Defending Gary Lineker: "First they came..."

It has to be seen to be believed. If you click on THIS LINK, you will be amazed at the number of articles written about Gary Lineker by that bastion of objective journalism, the Daily Mail. Gary joins the pantheon of people that the Mail hates. What a list! Cross-channel migrants, trade unionists, asylum seekers, teachers, lawyers, civil servants, junior doctors, Meghan and Harry, human rights activists - and that's just this week. I wish I was exaggerating. It's not just the Mail, of course. As we know, all other right-wing media outlets have joined in, together with many Tory politicians and, to an extent, some Labour luminaries, such as Yvette Cooper and Emily Thornberry. As the Daily Express gloatingly says:

"Corbynite MP Emily Thornberry joined in the criticism of BBC presenter Gary Lineker last night, arguing his language has been "really unfortunate" and she wouldn't have used it."

So, what exactly did Lineker say that has given such offence? His tweeted words were directed at the government's asylum policy. He said:  “An immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s.” The meanest intelligence can see this to be a single sentence, whether we agree with it or not. Had it been tweeted by me or you, (and I don't have a Twitter account), it would disappear into the ether. Much is being done to counter the double standards and hypocrisy of the Tories and the Tory media on this issue. Even as I type, the indomitable James O' Brien of LBC is tearing into them, but I would like to look at two examples of eminent media personalities who are defending Gary Lineker.

The first eminent defender is Emily Maitlis, who herself was reprimanded in 2020 by the BBC for her interview with Dominic Cummings which the broadcaster said did not meet its standards for "impartiality" after Cummings appeared to break lockdown rules. As Lineker could well be facing a similar reprimand, Ms Maitlis says: "Curious that @GaryLineker was free to raise questions about Qatar’s human rights record - with the blessing of the bbc - over the World Cup , but cannot raise questions of human rights in this country if it involves criticism of government policy…"

That is very well said by Prince Andrew's interrogator, but another defence comes from an unexpected quarter. Piers Morgan is not known for his concern for human rights, but he makes a sterling point in Lineker's favour when he says of a man with whom he, Piers Morgan, has crossed swords on  a number of occasions: 

“We both have strong opinions, we both believe in what we say and we express them forcefully, but we agree to disagree.And I have no problem with Gary Lineker, a football presenter, sports presenter, from giving his views.He’s not a BBC news journalist, he’s not anchoring The News at 10 or Question Time or Newsnight, he’s a football presenter doing Match Of The Day and other major sporting events."

Both telling points, and I would like to join in Gary Lineker's defence by examining what he said. I believe his words in the original tweet to be more accurate than his critics are saying against him once the anti- migrant vituperation of the tabloid press is factored into the topic.The language employed by Tory politicians and their lackeys in the press about cross-channel migrants is frequently similar to that of Nazi propagandists in the 1930s. As Tom Peck says in The Independent: 

"If the home secretary writes execrable garbage in the newspapers, and repeats it in the House of Commons, about how “100 million people are coming here,” people are not merely entitled but obliged to show zero tolerance. To call it what it is".

It has been said that the real reason for the outrage of the Tories and their press is the fact that Gary Lineker has 8 million followers on Twitter, and cannot be safely ignored, like the rest of us. That should not preventing us from speaking out. While we have democratic rights of free speech, we should  exercise them. "First they came for Gary Lineker..." and one day, it could be our turn.

Lastly, to bear out Gary's point, it's worth doing a direct comparison between Nazi propaganda and the anti-immigrant tropes of the right-wing press, in this case, the Daily Mail.

Now, it's no secret that the Mail has a lot to live down for its dealings with Nazism in the 30s. Before the Nazi takeover in 1933, after the 1930 German elections, the Mail welcomed the Nazi success as "the birth of Germany as a nation". In 1934, it ran a story "Hurrah for the Blackshirts", praising Moseley's British Union of Fascists (BUF) as  the correct party to “take over responsibility for [British] national affairs”. This earned the Mail's proprietor, Lord Rothermere, a dinner invitation from Hitler. And of course, the Mail has been at the forefront of every campaign of populist xenophobia since WW2, from Enoch Powell in the 60s, to Ugandan Asians coming to Britain in the 1970s, to the present day.

But to return to Gary Lineker's charge, here is visual evidence to support his case. Thanks to Global Justice Now, I present two cartoons, one from Nazi Germany in the 30s, the other from the Daily Mail in 2014. One portrays Jews as parasites on the German nation, the other of refugees as invading parasites. Both include images of rats, implying that both minorities are vermin.

And this from the Mail, 9 years ago:

Gary Lineker has made a very effective point.