair victory swept the Cultural Revolution to power.That revolution is now about 90 per cent complete.
But there were obstacles: a Parliament with a real opposition, an independent Civil Service, an independent, conservative press, courts that stood up to the state, a BBC that at least permitted some dissent on its airwaves, a police force that at least tried to police by consent, independent universities.Lockdown, with amazing speed, showed that all these seemingly mighty defences were paper tigers. We now have (with tiny exceptions) a lifeless rubber-stamp parliament, doormat judges, monolithic state broadcasting, a nearly-unanimous media, and a shouty, bossy state militia which obeys government rather than law.’
https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/...untry.html