John Cleese has announced he will be hosting a new show on GB News.
This sentence, perfectly banal in any other era or on any other channel, is now a statement of such vast controversy that it was trending on Twitter for an entire day.
As we are becoming used to with good old GB, the pre-frontally challenged mob immediately descended to explain to us that John Cleese was now ‘far right’, his Silly Walk now a sinister goose-step.
Ubiquitous Twitter Leftie and park serenader Femi expressed his disappointment that Cleese was now literally Hitler: “I just find it sad. I used to ADORE you. Your dark humour was era-defining. Your Hitler bit was hilarious BECAUSE you knew the audience understood the far right were the bad guys. Now you’re supporting a channel Andrew Neil left because even HE thought it was too far-right.”
I just find it sad. I used to ADORE you.
— Femi (@Femi_Sorry) October 10, 2022
Your dark humour was era-defining. Your Hitler bit was hilarious BECAUSE you knew the audience understood the far right were the bad guys.
Now you're supporting a channel Andrew Neil left because even HE thought it was too far-right.pic.twitter.com/hNwz9sI4S6
The almost pathologically wrong on every issue ‘law academic’ Daniela Nadj stopped by to tell us all why she totally didn’t care about it.
And the usual slew of half-man, half-bots gave us their ‘reckons’. Some of which I could not resist addressing.
Of course, as Ms Nadj admits, none of these people have actually watched the channel (with the possible exception of Femi, who probably gets some sick thrill out of hate-watching it on rare breaks from savaging his Casio).
The real GB News is an Ofcom regulated, at times almost painfully balanced attempt at honest news untainted by most of the media’s blatant metropolitan liberal bias.
I can tell it’s balanced because they employ me, whilst also airing many views I find disgusting. Such as the idea that we should abort unborn babies all the way up to nine months, a disturbing and deranged opinion I recently heard twice on the channel within the space of a couple of days.
But none of that matters to the woke mobsters. To them, the sheer existence of GB News is a symbol of something, a mild but uncomfortable pushback against the woke hegemony, and they sense danger.
And the imminent arrival of one of Britain’s greatest comedy legends throws another rather large spanner into their woke works.
Much as President Biden deduced that if a black person voted for Trump, they suddenly were not, in fact, black, a comedy legend appearing on a bad and naughty channel must suddenly mean they were never a legend at all, but a secret Nazi agitator playing an incredibly long game.
The more that respected figures decide to make this beautiful transition, the harder it is to condemn GB as ‘far right’, and the more difficult it is for the wokes to maintain their fragile and simplistic worldview.
The ostensibly intelligent Paul Sinha recently tweeted: “People are of course free to go on GB News. I’m free to believe that by doing so you are knowingly enabling Far Right, racist, anti-LGBT agendas and will judge you accordingly. You of course are entirely free not to give a shit.”
He later deleted it after many explained the multiple errors in his Tweet (actually it was nearly all error: only the fact that people are free to go on GB News, and to not care what the bloke from The Chase says about it, was accurate).
All this is encouraging.
What Cleese has been calling ‘binary’ thinking is now faltering. We are entering the era of the non-binary.
People are so sick of the idiotic tribal ad hominems, they are beginning to embrace nuance again. As Sam Harris would say: the adults are back in the room. Except unlike Trump-deranged Sam, this time they actually are.
When I pointed out on Twitter that David Starkey regularly appears on GB News, and referred to him as our greatest living historian, someone tried to snipe me down with the classic “This David Starkey?” reply, whereby you dredge up the inevitable moment of cancellation to discredit a man’s entire life’s work. Where this might once have been effective, I was now unfazed, and effortlessly brushed the bot aside with a sarcastic reply well beyond his binary IQ (he then blocked me).
I sense more and more that ‘their’ tactics are failing. Their horribly narrow Overton window – less a window and more like the trash compactor in Star Wars, ever-encroaching and harbouring concealed monsters – is now being rent apart once more.
It is time to say a Chad ‘Yes’ to their shrill accusations, like the one that GB News is ‘Far Right’; to bear down the monsters and scare them away for good.
At the end of Tolkien’s epic novel The Lord of the Rings, in a scene I always regret did not make it into the films, the hobbits return to the Shire to find it has been taken over by a low-level thug named ‘Sharkey’ (not to be confused with Starkey).
Sharkey turns out to be the great evil wizard Saruman in disguise, but the hobbits nonetheless make short work of booting him out of their home.
Whatever allegories academics may read into the scene, my take, upon reading it as a teenager, was simply that the hobbits’ great journey has made them immeasurably stronger, to the point where figures and challenges that once seemed intimidating are now a breeze to shrug off.
I sense this point coming with the woke mob, after the onslaught we have suffered at their hands for the last decade. Their knavish tricks, to quote our anthem, have become exposed. Their swords blunted by our armour of reason.
The adults are returning to the room, silly walks and all, and this great country’s great tradition of free speech and civil discourse is coming home.
Nick Dixon is a GB News presenter, host of the Weekly Sceptic podcast and co-host on the Podcast of the Lotus Eaters. This article first appeared on his Substack page, which you can subscribe to here.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Femi doesn’t improve with age.
I’m happy to say that I haven’t got a clue who he is!! Doesn’t sound as though I’ve missed much.
You’re actually better off not knowing. I can only wish to be in your position.
I’m with you Bertie, no idea of who Femi is but then I’m not on Twitter either.
Nor me! Never saw the point of it.
What’s a Femi?
It has to be asked – will he mention the war?
Seriously, I’m delighted to see him on GB News, a must-watch channel for those who value freedom (and no, I am nowhere near far-right!).
Yes you are! I bet you support freedom of speech, don’t you?! Nazi! I bet you think facts are valuable too! Bloody Nazi! I bet you’re even sceptical of government and authority colluding with big businesses aren’t you?!
And I bet you care for the wellbeing of children!
What a bloody far-right Nazi!
(I jest
I suspect the vast majority of us are left or right centrists…but to the Twitter blob we’re all incredibly evil, freethinking racialist gay bashers!)
You Nazi.
Jeepers, creepers (where d’ya get those beepers).
If I’m a Nazi, I’m one who enjoys Louis Armstrong (I bet he’s a “Nazi” an’ all)!
Damn! You outed me. I’m a Nazi too, it seems, and so are my pets. Honestly, when the ones claiming to be on the side of the angels are telling women to ‘just die!’, dressing up in black with black masks to hide their identity, breaking into shops, stopping ambulances and emergency services from saving lives and then calling the rest of us every name under the sun for disagreeing with them, you do wonder what happened to the dictionary or, indeed, whether they’ve ever encountered such a thing or dared to open it. Their knowledge of history is lamentable!
Mr Cleese
You foresaw Whitty and Vallance with your Gumby Brothers characters.
You foresaw Brexit with your ‘Holy Grail’ French characters waving their ‘private parts’ in our general direction.
You foresaw the demise of the internal combustion engine when you gave your Morris 1100 Estate a damn good thrashing.
You, Sir, are a prophet, although perhaps no match for Michael Palin in that regard. What prescience he had when he prophesied that ‘There will be a great confusion as to where things really are’
Nevertheless, a legend, national treasure as you already are, Centurion and latin grammar expert as well, perhaps you can save at least one juniper bush in this country so that we may yet survive and flourish, albeit at the expense of that unlucky juniper bush.
Brilliant news.
They don’t like it up ’em Mr Mainwaring!
Good.
What’s Rowan Atkinson doing these days?
Ah yes, Andrew Neil. Any respect that I had had for him disappeared in December 2021. ”It’s time to punish Britain’s five million vaccine refuseniks’, writes Andrew Neil.” (Bolds from original article – can’t edit them out.)
Same here. I used to like Andrew Neil but after that disgraceful, dictatorial statement I’ll never watch/listen to him again.
GB News really are creating a fine stable of presenters. I loved watching David Starkey arguing with Allistair Stewart during the Queen’s mourning period. “No, no, no …..you don’t understand ……. in 1327 …..” it was so informative (and hilarious) at the same time.
Really looking forward to John Cleese ……
Ironic that most of Cleese’s comedy was satire, silly, far fetched yet today it looks like it was a glimpse of future ‘reality’.
Quite bizarre how 90% of media is to the progressive left but, not content with 90% of it (or more) they want it all. They want the whole 100% or they scream blue murder. They want to criminalise every world view that isn’t theirs? How infantile and insecure is that?