A Question of Perspective

It all depends how you look at it, I suppose.  Whether recent developments have been disastrous for Boris Johnson, or whether they actually show that he's taking a grip on the situation.  Having five top officials resign in a period of forty eight hours, or so, would, to most of us, seem catastrophic, implying all sorts of behind the scenes turmoil at Downing Street.  But for at least one right-wing tabloid - the Daily Express, I think - framed it rather differently: as Johnson taking control of the situation by acting decisively and starting the 'Partygate purge' of officials.  An interesting attempt to salvage the situation, but undermined somewhat by the fact that these individuals all departed Number Ten under their own steam, rather than having been sacked.  But it serves as another example of how the media try to brainwash us into believing that what we can see with our own eyes isn't true, but rather that the exact opposite has happened.  Which, of course, simply reduces news reporting to the level of the sorts of conspiracy fantasies which try to convince us that the moon landings were fake or that the earth is flat, in the face of all the available evidence.  But we live in an era when even our political leaders are happy to peddle such fantasies as these when they think it suits their purposes: just this week we had Johnson repeating, in the Commons, the nonsense popular on far right web sites, that, when DPP, Keir Starmer had personally decided not to prosecute Jimmy Savile.  As a distraction from his own crimes, it failed miserably.  Indeed, it supposedly sparked the resignation of at least one of those advisors.

Which brings us to Spotify and Joe Rogan.  I find it somewhat depressing that idiots of Rogan's ilk seem to be able to attract so many ardent followers who seem willing to take his ill informed 'opinions' over actual facts.  But hey, say people who claim not to be fans of Rogan but are instead just interested in 'free speech', he's just allowing people to air 'alternative viewpoints' - that's just 'freedom of speech'.  Except that it isn't.  'Free speech' doesn't and has never meant that you have the right to say whatever you like.  If that were the case, then we wouldn't have laws, even in the most liberal of democracies, to protect against defamation, hate speech and incitement to hate or cause disorder, for instance.  All 'free speech' means is that you have the right to be publicly critical of institutions and authorities, without fear of persecution or prosecution.  (Although even these rights are limited under certain circumstances - just try criticising a judicial decision in open court: you'll find yourself going down for contempt of court).  Which is the issue with Rogan: in the middle of a pandemic he is giving a platform to crackpots and nutjobs to spread dangerous disinformation about vaccines, potentially undermining public health.  Sure, these individuals are entitled to hold their idiotic beliefs, but they don't have the automatic  right to be able to spread them.  But thelikes of Spotify and Rogan don't care about such niceties - they are only interested in increasing the clicks to their 'products' and, sadly, this sort of sensationalist shit attracts more clicks than sober, rational discussion does. Something the likes of JOhnson and his supporters know equally well.