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For four years, Donald Trump and the Republican party have been riding roughshod over long-established norms of American democracy. They have pushed to the legal limits of what they can do (and sometimes beyond). They have not so much ignored any opposition as declared it illegitimate. In response, and in the face of intense national polarization, politicians and pundits have appealed to moderation, civility and the common good. One of the biggest proponents of that attitude is President-elect Joe Biden, who, in his victory speech, said, We must stop treating our opponents as our enemy. We are not enemies. We are Americans. Now that Trump has lost, the political survivors of the Republican party may rush to join that chorus.

Biden, committed to re-establishing normalcy, will probably rejoice at the prospect of returning to the good old days of chummy bipartisanship. Dianne Feinstein already gave a preview, when she thanked Lindsey Graham for his leadership in the plainly illegitimate Amy Coney Barrett confirmation process and literally embraced one of Trumps worst lackeys. In the coming two to four years, political moderation might be a particularly alluring siren call to a weak Democratic president who may not control the Senate or have a strong majority in the House of Representatives.

Heres the problem, however: working across the aisle is not an ideal in itself. If we expect politics to look like an impartial pursuit of the common good or think that there will be consensus if we all follow the rules, as the neoconservative writer Anne Applebaum has suggested, then we are bound to be disappointed over and over. Rather, we must learn to distinguish between democratic and undemocratic forms of political conflict and properly sanction those engaged in the latter.

Polarization is not a given. Culture does not automatically determine politics; we are not fated to debate all issues in terms of cliched contrasts between flyover country and liberal coasts. Some social scientists like to reduce politics to psychology; they claim that humans are hardwired for tribalism or, put less politely, for groups hating each other. That isnt true. In fact, such accounts are curiously apolitical, as well as ahistorical. They cannot explain why, if tribalism is our universal fate, some democracies miraculously appear to escape it, and why some get by without endless culture wars, even if their internal differences are no smaller than in the US.

Polarization isnt an objectively given reality; its a rightwing political project and, not least, its big business just look at the talk radio millionaires. Rightwing populists deepen divisions and reduce all policy questions to questions of cultural belonging. What makes them distinctive is not their criticism of elites, but the invidious suggestion that not every citizen is part of what such politicians often call the real people. Trump told four congresswomen to go home to their shitholish countries; his sycophant Jim Jordan tweeted that Americans love America. They dont want their neighborhoods turning into San Francisco.

This strategy has worked well enough for a Republican party whose economic policies are utterly out of line with what large majorities of Americans actually want. For a counter-majoritarian party of plutocratic populism, riling people up with apocalyptic visions of real America being destroyed by black and brown people is not an add-on, but the core mechanism of an electoral outrage-and-grievances machine oiled with resources from the 0.01%. The noise of that machine effectively keeps people distracted from the plutocratic policies most Americans find unappealing.

Fierce partisanship is not in itself a symptom of politics gone wrong. On the contrary: we would not need democracy if we did not have deep disagreements and divisions which are inevitable, as long as we live in a free society. The problem arises when disagreement translates into disrespect. Disrespect doesnt mean just being impolite; it means denying the standing of particular citizens and, as a logical next step, actively trying to disenfranchise people. Republicans have been working towards a situation in which a combination of voter suppression and what the philosopher Kate Manne has called trickle-down aggression acts of private political intimidation tacitly endorsed by Trump shrinks the political power and relevance of many Americans in a way favorable to the interests of the Republican party.

None of this is to say that culture is off-limits for democratic conflict. Of course, its not always clear how abortion, for instance, is really about culture. But even deep moral disagreements can be accommodated in a democracy provided that both winners and losers have another chance to fight the fight. Contrary to Mitch McConnells gloating, losers dont just go home, but get to hold winners accountable and develop systematic policy alternatives. Democracy always allows for second thoughts; its only when the stakes become absolutely existential, or religious, that society gets locked in a scorched-earth, zero-sum battle.

What if rough play in politics not pretty, but not illegitimate becomes truly unfair play? Some theorists think the losing side should sacrifice for the sake of keeping the greater democratic whole together. But democracy cannot mean dividing politics between suckers and scoundrels, as the political scientist Andreas Schedler puts it. Game theorists tell us that we can re-establish proper rule-following by answering every tat with a tit. But responding to unfairness with unfairness might lead to a downward spiral of norms violations; fighting fire with fire could burn down the house as a whole.

It is crucial to realize that not all norm violations in political conflict are the same. Not every invention of an insulting nickname on Twitter must be answered with the same childishness (of which even Trumpists must be tired by now). The best answer to suppression of our voters is not somehow keeping out partisans of the other side. Mechanical tit-for-tat retaliation even if sometimes emotionally satisfying should be resisted in favor of could be called democracy-preserving or even democracy-enhancing reciprocity: measures the other side wont like, but which can be justified with genuine democratic principles: such as giving statehood to DC and Puerto Rico, or abolishing the electoral college.

Of course, McConnell sees these proposals as merely a power grab; yet a party that tries to construct new majorities, as opposed to just capturing counter-majoritarian institutions like the supreme court and relying on the votes of what Lindsey Graham once called angry white guys, would welcome the contest for new voters. Fair partisan fights can restore democracy, not kitschy appeals to unity and bipartisanship.

Read more from the original source:
End the odes to political 'civility'. Do you really think Republicans will reciprocate? | Jan-Werner Mueller - The Guardian

By Daniel Treiman

(JTA) Americans are in desperate need of some common ground. Thats why, this year, Thanksgiving isnt coming a day too soon.

No matter our political views, our religious beliefs, or if we hail from the reddest rural regions or bluest urban areas, on the fourth Thursday of November, Americans will step outside their daily routines to partake in this beloved national holiday.

True, we mark Thanksgiving in many different ways. For some, expressions of gratitude to God take center stage, while others celebrate more secularly. Some watch football religiously, while others prefer the Charlie Brown special. Some stick to the holidays traditional menu, while other families augment their turkey dinners with dishes reflecting their own particular cultural backgrounds and vegetarian Americans might opt for a tofurkey.

But a shared national holiday is still a shared national holiday, even if its observance is infinitely customizable and variegated. Whats more American than e pluribus unum?

In many respects, Thanksgiving is to Americans what Passover is for Jews. And both holidays build bridges across deep divides.

American Jews are not immune to the same forces that are setting Americans against one another. It can sometimes be difficult for American Jews to remember that we are one people, especially when religious differences increasingly overlap with a sharp political divide. Yet the fact that every Passover we all still gather around Seder tables to recount the same story reminds us that we share a past and we hope a future. (Next year in Jerusalem!)

Indeed, attendance at a Passover Seder is one of the most widely practiced Jewish observances among American Jews. Yes, some families may make amendments to the Seder plate that would vex some of their fellow Jews, but like turkey at Thanksgiving, you can safely assume that you will find familiar items on any Seder table. And while we might use different haggadot ranging from traditional to liberal to nontheistic to social justice-themed Jews of all backgrounds find a common touchstone in our ancestors Exodus from Egypt.

While Passover is the origin story of the Jewish people, Thanksgiving brings us back to the beginnings of America. Both holidays recount mythically powerful moments at the dawn of a new nation, recalling how, with the help of Providence, a people was delivered from a narrow place. For Passover, it was the redemption from slavery in Egypt; for Thanksgiving, a bountiful harvest that averted the threat of famine in an unforgiving new land. Freedom from bondage, and freedom from want and fear.

The parallels dont stop once the tables are cleared: What did the ancient Israelites do with their newfound, God-given freedom? They worshipped a golden calf. And what is our national ritual after our day of giving thanks? Black Friday sales. (Moments of transcendence are, as ever, ephemeral.)

Thanksgiving has been a special gift to American Jews. It is a secular national holiday that, in a predominantly Christian country, Jews (and other religious minorities) could embrace with enthusiasm and, in doing so, feel fully American.

Yet for all that we have gained from Thanksgiving, American Jews are also well-positioned to give something back.

Historians point out that the popular Thanksgiving story that many of us learned as children is not exactly how things happened back at that First Thanksgiving in 1621. Many would also note that the traditional Thanksgiving story elides the larger context of horrors inflicted upon Native Americans by European settlers.

American Jews are no strangers to navigating the tension between history and memory. In 2001, the eminent Conservative Rabbi David Wolpe stirred controversy when he spoke to his Los Angeles synagogue about how the biblical account of the Exodus is not supported by the archaeological record. But as Wolpe has noted, Jews should not fear historical knowledge.

The Torah is not a book we turn to for historical accuracy, but rather for truth, he would later write. The story of the Exodus lives in us.

Similarly, Thanksgiving over the centuries has accrued rich meanings that we carry with us beyond what is known about that small celebration at Plymouth. Amid our current culture wars over the American past, perhaps we can find a better balance between history and narrative when it comes to Thanksgiving. Grappling honestly with history as it actually unfolded, and reckoning with the perspectives of Native Americans who have struggled with what Thanksgiving should mean to them need not diminish, and could indeed enrich, our observance of the holiday.

Just as Jews argue around the Seder table about Passovers themes, Americans are unlikely to reach a consensus as to what Thanksgiving should mean. But it is still our common heritage, one that each year we share, appreciate and wrestle with.

This year, Thanksgiving presents unique challenges. In the midst of a deadly pandemic, we are not able to gather as usual with family and friends. Large, non-socially distanced gatherings of the sort that the Pilgrims hosted at Plymouth or the Israelites had at Sinai are out of the question.

But as we wander through the wilderness of post-election acrimony, this Thanksgiving has a special importance: Whether in small groups around our dining room tables or in continent-spanning Zooms, we would do well to remember the many blessings that we as Americans enjoy together.

Read more from the original source:
We Need Thanksgiving More Than Ever Now - Jewish Exponent

The Radio 1 listener: Alex Hood

A culture war around the Pogues song Fairytale of New York feels like a new Christmas tradition, like a Lindt chocolate Santa, but homophobic. In this years iteration, Radio 1 has removed two offensive words from the recording it plays, but Radio 2 will continue to play the original; Radio 6 Music DJs can choose between the recordings.

This perennial debate has become more tiresome by the year, but simply put: popularising slurs against the LGBTQ+ community, particularly on a mainstream platform such as a BBC radio station, is unacceptable. The song has not, and should not, be outright banned, but we shouldnt have to accept slurs of any form especially in this instance, when there is a perfectly acceptable alternative lyric in the rerecorded version from 1992.

As a young person, it is incredibly frustrating to see that this initiative hasnt been implemented as a blanket rule across all of the BBC radio stations. I welcome Radio 1s move to lead the way, and I understand the need to make different decisions based on each stations audience expectations. But the BBCs overall decision turns homophobia into a generational issue. By choosing to continue playing the uncensored version of the track on Radio 2 and Radio 6 Music, Radio 1 listeners, who predominantly fall into the Gen Z bracket, are being left open to targeted vitriol online, and being characterised as homogenous. We are all cast as snowflakes, hypersensitive and infantile, distracting from a debate should be about respecting those offended by the slurs, regardless of age.

The BBCs lack of rigour on this issue has turned those who are outraged by these derogatory terms into the problem, casting them as censors who cant handle complex art. Id argue that it is an intellectual and moral failing to say songs should have a free pass for homophobic slurs you can have complex art without them. Why do you so keenly want to hear this word? Why are you so angry that you cant sing it out loud? Why is this so aggressively and deeply argued year on year?

I am sure that other younger listeners are aware that the slurs in this song are archaic slang and a product of their time, but what these words are used for now oppression is the only thing that matters in this debate.

How inconsistent, it is tempting to say, that faggot and slut may be sung by the Pogues on Radio 2 but not on Radio 1. Well, can we first acknowledge an important consistency in the BBCs decision here? For once, the focus is not just about the homophobic epithet but also the misogynistic one; the one that swirls through our rape culture and repeats so often in pornography as to become white noise. Slut echoes round playgrounds at just about the same age year 8? Year 7? as little boys hear faggot as a prelude to a punch.

But hatred morphs as you age. Until about 30, as a distinctly in-your-face gay man, name-calling and violence were quite the thing for me: being chased, threatened, hospitalised. After 30? Its not the obvious one-word insults you have to watch out for, its the arguments devised by political and religious leaders, inspired by the promise of money and power, and enunciated in such a way as to sound reasonable and morally justified.

Social attitude surveys also reveal homophobia to be proportional to age: your grandad is much more likely to think youre a faggot than your classmate, he just may not say it to your face. So if there is one demographic that shouldnt be hearing faggot and slut, it is the Radio 2 audience aged 40 and over, like me, who grew up at a time when a Radio 1 DJ refused to play Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood because a celebration of sodomy was too much for his delicate heterosexuality.

The most likely choice of station for families together (hopefully) this Christmas is Radio 2. Want to protect the young? How about starting in the kitchen as they gather to stuff the turkey, with a glass of mulled wine and the radio on. If your grandad doesnt say faggot, Kirsty MacColl will do it for him. Someone at the table will laugh. No one will say its ugly. Home is where the hatred that really wounds is.

But Im conflicted. The use of faggot is arguably a question of intention Todrick Hall has a song called Fag but he weaponises it right back at you. In Fairytale of New York, that intention is abusive: the word is hurled as an insult. What complicates everything, including whether to bleep out words, is that the song is pure, rollocking artistry just as Michael Jacksons music is, and funnily enough, child abuse offends me a lot more than a word. I still listen to Jackson. And Id rather people hear great music with offensive words in it whether thats hip-hop or folk-pop than mediocre music that makes you feel nothing. Thats not easy listening, its death.

Easy thinking, meanwhile, would have it that the BBCs move is censorship. It isnt. Its selection according to audience, no more censorship than not hearing the word fuck before the watershed. And if you dont realise these are ugly characters in the song, drunkenly fighting, and not people worthy of emulation, then you are as stupid as someone who thinks that loving the same sex is wrong or a womans sexuality is shameful. Idiocy and bigotry are a tight overlap. The arts, by contrast, are the best of humanity.

There is only one answer to this conflict, one that will never be achieved but could begin with the deletion of a word. We need to change our world, one expression at a time, so that great music is never hate music.

A final word on consistency. If you hear a Conservative MP complaining about the BBCs deletion, please remind them of another deletion made today by a powerful institution: the Conservative governments decision to end funding for anti-LGBT bullying initiatives in schools. Pupils will still hear the word faggot this Christmas, but there will be no one there to mend the damage.

That story was reported by the BBCs LGBT correspondent. Unlike the government, at least the Beeb is trying.

While the argument over Fairytale of New York is not a new one, this year it has felt especially fraught, like a bad dose of portnturkey flavoured acid reflux at 4am on Boxing Day. I admit that, on a personal level, the contemporary enthusiasm for deeming this or that song or artist #problematic and beyond redemption is exhausting and troubling. The best art challenges preconceptions, makes us feel uncomfortable, forces us to confront the safety blanket of orthodox views. Does Fairytale of New York fall into that category?

Shane MacGowans explanation for the lyrics that theyre the words of a character and that sometimes characters in songs and stories have to be evil or nasty in order to tell the story effectively is perfectly reasonable. Across the pop spectrum from, say, the devilish characters Nick Cave created in Murder Ballads to the horrific storytelling on Immortal Techniques Dance With the Devil, offensive lyrics are key to the artistic process of writing a convincing, dramatic work. The same applies to art, television, literature. But is faggot really adding anything to the song that Kirsty MacColls replacement haggard doesnt serve? I dont think so.

Beyond that, my issue with the lyrics of Fairytale is the Christmas context. This is a song suited to being bellowed out by absolutely hammered people at their seasonal dos, a last collective singalong for the office party before everyone disperses to be sick into a McDonalds bag on the commute home. Ive heard it happen, and as a bisexual man, a load of straight people suddenly singing cheap lousy faggot has made me feel uncomfortable. It isnt their word to sing. A load of white lads doing the gun fingers and rapping the N-word along with hip-hop has rightly been beyond the pale for years.

There is, however, a point beyond the offence caused by MacGowans lyrics. Like John Lennons Imagine with a Santa hat on, Fairytale of New York is insufferably sentimental and trite. As anyone who has been subjected to the repetitive sonic torture of working in retail at Christmas well knows, the repertoire is not exactly lacking in festive songs that dont feature homophobic slurs, so perhaps instead of Fairytale of New York forever ammunition for both sides in the tedious stalemate of the culture wars, it might just be ignored. This fairytale should pass, blissfully, into forgotten myth.

See the original post here:
Should the BBC have censored Fairytale of New York? - The Guardian

Joe Biden and Kamala Harriss election victory may be a signal that Americans are ready to leave Donald Trumps inflammatory race war politics behind, but its clear that in the UK, disunity and culture wars are still driving forces behind Boris Johnsons government.

Last week a damning parliamentary report spoke of the shameful state of racism and human rights for Black people in the UK. Yet on the very same day the equalities minister, Liz Truss, appointed a supporter of the Home Offices hostile environment to Britains race equality watchdog. David Goodhart, who denies that racism and Islamophobia are significant problems in the UK, was chosen as one of four new commissioners on the Equality and Human Rights Commission. He also believes white self-interest is not the same as racism, and that white people who want to reduce immigration to maintain population share have a legitimate group interest.

We dont have to look too far back to understand why the appointment is problematic. The EHRC is set up to reduce inequality and eliminate discrimination. Yet this summer, after the killing of George Floyd, Goodhart said racial inequalities were in part due to self-inflicted wounds [among Black communities] of violent crime, fatherless families, anti-educational acting white culture. How can you be a commissioner on an equalities regulator if your response to Black Lives Matter is to say False or exaggerated claims of victimhood are all too easy to make in the current environment?

But this kind of appointment is not an exception for this government; it is the rule. Again and again, those who deny or question the impact and cause of racism are selected for key equality positions: Trevor Phillips, who was suspended from the Labour party over alleged Islamophobia, was appointed to the inquiry on the impact of Covid-19 on ethnic minorities (although he ended up playing no role in it); Dr Raghib Ali, who denies racism has any role in disproportionate coronavirus deaths, was appointed a government Covid adviser; and Tony Sewell, who has questioned the idea of institutional racism, was appointed chair of the governments commission on race and ethnic disparities. On top of this, Trusss fellow equalities minister, Kemi Badenoch, has bizarrely claimed that the authors of some of Britains bestselling anti-racism books actually want a segregated society. With Munira Mirza, a strong critic of Theresa Mays Race Disparity Audit, installed as No 10s policy director, its clear that the current government is unlikely to identify systemic racism as the cause of racial inequalities in health, criminal justice, housing, employment or any other area regardless of the litany of independent racial inequality reviews that suggest otherwise.

Under Boris Johnson we are not just in the midst of a culture war; anti-racists are also the target of an ideological anti-inclusion agenda.

The fact that many of the governments ideological appointees also happen to be people of colour is its way of playing the race card. No matter how many black or Asian people demonstrate that racism is a clear endemic problem in society, the government can roll out a totally unrepresentative brown face to say the opposite that everythings fine and a bit of hard work will solve everything.

We have deep-seated problems with racial inequalities in this country. Its not just that we havent made substantive progress in addressing racial discrimination since the 1999 Macpherson inquiry into Stephen Lawrences death, or that the proportion of black young people in the criminal justice system has increased, rather than decreased. Its that we are being led by a prime minister who has repeatedly used inflammatory racial language to mobilise rightwing voters.

America may be turning its back on a divisive era, but we are still very much immersed in it.

This article was amended on 20 November 2020 to add a clarification that while Trevor Phillips was announced as participating in the PHE review on Covid-19 he played no role it.

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How Boris Johnson learned to play the race card - The Guardian

Patrick Barwise and Peter York must be miffed that the phantom controversy in August over patriotic songs at the Last Night of the Proms came too late to feature in their new book. Here was a classic souffl of an outrage, whipped up from the flimsiest ingredients, which enabled newspapers and ministers to wave the flag in the face of the BBCs incoming director-general Tim Davie for several days. Meanwhile the government floated Charles Moore, a man with no broadcasting experience who once appeared in court for not paying the licence fee, to be the next chair of the BBC. After Moore bowed out, attention turned to Sir Robbie Gibb, who went straight from heading BBC Westminster to working for Theresa May and is currently raising funds for the new right-leaning channel GB News. Other candidates are in play, but Rule, Britannia!, if nothing else, will be safe in the next chairs hands.

The BBC, Barwise and York claim in this staunch defence of the corporation, is the whole British nation in all its untidy variety and, at the same time, one of its glories. This books value lies in its steady accumulation of myth-busting data. In 2015, 99% of households used at least one BBC service at least once every week. It remains by far the most trusted source of impartial news. Nineteen out of the 25 most-watched programmes of the last decade were broadcast on BBC One. The BBC is still, to quote the old Radio 1 slogan, the nations favourite.

The rise of streaming, funding cuts and a 'hostile prime minister' make the BBC's current predicament particularly grave

At the same time, it is a punchbag of limitless utility, so large that even the clumsiest blow will land. Even 50 years ago, director-general Hugh Greene called it the universal Aunt Sally of our day. Barwise and York argue that a cluster of factors, including the rise of streaming, funding cuts and the most hostile prime minister the BBC has ever faced make its current predicament particularly grave, even now that Dominic Cummings is no longer a fixture at No 10: Most people would now agree that the Corporation is in real, perhaps existential, peril. The usually cautious Andrew Marr recently warned of a drive to destroy the BBC.

The war is fought on two fronts. The commercial argument is that the corporation is simply too big: funded by the licence fee, it overpay stars and bureaucrats in order to hog ground that the free market could cover. But this is a catch-22. If the BBC continues to produce critical and commercial hits, then it is unfair to competitors; if it does not, then it doesnt deserve the current licence fee (which has risen by just 12 since 2010). To cave in would be ruinous. The less the BBC did, the less money it would deserve, the less it could do, and so on until it became a shell of itself.

Running parallel to this is the political critique that the BBC is unacceptably leftwing. Not economically you could not claim that it is anti-business or pro-union but in the nebulous cultural sense. It is the mothership of snooty, decadent, avocado-eating liberal elites (as opposed to the benign conservative elite represented by Lord Moore of Etchingham). Gutting one of the UKs most beloved and unifying institutions, and a major generator of soft power, is therefore the patriotic thing to do.

Once you are committed to seeing the BBC as an alienatingly woke monoculture, you are prone to looking foolish. In 2018, the Spectators James Delingpole derided the BBC One drama Bodyguard as Social Justice Warrior propaganda for casting people who arent white men in positions of authority, even as, the authors note, Britain had a female prime minister, and a Muslim home secretary and mayor of London. My prediction is that the BBC is going to become increasingly marginal, partisan and irrelevant, fumed Delingpole, as Bodyguard proceeded to become the biggest hit of the year apart from the World Cup.

It's hard trying to bring down the BBC when the masses trust its output the wheels of grievance require constant oiling

It is hard work trying to bring down the BBC when the masses stubbornly insist on enjoying and trusting its output, so the wheels of grievance require constant oiling by newspapers, thinktanks and opaquely funded pressure groups such as News-watch. Governments have been growling at the BBC for decades. Winston Churchill never forgave it for remaining independent during the 1926 general strike, while Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair have all forced the departure of troublesome directors-general. The current assault is in line with US-style backlash politics, neatly summarised by a series of 2004 blogposts published by Cummingss short-lived thinktank the New Frontiers Foundation. The author argued that the right should aspire to end the BBC in its current form while enabling more partisan outlets in the vein of Fox News. One post described the BBC as a mortal enemy of the Conservative party, which can only prosper in the long-term by undermining the BBCs reputation for impartiality.

The effort has already paid off. In polls, accusations of bias, whether left/right or leave/remain, roughly balance out, but Barwise and York call this a symmetrical illusion. While comedy and drama may skew to the left (as the arts tend to do), the BBCs political coverage consistently favours the government of the day, with a more pronounced bias when that government is Conservative. Taking its cues (and many of its guests) from the conservative-dominated print media, it overrepresents the right - shows such as Question Time, Politics Live and, most egregiously, The Papers. Spooked by accusations of metropolitan leftism, the BBC is desperate to appease those who hate it.

The Tories treatment of the BBC is reminiscent of the movie hoodlum who says you have a nice place here and it would be a shame if anything were to happen to it. The aim is to instil fear. The BBC has belatedly abandoned false balance when covering the climate crisis but it is still nervous about calling a lie a lie, or wading into any story that might inflame the right. Thats how it has ended up with absurdly strict new prohibitions on staff expressing personal opinions on social media. The left cannot inspire the same anxiety. It may mount Twitter sorties against Laura Kuenssberg or Panorama but it wants to reform the BBC rather than diminish it, perhaps realising that it would fare poorly in a post-BBC media landscape.

No serious defence of the BBC can be uncritical. Barwise and York dutifully address its 21st-century blunders, from the prank-call Sachsgate affair in 2008 to major institutional failures such as the gender pay gap and the Jimmy Savile scandal, and recommend finding a viable alternative to the licence fee. They call out the BBCs timidity in the face of power, its rather odd current reading of the political continuum [and] its tendency to nannyism. Every reader (including this one) can mentally add their own complaints.

Still, the rights attacks on the BBC are not a sincere and proportionate response to actual mistakes, such as, most recently, the alleged historical misconduct of Martin Bashir. Its campaign is deliberately unwinnable because, like most culture wars, it relies on granting righteous victimhood to the powerful. There will always be a fresh affront to the delicate sensibilities of Middle England, or at least enough raw material to manufacture one. The right would be lost without its perpetual indignation machine.

Yet it can still inflict immense damage. If you want to see a news broadcasting ecosystem that conforms to the Tory blueprint, look across the Atlantic, where the barely regulated free market has enabled partisanship, distrust, disinformation and conspiracism to erode the shared reality on which a healthy democracy depends. This books urgent conclusion establishes just how much Britain stands to lose if the BBC as we know it falls.

The War Against the BBC: How an Unprecedented Combination of Hostile Forces Is Destroying Britains Greatest Cultural Institution ... And Why You Should Care is published by Penguin (10.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

See more here:
The War Against the BBC review in defence of a national institution - The Guardian