Starmer’s Social Media Crackdown!

Right, so with more riots apparently planned, and having not got a grip of the root cause of them, false and foul accusations and attacks on migrants, mainly because he and the rancid party he leads, now in government have indulged in such things themselves, Keir Starmer has now decided that social media must be controlled and dealt with in order to deal with it. That of course ignores his own attacks and others in his own party on ethnic minorities, the hierarchy of racism in the Labour Party he refuses to acknowledge, ignores the actions of our mainstream media, the migrant bashing headlines in our newspapers, the chronic phrasing in televised news bulletins and current affairs programs that offends so many and warrants so many complaints.
Now with riot organising and the such like indeed happening on social media, you might be inclined to think any clampdown on social media will be a good thing, but when someone guilty of stirring up such hate himself, saying Bengali’s aren’t being deported fast enough, and with his ardent support for Israel being unquestionable, do you really think Keir Starmer is the sort of person to stop at hard right fascism in his social media clampdown, or is he going to actually come for anyone critical of him or other states? Coming for anyone who challenges him, or the dishonest, lying mainstream media, who we would be effectively left with if his crackdown is as brutal as feared? A social media crackdown in the name of dealing with riots presents Keir Starmer with an opportunity, not just to silence rioters, but silence anyone.
Right, so that was Keir Starmer there discussing the sentencing of rioters, still every sentence issued lower than those handed out to climate protesters who were planning to black a road, never quite got that far, but the take away sentence from Starmer there was we have to look more broadly at social media once the riots have been dealt with, which was the context that was placed in. First thing to ask is if the riots have been dealt with, why do you need to do that? Well, to prevent further riots, future riots, fine, but the more broadly bit? That is what has people concerned and some of us have seen this coming for a while, because these riots have presented Starmer with an opportunity. They’ve come at a great time for him, they’ve proven to be both a useful distraction and an excuse to mete out his authoritarianism on social media, on independent media that relies on it to carry their message. Starmer’s comments in that clip imply people need to watch out with what they say on social media, so I would raise him and say what about conventional media then? What about mainstream media? Do they need to watch out? Should they watch what they say? They certainly should don’t you think?
Various mainstream media newspapers, right wing hate rags I’ve referred to them as for years, for obvious reasons I’d like to think. What about them Keith? Are you going to act on them? I’m certainly not the only person thinking so if my cursory scrolling through social media this morning is anything to go by. For example Matt Kennard of Declassified UK shared this image, I’m breaking a cardinal rule of this channel by sharing this since it comes from the Murdoch Scum, but how is this not a mainstream media outlet not inciting hatred? Kennard makes that point in the attached tweet which he ended by saying:
‘Billionaire-owned S*n, Mail, Express have spent decades building UK far-right.’
Here’s another couple of images, shared by Devutopia on Twitter, one from the Guardian the other from the Daily Mail, the Guardian seeking Starmer’s comment on the riots headlined there with ‘Police presence deterred far-right disorder and reassured communities.’ Not true, the police were on many occasions seemingly overwhelmed and it was the weight on anti fascist demonstrators coming out – despite having been told not to – who made the difference and bizarrely, it’s the Mail in this case making that point and not the so-called liberal Guardian.
So often we could point to other examples of the shoe being on the other foot though, with one paper pitching against the other and keeping people divided, just as establishment interests want. It certainly wasn’t mainstream media helping people come together and demonstrate against fascism on our streets though, that was via social media too. As much as Starmer is blaming social media for the riots becoming organised, the counter protests were organised in exactly the same way. Restrict social media to stop the riots, and you stop those organising against such actions as well and not just at the level of instant message groups, WhatsApp groups, Telegram groups or whatever, but the very alternative media that has helped spread that word as well, that relies on social media to be a platform to propagate their news.
For example, if I take this story from Skwawkbox from the 6th August, this story serves to do one thing and one thing only – inform people where fascist protests are reportedly going to take place, allowing people to get themselves sorted locally to counter that. No mainstream media outlets will do that. But without social media, with restrictions placed upon it, how would a publication like Skwawkbox, who have their own website, get discovered? The TV media in its press reviews, they don’t look at alternative media, just the mainstream establishment papers. They will always get attention drawn to them all the time, whereas smaller indy outlets have to really work at it. They also happen to be the outlets that truly hold power to account though, are not bought and owned by billionaire establishment media types, who’s reputations are everything and are built on journalistic credibility and not just making up nonsense to suit a certain narrative, or parroting the lines of politicians, failing to hold them accountable.
Starmer wants to more broadly take on social media, yet he’s also scrapped any plans to hold mainstream media accountable for their conduct. If he truly wanted to deal with nasty, riot inducing headlines, he wouldn’t have ditched plans to deliver on the second part of the Leveson Inquiry, because that concerns the relationship between mainstream media and politicians and you can imagine that mainstream media would love nothing more than to have the cards stacked back in their favour, without restriction, the competition of smaller independent outlets removed to all intents and purposes. So any clampdown on social media, particularly against independent media utilising it, will be seen as hypocrisy and when Starmer constantly runs to the S*n, Murdoch towers having gone on public record saying they can’t seem to get rid of him, the opportunity for Starmer to do them a massive favour with social media restrictions seems obvious.
Then there is the politicians themselves. Perhaps if Starmer wants to clamp down on incitement to riot – and on that point also where the line as far as sentencing goes between rioting and protesting getting blurred, those Just Stop Oil protesters who got 21 years behind bars between 5 of them still a bigger sentence than any rioter has thusfar been handed - he should perhaps hand himself in for questioning.
Starmer who has advocated for war crimes to be committed against Gaza by Israel, cutting off food, cutting off power. Starmer who during the General Election campaign singled out Bengalis to be removed from the UK, but it goes far beyond him. Yvette Cooper and her immigration mugs, Theresa May’s go home vans, Suella Braverman’s prison barges and deportation plans to Rwanda in flagrant defiance of basic human rights law. Robert Jenrick heaping out unnecessary cruelty, by painting over kids murals to make children feel as unwelcome as possible, Sarah Edwards the new Labour MP for Tamworth, which has seen riots over the last week, stokes up that anti immigration sentiment further, by putting out a video on social media, conflating the issues of crime and border security in order to excuse the closing down of her so-called Asylum Hotels, Holiday Inns should be for holidays were her words the other day and invited Yvette Cooper to join her in what was a show of frankly inflaming tensions again.
But of course there is the small matter of these riots also being called the Farage Riots of course. Nigel doesn’t like this term, doesn’t like it at all, but the mainstream media platforming of him and his views, incessantly for years and years, have brought us to this point in no small way. Right wing media and political collusion, there’s no other explanation why this, for so many years failed politician, non MP, was given the airtime he was. Where was the public interest in that being so heavily weighted in Farage’s favour and where was the balance, when other politicians, such as from the Green Party, were constantly ignored? Brexit happened, Farage went, but then ITV rehabilitated his career via their I’m a Celebrity nonsense, he had the prominence to once again come back with his appalling views and now he’s an MP finally, but in no small way is there 5 Reform UK MPs without he constant platforming they get, not least via very right wing media outlets like GB News and Talk TV, where they basically have reserved seats? There’s no alternative for the left, the left uses social media more reliantly than the right wing do and Starmer’s war on the left is years long, with so many examples, not least the purge of Labour members and left wing politicians in favour of right wingers and loyal yes men, their unfortunate past track record on social media having come out to embarrass the Starmer government and fundamentally show up their claims of high quality candidates being the reason for the parliamentary selections as they were carried out done in the way they were, when really its been exposed as many surmised it all to be, as nothing less than petty factionalism of poor candidates with a litany of abusive tweets and posts to their names.
At the end of the day, where it is very easy to accuse and blame and point the finger of condemnation at knuckle-dragging idiots setting fire to police vans and throwing bricks, these are just the people stupid enough to believe the right wing racist rhetoric they’ve been told. It’s the press, it’s the politicians, it’s the people in positions of influence and power that are driving this division of hate in the country, yet they are going to pint the finger of blame at social media and by doing so, are actually going to come for all of us, all of our access, come for our right to free speech and freedom of expression as expressed via social media, by taking our ability to use it away. Social media platforms do indeed have a responsibility to deal with hate online, there’s a pretty solid argument to say, for example that Elon Musk ought to be the one held account rather than Twitter users, Nicolas Maduro has blocked Twitter in Venzuela for 10 days because of Musk’s incitement for rioting and violence, as just one example. It doesn’t help when the owners of various platforms stoke dissent themselves, but just as it might the case that these platforms are sowing discord, so it is the case that combatting that also gets organised on social media, and people are grateful for it, people have been praised for taking a stand, even our sausage fingered monarch has expressed gratitude, but not Starmer and he won’t either.
Where the mainstream media fails to hold power to account, it happens on social media. Any attempts to curb our voices in the name of silencing a minority of vile racists must be resisted, especially when a guy who has made his fair share of vile, racist comments himself, will be the one legislating for that, if as I fear, he’s going to use these riots as an excuse to, whilst giving a free pass to politicians, journalists, billionaire owned newspapers and TV news presenters as bigoted as you get. It isn’t the Tommy Robinson’s that are the biggest problem, it’s the Tommy Robinson’s in suits. Nobody is illegal, nobody is alien, nobody should be demonised for simply existing and being here.
Starmer hates being held to account, this is one way he could stop us doing that. Good leaders, good governments should welcome critique to be better. Starmer isn’t a good leader, this isn’t a good government, they don’t want to be held accountable, they want to do as they please. I’m not interested in letting that just happen, What about you?
Meanwhile, here’s a video recommendation telling you all about the wonderful high quality candidates Starmer has welcomed as MPs, one of which has produced so much nastiness, she’s only gone and deleted her Twitter account to run away from it. I wonder how long it will be before people are accused of driving her off social media by Team Keith? And I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.