The reaction to Jeremy Clarkson’s Sun column about Meghan Markle has been so over-the-top, it’s actually becoming quite funny. The most ridiculous I’ve seen so far was that of Chris Packham, presenter of Springwatch and a long-standing opponent of Clarkson’s on everything from driven shooting to farming. He tweeted: “It’s hate crime, pure and simple. If there were any sort of justice there would be laws that would jail him. And shut down the publisher. Is this the country we want to live in? Is this what we should tolerate? We must ask ourselves – where is this leading? Nowhere good.”
Does Packham really believe that Britain would be a better place if newspaper columnists could be imprisoned (and their newspapers shut down) for saying something offensive? Maybe he does.
I can’t link to the column in question because Clarkson has asked the Sun to take it down (which I think is a mistake). But it hardly matters because it’s been reproduced everywhere, particularly by those who claim to believe the words Clarkson used are likely to inspire violence against women and girls. (If they’re really so dangerous, why keep repeating them?) Here’s the offending passage:
I hate her. Not like I hate Nicola Sturgeon or Rose West. I hate her on a cellular level.
At night, I’m unable to sleep as I lie there, grinding my teeth and dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, “Shame!” and throw lumps of excrement at her.
This is an obvious reference to the scene in Game of Thrones in which Cersei is forced to do a ‘walk of atonement’ by the High Sparrow, but that was ignored by all Clarkson’s critics who reacted as if he had dredged up with this peculiar form of ritual humiliation from deep in his ‘misogynistic’ psyche. Apart from David Baddiel, who got the reference but condemned Clarkson anyway on the grounds that the original scene was itself a “violent misogynistic fantasy”.
The number of people who’ve interpreted Clarkson’s words, not as an attack on Meghan, but as an expression of misogyny, i.e. his deep-seated hatred of women in general and not just one woman, is extraordinary. When a female columnist fantasises about violence being inflicted on a man – Caitlin Moran once tweeted she hoped Germaine Greer would cut me in half with a sword – no one accuses them of misandry. But here’s the ex-Labour spin doctor Ayesha Hazarika giving her view on Clarkson’s column: “Many of us this week are reflecting on how misogyny has infected society and why violence against women is at such a frightening level.” That was also the view of Nicola Sturgeon, who described the column as “deeply misogynistic” – this was after a laughable bit of throat clearing in which the First Minister said she was a “passionate believer in free speech”! (This is the same woman whose government passed the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act last year.)
And it seems many members of the public shared this reaction. According to the Guardian, the Independent Press Standards Regulator has received a record number of complaints about the column – 17,500 so far, which is more than than the combined total it received in 2021.
Even Clarkson’s own daughter Emily condemned him, issuing the following statement on her Instagram account:
My views are and have always been clear when it comes to misogyny, bullying and the treatment of women by the media.
I want to make it very clear that I stand against everything that my dad wrote about Meghan Markle and I remain standing in support of those that are targeted with online hatred.
That has the whiff of Mao’s China about it, but it didn’t stop numerous commentators praising her. Carol Vorderman, for instance, described Emily’s denunciation of her father as “wonderful” and went on to condemn Clarkson for writing such a vile thing about “any woman”. Vorderman said in a follow-up tweet that she’d received “lots of abuse” about her condemnation of Clarkson, but didn’t mind because witnessing his demise – and seeing the ejaculations of anyone foolish enough to defend him – was “like watching the last death throes of the dinosaur age”. (Isn’t that a bit ageist?)
The Clarkson Effect.
— Carol Vorderman (@carolvorders) December 20, 2022
I've received a lot of abuse obvs, but it's like watching the last death throes of a dinosaur age. Sad souls who are angry at new thought, at equality, at kindness. BUT this chapter has also brought the calm, normally silent, people together. We fight onhttps://t.co/LkOhqNxtun
Incidentally, Vorderman quote-tweeted a letter to the Chief Executive of ITV signed by 60 MPs, including some Conservatives, urging her to sack him as presenter of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? They, too, didn’t get the Game of Thrones reference – or pretended not to so they could work themselves up into even more of a lather. “Expressing a scatological, misogynistic fantasy that Meghan Markle might be assaulted with faeces is an insight into a disturbed mind, openly expressing violent hate speech,” wrote the letter’s author, SNP MP John Nicholson. He claimed he had “consistently defended freedom of the press” – oh really? – but Clarkson had “crossed a line”.
The pile-on against the “old fart” is ironic, given that the people leading the charge claim to be concerned about the psychological trauma his words have caused Meghan. What about the psychological impact on Clarkson of being the latest victim of two minutes hate? It’s almost as if his critics are demanding that he should be stripped naked and paraded through the streets of every town in Britain while he’s pelted with excrement for daring to suggest that someone should be stripped naked and… etc., etc.
Needless to say, far from being traumatised, Harry and Meghan will be rubbing their hands with glee over this row, not least because it’s shifted public opinion back in their favour after the poor reception given to their Neflix ‘documentary’. Here, at last, is the ‘evidence’ they’ve been desperately searching for that the racist British tabloids turned on Meghan because, to quote John Nicholson’s letter, she’s “the only person of colour in the Royal Family”.
How has Clarkson responded to all this performative outrage and opportunistic virtue-signalling? Alas, he has issued (sort of) an apology:
In a column I wrote about Meghan, I made a clumsy reference to a scene in Game of Thrones and this has gone down badly with a great many people. I’m horrified to have caused so much hurt and I shall be more careful in future.
Oh, Jeremy. You should have reached out to the Free Speech Union, where we would have told you that apologising rarely succeeds in drawing a line under attempts to cancel you. On the contrary, it emboldens the mob who sense weakness and move in for the kill. When I stepped down from the Office for Students and apologised for various sophomoric remarks I’d made on Twitter in 2018, the Twitchfork mob immediately tried to get me fired from all my other jobs and I ended up losing five positions in total. And so it has proved to be in Clarkson’s case, with campaigns launched now to have him fired by Amazon, where he presents Grand Tour, as well as Clarkson’s Farm.
That issuing an apology was a mistake is also the view of Ross Clark, who has written an excellent piece for the Telegraph about L’Affaire Clarkson. It begins:
Jeremy Clarkson has never been the most subtle of writers, but his latest column has managed to exceed even his own outrage-expectations. In my view, if you want to call out the former royal couple for their excruciating and hypocritical behaviour, it pays to be everything they are not: reasonable, reserved and respectful. Fantasising about Meghan being paraded through the streets having lumps of excrement thrown at her is the very sort of thing which fuels the couple’s grievance machine, which allows them to say: see what we mean about racist Britain hating Meghan?
In truth, Netflix producers failed so miserably to demonstrate that Harry and Meghan were victims of an orchestrated hate campaign by the British tabloids that they were reduced to flashing up headlines from American publications. But Clarkson’s column will certainly be taking pride of place in the couple’s next film.
Today, however, that is not the main issue – for the debate has extended into one of free speech and Clarkson’s right to cause offence. The answer is easy: of course he has that right. And having written what he did, Clarkson made an error by appearing to apologise. That is exactly what Harry and Meghan and their supporters want: for the British press, and potentially its regulators, to be so fearful of causing offence that they grovel before them.
Clarkson should have followed one of two examples. The first, like the best comedians, is to unashamedly defend his right to write what he did. The second would be to maintain a dignified silence: say nothing, or, at the very most insist that “interpretations of my column may vary”.
It isn’t just Harry and Meghan whose interests Jeremy Clarkson has helped serve by means of his apology: it is the entire liberal-Left establishment and its demented campaign against what it calls the “Right-wing press”. Is there anything more ridiculous than watching Sir Philip Pullman, for instance, mounting his high horse over Clarkson’s column? This is a man who tweeted, following the Brexit vote, “When I hear the name Boris Johnson for some reason the words ‘rope’ and ‘nearest lamp post’ come to mind as well.”
Were the liberal-Left to apply consistent standards, it would have demanded that Sir Philip’s books be removed from bookshop and library shelves, and films based on his books to be banned from television. But of course, different rules apply to “enlightened” liberal commentators, who are allowed to employ violent imagery in their arguments and brush aside complaints that they didn’t mean it literally (neither, funny enough, did Clarkson when he called for Meghan to be paraded naked through the streets).
Worth reading in full.
What’s my view of Clarkson’s column? Well, I wouldn’t have written those words myself, not least because – to paraphrase Clark – I wouldn’t have wanted to give “the entire liberal-Left establishment” an excuse to launch yet another attack on the “Right-wing press” or lend any credibility to Meghan’s ludicrous attempts to smear the British tabloids as racist. I think I also would have recognised that it’s a little tone deaf to confess to fantasising about inflicting a Game of Thrones-style ‘walk of shame’ on a prominent female public figure, given the current campaign to criminalise ‘misogyny’. Such a law would pose a major threat to free speech because, among other things, it would almost certainly make it a criminal offence to say something ‘hateful’ against transwomen as well as women, which, as we know, includes saying you don’t think transwomen are women. I’m not sure all the feminist commentators citing L’Affair Clarkson as a reason we need a law against misogyny have thought that one through.
Should it be against the law to write what Clarkson wrote? Absolutely not. Should he lose his gigs on ITV and Amazon? Of course not. Should he be sacked by the Sun? No. I’ve got nothing against people condemning Clarkson on Twitter and elsewhere – they’re as entitled to exercise their free speech as he is. But trying to get someone fired for saying something you find offensive – or, more accurately, pretend to find offensive – goes beyond healthy debate in the public square and strays into cancel culture. That’s crossing a line, John Nicholson.
Whenever anyone says they support free speech but draw the line at hate speech, the six million dollar question is: Who gets to decide what hate speech is? In today’s political climate, accusing the Royal Family of being a racist institution isn’t hate speech – even though it’s clearly intended to stir up hatred against King Charles et al – but saying you would like to strip the accuser naked, parade her through the streets of every town in Britain… etc., etc. is the secular equivalent of blasphemy. Why? How did that become the rule? Because Chris Packham, Ayesha Hazarika and Carol Vorderman say so? And if it’s just whoever shouts the loudest, or whoever’s opinions align with the prevailing orthodoxy on Twitter, how will those purse-lipped puritans defend themselves when the fashion changes and their equivalents in 25 years’ time regard their speech as hateful?
As Ira Glasser, the ex-head of the ACLU said:
Speech restrictions are like poison gas. You see a bad speaker out there. And you don’t want to listen to him or her anymore. So you get this poison gas and say, “I’m going to spray him with it.” And then the wind shifts. And pretty soon the gas blows back on you.
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My advice to Alex? Don’t stand near train tracks or busy roads when anyone else is around!
Twitter is evil, Jack Dorsey is evil. Climate Change, like Covid, is a complete and utter scam. Any politician who pushes this is extremely stupid or extremely evil
1979 – The Beginning Of Time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K02fDpOu4AA
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That’s fine
GETTR is the new Twitter, without the deplatforming. Telegram is the new Facebook.
If you’re on Facebook, TicTok etc, you’re being steadily, remorselessly propagandised.
Shake the dust off your feet as you leave these apps.
Isn’t there the risk that moving to other platforms we just form an echo chamber? It’s important to have platforms that respect freedom of speech, but I think it’s valid to use whatever platforms we can to get our message across as best we can to the widest possible audience.
If it were a case of just moving to avoid hostile views, that would be a legitimate point. But the problem is that Facebook and Twitter actively censor and harass dissenting opinions, with the intention of making dissenters from elite dogmas feel isolated and alone.
So it’s necessary to find platforms that aren’t as manipulative. It might not yet be practicable for everyone to give up Twitter and Facebook, but we need to support the alternatives while they build up.
The blame rests with the big tech censors – they initiated the attack on freedom of speech on their platforms.
I think we have to do both – use and support platforms that allow free speech, but continue to use any platform we’re able to in order to reach as wide an audience as possible.
Big tech need to be reined in but I can’t see any realistic prospect of that happening. The much maligned Donald Trump might have done something in that regard, but who else will?
I agree we have to do both.
In the absence of elected politicians who will rein in big tech, the only tool we have, however imperfect, is to “vote with our feet” and help build up rivals to the censored platforms, that commit to tightly limited censorship and opinion manipulation.
Correct, see,
Dr. Sam Bailey – YouTube
and
Dr. Sam Bailey (odysee.com)
The advantage is you can draw people from the censored to the [relatively] uncensored platform, and simultaneously highlight the censorship itself.
All these ‘platforms’ you know, began as very sensible sheep.
Is any new platform not initially an echo chamber? After all Facebook probably started with half a dozen mates at University that Whalberg knew. A platforms strength is in its rules and its members. Some forums on Facebook are clearly echo chambers of course such as something like “Johnson Is an Idiot” or “Corbyn Is Antisemitic” which are both factual but rather limiting.
The issue is whether the echo chamber’s received opinions are enforced and protected by the administration. If not, then the predominant ideas can at least be challenged. The problem on Facebook and Twitter is that dissenting opinions are censored and harassed, administratively.
(Johnson is functionally an idiot, but Corbyn isn’t an “antisemite” – at least in the sense that (intentionally) smears him by association with Nazis. If Corbyn is an “antisemite” then being an “antisemite” is not necessarily a particularly bad thing to be – just a political opinion you hate. If you join the smearing of Corbyn et al as “antisemites”, then you can’t complain when people you might agree with are smeared as “islamophobes” or “racists”. And I write that as someone who could not be further from Corbyn on most issues.)
In many cases youtube is being used to advertise the uncensored material on other platforms adding links to the full versions.
Be a Human. Humans don’t need ‘platforms’.
Do not pay (feed) them.
There are only echo chambers now because the fanatics don’t want to hear what you have to say.
Gab is the only free speech platform.
Mewe is OK
I’ve had a few perfectly valid, perfectly accurate (I double checked everything mentioned) posts on Facebook marked as failing “Fact Check” which they got horribly wrong. This echoes my experience last year where I had them apologise for getting banning posts I’d made which they admitted were correct. They had still deleted them though – all four in one week. I welcome any platform which allows free speech and only censors where it is truly necessary (any admin of a forum knows this one as I do).
I totally agree – I don’t “do” social media , but it has occurred to me that one “positive” outturn from this sham/shambles is that you can now see the immoral/unethical/illegal/dictatorial mindset of Zuckerberg/Google and other media outlets acting as pure propaganda organs for corrupt politicians; what they trot out – whether it is fact checking bollox or ” incompatible with our policy on…” is so easily verifiably rubbish.
I appreciate it will take a very great number of people to switch before the click bait advertising revenue starts to diminish to the point where it starts to hurt. What will be truly scary is if access to the WWW becomes….restricted ….”discuss”?
“What will be truly scary is if access to the WWW becomes….restricted ….”discuss”?“
It already is. Look into how Parler was taken down by denying it access to server space, or racist/antisemitic groups and sites are denied access to basic finance services. As we’ve seen, the techniques pioneered on especially unsympathetic thoughtcriminals such as these are then conveniently available for use against other political dissenters.
Whoever first wrote this, it becomes increasingly relevant: ‘In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth will be seen as a revolutionary act’.
Generally attributed to Orwell but I’m not at all certain it was him and there is some debate on this. Sounds very Orwellian however.
Sadly it probably won’t be the case but I would love it if he was deliberately provoking twitter but making posts that were factually accurate but he knew would draw attention of ‘fact checkers’ to gather evidence as part of a class action law suit vs Twitter.
Don’t use Twatter, don’t use Farcebook, don’t use Gargle, don’t use Amazon, don’t use Netflix, don’t use TikTok, dont use Snapchat, don’t use PayPal, don’t use LinkedIn.
I’m not a fan of the organisations you mention, but I think we should consider using whatever platforms we can to get our message across.
Something like the ‘speakers corner’.
Firstly, we are not the centre.
Secondly, do not think that a machine is good.
“Social media companies that have audiences which dwarf any other are now actively censoring reporters at the behest of governments,”
I think it’s much more sinister than that. Social media companies (and major news and media organisations) are actively and relentlessly pursuing political agendas. It’s true that with covid these have coincided with government agendas, but if for example the UK had pursued a Sweden type approach, and/or had not authorised the covid vaccines, does anyone seriously think that the MSM and Big Tech would not have gone after them remorselessly?
News censoring reports is nothing new. Obviously at times of war it was done, Also in the reporting of relatively minor things like UFOs was restricted by the US government.UK I also believe asked for some UFO reports to be with held too.
Well, during WW2 the danger was real, not fictitious. UFOs I know nothing about. Yes, Ofcom restrict broadcasters with what they can say about covid. My point is that I don’t think the MSM need telling to push the covid narrative. They are pretty well all on board with it.
So you think these mobile morgues getting filled up now in Florida are fictitious?
Aren’t you being just a little obtuse? The evidence points to the existence of a novel virus of some kind that causes illness and death. What is pure fiction is the idea that covid is a deadly pandemic requiring unprecedented intervention, and the idea that any of this intervention makes any difference, and the idea that the evil fascists responsible for it believe for a second that it does make a difference.
I’m not up to date with what’s happening in Florida. Is there something unprecedented happening there, and if there is, do say what you think anyone could do about it that would make it go away?
FFS it is not a “novel” virus; it has been demonstrated ( Dr David Martin/Dr Richard Fleming and a load of other medics) that SARS COV2 is a chimeric, genetically engineered and therefore a synthetic product of GoF research, as admitted IN WRITING by Baric and Zhengli in 2015 (?highlighted in this presentation: https://youtu.be/3GzzBD1kJ0g?) – 8 successful results derived from a combination of Bat and Rat hosted viruses then distilled into 2 variants containing the inserted spike protein which when tested on humanised mice was shown to be pathologically lethal to humanlike tissue; SARS COV2 was then “released” on the world, method as yet unknown but almost certainly covered up by the CCP.
It appears that its only difference is the existence of genetic code that does not appear in any other known Coronavirus – how did this code become part of the Coronavirus – “ccucggcgggca”? I think Baric and Zhengli and certain other folks, Fauci/Farrar/Vallance/Daszak etc know
Yes, with people double vaccinated. We all know this.
Not fictitious, but perhaps overblown. I’d like to wait and see what is actually happening first before commenting. Sadly though it’s another strike against vaccine efficacy as Florida is in the top five vaccinated States!
Again. This troll. I was missing it…
The quicker people leave that stupid platform the better. If they’re so in need to spend time online, use decentralised platforms like Peertube (for video) and Matrix’s Elements. Both open sourced and free.
Maybe one day “they” will come after hosts for sceptic websites too.
What does “that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS.” mean?
prophylactic
I’m still none the wiser as to what he means.
“Think of it — at best — as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS.”
I can understand ““Think of it — at best — as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile”
But “that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS.” makes no sense
Normally you take medicine that mitigates illness once you’re ill. The covid “vaccines” are given to people before they get ill with covid.
Thanks Julian .
He means it’s a vaccine, but using the definition of vaccine as “substance intended to induce an immune response”.
It’s intensely amusing watching people froth at the mouth over their preferred word definitions. Of course religions have split in two over less, and this is no different.
These vaccines are not sterilising vaccines. They are symptom reducing vaccines.
But they are also a new, experimental type of treatment, for which we have literally no idea what the long term consequences might be, so calling them plain “vaccines”, as though they are just like the old familiar treatments that exposed the body to something like the pathogen to trigger an immune response, is intentionally deceptive.
The reason word definitions are fought over so passionately is that they have real world implications.
and are therefore prophylactic products just like Vitamin A, C, D, Zinc and Magnesium which when I last looked did not especially kill people.
I take them daily and have done since this covidmania kicked off.
Likewise !
He’s already got 100,000 readers on Substack. Think that must be rising fast,
Twitter is an incredibly sinister outfit. Truly ghastly people.
Yeah me too dot com – but I celebrated instead of whinging. Twitter is divisive in the extreme – an echo chamber at best and a mindless boxing ring at worst – not much in between. The mere fact it’s become the number 1 censoring arm of corporate govt is enough to boycott it en masse – but people are vain and count ‘followers’ and ‘likes’ etc. It’s called addiction and how the shit show works.
My life is so much better after being banned by twitter for the fifth time and me not bothering to make another account
Good for you!!
Try letters – not censored (yet)
It occurs to me if you, to use that dreadful Woke phrase, “deplatform” yourself from these platforms, as many of the comments suggest, are you not doing what they want you to do and silencing debate? Is it not better to fight back?
As discussed below, the best approach seems to be to do both. Continue to argue as far as is allowed on the censored platforms, while also actively supporting and building up the alternatives.
If you do the former without the latter, you are accepting battle where the odds are massively tilted against you, forever. If you do the latter without the former, then you are missing a chance to get the message out to a wider audience, albeit in a hampered and limited degree.
In the end, though, these platforms live or die by the market. If people want free speech then they have to prove it by selecting free speech platforms for market success. By preferentially using them.
I’m actually not convinced most people really want free speech, though. It seems likely most just want only the opinions they hate to be silenced. Understanding that free speech for yourself requires you to tolerate the expression of opinions you hate seems beyond the intellect and maturity of most.
Anyone with a brain or an ounce of humanity should get off twitter it is nothing more than putrid cess pool of ignorant, vain spewings by a very sad population and which lines the pockets of billionaires who get richer by encouraging hatred. If people just stopped using twitter the thing would die and people would be much better off.
…and yet, The Taliban and many other nasty pieces of work still have their account and have never been banned.
“Enuff said”
Note also he’s a former employee of the NYT. You have to wonder if a) he was sacked or constructively discmissed from that position for being a lockdown sceptic, and b) he was only banned from Tw@tter after he wasn’t working for the NYT, because a current employee being banned would be ‘bad optics’.
Granted; but then again the NYT have done a piece (just this week?) on the rush to install the RT-PCR test regime and the realisation that it resulted in the epidemic that “wasn’t” …I wonder if they had meaningful contact with certain US government officials and ad agencies…still come back to the pandemic busting piece ..maybe they have seen the light?
Another in the long list of censored, suppressed, and banned. Soon you will have no where else to look for alternative information. This was predicted and it is happening. Censorship, banning and suppression of information has no place in a “free” society.
Zuckerberg & Co., don’t like facts or the truth.
Welcome to global corporate fascism at its finest.
A handful of powerful global elites now control everything including experimental injections, main stream media, social media, nearly everything we buy and our governments.
Next phase of ‘The Project’ is tyranical global feudalism.
God help us all.
Good for him. God has ways to transforming evil ito good