Please note: I have found a better quality version of the ‘Panodrama’ movie to that which I originally uploaded with this piece. Both the audio and video are better quality. You can access this via the embedded file below
There is a statement in the Jewish Talmud that deals with the subject of what to do if a robber comes upon you at night. The Rabbonim, despite being mindful of the need to preserve life, allowed self defence even acting in self defence ended up in the death of the attacker. This has expressed in the Talmudic statement: ‘If someone comes upon you with the intention of killing you, then get up earlier and kill them first’. Sanhedrin 73 a-b.
This statement, as well as being permission for self defence, could also sum up what Tommy Robinson has done with regards to plans by the BBC to put together and broadcast an episode of Panorama that appears to be little more than a hit piece. Mr Robinson got wind of how the BBC was intending to stitch him up and hit back first with his own investigation of Panorama. Rather than do what many would have expected when subjected to a hit piece, which is to issue a post broadcast refutation, he took the very interesting and effective step of turning the BBC investigation back on itself, prior to the programme going to air. In the case of Tommy Robinson vs the BBC, it is the BBC who take the position of the robber in the context of the Talmudic statement above and Mr Robinson as the person who is exercising his right to self defence.
Now I am not a slavish admirer of Mr Robinson, he’s a flawed individual like we all are and hasn’t always got things right, but I have little doubt that he’s been treated appallingly by the State, along with state funded organisations such as Hope Not Hate and Tell Mama and by the mainstream media. Unlike some, I don’t treat Mr Robinson as a political ‘guru’, I’ve seen too many of such people be revealed as possessing feet of clay. However having observed Mr Robinson both online or in real life, I’ve seen little that could give reason for the State and mainstream media’s obsession with demonising him or smearing him. I have seen no credible evidence from my observation of Mr Robinson over many years that he is a racist, or has incited violence, or is unable to make the distinction between individual Muslims, many of whom wear their religion lightly, and the ideology of Islam. I have certainly never encountered or even heard any rumours of Mr Robinson being anti-Semitic and other commentators, such as Brian of London, an Israeli YouTuber would 100% back me up on that. Mr Robinson has been consistently and continually smeared by a media, especially the BBC a media outlet that we often have little choice but to pay for.
Do I believe that Tommy Robinson is perfect, of course not, like all of us he can be a bit of a dick at times and in my view he has made some poor choices with some of those who he has associated with. But at the end of the day all Tommy Robinson really is is a normal bloke from a normal background who wishes to speak up against the abnormal problems that the ideology of Islam has brought to Britain. Looking at and learning about Tommy Robinson’s story I am struck by a number of similarities in how he was brought up and how I was brought up. We both grew up in multiracial industrial areas, we were both taught, by our families and by our communities that we should judge a person by their character rather than their race and we both understand that the first and most numerous victims of Islam are Muslims themselves.
I could not get to the demonstration outside the BBC’s Media City complex in Salford on Saturday but I have since watched the ‘Panodrama’ video that Mr Robinson and his team produced. What it shows is that the BBC threw all pretence of impartiality out of the window so that the BBC’s Panorama team could produce a hit piece on Mr Robinson. Mr Robinson’s video, that has cleverly turned the tables on the BBC that was trying to produce a programme that would, as many on the Left may have hoped, which would bury Mr Robinson and mar his reputation among the public.
Like other commentators, for example Longrider, I’m not going to lambast the BBC over the comments made by Panorama’s John Sweeney about working class people being as rare as ‘Amazonian cannibals’ at the BBC. There is an element of taking something out of context with regards to this aspect of the furore. However also like Longrider I also wonder if the BBC would have taken context into account if the target of one of their journalistic investigations had said something that may be considered a little ‘off’.
The video that Mr Robinson has produced shows much more worrying problems, than a few odd comments concerning this programme, which I believe the BBC is now going to shelve. It paints a picture of the BBC working far too closely with Hope Not Hate and maybe not treating them with the same degree of scepticism that they would treat groups from the Right or elsewhere that were supplying the BBC with information. There area also worrying allegations of chequebook journalism along with pressing people associated with Mr Robinson to give false or sexed up statements and a willingness on the part of the BBC to twist the story to suit their narrative that Mr Robinson is ‘literally Hitler’.
I think that Mr Robinson and his team have really played a blinder when it comes to turning the tables on the BBC. They could have just done what many others have done and answered criticisms after the broadcast,but they did not. They dug up so much about the process of making this programme and those involved in it that it made the BBC’s proposed programme a public laughing stock even prior to it going on air. I was impressed at the way that Mr Robinson and his team used someone who the mainstream media had treated as a ‘dissident’ from Mr Robinson’s organisation, Lucy Brown, in order to expose this example of BBC agitprop. I must admit that when Ms Brown first turned up in her ‘dissident from Tommy’ role in the Sunday Times last August, I must admit I doubted Ms Brown and put the fact that she had run to the MSM as sour grapes on the part of a sacked employee. I hope that Ms Brown will accept my apology for thinking and writing that back then? She has played a major part in exposing what is looking to many like journalistic malfeasance on the BBC’s part.
If this edition of Panorama is ever broadcast then I believe that it will be quite rightly derided as it is a product that has been mortally wounded before it has gone out. it’s a programme that has got woke and gone morally broke. If it is never broadcast then the BBC have made a number of bad decisions that have wasted the money of licence payers. I must admit that as a believer in the concept of public service broadcasting and as someone who respects the good work that Panorama has done in covering other stories in the past, I’m very disappointed in the BBC and the way it has behaved here.
Despite what some are saying, I don’t think that this expose of the bent journalism of Panorama or John Sweeney will take down the BBC, I think that the BBC is too big and astute to be damaged by one direct hit on their reputation. I do however think that it has damaged the reputation of the Panorama programme and has made John Sweeney a man whom many may will give a wide berth to in the future. May I suggest that Mr Sweeney be moved from Panorama into a more suitable programme area, for example as the presenter of any new incarnation of the old children’s programme ‘Jackanory’? A job telling tall tales to naive children may be right up his street. After what has happened if I was involved in producing the Panorama strand I would wonder what damage Mr Sweeney may have done to my programme brand and want to distance myself from him.
John Sweeney was the robber who went after Tommy Robinson’s reputation and in this case Mr Robinson got up earlier and hit back at Mr Sweeney before he could do much damage. Whether you like Mr Robinson or not, whether you are a Tommy Robinson superfan or whether like me, you agree with some of what Mr Robinson does but are prepared to criticise that with which you don’t agree with, what can’t be denied is that Mr Robinson and his team scored a bit of a victory here. They have managed to embarrass the BBC’s flagship documentary programme and in doing so have also helped to expose to the public the squalid hatefulness, bullying and dare I say it, fascistic machinations of the woefully misnamed ‘Hope Not Hate’ group. If there is any long term success from the way that Mr Robinson and his crew turned a hit piece into a victory, then it is by exposing Hope Not Hate for what they are. This furore has shown Hope Not Hate to be far Leftists who are not on the side of ordinary Britons of all races and faiths, but who are fairly and squarely on the side of Islam and by doing so wish to squash all debate about this ideology and will stop at nothing in order to do so.
The demonstration at which the ‘Panodrama’ expose of the machinations behind the BBC’s hit piece on Mr Robinson was unveiled, also seems to have been a big success. The Guardian is reporting that 4,000 people trooped up to Salford and only 600 turned out to support the far left opposition. If the Guardian is saying four thousand, and they sometimes talk down the sizes of patriot demos, then we should assume that there was at least 5000 there for Mr Robinson in reality. There have also been allegations voiced on the internet that the Tommy demo would have been bigger but for police preventing people from attending and transport issues in the area of the demo.
You can see a recording of the ‘Panodrama’ video via the link below. It was taken by someone at the demonstration and as such has poor audio at times but it is good enough to show that when Panorama went to take a bite out of Tommy Robinson, Mr Robinson bit back in a very clever and well presented manner.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6ZyolV0Z28
As someone who supports the idea of public service broadcasting and who can remember the days when the BBC was regarded as a ‘broadcaster of record’ I’m saddened to see the BBC sink so low with this overt Tommy hit-piece. Yes I will admit that the BBC has since the mid 1960’s had a liberal tinge to it, but it was not overtly linked to the Marxist inclined Left, something which the Tommy furore has exposed.
I think the old style BBC patrician liberalism came from a similar place, non conformist Christian social concern and classical liberalism, similar to which motivated the creation of many other institutions of social good, but the BBC has long since departed from these roots. What we have now at the BBC is nothing like that, it is an organisation that has become dominated by socialists and socialism with all the authoritarianism and censoriousness that such are inextricably linked to such political currents. This is something that I and all Britons should be saddened by. I believe that the decline of the BBC has come in part from a phenomenon of ‘like hiring like’. This is where those with far Left views have been employed, have advanced into management positions and then hired people just like themselves. This is a phenomenon that has not just afflicted the BBC, but has afflicted other public sector and third sector organisations and the BBC’s obsession with ‘diversity’ of skin colour, gender and sexuality has driven out real diversity which is diversity of viewpoint. With the Tommy Robinson hit piece the BBC has crapped on its own Charter and crapped on the British subjects who pay via the licence fee for the BBC. The BBC will survive this furore but it has lost a lot of trust because of it. I would like to see the BBC earn back that trust but to do so the organisation will need to show that it is a broadcaster for everyone and not just the metro-Left and those groups that the Left define as ‘untouchable’ or who are able to tick specific ‘diversity boxes’ on a monitoring form.
