Wind the clock back a few years. I'm a civil rights activist, lecturer, writer and commentator. Our screens are awash with my ugly mug trying, with ever increasing futility, to save the world from certain doom. As it becomes increasingly obvious I'm an existential threat to all human existence on the planet, the prevailing narrative being pushed by those who were formerly cute little pro-PNAC neocons, morphs into something far worse - the new far right.
I’m just going to simply lump some of the Venn diagrams together: Bannon, Breitbart, Banks, Farage, Milo, UKIP, EDL, Tommy, Gove, Cummings, Nawaz, 'Ratbiter' Cohen, Quilliam, Nelson, Neil, Nina Rosenwald, Gatestone. There are so many others. TV personalities. BAFTA winners. Musicians. Actors. Journalists. Producers. Activists. A central core of radicalised activists and gatekeepers. They extend pressure, cajole sycophants, radicalise others. Online. Straight from the playbook they wrote.
Under the weight of BBC personalities secretly messaging colleagues and collaborating with others, I started facing cancellations for shows, gigs, festivals and other public appearances. My Wikipedia page was repeatedly vandalised and taken down as they carefully crafted every good deed to be sullied; to mock and smear, at every juncture. Philip Cross, one of their most lauded targeted Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott, John Pilger and of course, Mo Ansar.
Not that it should stop us doing our good works. But it does. It limits audiences, trashes our reputation but worse, it takes front line voices out from the debate. Think Rankin Fitch and Runaway Jury. And galactically effective it was sweeping into its net the racist and naive alike, from my drummer’s dad to Christian festivals, from new friends to the BBC, and about 17.4m for Brexit. As Cummings says, this is 'total war'.
Around that time, my friend Glen Greenwald and his new investigative publication 'The Intercept' reported on leaks relating to UK intel agencies and how they take down public personalities online that they consider to be a threat to national interests. It was in a PowerPoint presentation. How something so banal could so hurt reputations and careers. Hannah Arendt would have something to say. And how it destroys families. Lives.
Believe me when I say that every single one of JTRIG’s template was used against me. https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/
Fast forward to my Comment video piece for Guardian. I was regularly writing for Huff Po, on our TVs and radios regularly. I drive up to Guardian HQ. It's a dreich evening in central London. I deliver my bit. Pop to Camden market then drive home. The video piece is spiked. Jonathan Freedland was heading the comment desk. I challenge him, he denies it existed. Which seems odd strategy considering I'd been paid too.
As much as I may agree with much, if not all of what Kath Viner and the Guardian do as a public platform; it is becoming increasingly obvious that at some point something changed. We need to reconcile how our government and the instruments of intelligence and protection of the state, pivoted and turned on its citizens. When did the national security protocols rolled out to control and handle the MSM in the event of counter terror extended to those seen and shortlisted for emboldening dissidency, socialism, multiculturalism and sodāmi g pūt atainot political corruption. And it was laughable (if not unlawful) when the Chairman of Index for Censorship, a leading Times journalist, was defaming me online and Tweeting out smear campaign hit pieces on me by Islamophobes, shared and read by tens of thousands. These interests are everywhere. In plain sight. They look like us. Even pretend they're us. And we are then asked to conform, or be damned. How the Romans were always so. How else can warfaring apartheid societies operate, I guess?
How they marginalise dissenting voices. How they fomente hate and support anti-democratic interests at home and overseas. How they take the idea of entrapment and extend it to the point of outright terror by aiding and abetting children from the UK to travel and join ISIS. How they curtail our freedoms and free expression, yet sell us the fantasy that they are our champions.
What else is afoot?
I've been a champion of civil liberties and a secular society my entire life. For spiritual freedom, for enlightenment. The day the security services and our extended state apparatus (including the media) have me in their crosshairs, we are truly fucked. Or there again, when have they not always targeted my kind?
As someone who has also advised government and RICU on counter terror, combatting radicalisation and extremism, and worked on both Prevent and Channel before they became corrupted; the lessons I have learned and taught others need to be considered again by government and our agencies. These were shared messages. Shared values. We have lost our way and too many have gone too far. Rogue interests which must be brought back in line. The extremists have taken over our establishments and the ideological war that Blair threatened is now here.
I have plenty of friends at the Guardian. As I do in the Labour Party. And a few in the Conservative Party. But we need to get our houses in order and sycophancy is no replacement for just and fair behaviour. The system relies on you feeling embarrassed, stubborn and unwilling to accept you’ve made a mistake – and following unlawful guidances from a far right securitised state whilst its sliding into the abyss (when you know better) is fuck all excuse. Know this. As the Guardian tumbles, know that should it fall, so do we and so do our freedoms.
Time to drain the swamp. Of actual monsters, please.
First published 12 September 2019: Medium