Tuesday 3 July 2018

BBC Newsnight on the ropes

There appears to be no limit to the ever increasing eagerness of the BBC to promote identity politics and political correctness. Their coverage of just about every permutation of minority interests, whether it be extolling the ‘virtues’ of the LGBT lifestyle, the ‘enlightened’ outlooks of minority racial or religious groups, or the latest ‘overdue’ demands of feminists, is combined with a near incomprehension of any dissenting viewpoint. The invariable response to those who might question this agenda is the usual reflex accusation of racism, transphobia, homophobia, Islamophobia, bigotry, xenophobia, sexism or any combination of such ‘hate crimes’.

There is no more strident vehicle for the promotion of this agenda than the BBC2 Newsnight programme. A few weeks ago Britain’s best known political prisoner Tommy Robinson faced a barrage of vitriol from Kirsty Wark. Not to be outdone her colleague Emily Maitlis has more recently levelled her fire at the Hungarian foreign minister over his country’s immigration policies. Many East Europeans have witnessed at first hand the massive changes to Britain and other West European states that have resulted from the uncontrolled chain migration from third world countries. They have looked on in horror at what they have seen, and firmly resolved that the same fate would not be visited upon their own nations.

The context for the Newsnight interview was the stunning electoral victory of Hungarian premier Viktor Orban who was recently re-elected with a huge majority after an election in which his main platform was the maintenance of a hard line approach to immigration. During the interview the Hungarian foreign minister adroitly defended his government’s immigration policy in a calm and courteous manner, mixed with some bemusement at the excitable aggression displayed by Maitlis.

The foreign minister rightly condemned the hypocrisy and political correctness underpinning current EU policy on immigration, which he characterised as an open invitation to potential African migrants to make the hazardous journey across the Mediterranean to reach the shores of Europe. To forestall this development the Hungarian government has introduced legislation to criminalize individuals who actively aid economic migrants to enter Hungary. He justified this on the grounds that neighbouring countries such as Serbia had peaceful relations with Hungary, whose border was being violated by the influx of economic migrants from outside Europe, using Hungary as a migration route to Western Europe.

Maitlis facilely asked why Hungary had such a strict immigration policy when it had relatively few applications for asylum. The foreign minister responded by correctly reminding her that there were tens of millions of potential economic migrants who might take up the EU ‘invitation’ to attempt to reach Europe. Since the migration crisis in 2015 the Hungarian government has wisely used the time to build up their border controls to protect themselves from further waves of immigrants that might occur in the future.

Maitlis alleged that Hungary’s policy on immigrants was not really about immigration but was instead motivated by xenophobia. The minister regarded this accusation as an insult against the Hungarian people, stressing that they have the right to make their own decisions about whom they should allow and not allow into their country. In response to the claim by Maitlis that Hungary wanted to keep out Muslims the minister insisted that he wanted Hungary to remain Hungarian and rejected the notion that multiculturalism was somehow a good idea to introduce into his country. He added that allowing a huge influx of migrants into Europe without security checks was reckless as it facilitated the uncontrolled entry of potential terrorists.

Maitlis ended the interview by repeating liberal tropes that the Orban government had manipulated the recent election result, that press freedoms have been eroded under a government PR dictatorship resulting in the undermining of the rule of law, and that Hungary could no longer be regarded as a democracy due to creeping authoritarianism. The minister firmly refuted such claims by pointing out to Maitlis that her approach was unbalanced and one sided as she was credulously repeating the ‘lies’ and distortions of defeated liberal opponents.

The Hungarian government has shown great courage in resisting the demands of EU leaders to turn their country into a multicultural failed state. If only British politicians and governments of the past fifty or sixty years had shown the same resolve and good sense, many of the intractable problems Britain currently faces would have been avoided, and we would instead have a country in which its people enjoyed widespread social cohesion and community harmony. We would also be spared the self righteous posturing of Emily Maitlis and her kind.