I think I might have mentioned this before, but I haven’t watched much TV recently. The media’s treatment of the antisemitism crisis in the Labour Party makes for excruciating viewing. Of course, that’s not the only reason I’ve stayed away. There’s also the matter of the BBC’s aggressive ‘diversity’ policy, where every other presenter is Black, Asian or minority ethnic, or a woman.
Many of whom must have been employed purely on the grounds of race, identity or gender.
The Victoria Derbyshire show, hosted by Reeta Chakrabarti gave us a shocker a couple of days ago. BBC Watch has transcribed much of it. This is an example of the BBC plumbing new depths.
It must have been their aggressive diversity policy that possessed the BBC to bring in a young lady named Katy Sian to opine on left-wing antisemitism, and outrageously, to present her as an authority on the topic.
A respectful Reeta Chakrabarti treated Ms. Sian as if she was a disinterested arbiter and expert, whose contribution to the discussion was necessary for the purpose of counterbalancing the allegations of the two Jewish guests, whose lack of objectivity needed to be put in its proper perspective.
The reality couldn’t be further from the truth. This lady may well be an expert on racism, but her specialty is ‘Islamophobia’. Listening to this inarticulate and slow-witted woman speak, the mind truly boggles at the idea that she’s involved in a university in any academic capacity at all. But I guess that says something about the sorry state of universities these days.
A cursory Google comes up with enough information - surely the commissioning editor was aware of this - to show that she’s not an authority on “racism” at all. She’s a left-wing, pro-Islam, anti-Israel activist. So, the BBC brought an important debate on antisemitism in the Labour Party down to the lowest possible level.
Sikh blogger SikhSangat describes Katy Sian as “an Islamist apologist and ‘academic crackpot,’ “ and
“a left-wing author who likes to think of herself as an intellectual on racism but in reality, she’s a pseudo-intellectual racist.“
She supports CAGE, sources her Tweets from the Guardian and her Twitter banner picture is of PLFP hijacker Leila Khaled.
Reeta Chakrabarti generously gave her the last word, which she took advantage of to make this plainly antisemitic announcement: ”to critique Israel’s settler colonial state is not antisemitic.”
Katy Sian has almost certainly crossed over from a parallel universe in which nobody ever talks about Islamophobia and racism. I hate to be trivial but it was very difficult not to laugh as she pouted in vexation as the other guests spoke. Not a natural listener, I suspect. One does wonder if there is form of extortion racket in operation in which gullible young people squander their future earning on non subjects for the enrichment of academic institutions.
ReplyDeleteThe BBC will continue to show such programmes if people in the UK do not protest directly to them and their MP's in large numbers about this type of propaganda against the Jewish State. It no doubt adds to hatred and violence against UK Jews.
ReplyDeleteOver 20 years ago a Leicester University professor explaining the background to the Middle East situation informed his radio 2 audience that the Jews were the first suicide bombers in Roman times. The shocking answer came back from the BBC Complaints Unit at the time was " Not enough people would offended by it"