Why are the BBC stoking culture war grievances?

This profoundly irresponsible BBC headline implies that the 67 year old man was jailed for chanting "you're not British anymore" at police. In reality he was jailed for violent disorder.

David Notley was jailed for violent disorder, so the assertion "67-year old man jailed after chanting 'you’re not English anymore' at police" is profoundly misleading, and seemingly designed to whip up grievances.

If the intention of this misleading BBC London headline was to provoke outrage, it worked an absolute treat, with the replies to their Twitter post absolutely teaming with far-right outrage, based on the falsehood that this man was jailed for the chant, rather than his violent misconduct during a riot (which the article notes he pled guilty to).

Notice how all of the outraged comments that got bumped to the top of the Twitter replies came from "blue tick" accounts that pay Elon Musk for greater visibility, and how they were all entirely uninterested in reading the actual article, or addressing the fact that he was jailed for his violent conduct, not his "you’re not English any more" chants.

It’s like watching that bizarre "these days if you say you’re English you’ll be arrested and thrown in jail" Stewart Lee routine playing out in real life, with the state broadcaster acting as one of the main instigators.

In reality the overwhelming majority of people jailed over the far-right riots - including the subject of this grossly misleading rage-bait article - have pled guilty to crimes like violent misconduct, rioting, attacking public sector workers, looting, vandalism, and arson.

Of the tiny percentage who have been jailed for saying things, absolutely nobody has been jailed for chanting anything like "you’re not English anymore" at police or repeating the Tory party slogan "stop the boats".

What they’ve actually been jailed for is publicly inciting violence.

Julie Sweeny was jailed for responding to a video of the local community rallying around to repair the damaged Southport mosque by saying "It’s absolutely ridiculous. Don’t protect the mosque. Blow the mosque up with the adults in it".

Tyler Kay was jailed after using a Twitter account bearing his own name to call for hotels housing immigrants to be burned down, while helpfully tagging Northamptonshire Police in on some of his riot-inciting tweets!

Of course far-right sympathisers will attempt to argue that inciting people into committing crimes like bombing mosques or burning hotels is just "free speech", but you’d have to wonder if they’d feel the same if someone tried to incite a crowd into burning down or bombing their house, or the homes of their right-wing idols like Nigel Farage, Richard Tice, or "Tommy Robinson".

In fact you’d suspect they’d be amongst the first on the phone to the police to report any such threats, right?

In reality people are absolutely free to criticise the government’s immigration policies, complain there’s too much immigration, chant Tory party slogans in the street, and criticise the police, if that’s what they want to do.

What they’re not entitled to do is engage in rioting, violent disorder, arson, and looting, or incite people into bombing mosques and burning down hotels.

It’s absolutely clear that in this particular case, reference to the "you’re not English anymore" chant was added into headlines purely to generate outrage and far-right victimhood, with the objective of harvesting clicks and engagement.

The BBC are not alone in spreading this kind of grossly misleading rage-bait headline over this case either. The likes of AOL, the Telegraph, Daily Express, and Breitbart all ran updates and headlines falsely insinuating Notley was jailed for chanting "you’re not English anymore", but is it really too much to expect that the British state broadcaster avoids such provocative and misleading culture war headlines?

Setting up a small monthly GoCardless subscription really helps too.