Jeremy Clarkson targeted for cancellation

Jeremy Clarkson targeted for cancellation

The reaction to Jeremy Clarkson’s?Sun?column about Meghan Markle has been so over-the-top, it’s almost comical. The most ridiculous we’ve seen so far was that of Chris Packham, presenter of?Springwatch?and a long-standing opponent of Clarkson’s on everything from driven shooting to farming. He?tweeted: “It’s hate crime, pure and simple. If there were any sort of justice there would be laws that would jail him. And shut down the publisher. Is this the country we want to live in? Is this what we should tolerate? We must ask ourselves – where is this leading? Nowhere good.”

Does Packham really believe that Britain would be a better place if newspaper columnists could be imprisoned (and their newspapers shut down) for saying something offensive? Maybe he does.

We can’t link to the column in question because Clarkson has asked the?Sun?to take it down (which the FSU thinks is a mistake). But it hardly matters because it’s been reproduced everywhere, particularly by those who claim that the words Clarkson used are likely to inspire violence against women and girls. (If they’re really so dangerous, why keep repeating them?) Here’s the section that has caused all the controversy:

I hate her. Not like I hate Nicola Sturgeon or Rose West. I hate her on a cellular level.
At night, I’m unable to sleep as I lie there, grinding my teeth and dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, “Shame!” and throw lumps of excrement at her.

This is an obvious reference to the scene in?Game of Thrones?in which Cersei is forced to do a ‘walk of atonement’ by the High Sparrow, but that was ignored by all Clarkson’s critics who reacted as if he had dredged up with this particular form of ritual humiliation from deep in his ‘misogynistic’ psyche. (Apart from?David Baddiel, who got the reference but condemned Clarkson anyway on the grounds that the original scene was itself a “violent misogynistic fantasy”.)

The number of people who interpreted Clarkson’s words, not as an attack on Meghan, but on all women, is quite something. When a female columnist fantasises about violence being inflicted on a man – Caitlin Moran once tweeted she hoped Germaine Greer would cut FSU General Secretary Toby Young in half with a sword – no one accuses them of misandry. But?here’s?the ex-Labour spin doctor Ayesha Hazarika giving her view on Clarkson’s column: “Many of us this week are reflecting on how misogyny has infected society and why violence against women is at such a frightening level.” That was also?the view of Nicola Sturgeon, who described the column as “deeply misogynistic” – this was after a laughable bit of throat clearing in which the First Minister said she was a “passionate believer in free speech”! (Is this the same woman whose government passed the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act last year?)

And it seems many members of the public shared their disgust. According to the?Guardian, the Independent Press Standards Regulator has received a record number of complaints about the column – more than the combined total it received in 2021. (The number?now exceeds 20,000.)

Even Clarkson’s own daughter Emily condemned him, issuing the?following statement?on her Instagram account:

My views are and have always been clear when it comes to misogyny, bullying and the treatment of women by the media.
I want to make it very clear that I stand against everything that my dad wrote about Meghan Markle and I remain standing in support of those that are targeted with online hatred.

That had the whiff of Mao’s China about it, but it didn’t stop numerous commentators praising her. Carol Vorderman, for instance, described Emily’s denunciation of her father as “wonderful” and went on to?upbraid Clarkson?for writing such a vile thing about “any woman”. Vorderman said in a?follow-up tweet?that she’d received “lots of abuse” about her condemnation of Clarkson, but didn’t mind because witnessing his demise – and seeing the ejaculations of anyone foolish enough to defend him – was “like watching the last death throes of the dinosaur age”. (Isn’t that a bit ageist?)

Incidentally, Vorderman quote-tweeted a?letter to the Chief Executive of ITV signed by 60 MPs, including some Conservatives, urging her to sack him as presenter of?Who Wants to be a Millionaire??They, too, didn’t get the?Game of Thrones?reference – or pretended not to so they could work themselves up into even more of a lather. “Expressing a scatological, misogynistic fantasy that Meghan Markle might be assaulted with faeces is an insight into a disturbed mind, openly expressing violent hate speech,” wrote the letter’s author, SNP MP John Nicholson. He claimed he had “consistently defended freedom of the press” – oh really? – but Clarkson had “crossed a line”.

The pile-on against the “old fart” is ironic, given that the people leading the charge claim to be concerned about the psychological trauma his words have caused Meghan. What about the psychological impact on Clarkson of being the latest victim of?two minutes hate? It’s almost as if his critics are demanding that he should be stripped naked and paraded through the streets of every town in Britain while he’s pelted with excrement for daring to suggest that Meghan should be stripped naked and… etc., etc.

Needless to say, far from being traumatised, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will be rubbing their hands with glee over this row because it’s shifted public opinion back in their favour after the poor reception given to their Neflix ‘documentary’. Here, at last, is the ‘evidence’ they’ve been desperately searching for that the racist British tabloids turned on Meghan because, to quote John Nicholson’s letter, she’s “the only person of colour in the Royal Family”.

How has Clarkson responded to all this performative outrage and opportunistic virtue-signalling? Alas, he has issued (sort of) an apology:

In a column I wrote about Meghan, I made a clumsy reference to a scene in?Game of Thrones?and this has gone down badly with a great many people. I’m horrified to have caused so much hurt and I shall be more careful in future.

Oh Jeremy! You should have reached out to the Free Speech Union, where we would have told you that apologising rarely succeeds in drawing a line under attempts to cancel you. On the contrary, it emboldens the mob who sense weakness and move in for the kill. When the FSU's General Secretary Toby Young stepped down from the Office for Students in 2018 and apologised for various sophomoric remarks he’d made on Twitter, the Twitchfork mob immediately tried to get him fired from all his other jobs and he ended up having to step down from five positions. And so it has proved to be in Clarkson’s case, with campaigns launched now to have him fired by Amazon, where he presents?Grand Tour?and?Clarkson’s Farm, and various woke activist groups?writing to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police?urging him to “take action” against the miscreant. Thankfully, Sir Mark Rowley has said he has?no intention of doing so.

What’s Toby Young's view of Clarkson’s column?

Well, I wouldn’t have written those words myself, not least because – to paraphrase Ross Clark in the?Telegraph?– I wouldn’t have wanted to give “the entire liberal-Left establishment” an excuse to launch yet another attack on the “Right-wing press” or lend any credibility to Meghan’s ludicrous attempts to smear the British tabloids as racist. I think I also would have recognised that it’s a little tone deaf to confess to fantasising about inflicting a medieval punishment on a prominent female public figure, given the current campaign to criminalise ‘misogyny’. Such a law would pose a major threat to free speech because, among other things, it would almost certainly make it a criminal offence to say something ‘hateful’ against transwomen, which, as we know, includes saying you don’t think they’re women.

Should it be against the law to write what Clarkson wrote? Absolutely not. Should he lose his gigs on ITV and Amazon? Of course not. Should he be sacked by the?Sun? No. The people condemning Clarkson on Twitter and elsewhere are as entitled to exercise their free speech as he is. But trying to get someone fired for saying something you find offensive – or, more accurately, pretend to find offensive – goes beyond vigorous debate and becomes cancel culture. That’s crossing a line, John Nicholson.

Whenever anyone says they support free speech but draw the line at hate speech, the six million dollar question is: Who gets to decide what hate speech is? In today’s political climate, accusing the Royal Family of being a racist institution isn’t hate speech – even though it’s clearly intended to stir up hatred against King Charles?et al?– but saying you would like to strip the accuser naked, parade her through the streets of every town in Britain… etc. is the secular equivalent of blasphemy. Why? How did that become the rule? Because Chris Packham, Ayesha Hazarika and Carol Vorderman say so?

To underline just how subjective the concept of ‘hate speech’ is, the same people who’ve condemned Clarkson never object when equally nasty things are said about Tories by members of their own tribe. We don’t recall David Baddiel piping up when Jo Brand joked about throwing battery acid in Nigel Farage’s face, for instance, or when Carol Vorderman reaching for the smelling salts when Angela Rayner referred to “all Tories” as “scum”. The author Sir Philip Pullman described Clarkson’s column as “poison”, yet three years ago he said: “When I hear the name ‘Boris Johnson’, for some reason the words ‘rope’ and ‘nearest lamp-post’ come to mind as well.” (See Ross Clark’s?great piece?on this hypocrisy in the?Mail.)

So, to be clear, the change to the law Clarkson’s critics are advocating would make it a criminal offence to say something ‘offensive’ about people on the same political side as them, but not about their political opponents. Apart from being illiberal, isn’t that a little short-sighted? Yes, they’re in the ascendancy now, but what if the fashion changes and their equivalents in 25 years’ time regard their speech as hateful? What principle will they be able to appeal to to protect their free speech, given that they’ve campaigned to criminalise the speech of their ideological enemies?

As Ira Glasser, the ex-head of the ACLU?said:

Speech restrictions are like poison gas. You see a bad speaker out there. And you don’t want to listen to him or her anymore. So you get this poison gas and say, “I’m going to spray him with it.” And then the wind shifts. And pretty soon the gas blows back on you.

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If you think there’s a risk you’ll be penalised for exercising your legal right to free speech, whether it’s in the workplace or the public square, you need the protection of the Free Speech Union. Membership starts from just £2.49 a month. You can join us?here.?

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When I first heard about this incident I tried to find what had caused so much offence that Clarson had had to apologise. I came across the two paragraphs quoted and continued to wonder where the really offensive and apology-worthy section was. Meanwhile, the likes of Nish Kumar, Joe Lycett, etc, along with the conveyor belt of race grifters, continue to be broadcast and say a great deal which I find offensive.

Anthony Straeger

Seasoned Scriptwriter, Director & Consultant - Crafting Compelling Stories for Film.

2 年

Absolutely correct.

Richard J. Francis

Currently resting pending re-launch.

2 年

This is without doubt the truest sentiment. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen this during my life.

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