Emily Maitlis is a Huge Problem for Free Speech

Also: Happy First Birthday, Heretics

Emily Maitlis - The News Agents

“It was just a tweet, it was just a tweet!” cries British journalist Emily Maitlis sarcastically about those locked up for years in prison for…just a tweet. Her implication is as clear as it is chilling: that a tweet really is dangerous enough to merit imprisonment.

As The News Agents podcast slips further into authoritarianism, let’s consider the danger of elitist corporate shows that cosplay as indie podcasts.

Just like The Rest is Politics - another popular liberal elite podcast featuring mainstream politicians Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart, The News Agents is corporate to its bones. Goalhanger - led by extremist former footballer Gary Lineker - runs the former. Global - worth billions and chaired by Labour peer The Lord Allen of Kensington (seriously) - owns Maitlis’ podcast.

Yet - to see them side by side on Spotify or YouTube - these two corporate shows appear no different to my podcast Heretics. I started podcasting while on minimum wage with a webcam and mic sellotaped to my laptop.

Although my channel outperforms both of theirs now, I’ve never received any kind of corporate funding of philanthropic investment, so - like many indie podcasters - had to work many jobs while pursuing this ambition and slowly growing. But, by virtue of the podcast medium, the aforementioned corporate machines seem just like us…just like a few guys sitting around and chatting the shit.

Never mind that Campbell was the spin doctor known for a temper so ferocious that writers based the iconic Malcolm Tucker character in The Thick Of It on him. He was the Director of Communications and Strategy in the cabinet that led us to war with Iraq.

The others have had distinguished careers in the BBC and the British legal system. They are not just of the establishment - they are it. I’ll get to why that is relevant, but first note that these are hardly plucky underdogs taking on the regime. Heaven knows how much the corporations pay these would-be revolutionaries.

I find it probable that hosts Rory Stewart, Emily Maitlis, Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall are decent, well-meaning people. This may even be true of Campbell. We lose sight of this in the culture wars. We forget Hanlon’s razor. Or, as Hannah Arendt coined it, the “banality of evil”

Of course, this was meant for evil Nazi figures such as Eichmann, and doesn’t apply to probably nice people like Maitlis! I am concerned here with the slippery slope of free speech restriction.

Here’s how that inadvertent evil is currently working:

Let’s imagine for a moment that those of us in the alt-media podcast sphere are correct: that the Leftism with which we grew up (individual liberty, gay rights, civil rights, colourblindness and free speech) is dead.

As always happens, the pendulum has swung too far (it will one day swing back the other way). We adopted those truly liberal values into our zeitgeist and then - in a bid to out-liberal one another - created a monster. The side that was once in favour of liberal values has become illiberal.

It’s a story older than Bolshevism.

This graph by the Survey Center on American Life would suggest this is true. It is being shared to show the disparity between the views of men and women around the world—a topic worthy of its own article—but it inadvertently shows something startling.

Notice how even the men—who represent the Far Right of the sex divide—still skew Left in the US. That’s right—relative to the rest of the world, Trump is Left-leaning. You might consider the graph’s placement of Left and Right arbitrary, but the South Korean men show us up for our soy-boy liberal tendencies.

Glance to the right of the graph: what is happening in the UK is alarming. The men are extremely Left. The women are off the charts. It needn’t be said that - were any country to score equivalently to the Right - we’d consider it one step from that of a goose.

The rest of the world hasn’t overlooked the UK’s increasing Leftist authoritarianism. We are fast becoming the butt of jokes and hypothetical dystopian scenarios at American events.

Our government let out criminals - including paedophiles - to make room for ordinary people who sent out hurtful (and in extreme cases indefensible) social media posts. I don’t agree with the sentiment or words in many of these posts, but we should learn from history that defending the rights of those with whom you disagree vital.

Whether it be the Orwellian nature of BBC pundits referring to a male boxer as a woman while castigating those of us who spoke testicular truth (or the fact that the Olympics allowed this travesty to take place in the first place)…or what increasingly looks like a shocking cover-up regarding an Islamist attack on children…it is widely agreed that the UK has drunk the Kool-Aid.

A quick point about male boxer Imane Khelif that is oft forgotten: the only way to make the argument that Imane is a woman is to engage in extreme conspiracy theory. Such are the facts around the matter - which I’ve explored in other articles - that a number of outrageous conspiracies involving doctoring of certifications in multiple world locations would have to come true. The BBC and all those engaging in this type of disinformation have become the very conspiracy theorists that they once took pride in exposing.

Whether it be a sunk-cost fallacy, a boiling frog concept, or that banality of evil, it is a truism of human nature that the last to notice our dramatic transformation into an island of extreme crankery would be those with the most to gain from the status quo: the journalists (such as The News Agents & The Rest is Politics) propping it up.

The Overton Window has shifted so far to the illiberal Left that journalists - those tasked to hold the elite to account - celebrate when the police investigate other journalists for social media posts. Incredibly, these mouthpieces for the government, the corporations and the status quo still see themselves as intrepid Leftie outsiders.

Jon Sopel is satisfied that social media users are in prison, but protested that ex-BBC news anchor Huw Edwards - who made images of children - had done nothing illegal: “I think it’d be a crying shame if this is the last we see of Huw Edwards on television,” he said.

Huw Edwards

It is probable that Sopel didn’t know the full extent of Edwards’ crimes at the time, but he was quick to defend him without the full facts. Edwards somehow escaped the very prison that the hurty words users currently inhabit with Sopel’s blessing.

Theirs is no longer the side of liberalism and enlightenment - they’re just among the last to notice. The UK, in particular, is entering a dark era. And perhaps the most gruelling thing about these corporate podcasters is this: