Aha!

Here's something that might be of interest:

Airwars needs your help. They scrutinise military operations while others would rather look away. Essential work. https://t.co/OWZBbDkxTx

— Quentin Sommerville (@sommervilletv) December 27, 2019

The iconclastic David Sedgwick, author of BBC: Brainwashing Britain? and the soon-to-be-published The Fake News Factory: Tales from the BBC, has looked into the charity the BBC's Quentin is promoting and has a question: Guess which organistaion run by a "billionaire philanthropist" part-funds Airwars? 

Oh, yes. 

(Spoilers: For those who can't be bothered clicking on links, it's Big George Soros's Open Society Foundations. Of course). 

Bingo!

There's a UK-politics-related headline about antisemitism on the BBC News website's home page this afternoon.  

Given the study yesterday which found that 30 Labour election candidates are presently mired in allegations related to antisemitism, which party do you suspect it relates to? 

Yes, the Conservative Party of course. 

The BBC's headline is: 

Tories probe candidates over anti-Semitism claims

"Boris Johnson "must answer" for anti-Semitism, Labour says" is the caption under the photo of Boris Johnson at the top of the BBC article. (The word 'chutzpah' springs to mind).

Here's to be hoped that 'the Tories' permanently chuck them out with a very swift kick up their posteriors, if they're guilty as charged. Every party should have absolute zero tolerance towards antisemitism. In all its forms.

As for Labour - much quoted in the article, condemning the Conservatives - well, in the 19th paragraph of this 20-paragraph report, the BBC adds - like an afterthought - a 'meanwhile':

Meanwhile, Labour has been beset by allegations of anti-Semitism for more than three years, leading to the suspension of a number of high-profile figures such as Ken Livingstone and Chris Williamson, and an unprecedented investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. 

Mr Corbyn has apologised for incidents of anti-Semitism in Labour on several occasions and said anti-Jewish racism was "vile and wrong".

Hmm. Mr Corbyn's apologies are widely seen as disgusting non-apologies.

I'd love to know the political views of the BBC journalist who wrote this piece - though I think I can safely guess. 

After citing (at length) Labour's Andrew Gwynne, who mentions George Soros, that same BBC reporter then thinks it's right and proper to add this:

Jewish multi-billionaire philanthropist George Soros, who has given away £32bn, has been the topic of numerous fake news stories and conspiracy theories, many of which are anti-Semitic.

I hope the Corbynista hordes here - and Jeremy's Hamas/Hezbollah admirers abroad - appreciate this and write the BBC a warm thank-you note. It's the least they can do.

Spectacles

Talking of Andrew Neil, The Spectator has a couple of fine pieces about BBC bias, albeit by the usual suspects - Mr Liddle and Mr Delingpole. 

Rod's piece concentrates on the BBC's deep-seated bias towards social liberalism as reflected in its many outlets (from Today to the Victoria Derbyshire show) firing on all cylinders after Mrs May's resignation honours list included Geoffrey Boycott, who was once convicted of assaulting his girlfriend. Why did the BBC go heavily on that when they could have majored on the stinking "cronyism" of many of Mrs May's other choices - most of her former senior aides and advisers, plus Conservative donors - and the reek of hypocrisy and corruption they might be said to reveal so clearly? Now, I must say that I think the BBC could have concentrated on both stories, but Rod - from my researches - is right that it was the abusive cricketer who dominated the corporation's field of vision. 

James's piece looks at a couple of BBC documentaries and finds them guilty of bias - The Rise of the Nazis and Conspiracy Files: The Billionaire Global Mastermind? 

Except for watching the Ask Sarkar bits (which I ferreted out like truffles and which I agree with James turned out to be "harmless to the point of irrelevance"), The Rise of the Nazis isn't a series I've watched (yet). Of it he writes: 

Back in the day, the BBC might have been content to strive for an objective take on the subject, perhaps with a voiceover by Samuel West and lots of period footage. But the danger of that approach, the BBC has since realised, is that it runs the risk of viewers making up their own minds what to think. Some of them might not be aware, for example, of the obvious parallels between Hitler, Nigel Farage, Donald Trump, Brexit and, to a lesser extent, Michael Gove. 

But I did watch the George Soros programme (you'll doubtless be pleased to hear). It was a straightforward debunking exercise aimed at right-wing conspiracy theorists which focused mainly on the loudest, nastiest figures of the fringe and the wilder, nastier conspiracy theories. But the relentlessness of its defence of Mr Soros struck many online commenters as constituting a whitewash. It also left me deeply uneasy on that count. Is every accusation false? Has he done nothing wrong? Is he such a good guy? Is everyone accusing him bad?

Here, for example, is the programme's (very) brief take on his campaign to prevent Brexit:

George Soros has made no secret of his views on Brexit, publicly contributing £1.7 million to the Remain campaign. Now, talk of a secret Soros plot is spreading to the UK.

This was followed by a clip of Nigel Farage sounding like a conspiracy theorist. 

And that was that. 

A lot more detail on what he has done - e.g. his £400,000 to find Gina Miller & Co. since the referendum - wouldn't have gone amiss. And what is the role (if any) of his Open Society foundation in, say, funding OpenDemocracy in the UK, with the latter's admitted links to the likes of Carole Cadwalladr? 

Anyhow, here's James's less charitable take on the programme:

But the documentary it did on George Soros — Conspiracy Files: The Billionaire Global Mastermind? (BBC2, Sunday) — was worse, much worse. Soros is an intriguing and influential character, well worth a detailed investigation. Apart from the time he famously broke the Bank of England in 1992 when he caused sterling to crash out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, there’s the vexed issue of what the BBC calls his ‘philanthropy’, but which some of us might consider more akin to bankrolling the destruction of Western civilisation. 

Soros has given away $32 billion to ‘liberal’ causes, ranging from his promotion of the global-warming scare to his campaigning for open borders which involves hefty donations to a number of unsavoury and sometimes violent hard-left activist groups. The documentary’s considered take on all this: Soros gives generously to ‘education, health, human rights and democracy projects’. People who think it’s any more sinister than that are mainly tattooed, racist, far-right conspiracy theorists — and Trump fans, if there’s any difference — whose hatred stems mainly from the fact that Soros is Jewish. I think it’s time the BBC gave up trying to pretend it’s a voice of impartial authority, don’t you?

Don't you? 

Why is billionaire George Soros a object of sympathy for the BBC?

The BBC seems to relish acting as St. George towards poor George Soros, with Mr Soros in the role of cruelly-used Princess and "the hard-right" as the nasty Dragon. 

This weekend they are riding out, lances aloft, with a BBC News website article headlined Why is billionaire George Soros a bogeyman for the hard right? and an accompanying BBC Two programme tomorrow night titled Conspiracy Files: The Billionaire Global Mastermind? 

The blurb for the latter runs as follows:

How billionaire George Soros has become a bogeyman around the world. Are allegations of secret Soros plots to overthrow governments and flood countries with migrants simply a product of anti-Semitism?

A taster clip for the programme - seen here - makes the programme's likely 'take' very clear. Its line will be that Mr Soros's accusers are "conspiracy theorists", that their "conspiracies theories" are underpinned by antisemitism, and that such "conspiracy theories" have "deadly consequences". 

The website article by the BBC's Mike Rudin is chockablock with defenders of Mr Soros and lays out the case against his accusers with single-minded purpose. 

Wonder if George Soros will be tuning in?

Stephen Sackur doesn't do subtlety

What, no Michael Portillo?

Here's a transcript of Stephen Sackur's From Our Own Correspondent report this morning:

Viktor Orbán doesn't do subtlety.

I know this because I've been to his home village, a short drive from Budapest. Felcsút, population 1,800, has become a potent symbol of the Hungarian Prime Minister's vanity and the shameless merger of his own interests with those of the state. 

Exhibit A is the now notorious 'railway to nowhere' built as a pet project on the Prime Minister's orders in 2016. It connects Felcsút with an arboretum, reportedly owned by Mr. Orbán's dad, some three miles to the south. The railway was built with the help of two million euros of EU funds and has, on the busiest of days just a handful of passengers in its faux-antique carriages. Trains don't run at all from October to March. due to an overwhelming lack of public demand. 

Puskás Akadémia football stadium

The railway is by no means the most incongruous piece of expensive infrastructure in this rural backwater. 20 yards across the road from Mr Orbán's weekend cottage is an extraordinary timber, steel and copper clad football stadium, home to Puskás Academy - a Hungarian Premier League team founded by Orbán and his close friend Lőrinc Mészáros. Mr Mészáros was a plumber and pipe fitter when he first met the future PM; now he's Hungary's most powerful oligarch.

There is, not surprisingly, an intense loyalty to their home-grown Prime Minister amongst Felcsút's residents. Journalists from far away are viewed with deep suspicion. I was ejected from the village cafe when I tried to ask a pointed question about Mr. Orban's largesse, and a handful of locals refused to emerge from the nearby general store when they saw me loitering outside. Finally an old lady shuffled out, clutching a tray of eggs, to declare that Mr. Orbán was the saviour of the village and the country.

30 years ago Mr. Orbán was a fiery opponent of the dying Soviet empire, a champion of freedom from authoritarian rule who welcomed Hungary's embrace of the European Union. Now he's the continent's leading exponent of what he calls 'illiberal democracy'. Brussels is the enemy, run by a liberal elite intent on diluting the Christian identity of Europe with waves of immigration. 

The crisis of 2015, which saw hundreds of thousands of migrants cross into Hungary from Serbia in the hope of making it to Germany, was a political gift for the Orbán government. 

Migrants detained in Ásotthalom

In response he built a fortified electrified fence along 125 miles of the country's southern border. He rejected EU efforts to get all member states to take in a share of the refugee influx. He built detention camps on the border which human rights groups say flout international rules on the treatment of migrants. He now blocks UN efforts - and, indeed, mine - to gain access. 

All of this has proved tremendously popular with many Hungarians. I walked a stretch of the fortified fence with László Toroczkai, the far-right mayor of the border village of Ásotthalom. "Finally we have security. Now I sleep at night", he said, nodding to his own home 30 yards from the barbed wire. 

Mr. Orbán and his Fidesz party machine have done away with many of the institutional checks and balances associated with Europe's more liberal democracies. 500 of the country's media titles are now controlled by a conglomerate run by cronies of the Prime Minister. The Hungarian parliament has made it a crime for NGOs to offer assistance to migrants. 

And the Government continues to wage a vitriolic campaign against the Hungarian-born American billionaire financier George Soros, who has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into civil society organisations in his native land. Ironically a youthful Viktor Orbán studied at Oxford thanks to a scholarship funded by Mr. Soros. Now the Prime Minister rails against the Jewish billionaire as a crafty international speculator intent on filling Hungary with immigrants. 

It is cynical dog-whistle politics and, to the consternation of many, it works. 

'Screaming' poster

In the last few days thousands of posters have gone up across Hungary depicting Mr. Soros and EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker side by side. "You have a right to know what they're doing" screams the poster's headline. "Undermining Hungary's security".

With European parliamentary elections looming Mr. Orbán is now coordinating with anti-immigrant political leaders in Italy, Poland and other member states to seize the political momentum and deal a devastating blow to the Brussels status quo. 

He may despise the EU in its current form but he has no intention of leaving. His ambition is much bolder. He wants to remake it in his own image.

Viktor and George and Evan and Kevin

Continuing with last night's PM, here are Evan Davis and Kevin Connolly on Hungary's Viktor Orban. Look out for Evan's introductory remarks about George Soros, and savour the irony (perhaps) of a report about the threat to democracy in Hungary which features voices from just one side of the political divide there:

Evan Davis: George Soros is a wealthy and powerful advocate of liberal causes in the modern world. He uses his huge private fortune to promote the cause of greater openness and, somehow, he's emerged as a peculiarly intense focus of hate from right-wing campaigners, who have even been blaming him for funding the caravan of migrants making their way through Mexico from Central America to the US. But nowhere is he more controversial than in his home country Hungary, where a liberal arts university he founded says it's on the point of being forced out of business by the populist-nationalist government of prime minister Viktor Orban. Mr. Orban's critics say he's shown a pattern of trying to crush or control institution he doesn't like, including Hungary's independent judiciary. Here's the second in a series of special reports from Budapest by our Europe correspondent Kevin Connolly:

Kevin Connolly: We're on a huge Ferris wheel in the heart of Budapest which offers a spectacular perspective on the landscape of Viktor Orban's Hungary. Architecturally, it is impossible not to be charmed. The glittering Danube threads together the city's elegant parks and palaces. But somewhere down there, in the courtroom and colleges, there are growing fears that Viktor Orbán's instincts are authoritarian and that, slowly, he's moving to erode academic freedom and the independence of the judiciary and, above all, to force his least favourite seat of learning out of town altogether.

Eva Fodor: The government has forced us out of this country. It's this simple. It's very obvious that it's designed to make our lives impossible.

Eva Fodor is pro-rector of the Central European University, a graduate college established in Budapest by the Hungarian-born financier George Soros. His liberal globalist instincts seem to really rile Viktor Orban. Eva says the University is being forced to relocate to Austria next month because the Orban government won't sign the papers that would give it the legal authority to operate in Hungary.

Eva Fodor: This is an obvious and clear violation of the principle of the rule of law. The government passes ad hoc regulations without consulting people. This is an obvious and blatant restriction on academic freedom. It's actually closing a university. So this government, the Hungarian government, has designed the legislation that closes a university. This has not happened within the European Union, so it is a purely authoritarian move.

The Central European University can. to a certain extent, look after itself of course. Its students can take to the streets to denounce Viktor Orban's authoritarianism. as they did here. And, in the end, George Soros can afford to fund the move to Vienna, even if he doesn't really want to . But what of the judiciary, which feels itself to be under a similar kind of attack? Hungary's government is taking control of judicial appointments and lowering the compulsory retiring age for experienced judges to create more vacancies for its own people. Zsuzsa Sandor was forced out of her job as a judge under the new rules and says Viktor Orban's Fidesz party is putting the legal system under more pressure than the Communists did back in their day. Mrs Sandor says this is all about Viktor Orban wanting to control every area of life in a way that is just not compatible with proper democracy. Already, she says, prosecutions against Fidesz people only go ahead if the courts get the nod from someone at the very top of the party. Now, of course, no one is saying that Hungary is heading back into the kind of political darkness remembered here at the Terror House Museum, which commemorate victims of the Nazis and the Soviets. Indeed, Mr. Orban's defenders say all the complaints from academics and lawyers are just the predictable moaning of liberals who simply don't like him. But there is surely something more profound at work here. Hungary only emerged 30 years ago from a largely non-democratic history that included occupation by the Austrians, the Germans and the Russians. Small wonder, says the academic George Baron (sp?), that there's a taste for strong leadership here - a taste that brings with it certain dangers.

George Baron: In every nation they would like a strong leader, a father-like figure, but the strong institutions of democracy could make limitations to that desire. If the institutions are weak there are no limitations, and if a cynical guy with talent would like to seize total power he can do it if the institutions are not strong enough. 

The views from Budapest's Ferris wheel are breathtaking and the Budapest the tourists see is as beautiful as ever, but below the surface this is a troubled landscape, and there are real fears here the Fidesz government is eroding the strength and freedom of civil society in a manner that is disturbing and that is not pretty to watch.