Tories and Fascism - Mary Beard - 1 March 2020

The Tories' decision to block the academic Mary Beard from becoming a trustee for the British Museum is far from the most significant political story this week, but it's worth considering for what it tells us about the Tories, and the mainstream media hack pack who continue pathetically failing to hold them to account.

The stated reason for the Tory government intervening to block Mary Beard is that she has been too much of a vocal Brexit-sceptic, especially on social media.

The precedent this sets is alarming to say the least. If individuals don't conform to the ideological positioning of the Tory government, the government will actively intervene to deny these individuals employment and positions of influence within society.

This kind of ideological authoritarianism is deeply sinister, whoever may be trying to impose it.

"Sorry, no job for you chum, you've failed our ideological purity test" is alarming stuff, but the mainstream media non-reaction is just as concerning.

The Guardian posted an article about the story, and the only other coverage is a piece of lazy churnalism in Daily Mail featuring the usual slavering misogynistic dogs in the comments, one of whom even tries to argue that Remainers "are like the communists who ensure that only party members and supporters get the better jobs", which is an absolute inversion of reality given that Tory Brexiteers are the ones busy conducting purges to ensure the best jobs go to favoured ideological conformists ahead of outspoken non-conformists.

Say Jeremy Corbyn had won the general election, and Labour figures had set about interfering in non-governmental appointments by imposing ideological purity standards on appointees, against the backdrop of a senior government minister bullying a senior civil servant out of their job, then trying and failing to bribe him into silence.

It's beyond obvious that the mainstream media hack pack would be raining absolute hellfire on Corbyn and his government, instead of publishing two paltry articles about their political interference in non-governmental appointments, and actually running a barrage of PR pieces actively defending the minister responsible for the bullying scandal.

But because it's the Tories, it's barely even mentioned, because ideological purges and ministerial bullying are only bad and terrible when the hack pack are inventing purely imaginary scenarios about the left doing it. When the right impose ideological purity tests and conduct their politically motivated purges in plain sight, most of them can't even be bothered to take note of it, let alone post furious Tweets about it.

And where have all the right-wing free speech advocates suddenly disappeared to after having made such a fuss about Boris Johnson's creepy 'sterilise the poor' adviser last week?

Presumably the 'free speech' they believe in only applies to people promoting stuff like hard-right economic ideas, eugenics, elitism, bigotry, and pro-Tory propaganda.

But as soon as it comes to the free speech of left-wingers or people expressing concerns about the absolute farce the Tories have made of Brexit, they're suddenly absolutely fine with people being bullied out of their jobs for 'thought crime', and getting purged from non-governmental appointments for having failed secretive government-imposed ideological purity tests, because they don't raise the slightest objection to any of it.

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