Ignorance has its champion

 

Free Speech, flag lovers and cancel culture have littered too many conversations in recent weeks in the same way that some days walking the streets there is more dog crap to avoid. Nonsense dressed up as victimisation for people who behave like over fed dogs pulling faces when they are denied a treat.

There are plenty of people who have a right to victimhood and I don’t have to reach too far to find an example among racial, disabled and women’s groups. No-one ever gave them a free speech mandate. They have never been cancelled either because they didn’t get a booking in the first place. Just as the recent decades decided to reach out an olive branch of a few token bookings and media slots the establishment has found a way to demand their own special treatment. It’s the same kind of victimhood where the richest make you believe they are more deserving of tax cuts than the poorest. The success of this tactic at the ballot box has given the principle more virtue and allowed right wing nut jobs to claim they have been injured whilst punching a liberal.

The right-wing media have long been masters of the creating the patriotic victim strawman by suggesting immigrants from remote parts of Africa have an in depth knowledge of the UK benefits system. The fact that none of them understand how little benefits migrants can claim is not just a reflection of the lack of education in those African states but the ignorance pumping through the veins of too many of this country.

With social media growing the TV media has been bent like a child under the weight of a bully. Outlets are either active in promoting victimhood or are forced to represent these arguments to avoid being accused as being part of cancel culture. This is combined with the pay per clicks culture encouraging the input of skinhead Barry whose father was a bad’un and started a Facebook group under a fake name he found in Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry film. Skinhead Barry is a social justice warrior fighting our freedom of speech campaigning that union jack tattoos should be mandatory.

Ignorance now has its champion.

I remember when ignorance was to be avoided not giving a grant and business plan. Talk about cancel culture, they get to claim they are being cancelled on prime time TV and every social media page in the country. That’s some platform for an opinion that once wouldn’t have got views beyond a cubicle in the pub toilet.

A car crash is due. With brains the size of peas and more contradictions than a Trump speech, I get the feeling they will turn in on themselves. But with the narrative of division written through any contentious event it will have be to something momentous. Even a global pandemic was like giving an arsonist fire safety training.

At some point truth will have marketable value again in the same way as flares are coming back in fashion. Most of us would even wear the flares if that’s the only thing that gives us hope.