Context is King

Whilst not wishing to comment upon a court case currently in progress, it has to be said that Graham Linehan's trial for allegedly harassing a trans activist does serve to highlight the fact that the Tweets which resulted in him being arrested for incitement to violence as he stepped off of a plane from the US, aren't an isolated incident.  I recall that, with regard to getting good rankings on search engines, people used to declare that 'Content is King!' (how naive we were then).  In real life, however, it is context that is king when it comes to information.  Hence, put into the wider context of Linehan's social media activities, those Tweets intimating that a legitimate way of dealing with the thorny issue of single sex spaces for women would be to punch any trans interlopers in the balls might well be taken seriously by the authorities when a complaint was made about them.  Taken alone, they can be passed off as a joke - a poor one, but a joke, nonetheless - but seen against the background of his relentless, obsessive, some might say, anti-trans campaign and the often aggressive and violent language employed in said campaign, they might well be a cause for concern.  Because that's the nub of the matter:  nobody is saying that Linehan, or anyone else, can't have, or even express, views sceptical of trans rights, only that they should be expressed in reasonable, rational terms, without recourse to angry and violent language which could be taken as an incitement to violence.

Which is why, of course, the likes of Fartage, the Tories and the rabid right-wing press, do their best to avoid mentioning the context of the case. Instead, they try to present Linehan as a victim of wokeness-gone-mad, a hero for standing up against political correctness and left-wing bullying, wheras, in truth, he's just a very angry man who, despite being a writer, is seemingly incapable of expressing himself in a reasonable and coherent manner.  Obviously, this isn't an isolate phenomenon: it's the right's stock-in-trade to always omit context from any issue, instead presenting everything as an entirely isolated incident.  Take the business of the current campaign by shady players to stick England flags everywhere.  If we were to believe the right-wing press, it is a simple expression of patriotism and attempts to remove them represent a typical left-wing repression of our freedoms.  What they omit to mention is the context of this campaign, that the England flag has, in recent years, been co-opted by various extreme right groups and used to intimidate not just immigrants, but anyone who disagrees with their pound shop fascism - oppose the posting of that flag and you are obviously an unpatriotic traitor trying to undermine our national identity.  'It's only a flag - what's your problem?' they ask, a sentiment echoed by Fartage, Tories and the press, as if they are completely unaware that flags are never 'just' flags.  They can have all manner of connotations according to context, often amplifying their innate symbolism.  Moreover, the motivation for wanting to fly them is never questioned - I mean, why do you need to have England flags plastered all over England?  I don't know about anyone else, but I know that I'm in England, I don't need visual confirmation everywhere, even painted on mini-roundabouts.  Are those putting them up saying that they think people are so stupid that they don't know where they are?

Look, if somebody wants to fly a flag, any flag, on their own property then, so long as it doesn't contravene planning or safety laws or it isn't offensive (ie a Nazi swastika), then good luck to them (although I don't know why anyone would want to have a flagpole in their garden).  But sticking them in public places without permission, or painting them on roads, is simply vandalism, regardless of the flag involved and I find it fascinating that the sorts of right-wingers and newspapers who usually decry vandalism seem to want to defend this particular instance of vandalism.  Which they can only do by their perverse refusal to properly contextualise the issue.