Media Lens Read Aloud

Media Myopia As We Hurtle Towards Climate Oblivion

Audio narration by Matt Alford Any aliens who have been monitoring radio and television transmissions streaming outwards into space from Planet Earth over the past few decades will likely be intrigued, bemused or simply horrified at humanity’s headlong drive towards climate catastrophe. No matter the urgent warnings from climate scientists, the power of billionaires, financial speculators and corporations maintains a death-like grip on governments around the world. Amid the occasional flurry of big business greenwashing and government rhetoric about ‘climate protection’ and ‘eco-friendly’ initiatives, billions of people are being held hostage by the forces that are dragging everyone to the edge of the climate abyss. New warnings about climate change do, of course, occasionally appear in the press. But rarely, if ever, are there prominent and sustained front-page headlines and news-leading television coverage. Rarer still are impassioned editorials, high-profile presenters and commentators demanding the substantive, radical changes that are needed to avoid the most damaging predicted impacts of business as usual. Earlier this month, the Royal Albert Hall hosted a 100th birthday party for naturalist David Attenborough, Britain’s most beloved broadcaster. Celebrities showered him with love and praise: Leonardo DiCaprio, Judi Dench, Olivia Colman, Emily Eavis, Chris Martin, Ben Fogle, Raye, Kate Winslet. And Paddington Bear. Attenborough sat in the royal box, alongside Prince William. King Charles delivered a handwritten message from Balmoral Castle via a ‘cavalcade of creature couriers’, including eagles, a red squirrel, a hedgehog, otters, ducks, a fox and deer, thanks to the wonders of CGI. All very nice; all very Disneyfied. For many years now, Attenborough has been warning about the dangers of mass consumption, pollution, worldwide species loss and global warming. These subjects are clearly of great concern to him, although he started ringing the alarm bell very late. But the evening gave a wide berth to such uncomfortable topics. ‘Life on Earth’? The climate crisis must be happening on a different planet entirely. As Jonathan Liew, a Guardian sports journalist and columnist, pointed out [https://archive.ph/A5kTk]: ‘This is, of course, the Attenborough with which our public discourse is most comfortable: depoliticised, universally adored, a man-sized Paddington Bear fit only for our veneration. Who teaches us about tree frogs and seal cubs and stick insects and asks for nothing in return.’ Of course, what Liew called ‘public discourse’ is the tightly constrained media space permitted by state and corporate power. Liew continued: ‘And perhaps there are more difficult questions to negotiate here: the extent to which he has been a force for the meaningful and revolutionary change he seeks, and the extent to which his broad, inoffensive appeal has been more hindrance than help, allowing the powerful to feign concern for the planet while shirking the tough and bloody compromises required to secure it.’ To his credit, Attenborough has been eloquent and impassioned in recent years about the climate crisis. He addressed the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021, saying [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7EpiXViSIQ&t=144s] that: ‘We are already in trouble. The stability we all depend on is breaking. This story is one of inequality, as well as instability. Today, those who’ve done the least to cause this problem, are being the hardest hit. Ultimately, all of us will feel the impact, some of which are now unavoidable.’ But, even five years on, as the climate crisis worsens, the topic was deemed unmentionable by the organisers of Attenborough’s 100th birthday party. ‘Hothouse Earth’ And Collapsing Currents In February, a new scientific report [https://www.cell.com/one-earth/abstract/S2590-3322(25)00391-4] warned that runaway global warming is closer than had previously been thought. We are heading for the ‘point of no return’ after which we would be locked into a hellish ‘hothouse Earth’. Climate ‘tipping points’ would be triggered, producing rapid heating, which would lead to a domino effect of yet more tipping points and feedback loops. These include the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, drastic dieback of the Amazon rainforest and the weakening, and possible shutdown, of the Atlantic ocean conveyor belt known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation [https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/amoc-explainer/index.html] (AMOC). The scientists stated that: ‘Earth’s climate is now departing from the stable conditions that supported human civilization for millennia.’ The world has already experienced a global average temperature rise of over 1.3C since pre-industrial times and is likely to surpass the Paris Agreement ‘limit’ of long-term average heating of 1.5C in the next few years. Current government and business policies are pushing us towards 2-3C of global warming [https://climateactiontracker.org/global/cat-thermometer/], if not more, by 2100. But, if trigger points are breached and runaway global warming occurs, we are talking about much higher temperature rises, perhaps 10C or more. This would mean almost unimaginable catastrophic effects on the climate system, global agriculture and societal infrastructure; not to mention the extinction of humans. Scientists have warned [https://archive.ph/fSFQv] that even a rise of 3-4C means that ‘the economy and society will cease to function as we know it’. Bill McGuire, Professor Emeritus of Geophysical and Climate Hazards at University College London, put things in grim perspective [https://x.com/ProfBillMcGuire/status/2021708789779714350] via X: ‘We are already locked-in to a return to Pliocene [around 2.6 to 5.3 million years ago] conditions (3C hotter and (eventually) ~ 20m sea-level rise) ‘Keep going as we are, and hotter Miocene [5.3 to 23 million years ago] conditions will result ‘Beyond this a return to early Eocene [around 48 to 56 million years ago] hothouse beckons - and potential oblivion’ During the Eocene, the global average temperature was well over 10C higher than present. Oblivion would hit humanity long before such a temperature rise occurred. Earlier this month, yet another deeply disturbing scientific study [https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adx4298] revealed [https://e360.yale.edu/features/amoc-climate-change] that the risk of AMOC reaching a tipping point by 2100, after which its shutdown would be inevitable, is as high as 50 per cent. Previously, this was considered ‘a low likelihood event’ of around five per cent. But even this should be held in perspective. How many of us would board a plane knowing that there was a five per cent chance that it would crash? AMOC, of which the Gulf Stream is the best-known component, is a vital carrier of warm water from the tropics to high latitudes in the North Atlantic, returning cold water southwards. It is a primary source of heat for western and northern Europe, leading to the temperate climate here. AMOC connects with other ocean current systems in a global network that transports heat, water, nutrients and carbon around the planet. Any disturbance to AMOC, far less its collapse, would have devastating global consequences for climate, agriculture, infrastructure and even for the habitability of Earth. Professor Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, who has studied AMOC for 35 years, said [https://archive.ph/R77Up]: ‘This is an important and very concerning result. It shows that the “pessimistic” models, which show a strong weakening of the AMOC by 2100, are, unfortunately, the realistic ones, in that they agree better with observational data.’ He added: ‘I now am increasingly worried that we may well pass that AMOC shutdown tipping point, where it becomes inevitable, in the middle of this century, which is quite close.’ To emphasise: the tipping point may be much earlier than 2100; it could happen by 2050, or even sooner. The vital point here is that scientists increasingly agree that the ‘safe window’ to stabilise the current by halting emissions is closing far faster than previously thought. And the public likely does not even realise it. Rahmstorf had previously said [https://archive.ph/FK1cd] that a collapse must be avoided ‘at all costs’. Now he added [https://archive.ph/R77Up]: ‘I argued this when we thought the chance of an AMOC shutdown was maybe 5%, and even then we were saying that risk is too high, given the massive impacts. Now it looks like it’s more than 50%. The most dramatic and drastic climate changes we see in the last 100,000 years of Earth history have been when the AMOC switched to a different state.’ In an English-language video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4onHcgbyw8] for the German DW news channel, Rahmstorf explained the importance of AMOC for European and global climate, and the significance of the latest alarming results. He warned that we should expect more climate extremes in heat, cold, drought, floods and storms. If and when the AMOC collapses, the impact on agriculture in the northern hemisphere will be devastating. The drop in harvest yields for key crops could be as high as 50 per cent. Mass starvation is a very real possibility. Climate Shocks A few days after the disturbing new AMOC report came out, Guardian columnist George Monbiot noted [https://archive.ph/Q1Bze]: ‘Last week delivered the biggest news of the year so far, perhaps the biggest news of the century. But partly because billionaires own most of the media, most people never heard it. We might find ourselves committed to a civilisation-ending event before we even learn that such a thing is possible.’ Prior to Monbiot’s column in the Guardian, the paper had published a piece [https://archive.ph/R77Up] on the report by Damian Carrington, its environment editor. Two other UK national papers covered the study: the Daily Mail [https://archive.ph/sC4Uz] and the Independent [https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/atlantic-ocean-collapse-climate-change-b2958795.html]. Channel 4 News covered the topic in a news broadcast [https://www.channel4.com/news/collapse-of-critical-atlantic-current-more-likely-than-thought]. Amazingly, that was about it for the entirety of the establishment media. The fact that deeply disturbing findings about a likely collapse of a vital component of the climate system were not given wider, extensive and sustained coverage is a devastating indictment of ‘mainstream’ journalism. Even worse, when the report came out, the BBC preferred to push [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crl19dzdd38o] Reform-style propaganda about ‘migrants making false claims to stay in UK’. This was given prominent placing on the front page of the BBC News website. We could not find a single report on the BBC News website (although there was an article [https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/amoc-weakening-faster-than-we-thought] about it in the BBC Science Focus Magazine). That is simply appalling, particularly for a supposed ‘public service’ national broadcaster. Scientists are warning, as loudly as they possibly can, that the present economic system of rampant capitalism is destroying the very life-support systems that made Planet Earth a habitable environment for humans to evolve and flourish. Professor Bill McGuire, whose new book, ‘The Fate of the World: A History and Future of the Climate Crisis’ [https://harpercollins.co.uk/products/the-fate-of-the-world-a-history-and-future-of-the-climate-crisis-bill-mcguire], is published this month, writes: ‘In our current predicament, [global warming] is set to bring about nasty and unwanted shocks and surprises, which are the last things we need right now, and the signs are already there. The ramped-up heat is acting to accelerate melting of the polar sea ice and land-based ice sheets, increase methane degassing from northern hemisphere permafrost and significantly slow the AMOC. Via positive feedback loops and the crossing of tipping points, such domino effects can and do magnify abrupt climate change and its ramifications.’ (Bill McGuire, ‘The Fate of the World: A History and Future of the Climate Crisis’, HarperNorth, 2026, pp. 102-103) McGuire also points to the devastating effects of climate change on the human body. It is not just rising temperatures that should concern us, he says, but the lethal combination of heat and humidity: ‘If you can’t sweat, you die – and quickly. A combination of heat and humidity is measured on what’s called a wet-bulb thermometer, which provides a far better estimate of the heat we actually feel than a normal, dry-bulb instrument. The critical value on a wet-bulb thermometer is 35°C, because at this level of heat and humidity the human body cannot lose heat by sweating as the surrounding air is already saturated with water. Anyone exposed to such conditions, super-fit or not, resting by the pool in the shade or working in the fields, will start to experience their internal body temperature climbing rapidly, ultimately leading to organ failure and death in 6 hours or so.’ (Ibid., p. 189) He adds: ‘All of the threats and problems of the modern world will be multiplied and magnified, from physical and mental health to poverty and inequality, to mass migration, civil strife, conflict and war. Global heating is not only tearing apart our climate but shattering the social and economic constructs that keep our world functioning, albeit in a sort of mad-cap way, and stop everything falling apart.’ (Ibid., p. 195) McGuire relates that he knows from conversations with fellow scientists that: ‘many feel desperately sad and frustrated about where our world is headed and the bleak future we are bequeathing our children and their children, and I am no different. Knowing what I know, it is no longer possible to see my kids without wondering just what incarnation of hell they will have to face in later life.’ (Ibid., p. 199) Look at the daily, hour-by-hour obsessing over the endless maneuvering within the Labour government; every single statement from ministers and their allies scrutinised by the Westminster bubble of political correspondents. Imagine that, instead of focusing on short-term melodramas, leading news organisations rigorously probed politicians, day in and day out, about the climate crisis. Imagine that news editors and journalists relentlessly challenged the government about current policies that are bringing us closer to the brink of climate chaos. Imagine that reporters investigated and exposed the deep reluctance and state-corporate obstacles, including the establishment media, that are blocking alternatives to climate Armageddon. Imagine, in other words, that we had a sane media system. That could just mean the difference between human survival and human erasure. DC Note to our readers If any friendly academics or others are able to help us access the ProQuest or Nexis media database, please email us: editor@medialens.org [editor@medialens.org]. Media Lens is 25 years old in July 2026. Thank you to everyone who supports us, whether you donate [https://www.medialens.org/donate/] financially, read our work or share it with others. Although you may receive this email as having been sent to an ‘unpaid’ Substack subscriber, we are aware that you may support us via another method; namely PayPal or a bank standing order. We are very grateful for your financial support. New alerts and cogitations are now available as podcasts on Substack [https://medialens.substack.com/s/read-aloud], YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-SGnHPe74-ogAqJNV5qCUJdTqBisgimh], Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/4fTxgGpriTjpF8qtQ3keC0] and Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/media-lens-read-aloud/id1870078913]. Get full access to Media Lens at medialens.substack.com/subscribe [https://medialens.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

'Starmageddon' - The Anti-Polanski Smear Campaign That Ate Itself

Audio narration by Matt Alford. Historian Ian Kershaw titled the two volumes of his definitive biography of Adolf Hitler, ‘Hubris’ and ‘Nemesis’. (Allen Lane, 1998 and 2000) Inevitably, it seems, great power comes with great hubris. For a brief, glorious moment, brick walls appear as doorways, everything seems possible. Nemesis lies in wait. Having taken just six weeks and one day to conquer all of France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg in 1940, Hitler said [https://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/21/magazine/hitler-s-russian-blunder.html] of his plans to invade the Soviet Union the following year: ‘We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.’ The war would be over in a matter of weeks, three months at most. Four years later, Berlin lay in ruins with Hitler’s corpse smouldering among them. In the Guardian, Julian Borger cited [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/09/tensions-emerge-bejamin-netanyahu-donald-trump-alliance] former Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas on the hubris that consumed Donald Trump: ‘Netanyahu, being the conman that he is, used Venezuela as an example. He said to him: “Look what you did in Venezuela. It was painless. It was effortless. It was beautiful. You changed the regime.” ‘He told Trump: “The Iranian economy is in shambles. The people are on the precipice of revolt. The Revolutionary Guards are losing control. Life in Iran is intolerable. This is our time. What we could do together is bring down the regime … think that together, jointly, we can win the war in three, four days.’” ‘Together’, Netanyahu’s 40-year dream [https://x.com/John_Hudson/status/2028150767626948616?s=20], and Trump, met the nemesis of Iran’s missile mountains, its deluge of drones. With these, Iran was ‘able to inflict withering damage on US bases and Gulf monarchies, close the Hormuz strait and trigger a global economic crisis’. Pinkas concludes: ‘This affects Netanyahu politically and this affects Trump politically. In other words, they have screwed each other pretty badly.’ In February 2023, the previously unthinkable appeared as low-hanging fruit to Keir Starmer – he would dispense with all compromise, all pretence, and simply evict the left from Labour once and for all. With great hubris, he declared [https://x.com/CarefulTweeter/status/2052783061989744840]: ‘If you don’t like the changes that we’ve made, I say the door is open and you can leave.’ In the aftermath of last week’s ‘Starmageddon’ election catastrophe that looks likely to terminate Starmer’s premiership, Owen Jones commented [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/08/local-election-results-our-panel-responds-nigel-farage-zack-polanski]: ‘Labour’s high command gambled that a vicious smear campaign against the Greens would lower their vote. Yet Zack Polanski’s insurgents look well positioned to replace Labour in large swathes of its urban heartland. Keir Starmer believed that if he could crush the left within Labour, he would be able to expel it from politics for ever. The Greens have proved him wrong.’ The BBC’s Chris Mason and Iain Watson nutshelled [https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yxr7zng6po] the results: ‘Sometimes it is the details that best illustrate the broader canvas. ‘The Labour leader of the prime minister’s local authority, Camden in north London, lost to the Greens… ‘Labour have been winning elections in Wales since before Sir David Attenborough was even born. Until today that is. ‘Sir Steve Houghton had been the Labour leader of Barnsley Council since Sir John Major was prime minister. Until today that is.’ The conclusion: ‘Labour were thwacked and the Conservatives became a sideshow at the same time.’ The Green Party received [https://x.com/ZackPolanski/status/2053600992562696446] 1.95 million votes at the local elections (not including mayoral votes), approximately 1 million more than the previous best result in 2023. But who facilitated Starmer’s audacious attempt to crush the left? In the Guardian, Andy Beckett pointed [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/05/greens-lessons-destruction-corbyn-zack-polanski-labour] to a ‘coalition of interests’: ‘… including the rightwing media, the right of the Labour party, the Conservative party, corporate lobbyists, defenders of Israel and the Anglo-American “special relationship”, and supposedly realistic centrists from the opinion pages of the Financial Times to the deep-state recesses of Whitehall. Protecting Britain’s status quo, by any means necessary, against the disruptive plans of the left has been one of this loose and adaptable establishment’s main priorities for decades, arguably for centuries.’ Beckett, of course, is guilty of ‘selective inattention’. With his trademark acid tongue, former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald responded [https://x.com/ggreenwald/status/2051668014500589687] to a post on X by Guardian political editor Pippa Crerar: ‘When the establishment/Blairite wing of the UK Labour Party couldn’t stop Jeremy Corbyn’s rise, their media operatives at the Guardian and similar outlets fabricated anti-Semitism accusations against Corbyn and his supporters, eventually handing party control to the unprecedentedly hated Sir Keir Starmer. ‘As Starmer’s historic unpopularity is now fueling the rise of the Green Party, Labour’s media apparatchiks -- led by the Guardian’s supreme Starmer loyalist @PippaCrerar -- are now replicating that tired smear campaign against the Greens. That the Green Party leader, @ZackPolanski, is Jewish is, of course, no impediment.’ Indeed, in July 2015, state-corporate politics and media launched an unprecedented smear campaign to derail Jeremy Corbyn’s project, peaking just prior to the 12 December 2019 election. That month, Loughborough University found [https://web.archive.org/web/20230811095734/https:/www.lboro.ac.uk/news-events/general-election/report-3] that pre-election coverage of Labour in the press had been consistently ‘very negative’, while coverage of the Conservatives had been consistently ‘positive’. Our own ProQuest database search of UK newspapers for articles mentioning ‘Corbyn’ and ‘anti-semitism’ showed [https://www.medialens.org/2019/reopening-auschwitz-the-conspiracy-to-stop-corbyn] how the smears intensified as the election grew closer: September = 337 hits October = 222 hits November = 1,620 hits Corbyn first became an MP in 1983. He stood for the Labour leadership 32 years later, in May 2015. In March 2019, we searched the ProQuest database for UK newspaper articles containing: ‘Jeremy Corbyn’ and ‘anti-semitism’ before 1 May 2015 = 18 hits None of the 18 hits accused Corbyn of anti-semitism. For his first 32 years as an MP, it just wasn’t a theme associated with him. Then things changed: ‘Jeremy Corbyn’ and ‘anti-semitism’ after 1 May 2015 = 11,251 hits Similarly, one year ago, the idea that the Green Party UK had ‘an anti-semitism problem’ would have been deemed nonsensical. So, what changed? The difference, obviously, is that Zack Polanski started criticising Israel and winning a level of support that threatened the status quo. Just as the Guardian played a lead role in undermining Corbyn, it led the way in promoting Starmer with an embarrassing series of articles archived under the title [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/series/starmer-path-to-power]: ‘Starmer’s path to power’. Despite the fact that Starmer had famously scrapped [https://archive.ph/wOrHW] every one of his 10 ‘socialist’ pledges, Polly Toynbee wrote [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/05/general-election-tories-politics-labour] in the Guardian of how the Conservatives failed to punish wrongdoing in the party because they didn’t take it that seriously: ‘Straight-as-a-die chief prosecutor Starmer will allow no such equivocation.’ Polanski Pilloried As Craig Murray noted [https://x.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/2052840351879090338] of last week’s elections: ‘The most striking thing about the BBC election coverage is that the BBC presenters were all under instruction not to speak to any Green without referencing the Golders Green knife attack and “anti-semitism”.’ The Daily Mail explored [https://x.com/DailyMail/status/2051934229303271659] other avenues of attack: ‘Zack Polanski admits he was WRONG to claim to be a “spokesman” for the British Red Cross…’ Piers Morgan commented [https://x.com/piersmorgan/status/2051979559273193616] on X: ‘So he’s an egregious liar as well as a moron. Good to know.’ ‘Egregious’ as in outstandingly bad, shocking? This was absurd. Owen Jones posted [https://x.com/GlassJet/status/2052323113660989610] a message received from someone who had worked as a manager at the British Red Cross: ‘I was a paid member of staff at the British Red Cross where I managed Dance: Make Your Move fundraising events. These events regularly attracted large audiences and involved significant participation from young people, raising substantial funds for the charity. Zack Polanski volunteered as an emcee at several of these events over multiple years. In this role, he was on stage, represented the organisation publicly, and spoke about its core principles, including humanitarianism, impartiality and voluntary service. He was, in practice, acting as a public-facing representative of the charity at these events. ‘The recent smear campaign is appalling. Zack was an enthusiastic, kind and valued volunteer who believed deeply in the cause.’ A poster on X commented [https://x.com/grumpy_as_hell/status/2052056623158312984] that Polanski tried ‘to flimflam women that hypnotherapy could make their breasts bigger…’ An X handle called ‘Stan’s account’ had already answered [https://x.com/tristandross/status/2051810451537707098] that point: ‘zack polanski said what?? about boobs??? i guess i have no choice but to vote for the eternal misery, war and paedophiles candidates then.’ It is a bitter irony that, despite the press railing endlessly against the supposed threat of anti-semitism in left politics, the hostility directed at Polanski may in fact be exacerbated by the fact that he is Jewish. Several cartoons appeared [https://x.com/benphillips76/status/2051909751076975056] in major British newspapers depicting Polanski with a hook nose that he does not possess. Lord John Mann (Baron Mann, of Holbeck Moor in the City of Leeds), advisor to the UK government on anti-semitism, commented [https://x.com/LordJohnMann/status/2051951798424899869] on the images: ‘All four are antisemitic. Which is precisely why removing Green Party extremist candidates is necessary.’ So, cartoons that Mann deems anti-semitic targeting the Green Party are a reason to further criticise the Green Party rather than the newspapers that published them! This can best be described as Trumpian ‘logic’. The Board of Deputies of British Jews responded [https://x.com/BoardofDeputies/status/2052027631537672455] with notably muted criticism: ‘Caricaturists and their editors must take care that their depictions of Jews in public life do not wade into centuries old anti-Jewish tropes. ‘We have seen a number of examples of political cartoons published depicting Zack Polanski that are a cause for concern. ‘We call on publications to show the utmost vigilance and stringency on these issues.’ Readers will recall the outrage over an allegedly anti-semitic mural whose removal was challenged by Corbyn on Facebook in 2012 with the question, ‘Why?’ The biggest nose on display in the mural belonged to a very recognisable J.P. Morgan, an Episcopalian Christian. Nevertheless, the BBC’s Jo Coburn said [https://skwawkbox.org/2018/03/26/video-bbc-antisemitism-with-hook-nosed-jews-assumption/] on the Daily Politics programme in 2018: ‘If you look at that picture even for a split-second, it is a picture of six men with hook-noses, stereotypical Jewish men playing a board of bankers’ Monopoly on the broken backs of workers. Which bit of that is not antisemitic?’ The problem with Coburn’s analysis was precisely that one needed to look at the mural for more than a split-second to understand it. For example, if in Coburn’s fraction of a second the observer failed to recognise the very accurate depiction of J.P. Morgan, they would miss the point that the mural could not be summarised as simply depicting ‘stereotypical Jewish men’. Similarly, careful observation revealed that the noses were not all, or even mostly, ‘hook-noses’ – some were small by cartoon standards and not at all hooked. In her newly published book, ‘Killing Corbynism – Zionism’s War on Socialism’, Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt writes: ‘The artwork in question – Freedom for Humanity - False Profits – depicted caricatures of six white men playing a board game on the bent backs of faceless black and brown people. The central characters were identified by the artist as Andrew Carnegie, Aleister Crowley, JP Morgan, John D Rockefeller, Lord Rothschild and Paul Warburg, only two of whom (Rothschild and Warburg) were Jewish.’ (Incarnadine Imprint, 2026, pp.120-121, our emphasis) Gordon-Nesbitt provides fascinating, forensic analysis on the concerted, very cynical campaign to use the mural to undermine Corbyn. The artist, Mear One, real name Kalen Ockerman, posted [https://x.com/mearone/status/977299958054318080] on Twitter (now X) in 2018: ‘This mural is about class, not race, and labeling it as anti-Semitic is a divisive, self-interested political tactic used to shut down forward-thinking conversation and bog us down with old-world rhetoric.’ Of course we can question the artist’s claimed motivation, but there is more than enough evidence to suggest it was reasonable of Corbyn to not immediately perceive the mural as a racist trope. The idea that his question was powerful evidence of his anti-semitism is one of the most striking examples of blinkered herd-think of our time, closely resembling the manufactured anti-communist hysteria of the 1950s and 1960s. Given that furore, we can only stand aghast at the lack of outrage in response to the recent, genuinely hook-nosed depictions of Polanski, who is Jewish, in major British newspapers – the silence is deafening, the hypocrisy, as ever, tragicomic. But anyway, is anti-semitism not more commonly associated with the right? Isn’t a key feature of left and green ethics the belief that suffering and happiness are equal, that no person’s welfare matters more? No one is ‘chosen’, and no one is a ‘human animal’? Individual leftists might, of course, succumb to racist cultural conditioning and anger at genocidal injustice, but racism swims against the whole tide of left-green ethics. That is not the case on the right. In December 2025, twenty-six former pupils and teaching staff at Dulwich College signed an open letter published [https://web.archive.org/web/20251206195840/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-reform-school-racism-allegations-keir-starmer-b2868893.html] in The Guardian asking Nigel Farage to apologise for alleged racist, including anti-semitic, behaviour during his time there. The Independent cited Peter Ettedgui, now an award-winning director and producer, who said of Farage: ‘He would sidle up to me and growl: “Hitler was right,” or “Gas them,” sometimes adding a long hiss to simulate the sound of the gas showers.’ Ettedgui added: ‘I wasn’t his only target. I’d hear him calling other students “P***” or “w**”, and urging them to “go home”. I tried to ignore him, but it was humiliating. It was shaming.’ English teacher, Chloë Deakin, wrote [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/10322331/Nigel-Farage-was-a-racist-schoolboy.html] to the master of Farage’s college (head teacher), David Emms, asking him to reconsider his decision to appoint Farage as a prefect, citing his alleged ‘publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views’. Reform candidate Glenn Gibbins, the candidate for Hylton Castle Ward in Sunderland, won his seat in last week’s council elections. In now deleted posts, Gibbins posted [https://metro.co.uk/2026/05/09/reform-candidate-said-nigerians-melted-fill-pot-holes-wins-seat-28297091/] on social media: ‘carnt [sic] believe amount of Nigerians in town… should melt them all down and fill in the pot holes.’ The Liverpool Echo reported [https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/reform-uk-candidate-who-said-33914559]: ‘A Merseyside Reform UK election candidate who called the Holocaust a “hoax” and “propaganda” has been elected in the local elections. Jay Leslie Cooper has taken one of three available seats for the Bootle West ward on Sefton Council.’ Unlike the smears targeting Corbyn and Polanski, these are genuinely disturbing comments, and they have barely been covered by the press. As Glenn Greenwald said [https://x.com/ggreenwald/status/2051668014500589687]: ‘Every influential Israel critic (Jewish or not) will inevitably stand accused of anti-Semitism. The more cynically they exploit these accusations, however, the less potent they become.’ Meanwhile, racist supporters of Israel and the established status quo will be given a free pass by the ‘free press’. DE If any friendly academics or others are able to help us access the ProQuest or Nexis media database, please email us: editor@medialens.org [editor@medialens.org] David Edwards is co-editor of Media Lens and author of ‘A Short Book About Ego… and the Remedy of Meditation’, Mantra Books, 2025, available here [https://www.medialens.org/bookshop/a-short-book-about-ego/]. He is also author of the forthcoming political science fiction novel, ‘The Man with No Face’, to be published by Roundfire Books in March 2027. Get full access to Media Lens at medialens.substack.com/subscribe [https://medialens.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

A Lefty Progressive Goes To The Tank Museum

I was born in the south-east of England 17 years after the end of the Second World War, the most destructive conflict in human history. As a child, the 17-year gap seemed a lifetime; as a 64-year-old, it seems like the immediate aftermath. Everyone had fought in the war: your teacher, newsagent, headmaster, dentist, doctor. I met stereotypically moustachioed friends of my dad who had fought in Spitfires in the skies directly overhead. Or they had flown Lancaster bombers over Berlin: ‘I was just a taxi driver running a night-time service, there and back.’ Relentlessly propagandised to celebrate the great victory by films, TV series, documentaries, comic books and toys, I became an avid builder of model tanks. When I was thirteen, a middle-aged German businessman with a partially melted right hand visited our house. He had been a tank commander in the war. Knowing I would be fascinated, my dad ushered him into my room and showed him the tanks I had built. Clearly dismayed, the visitor shook his head and pointed to an electric guitar I had been playing: ‘Metal is better used for making those than for tanks. War is terrible, really terrible. Forget about all of that!’ Decades later, bemused by my youthful enthusiasm for war, I took a train from Bournemouth a few stops down the track to the tank museum at Bovington. I climbed inside one of the early Second World War German tanks that had invaded France and the Soviet Union. The inside of any tank is so brutal that to make contact with any part of it is to risk injury. Momentarily losing that awareness, I banged my head against a cluster of metal spikes poking down from the turret. It hurt. Even as a stationary museum exhibit, a tank can harm you. I struggled to imagine how anyone could be inside such a thing when it was moving or under fire. I rapped my knuckles against the front of a Soviet T-34: Donald Trump’s claims notwithstanding, the tank, 57,300 of them, that defeated Hitler. If you rap your knuckles against the wall of a building, there’s a response - the energy resonates in the brick or concrete; you have some effect. When you rap your knuckles against a tank, there’s no reverberation, nothing; you have no effect at all. And you can’t lift the tracks of a large tank even an inch, they are like slabs of rock. Rolling gently around the T-34 was an elderly man in a wheelchair. Old school, he was chatting to everyone, making friends at every turn. He was the right age, and I wondered if he had lost the use of his legs while fighting these metal monsters. As I walked on, I had a growing sense that war was the quintessence of all that is anti-human, anti-life. The tank is perfectly symbolic of the ego, of its hostility, aggression, rejection, hatred. What I found staggering was just how much time, energy and resources had been devoted to the development of these weapons – the investment of engineering and other technical expertise defies belief. The power was impressive, but where, as a teenager, I had felt excitement, I now felt a queasy revulsion. And a deep weariness – there was nothing inspiring or enlivening in all of this; the whole focus of the museum led down a cul de sac of killing and death, which made it, in the deepest sense of the word, boring. Why is it that wars are a perennial feature of human experience? The towering walls surrounding so many of the world’s cities are testament to that grim reality. Just this year, after the ruthless blitz on Venezuela, the US and Israel have waged a war of aggression on Iran, with Cuba also in the crosshairs. Is war genetically hardwired, an inevitable product of nature ‘red in tooth and claw’? Is it something we could somehow choose to renounce, if enough of us chose to do so? Of course, I know the arguments: Perpetual War is the result of economic and political momentum that has built up over decades and centuries. If you don’t fire the missiles, the factories close. If you don’t have an enemy, you can’t fire the missiles. If the ‘Bad Guy’ doesn’t exist, you have to invent him. As the historian Howard Zinn said so well: ‘It seems to me that it only takes a little bit of thought to realise that if wars came out of human nature, out of some spontaneous urge to kill, then why is it that governments have to go to such tremendous lengths to mobilise populations to go to war? It seems too obvious, doesn’t it? They really have to work at it.... Most humans don’t respond to appeals to go to war on the basis of Let’s go and kill. No, Let’s go and free somebody. Let’s go and establish democracy. Let’s go and topple this tyrant. Let’s do this so that wars will finally come to an end.’ (Howard Zinn, ‘Power, History and Warfare’, Open Magazine Pamphlet Series, No. 8, 1991, pp.4-5) But this reminds me of the ‘infinite regress’ problem [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_regress] of religion: Who created the universe? God. But then who created God? If wars don’t come out of human nature, what about the fact that so many people consistently fall for the propaganda manufacturing consent for war? Does that gullibility and indifference come out of human nature? And why are people willing to work for militaries operating at the whim of obviously barbaric, greed-driven governments and defence industries that kill for profit? And why do people work for fossil fuel companies in an age of catastrophic climate change? Why do they continue to participate, ignoring the evidence of their own eyes – literally, the obvious facts of their day-to-day experience, of existential catastrophe? Why are we so easily seduced by fake dreams [https://www.medialens.org/2024/expanding-beyond-earth-the-illusions-of-progress/] of Star Trek to the Moon and Mars when the journey that really matters is ‘Earth Trek [https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/reality-roundtable-24]’? Are we somehow destined, designed, doomed to sleepwalk to disaster? But why? The questions echo across the universe… Sometimes, we receive a kind of answer. Monte Cassino – ‘That Were Rough’ Because the previous service back to Bournemouth has been cancelled, the train is crowded, so I drop into the only seat available. To my surprise, I see that the person sitting next to me in a seat reserved for the disabled is the guy in the wheelchair I saw in the museum. Within seconds, I learn that he is called Billy. We have more room than people in the other seats because we are facing the curved wall of the toilet. Parked against this wall is his wheelchair. His legs are outstretched and he is holding a pair of crutches. It slowly dawns on me that Billy, in fact, has two artificial legs. And it again becomes clear that he is one of those chatty types who knows that everyone is basically the same: everyone is friendly, likes a good chinwag. We are soon nattering, and Billy is 81 years-old and has had a ‘grand time’ in the museum. He mentions something about Africa and the war. I take up the obvious prompt and ask him if he saw action. He looks me in the eye, ‘Oh yes,’ he saw action alright. ‘Apparently,’ I offer, ‘Spielberg’s film “Saving Private Ryan”’ gives a pretty good idea of what war is actually like.’ ‘No, no’, he says dismissively, exactly echoing the German tank commander I met in my youth, ‘they never show it like it is, they make it look glamorous, exciting. It isn’t glamorous. War is terrible, really terrible.’ Words are such small containers, and something is missing from this: ‘terrible’ doesn’t seem to capture the extent of the awfulness. I want him to tell me how war is terrible, why it is terrible. I want to know just how terrible this life we are living is capable of being. I try again: ‘So, you were in the thick of it…’ ‘I were in North Africa at Tobruk. They had us under siege.’ ‘Must’ve been dreadful in that heat.’ He laughs and points at the carriage floor. ‘We used to dig holes in the sand at night and bury the beers, then dig ‘em up the next day, and we had freezing cold lager. Bloody marvellous!’ He laughs: ‘That kept us cool!’ This isn’t quite what I’m after, either – the refrigeration of beers! - but that’s what I get. Billy isn’t interested in communicating the terribleness of war; he’s interested in the scams, tricks, fiddles. ‘We landed at Sicily, and then, when we’d got them out of there, it was mainland Italy. We moved up to Monte Cassino - that were rough.’ Monte Cassino was one of the fiercest battles of the war – the Allies suffered 55,000 casualties battling up a mountain to eject German troops from a bombed-out monastery at the top. It was utter carnage. Billy says: ‘We were crossing this river, and we were just slaughtered. Out of a thousand men, 300 were killed crossing that river. It were so bad that people who’d got hit were getting hit again coming out on stretchers. It were that bad!’ I have to ask, feeling as if I already know the answer: ‘Is that where you lost your legs?’ ‘Oh no!’ he says. ‘I got through the war without a scratch. They never touched me.’ I’m too surprised to be polite: ‘Then what happened to your legs?’ ‘I was a smoker. I had circulation problems, and I went to a doctor when I were in Canada, and he said: “Forget about cutting down, if you have so much as one cigarette a day, I guarantee you’ll be back here for amputation.”’ ‘So, what happened?’ ‘I kept on smoking!’ ‘You kept on smoking?’ Around us, silence falls as a dozen fellow travellers start paying attention. ‘My wife smoked. And my brother-in-law, who was living with us then, smoked, and it was so tempting.’ He points to his artificial legs: ‘I had this one off in ‘67, and this one in ‘68.’ ‘My God, and do you still smoke?’ ‘Oh no! I gave up in ’78. It were New Year’s Eve and I said to my wife, “That’s my last fag! That’s it!’” And that were it. I’ve never had a fag since.’ He pats a leg and looks out of the window: ‘It’s no problem, I’m used to them now. It’s no problem getting around.’ With that, he puts his hands into his crutches, struggles to his feet, positions his legs and does a near-perfect Tin Man impression in the direction of the toilet. See also [https://www.medialens.org/2017/a-lefty-progressive-goes-to-the-seaside/] ‘A Lefty Progressive Goes To The Seaside’, part of the ‘Lefty Progressive Daytrip’ series. David Edwards is co-editor of Media Lens and author of ‘A Short Book About Ego… and the Remedy of Meditation’, Mantra Books, 2025, available here [https://www.medialens.org/bookshop/a-short-book-about-ego/]. He is also author of the forthcoming politico-mystical science fiction novel, ‘The Man With No Face’, to be published by Roundfire Books in 2026. Get full access to Media Lens at medialens.substack.com/subscribe [https://medialens.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Nuclear Genocide - The Threat And The Ceasefire

Given the ‘mainstream’ structural filters that reflexively whitewash the crimes of ‘The Good Guys’ - ‘us’, by doctrinal fiat - we have often wondered how the great and the good of corporate politics and media would react if the US or Israel ever decided to use nuclear weapons. Could they, even then, break out of their lock-step deference to power, reclaim their souls and say something humanly honest about that ultimate moral abomination? This week, it looked like we might find out. On Easter Sunday, Donald Trump posted [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg0q6wdzp1o] a message on social media threatening to destroy Iran’s civilian infrastructure: ‘Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F****n’ Strait, you crazy b******s, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP’ Afterwards, Trump told Fox News there was a ‘good chance’ a deal would be reached on Monday, but he was considering ‘blowing everything up and taking over the oil’ if a deal to end the war was not reached quickly. The threat followed Trump’s April 2 bombing of Iran’s unfinished B1 bridge (40 km west of Tehran, designed to be the highest bridge in the Middle East) and his associated threat [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/01/us/politics/trump-iran-war-address-takeaways.html] to ‘bring [Iran] back to the Stone Ages where it belongs’. For Britons going to bed on Tuesday evening, there seemed to be a real prospect that we might wake up to news that nuclear weapons had been used for the first time since the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Trump had, after all, posted this [https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyk7xgkzvzo] apocalyptic prediction on Truth Social: ‘A whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.’ Of course, nothing Trump says can be taken at face value. His clear devotion to the ‘madman theory’ [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory] of international relations means he has to wildly threaten with the biggest stick possible in one hand while offering carrots in the other to achieve a ‘deal’. But many of us felt deeply anxious for the fate of Iranians being terrorised this way, facing the ultimate horror of a nuclear holocaust. Even if Trump’s threats had been a sham, Iran might have preemptively struck at Israel’s nuclear and desalination plants triggering a nuclear response. Iran has anyway suffered [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/05/trump-warns-iran-to-reopen-strait-of-hormuz-by-tuesday-or-face-hell] grievously. According to the Iranian authorities, around 81,000 civilian sites have so far been damaged by US-Israeli bombing, including 61,000 homes, 19,000 commercial sites, 275 medical centres, and nearly 500 schools. Sarah Smith of the BBC described [https://x.com/medialens/status/2041561509097304277]Trump’s threat that ‘a whole civilisation will die tonight’ as merely ‘brutal’. Smith’s breathtakingly bland conclusion: ‘But this latest post does not indicate that he is optimistic about reaching an agreement before his deadline tonight.’ Much worse appeared elsewhere on the BBC website. Ghoncheh Habibiazad, a ‘senior reporter’ at BBC Persian at just 27 years of age, published this [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgl0ng8z0do] comment allegedly supplied by a twenty-something Iranian called ‘Radin’: ‘About them hitting energy infrastructure, using an atomic bomb, or leveling Iran – my honest reaction is that I’m okay with all of these.’ The first thing to say is that a comparable obscenity from a crazed British or US citizen eager to see the ‘leveling’ of their country would of course never be published by any BBC journalist. Des Freedman, professor of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, commented [https://novaramedia.com/2026/04/07/bbc-under-fire-for-quoting-iranian-ok-with-being-nuked-by-trump/]: ‘Iran has 90 million citizens and yet the BBC manages to find one who claims to be “OK” with using nuclear weapons against his own country. There isn’t a single reference in the entire story to the fact that the attacks are illegal and seen by many as war crimes.’ Some seven hours after being published, following much public outrage, ‘Radin’s’ quote mysteriously disappeared from the BBC’s article, replaced [https://www.newssniffer.co.uk/articles/2923999/diff/0/1] by a different comment from the same source: ‘If attacking targets brings down the Islamic Republic, I’m fine with that.’ No correction or edit notice was attached at the time highlighting the change. So, what did ‘Radin’ actually say: the first comment, the second, both, neither? Grayzone discussed [https://thegrayzone.com/2026/04/07/senior-bbc-iran-reporter-opposition-activist/] the background of the BBC journalist responsible casting serious doubt on her impartiality. BBC Persian has long been a notorious conduit for regime change propaganda. On 7 April, the BBC finally added an ‘Update’ to explain its vanishing quote: ‘However, after further review, this part of the quote was removed from the article due to concerns over the way in which the speaker expressed his views and the extent to which they reflected wider Iranian viewpoints.’ This was meaningless verbiage that explained nothing. Health secretary Wes Streeting was asked whether destroying Iran’s power stations and bridges would be a war crime. Reaching deep into his soul, Streeting replied [https://x.com/declassifiedUK/status/2041421556249686190]: ‘Not my judgement to make.’ We like to feel that we give people a chance, that we are tolerant, open-minded. But we also think it’s important to recognise the truth of Oscar Wilde’s observation [https://www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm]: ‘It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.’ Voters need to be clear that plastic politicians like Streeting can be judged by the sociopathic, blank look on their faces – our felt awareness that they are lacking humanity, compassion and empathy is not mere imagination. We can all see and feel the soullessness of much of the Labour hierarchy, notably the ‘empty raincoat’, Sir Keir Starmer. To his credit, ITV News political editor Robert Peston expressed his deep exasperation and astonishment at Trump’s ‘appalling remarks’ on ending Iranian civilisation, asking [https://x.com/itvnews/status/2042310483428921373] Starmer: ‘How did you feel about that? And how do you sustain a relationship with an American president who can say those things?’ Starmer replied with his usual emotional vacuity: ‘Well, let me be really clear and blunt about this - they’re not words that I would use, or would ever use.’ NATO secretary general Mark Rutte replied [https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/2042069258344206770] in similar fashion to Trump’s genocidal threats: ‘When it comes to what leaders are saying, I’m not commenting on everything.’ Consider, also, the US senator and leading warmonger Lindsey Graham. Glenn Greenwald has often commented on Graham’s ‘ghoulish’ delight in death and destruction: ‘Look at the glee on Lindsey Graham’s face as he talks about people dying. It is the only thing that seems to animate him, the only thing that makes him truly happy: the idea of more war and more people being killed.’ (Greenwald, Systems Update, ‘The Sociopathy of Lindsey Graham & the Neocons’, 30 May 2023) Graham likes to make comments of this [https://x.com/AdityaMandagie/status/2039968830697644141] kind on Iran: ‘You either do a deal where you get out of the business you were in, or we’re going to blow your stuff up that will allow you to function as a nation. That is your choice.’ In his classic book, ‘The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness’, psychotherapist Erich Fromm wrote: ‘Necrophilia in the characterological sense can be described as the passionate attraction to all that is dead, decayed, putrid, sickly; it is the passion to transform that which is alive into something unalive; to destroy for the sake of destruction; the exclusive interest in all that is purely mechanical. It is the passion “to tear apart living structures.”’ (Fromm, Penguin Books, 1982, p.441, our emphasis) Fromm noted a coldness and deadness in the eyes of such people. Incapable of smiling authentically, their faces are rigid, unresponsive, limited to smirking. Fromm pointed to a specific type of ‘hard’ or ‘cruel’ mouth set in a permanent expression of distaste or contempt. All of these traits are clearly visible in Graham’s appearance. A real problem is that these monsters can slip through to the highest echelons of politics where they are mistaken for cool, emotionless, tough defenders of the national interest. In reality, they bring the death and destruction they crave even on their own nations. ‘Operation Eternal Darkness’ And The Ceasefire With a nuclear holocaust apparently averted, on April 8, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced [https://x.com/ggreenwald/status/2041937714119839781/photo/1] a two-week ceasefire between the United States and Iran: ‘With the greatest humility, I am pleased to announce that the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America, along with their allies, have agreed to an immediate ceasefire everywhere including Lebanon and elsewhere, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY.’ (Our emphasis) As this clearly stated, the ceasefire included Lebanon. Nevertheless, just hours later, Israel launched its most violent bombardment of Lebanon yet, killing at least 303 and wounding 1100 people by targeting, without warning, apartment blocks in residential areas of Beirut that had not previously been attacked, and also by attacking a funeral, cafes, emergency workers and ambulances. Israel’s name for the attack was ‘Operation Eternal Darkness’. Tucker Carlson, a devoted Christian, noted that ‘eternal darkness’ appears numerous times in the New Testament as a reference to hell. The BBC’s whitewashing response [https://x.com/SweeneySteve/status/2042116020169576615] to this attempt to derail the ceasefire: ‘Well, more now from Lebanon, where Israel says it’s hit more than a hundred [Hezbollah] command centres and military sites in ten minutes.’ As we have commented before [https://www.medialens.org/2025/israel-says-is-not-journalism/], ‘Israel says’ is not journalism. Unusually, BBC Middle East correspondent Hugo Bachega posted [https://x.com/hugobachega/status/2042203200791437510] a defence in response to criticism: ‘There is a clip circulating that misrepresents the way the Israeli attacks on Lebanon were covered by the BBC last night. ‘This is the full segment. I’m out in Beirut interviewing people so unable to do it by myself - but here’s the introduction, my live and my report.’ His report was sympathetic to the plight of Lebanese civilians, and it did quote the president of Lebanon describing the attacks as ‘a massacre’, but Bachega missed the point: the BBC would never introduce a report on a comparable atrocity by Russia, Iran or any other Official Enemy with those countries’ crude propaganda take on events. How to explain the extraordinary servility of the BBC in reporting on the crimes of a tiny foreign country of just nine million people? Aaron Bastani of Novara Media comments [https://x.com/medialens/status/2042166059961139380]: ‘If they relay the facts, accurately and objectively, there is a deluge of pressure from the Israel lobby. Phone calls, emails - it’s extraordinary. And organised. ‘This is the “electric fence” approach to media monitoring and management, as [former Guardian reporter] Nick Davies calls it. You disincentivise accuracy, or even just covering stories. Even the smallest thing gets a response (like a small shock from a fence). Producers know there are costs for covering Israel, so they calculate “let’s leave it this time”. ‘It’s not excusable, but it’s explicable. For the BBC, however, which is public service journalism, and which we all pay for, it’s unacceptable.’ The destructive impacts of Israeli influence on British democracy go far beyond media flak. Israel and its supporters played a lead role in promoting the fake antisemitism smears that derailed Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party. This was a serious attack on British democracy that slammed the door on a more compassionate, people-centred politics, opening the way for Tory-lite Keir Starmer and, consequently, the disastrous threat of a hard-right Reform Party government. Gideon Levy, who writes a weekly column for Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, commented [https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2019-11-28/ty-article-opinion/.premium/the-contract-on-corbyn/0000017f-db6b-d3ff-a7ff-fbeba82b0000] on the Corbyn smears in 2019: ‘The Jewish establishment in Britain and the Israeli propaganda machine have taken out a contract on the leader of the British Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn. The contract was taken out a long time ago, and it was clear that the closer Corbyn came to being elected prime minister, the harsher the conflict would get.’ Political analyst Norman Finkelstein, whose mother survived the Warsaw Ghetto and the Majdanek concentration camp, and whose father was a survivor of both the Warsaw Ghetto and the Auschwitz concentration camp, said [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEX5OGmXLz4]: ‘The British elites could not have gotten away with calling Corbyn an anti-semite unless they had the support, the visible support, of all the leading Jewish organisations. You have to remember that during the summer [25 July 2018], all three major British publications, for the first time in British Jewish history, they all took out a common editorial [https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/jewish-newspapers-join-forces-to-condemn-jeremy-corbyns-attempts-to-tackle-labour-antisemitism] denouncing Corbyn as an anti-semite and saying that we’re now standing on the verge of another Holocaust. They are the enablers of this concerted conspiracy by the whole of British elite society to destroy Jeremy Corbyn.’ Humanising Iran While sociopaths had their say in response to Trump’s threat that Iran would shortly ‘die’ as a civilisation, something wonderful also happened: there was a global tsunami of revulsion and rejection. The threat stirred the humanity even in voices on the hard-right. The Mirror described [https://x.com/ThatTimWalker/status/2041630518219821308] Trump as a ‘maniac’ and the Daily Mail described [https://x.com/ThatTimWalker/status/2041630518219821308] his threats as ‘unhinged’, and they were joined by all kinds of voices from across the political spectrum. That is positive. If Trump repeats the threat, the response will be louder still. Additionally, we saw and reposted numerous videos on X humanising Iranians. Notably, this [https://x.com/DDGSarah/status/2041303099718189258] video of ordinary people in Tehran – people who look exactly like the rest of us – challenged decades of Western propaganda depicting grim-faced Iranian women in black burkas walking past skull-packed propaganda murals demonising America. The video has had 5.3 million views and 52,000 ‘likes’. Posting a beautiful image of Iranian architecture, Dr Rhonda Garad wrote [https://x.com/RhondaGarad/status/2041369103328481596] on X: ‘Trump’s done what no tourism campaign could-sparked huge interest in Persian culture. Posts on history, architecture, food, music, Lego videos-going viral. The hatred we’ve been fed about Iran for decades-rapidly transformed into support and respect.’ Victims of Capitalism Memorial Foundation posted [https://x.com/karaokecomputer/status/2041315954530103546]: ‘Iranian Tar player Ali Ghamsari is currently camped at Damavand Power Plant, which provides a significant amount of electricity to Tehran. Ghamsari says he’ll remain there for a while in the hopes that his presence will protect it from bombing.’ And from Gaza, Maha Hussaini posted [https://x.com/MahaGaza/status/2041238336929444093] a beautiful, all but silent, 34-second video that somehow said so much: ‘Here, I have stood at the peak of fear and felt the deepest peace.. ‘Good night from Gaza🪴’ Despite all the madness, horror and killing, Trump’s genocidal threat provoked a display of deep-seated solidarity and compassion that defied decades of propaganda demonising the Iranian people as ‘animals’, ‘savages’ and ‘primitives’. Clearly, very few of us are willing to tolerate the threat of nuclear genocide. In these grim times, when it sometimes feels like humanity has completely lost its way, that is something to celebrate. DE David Edwards is the author of ‘A Short Book About Ego… and the Remedy of Meditation’, Mantra Books, available here [https://www.medialens.org/bookshop/a-short-book-about-ego/]. He is also the author of the science fiction novel, ‘The Man With No Face’, to be published by Roundfire Books in 2026. Get full access to Media Lens at medialens.substack.com/subscribe [https://medialens.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

‘How On Earth Do You Justify That?’ Laura Kuenssberg’s Selective Empathy

On 8 March, on the BBC politics programme, ‘Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg’ [https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002sgns/sunday-with-laura-kuenssberg-iran-israel-and-the-foreign-secretary], the former BBC political editor put these impassioned words to Seyed Ali Mousavi, the Iranian ambassador to the UK: ‘Since we last spoke, your government has killed thousands of its own people in the streets who had the courage to stand up to protest against the suffering that they have been experiencing at the hands of the regime. Thousands of people were killed. How on earth do you justify that, Ambassador?’ Clearly feeling deep emotion, Kuenssberg continued: ‘Just this morning, I looked at many of the images and watched some of the videos from what happened to protesters in your country in January. I looked at images and videos, verified independently [sic] by our colleagues at BBC Verify, that show body bags littered over the courtyard of a mortuary, the Kahrizak Forensic Medical Centre in Iran. I saw images of young, old, teenagers, people killed by your government, beaten faces, bloodied bodies, gunshot wounds.’ In a strongly accusatory tone, she confronted him: ‘How on earth do you justify that and sit there today saying, “Our people have some complaints”? Your government killed thousands of their own people and the world saw that’. When has Kuenssberg ever expressed such heartfelt revulsion at the genocide being committed by Israel in Gaza, with likely in excess of 100,000 Palestinians [https://www.mpg.de/25778228/1125-defo-gaza-study-reveals-unprecedented-losses-of-life-and-life-expectancy-154642-x] slaughtered? Has she expressed similar horror for 175 [https://archive.ph/7aKIX] schoolgirls, staff and parents killed by the US in a ‘double-tap’ attack [https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/exclusive-iranian-girls-killed-double-tap-strikes-minab-school] on a primary school in Minab in Iran? It seems some victims matter more. On the same politics programme last year, Kuenssberg said this [https://x.com/SaulStaniforth/status/2030659861076181316] about the genocide in Gaza: ‘Often when it comes to the debate about Gaza, it gets very binary and very aggressive very, very quickly and there’s no room for nuance.’ What possible nuance could there be about genocide? Her tone then was light, devoid of outrage for the tens of thousands dead Palestinians, the mangled and bloodied corpses, many of them babies and children, ripped apart by brutal Israeli firepower. Kuenssberg also aggressively challenged Mousavi about Iran’s supposed drive towards a nuclear weapon and how Iran could not be trusted to stick to international agreements. Mousavi pointed out that, on the contrary, Iran is a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, whereas Israel is not. Moreover, as we noted in our previous alert [https://medialens.substack.com/p/operation-epic-fury-anatomy-of-a], in 2015, Iran signed up to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), an agreement to limit the Iranian nuclear programme in return for lifted sanctions. Trump tore up this agreement when the US unilaterally withdrew from it in 2018. It should be obvious that to state such salient facts is not to side with the Iranian regime, nor to excuse its crimes. Journalist Peter Oborne, the Daily Telegraph’s former chief political commentator, reports [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BlXzB8E8h4&t=94s] that Iran stuck completely to the JCPOA agreement until the US withdrew in 2018. Until the US and Israel began their attacks, Iran was negotiating in good faith in order to avoid any war. The Omani foreign minister, who was involved in the negotiations, stated [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BlXzB8E8h4&t=123s] that Iran had agreed that they would never have the material needed to make a nuclear bomb, adding: ‘There would be zero accumulation, zero stockpiling. And full verification. Even United States inspectors will have access.’ Oborne spelled out [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BlXzB8E8h4&t=145s] what happened next: ‘Iranians were negotiating really hard to avoid a war. They’d actually offered a better deal than they’d signed off on in 2015. That was on the table and that, of course, is when America and Israel struck.’ Note, also, that in the very same programme on Sunday when Kuenssberg asked propagandistic, emotion-laden questions of the Iranian ambassador she had nothing to say about the Gaza genocide when interviewing Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog. She did not say to him: ‘Since we last spoke, your government has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in what human rights organisation and genocide scholars have said is a genocide. How on earth do you justify that, Mr President?’ What does it say about the state of politics and news that the president of a genocidal and apartheid state was given carte blanche to proclaim that in attacking Iran and Lebanon, ‘we are doing this for the entire free world’? Empathy by a prominent BBC journalist for one set of victims – Iranian – is permitted, even required. Permitted, that is, when the finger of blame points the right way. But as the Minab school bombing shows, not when it points the other way; in this case, conclusively towards the US [https://archive.ph/g5aGF]. ‘Unpeople’ And ‘Unworthy’ Victims British historian Mark Curtis, co-founder and co-director of Declassified UK [https://www.declassifieduk.org/], has applied the concept of ‘Unpeople’ as a framework for understanding Western foreign policy. In his 2004 book, Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses [https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Mark-Curtis/Unpeople--Britains-Secret-Human-Rights-Abuses/145265], and in his earlier work, Web of Deceit [https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Mark-Curtis/Web-Of-Deceit--Britains-Real-Foreign-Policy/144069], Curtis argued that the political system separates victims into two categories: those whose deaths matter (‘People’) and those whose lives are considered expendable (‘Unpeople’). The concept of ‘People’ and ‘Unpeople’ has its roots in the work of Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in their classic 1988 book, ‘Manufacturing Consent’, where they discuss examples of ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy’ victims. Worthy victims are people who are killed or oppressed by Official Enemies of the West, such as the Soviet Union (and now Russia), North Korea or China. These victims garner considerable media attention in the propaganda system, marked by sympathy, indignation and fury. Their suffering is humanised, described in detail, and used to generate moral outrage directed at the offending regimes or governments, often as part of a concerted attempt to topple them for the benefit of Western geostrategic interests. ‘Unworthy’ victims, by contrast, are people who are killed or whose democratic aspirations are crushed by the West or ‘our allies’; such as Suharto’s Indonesia in the 1960s, Pinochet’s Chile in the 1970s, the US-backed Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975, and Israel in the present day. These victims are less prominent, even absent, in western media coverage or are often discounted as ‘collateral damage’: a lesser kind of human, robbed of their individuality, their life stories; even their names and faces. Herman and Chomsky’s analysis focused on the treatment of ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy’ victims in the propaganda system. Curtis has expanded the discussion by examining declassified UK government files, released under the ‘Thirty-Year Rule’, showing how the British state structurally ignores or downplays the importance of those it regards as ‘Unpeople’. Curtis highlights [https://www.declassifieduk.org/gaza-britains-seventh-genocide/] a prominent example occurring right now: ‘In the case of Gaza, Palestinians are seen as unpeople since supporting them holds little merit or gain for British planners. What does Palestine have to offer Whitehall in comparison with Israel?’ Curtis continues: ‘In supporting Israel, Whitehall can demonstrate [https://www.declassifieduk.org/why-does-the-uk-give-israel-unqualified-backing/] British subservience and usefulness to its major ally, the US. Israel is a buyer of British arms, a strategic ally to police the region and an increasing, albeit still fairly small, trade partner. ‘And a quarter [https://www.declassifieduk.org/israel-lobby-funded-a-quarter-of-british-mps/] of the UK’s entire parliament of MPs has received funding from the Israel lobby, buying an influence over UK policy-making that is way beyond anything the Palestinians can induce.’ The fact that there is a well-funded Israel lobby in the UK parliament is beyond the pale for the ‘mainstream’ media to discuss and analyse. To do so would almost inevitably lead to the insidious and often fake charge of ‘antisemitism’. Is it really antisemitic to point out, as Declassified UK did [https://www.declassifieduk.org/israel-lobby-funded-half-of-keir-starmers-cabinet/] in 2024, that fully half of Keir Starmer’s Cabinet were funded by the Israel lobby? It is highly doubtful that an in-depth investigation into the Israel lobby in the UK, such as the 2009 Channel 4 Dispatches programme [https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/pro-israel-lobby-in-britain-full-text/] by Oborne, would ever be aired today. And so there remain approved sets of victims that the ‘mainstream’ media will systematically highlight; and there are other groups of victims that are to be regarded as dispensable. Laura Kuenssberg’s paired interviews with the Israeli president and the Iranian ambassador, on the same BBC programme, no less, are a case study in the selective empathy required by high-profile corporate journalists. DC Note to our readers Media Lens is 25 years old in July 2026. Thank you to everyone who supports us, whether you donate [https://www.medialens.org/donate/] financially, read our work or share it with others. 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