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Post-Apartheid South Africa

September 15, 2024/8 Comments/in General/by Pierre Simon

I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Like the great redeemer of humanity, Martin Luther King, the worshipped Messiah of the new religion of diversity now sweeping the West, Mossad trained Nelson Mandela,[1] the saviour of South Africa, the anti-White leader of the terrorist group Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) was in reality a “communist mole” determined to destroy capitalism and replace the White South African government with a Black communist dictatorship.

This has now been achieved, but the result is disappointing, to say the least. The combination of communism-racism-multiculturalism is triply lethal. By realizing his post-national utopia, Nelson Mandela, “this gentle reformer whom the media likes to portray as the ‘archangel of peace,’ has plunged his country into a sea of racial conflict, crime and economic ruin,”[2] says African historian Bernard Lugan. Because of him, South Africa is no longer a first-world country, but a country in the doldrums like all the other countries of this cursed continent condemned to languish in its mediocrity.[3]

“Could it be otherwise,” Bernard Lugan asks rhetorically, “when since 1994, the ‘New South Africa’ has been built without taking reality into account? The ‘rainbow nation’ [nicknamed for its multiculturalism], a post-apartheid paradise, a modern version of the ‘classless society’ that was supposed to emerge from the end of the White regime, soon appeared to be a ‘smoke and mirrors.’ A product of Western nonsense, it has prevented us from seeing that South Africa is not a nation, but a mosaic of different peoples brought together or juxtaposed by the British colonizer. Peoples whose cultural references are foreign and even irreducible to each other.”[4]

As a result of this total lack of vision, many big investors left, taking with them most of the White elites that made the country work. Infrastructure collapsed. Unemployment rose from 5 percent to more than 25 percent, even 40 percent in some sectors. In 2013, nearly 17 million Blacks out of a population of 51 million were on welfare, and it hasn’t gotten much better since. With Blacks favoured in all circumstances, unskilled White labour that no longer has access to work lives in slums. Corruption is the rule; the crooked civil servants and politicians who swarm in the new African El Dorado plunder the state coffers.[5]

Johannesburg, the jewel of Africa, has become the crime capital of the world. Riots and the looting of department stores are so frequent that the media, jaded, no longer even mention them. In the middle-class White neighborhoods, people barricade themselves and arm themselves to the teeth, so frequent are home invasions, violent burglaries, and murders.[6]

And that’s without mentioning the rapes: 40,000 per year in Johannesburg alone, solo or gang rapes (jack rolling) of everything that moves — women, 90-year-old grandmothers in wheelchairs, little boys, girls, and female babies. The latter are particularly coveted, because in the land of “living together,” it is believed that the only way to be cured of HIV (AIDS) is to have sex with a virgin. As a result, approximately 10% of rapes committed throughout the country are perpetrated on children under the age of three.[7]

 

9 year old Kayla Meyer, pictured at the top, watched her parents and grandparents be ruthlessly murdered. She was then tied up with wire, stripped down, gang raped then beaten to death with a shovel and stuffed into a closet. She was a kind little girl and her favorite colour was purple. (@EmilyMorse4Life)(Figure 1)

In addition, since the country has been ruled by a racially-majority government that is totally insensitive to the rights of minorities, the hunt is on for the White farmers who feed the country; not a day goes by without several of them being trapped, attacked, tortured, murdered, or left for dead, flayed alive in boiling water or with their limbs hacked off with hatchets. According to Ernst Roets of AfriForum, a group that advocates for the rights of the Afrikaner minority, “the victims were attacked with electric drills, blowtorches and bleach, which indicates a racial element. Only White farming families have experienced such levels of violence, never Black victims.” In 2017, there were 433 incidents, up from 342 the previous year. These attacks are part of a drive to get rid of Whites. Communist Julius Malema and former President Jacob Zuma have indeed exacerbated an anti-White sentiment by publicly calling for the killing of Whites and the expropriation of their farms without compensation.[8]

“Kill the Boer, kill the White,” Mandela liked to sing with his Jewish friend, Yossef Mashel Slovo, known as Joe Slovo, a prominent member of the Jewish globalists who infected the Africans with the virus of communism. The comrades took them at their word.[9] From that point of view— it is safe to say that for the Oppenheimer’s and the other Jewish financial sharks who were behind this revolution—the result was a great success. They went on to buy the country’s industries and to capture the natural resources of the land for a pittance. As many people know by now, wars and revolutions fought in the name of democracy, philanthropy and humanism are a lucrative business.[10]

But Whites were not the only victims of atrocities. During the apartheid period, when the African National Congress (ANC)—the movement led by her husband—sought to overthrow the government, Winnie Mandela and her band of “footballers” used to “necklace” traitors to the cause, a relatively widespread assassination technique in the rainbow nation that the globalists like to hold up as an example, but never visit.[11] Here are the operating instructions: 1) wrap the victim in barbed wire to immobilize him; 2) put a tire around his neck, like a collar; 3) fill the inside of the tire with gasoline; 4) light it. The flesh on the face that ignites melts and strips the bone; the victim dies burned alive in a long torment.[12]

One would not be at all surprised to learn that at the end of a hard day’s “necklacing,” Winnie and her comrades would gorge themselves on BBQ-ed Blacks to regain their strength. Cannibalism among the savages has always been popular.[13] The despots Idi Amin Dada and Jean-Bedel Bokassa were notorious lovers of human flesh.[14] In the African press cases of cannibalism are regularly reported.[15] It should be noted that it is not forbidden in South Africa to eat human beings, but it is forbidden to sell or store human meat.[16] A nuance that the lovers of diversity will appreciate.

The same thing can be said about Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), the stronghold of the late Robert Mugabe, the dictator in office for 37 years (1980 to 2017). As a good communist, he too was supposed to transform his country into a Garden of Eden. But he only succeeded in turning it into a hellhole. Blacks killed and dispossessed thousands of White farmers to take back the land they had supposedly stolen from them.

But unable to manage a modern farm, the Black social justice warriors soon went bankrupt. The fields fell into disrepair. Famine struck. Without food aid from the rich White countries, they would all have starved to death. Running out of ideas, they even tried to bring back the Whites to put their revolution-ravaged country back on track.[17] But what White person would be foolish enough to return to a country where anti-White racism is rampant?

We tend to forget, but the revolution also took place in Haiti. It was not communists as such, who revolted against the ruling power, but it is just the same. In 1804, in the wake of Robespierre and the terror of 1793, Haitians led by Toussaint Louverture, the King-Mandela-Mugabe of his time, freed themselves from the French colonists, whom they raped, tortured, and murdered by the thousands.[18]

But without the Whites who had made the island a paradise, the world’s first Black republic quickly turned into a nightmare. The farms, the sumptuous villas, the stately palaces, the beautiful administrative buildings, the roads and bridges that the White settlers had built to last a thousand years soon fell into disrepair for lack of maintenance and knowhow.

Two hundred years after the terror, Haitians freed from the yoke of the oppressive Whites still stagnate in their slums, garbage cans, and open sewers. The only solution they have found to their stagnation is to emigrate. After every hurricane, every famine, and every coup d’état, they flood us like a tidal wave, eat our cats, ducks, and geese, rape our little girls and squat our houses. It’s not their fault, forgive them, with an average IQ of 67, they do not know how to do otherwise, their country being probably the most dysfunctional on the face of the Earth.[19]

For a good perspective on how ineffectual and primitive Africans are in creating the kinds of societies that Whites take for granted, see the following two documentaries Empire of Dust (2011) by Bram Van Paesschen and Africa Addio (Farewell Africa) by Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi (1966).

The first documentary chronicles the frustration and often futile efforts of Chinese workers to get Blacks in the town of Kolwezi (Congo) to mine the immensely valuable resources available to them. Lao Yang is repeatedly stunned at the level of incompetence, lack of organization and forethought of the Congolese Blacks to take steps in improving their country. The simplest tasks take weeks and even months to accomplish because of problems in the supply chain, mistakes that could have easily been avoided, unskilled labourers, language barriers, and constant bribery which grinds everything to a halt.[20]

The second documentary is a graphic portrayal of African Blacks and the chaos and bloodshed that ensued after the colonial rule. The film illustrates the downfall that occurs when Blacks are left to their own devices. Their more primitive traits are unleashed with no restraint. This is not a movie for the faint-hearted. Its value is found in showing how dependent Blacks are upon the White man if they want a civilized society with law and order—the very thing that blacks historically have been unable to create on their own.[21]

In the same vein, but on a neighboring continent, one of the most filthy, disgusting and obscene documentaries in the annals of cinematography, Dirty India.

If you still think after reading this and seeing these three documentaries that the colored people that our elites are bringing to Western countries are an asset, you’re totally out of touch and forever brainwashed by the multicultural propaganda that runs ceaselessly on all news platforms.


[1] “Mandela received Mossad weapons training. Late South African icon met with Israeli agents in Ethiopia in 1962 under the alias David Mobsari, Israeli document shows,” The Times of Israel, 20 December 2013.

[2] Bernard Lugan, Nelson Mandela: l’icône et le néant, bernard-lugan.blogspot.com, December 6, 2013.

[3] Ilana Mercer, Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, Stairway press, 2012.

[4] Bernard Lugan, Jacob Zuma peut-il survivre au Gupta Gate?, L’Afrique réelle, July 2017, no 91.

[5] Bernard Lugan, Afrique du Sud, la question raciale, L’Afrique réelle, March 2014, no 51.

[6] Lauren Southern, Farmlands, YouTube, 2018.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Jane Flanagan, “White Farmers Tortured with Drills and Blow torches, Afrikaner Rights Group Claims,” The Times, Jan 31, 2019.

[9] David Duke, Le Grand Secret du communisme, Free Speech Press, 2015.

[10] Kerry R. Bolton, The Tyranny of Human Rights, Antelope Hill Publishing, 2022.

[11] Stefan Molyneux, The Bloody History of Winnie and Nelson Mandela, South Africa Cries, YouTube, Avril 2, 2018.

[12] Suzanne Daley, “Winnie Mandela’s Ex-Bodyguard Tells of Killings She Ordered,” The New York Times, December 4, 1997.

[13] John Baker, Race, Oxford University Press, 1974, republished in 2012 by Ostara Publications.

[14] “Kiselev: No, We Won’t Become Cannibals Here in Russia! Liberalism Has Gone Too Far!” Vesti News, YouTube, September 16, 2019.

[15] Jeff Wicks, “KZN Man Tells Police He’s ‘Tired of Eating Human Flesh,’” Times of South Africa, August 21, 2017.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Robert Mugabe, Wikipedia. The Free Encyclopedia.

[18] T. Lothrop Stoddard, The French Revolution in San Domingo, Ostara Publications, 2011.

[19] Kevin MacDonald, “Haiti: the Quintessential Dysfunctional Society,” The Occidental Observer, January 2010.

[20] RockaBoatus, “What’s Up with All the Blacks on Television?” The Unz Review, October 16, 2022.

[21] Ibid.

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png 0 0 Pierre Simon https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png Pierre Simon2024-09-15 10:52:252024-09-15 10:52:25Post-Apartheid South Africa

The Outdoor Smoking Ban in the UK

September 15, 2024/17 Comments/in Featured Articles/by Edward Dutton

It took only a few weeks for the authoritarian instincts of Sir Keir Starmer, Britain’s new leftist Prime Minister, to erupt from him like so much pent-up lava scorching its way through the country’s towns and villages. Violent criminals have now been given early release in their thousands from the UK’s overcrowded jails to make way for working-class Whites who wrote slightly emotive tweets about mass immigration as part of the widespread disorder, understandable fury and fear, sparked by an ethnically-Rwandan teenager stabbing three little girls to death at a Taylor Swift-themed holiday club in July. Working-class protestors against this terror were condemned as “far right thugs” by “Two-Tier Keir” — a nickname referring to the fact that Whites are treated far more harshly and dealt with far more quickly than Labour’s foreign or educated clients.

With the riots, Two-Tier Keir’s motives were obvious but they are far less obvious with regard to his proposed banning of smoking outside pubs. This is what makes the policy, overtly a matter of improving public health, all the more pernicious. It is dressed up as something noble — a logical extension of the banning of smoking in pubs which began in 2007 — but, as with everything that emerges from the Labour Party, it is no such thing. It reflects paranoia, Machiavellianism and plain leftist resentment.

As all the businesses around them collapse into Middle Eastern kebab shops, money-laundering “Turkish Barbers” and garish “nail salons,” the pub remains the last bastion of English culture and specifically of White, working-class English culture. It is a place where ordinary English men and women can congregate and exchange notes converse about how Two-Tier Keir is destroying their country — creating a kind of Anarcho-Tyranny, in which traditional crime is not policed but “thought crime” is dealt with quickly and punitively in order to demoralise and control the population. The proles can express their genuine views in such a place; away from the prying eyes of New Labour’s politicised police who gleefully spy on their tweets and Facebook posts.

As such, the pub is dangerous: it is a breeding ground for discontentment and dissent. Banning smoking in the vicinity of pubs will keep working-class people, many of whom smoke, away from The Royal Oak and The Jolly Farmer, and industry leaders agree that it will lead to pubs closing down. So, pubs will shut down, meaning that working-class discontentment is easier to monitor and, so, repress. This all makes sense because, as I have explored in my book Woke Eugenics, leftists are very high in mental instability and in negative feelings. This makes them paranoid — meaning that, for them, there is every motivation to stop working-class people from freely exchanging views.

As I also explore in the book, mental instability is robustly associated with Machiavellianism; the desire for power and control over others. This logically follows as if you experience the world as a frightening and hostile place then you will want to take control of it. The pub represents a lack of control: people get tipsy or drunk and lose their inhibitions to varying degrees. They might, in this alternative state of consciousness, make remarks that incite others to be critical of the Labour Party and immigration and the various way in which Labour is destroying all that was ever good about Britain — high trust, free speech, low crime, impartial public bodies, sound public services — in order to crush dissent. Pubs are therefore a danger, so it is better if they are shut down.

The pub also makes working-class people happy. They can relax after a long day with a few beers and some cigarettes with their friends and other like-minded people. But why would Labour want them to be remotely happy? It is far preferable that they are depressed people who see life as meaningless and lose the will to fight to improve their lot; unlike people who are anxious. Proneness to anxiety is something which strongly characterises leftists. It follows that working-class people need to be isolated and lonely so shutting down the pubs is clearly an excellent idea.

Also, it should not be forgotten that there is something quite profound about English pub culture. In going to the pub, you are not merely having a drink. You are participating in a ritual in which your ancestors participated all the way back to the Middle Ages, with some pubs being hundreds of years old. This link to the past is reflected in pub names that refer to pre-industrial England, historical events, English kings and noblemen, English folklore and long-dead national heroes: The Jolly Farmer, The Royal Oak (when the future King Charles I hid in an oak tree to escape the Roundheads), The Old King’s Head, The Foley Arms, The Green Man, and The Duke of Wellington. As English writer Sean Gabb has argued, you achieve a revolution by cutting the connection to the past. This leaves people confused, lacking in a clear identity and, so, more open to being brainwashed.

Leftists are anti-traditionalist. They feel that they are of low status and therefore must fight against an oppressive culture. And because they are neurotic, and they resent anything that is symbolic of the traditional hierarchy or culture. These must be torn down so that they can attain power. Pubs are a symbol of the old, pre-multicultural England; a rallying point, a reminder of what was. They need to go.

Finally, leftists, being unstable, are unhappy and resentful. Pubs involve people having fun and being happy. If you are bitter and unhappy, there is little worse than seeing other people enjoying themselves. “How dare they enjoy themselves! What about my suffering?” they Narcissistically think, with Narcissism being a way of coping with intense negative feelings. So this is yet another reason why pubs must shut down.

And it’s nothing to do with health. We are evolved, in effect, to be farm labourers in a context of food scarcity and we are now sedentary. Consequently, we will get fat. Tobacco, unhealthy as it is, is an appetite suppressant. Get rid of it and, as we have seen over the last 40 years, working-class people, who tend to have relatively poor impulse control as I have explored in Woke Eugenics, will simply get fat.

Labour are the New Cromwellian Puritans: bitter, resentful, power-hungry, mentally unstable, humourless, virtue-signallers. They may have shut down theatres but even Cromwell’s Puritan Interregnum, between 1649 and 1660, didn’t close the pubs. . . .  Ultimately, of course, the English were pushed too far by the Puritans. There was a counter-revolution and the Two-Tier Keirs of their day were publically hanged, cut down (in some cases while still alive), castrated (with their testicles burned before their Puritan eyes), disembowelled, beheaded, and drawn and quartered   . . .

 

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png 0 0 Edward Dutton https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png Edward Dutton2024-09-15 09:42:032024-09-15 18:34:19The Outdoor Smoking Ban in the UK

“I wish my son Aidan Clark was killed by a 60-year-old White man”: Another example of the Amy Biehl Syndrome

September 13, 2024/9 Comments/in General/by Kevin MacDonald

Once again the Amy Biehl syndrome surfaces, this time in Springfield, Ohio.

Re the Amy Biehl, see Rockaboatus’s article “Amy Biehl, Forgiveness, and the Nature of Hate“:

Amy’s parents, Peter and Linda Biehl, fully supported the release of the murderers and were quite vocal about it too. Peter, in fact, shook their hands and stated: “The most important vehicle of reconciliation is open and honest dialogue. . . . We are here to reconcile a human life [that] was taken without an opportunity for dialogue. When we are finished with this process we must move forward with linked arms” (Wikipedia). Numerous articles were published praising Amy’s parents’ decision to forgive her daughter’s murderers appeared in both American and South African newspapers. One wonders how self-debased a father can get that he would shake the hands of those who stabbed and stoned to death his own daughter?!

A charity foundation was created in 1994, the ‘Amy Biehl Foundation Trust.’ Adding insult to injury, two of the men who had murdered Amy were hired to work for the foundation! Seventeen years after Amy’s death, a bronze plaque mounted on a stone was unveiled by the U.S. Ambassador, Donald Gips and Linda Biehl, at the Cape Town site where she was murdered.

None of this, of course, did a bit of any lasting good. Since Apartheid ended, South Africa has morphed into a cesspool of government corruption, staggering levels of violent crime, and a rabid anti-White ethos has gripped most of the nation. Racially naïve Whites like the Biehls will never attain the racial Utopia they want despite the best of intentions and endless funding they may receive because of the natural proclivities of Blacks and their dysfunctional cultures. Blacks cannot change who they fundamentally are, and neither can Whites. This is why every effort to make them like us and to erase our innate differences has failed repeatedly, wherever Blacks are found around the world.

Father Of Child Killed By Haitian Migrant Says He ‘Wishes His Son Had Been Killed By A White Man’ | ZeroHedge

Father Of Child Killed By Haitian Migrant Says He ‘Wishes His Son Had Been Killed By A White Man’

Springfield, OH has entered the media spotlight in recent weeks in large part due to the massive influx of Haitian aliens pouring into the town through Biden Administration relocation programs.  Springfield’s native born population of 60,000 has been overwhelmed by over 20,000 such migrants shipped to the area in the span of a couple years.  The cultural shock for the locals has been extensive.

One tragedy that has resulted from this great replacement was the death of 11-year-old Aidan Clark.  The man who killed Aiden Clark is a 36-year-old Haitian named Hermanio Joseph, and he entered the US illegally.

It happened on the first day of school in 2023 on state Route 41. Joseph’s vehicle reportedly went left-of-center, forcing the school bus driver to swerve onto the shoulder. The vehicles collided and the bus went off the road and down into an embankment, overturning.  Aiden was killed when he was ejected from the bus, authorities said. Another 26 students were hospitalized.

Joseph was ultimately convicted on charges of involuntary manslaughter and vehicular homicide.and sentenced to between 9 and13 years in prison.  However, the parents of Aidan Clark now say they wish their son had been ‘killed by a 60-year-old white man’ instead.

Aiden’s father Nathan Clark appeared before the Springfield City Commission on Tuesday at an event organized by local politicians designed to “debunk” (lie about) the rising complaints of migrants killing and eating local pets and wildlife. 

Nathan addressed what he perceives as “hate” directed toward the growing immigrant community:

“I wish that my son Aiden Clark was killed by a 60-year-old white man.  I bet you never thought anyone would say something so blunt. But if that guy killed my 11-year-old son, the incessant group of hate-spewing people would never leave us alone. The last thing we need is the worst day of our lives violently and constantly shoved in our faces.  But even that’s not good enough for them. They take it one step further.

They make it seem like our wonderful Aiden appreciates all your hate; that we should follow your hate. And look what it’s done to us. We have to get up here and beg them to stop. Using Aiden as a political tool is, to say the least, reprehensible for any political purpose. 

Speaking of morally bankrupt, politicians [Republican U.S. Senate candidate] Bernie Moreno, [Republican U.S. Rep.] Chip Roy, [Republican vice-presidential candidate] JD Vance and [former Republican president] Donald Trump — they have spoken my son’s name and used his death for political gain. This needs to stop now…”

Clark went on to deny the claims of migrant animal abuse and attacked Republicans on multiple occasions for making his son’s death “political”, even though his speech was clearly politically motivated. He also defended the image of Hermanio Joseph, saying that the event was an ‘accident.’

The commission press event was designed to mislead the American public about reports of migrant animal killings. Springfield Mayor Rob Rue said claims of geese or ducks from parks being killed and eaten are unsubstantiated.

The incidents are in fact real.

Multiple police reports have been made in the area with locals complaining about a rise in missing pets and identifying migrants killing and taking animals.

Here is the official police report showing that the 911 call took place on August 26th – Weeks before the rumors about Haitian Migrants killing park animals went viral. pic.twitter.com/uNn9Pzcfo4

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) September 11, 2024

The Ohio Attorney General has backed Trump’s claims, stating that the reports of at least some migrant animal killings are indeed credible.

The attempted cover-up of these incidences seems familiar.  It is very similar to the attempted cover-up of Venezuelan gangs creating havoc and taking over apartment complexes in Aurora, CO.  A situation which was quickly proven to be a reality.

The establishment media and Democrats are trying to hide the negative effects of open border policies.  They would have Americans believe that these incidences and the death of Aiden Clark are unrelated.

They dig up the parents of Aiden Clark to attack Donald Trump and Republicans on the animal issue while they wish out loud that their son had been killed by a white man. 

Except, he wasn’t killed by a white man, he was killed by an illegal immigrant from Haiti who was convicted of vehicular homicide.  And if the Biden Administration wasn’t importing homicidal aliens from third world countries, the boy would still be alive today.  This is a fact.  The Clark press speech is not just an expression of the sad nature of progressive white guilt, it also reveals a stark desperation among Democrats.

The truth matters.  The truth on the destructive nature of multiculturalism and open borders certainly matters.  The third world and the western world do not mix. The progressive left realizes that this issue is an incredible weakness for their aspirations to political power and it only makes sense that they would try to hide the symptoms as much as possible until November.  The fact that they feel the need to lie shows that they know what they are doing is malicious.

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png 0 0 Kevin MacDonald https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png Kevin MacDonald2024-09-13 10:44:422024-09-13 10:44:42“I wish my son Aidan Clark was killed by a 60-year-old White man”: Another example of the Amy Biehl Syndrome

Globo-Mojo: Minority Rights Will Not Apply to Whites

September 13, 2024/8 Comments/in Featured Articles/by Tobias Langdon

You could pronounce it in Welsh: HWWTYL. You’d say something like “hoo-till.” But it isn’t a Welsh word, it’s an English acronym. What does it stand for? HWWTYL = “Heads We Win, Tails You Lose.” It’s the supreme principle of leftism, supplanting all others and governing all aspects of reality.

Simultaneously smarmy and sinister

In other words, leftists have no genuine principles. They have only a pursuit — the pursuit of power. Once they have power, they use it to privilege their pets and punish their enemies. The principle of HWWTYL is central to privileging and the punishment. It means that Whites can do no right and non-Whites can do no wrong. For example, if non-Whites enter a White district, that’s “enrichment,” which is good and glorious. But if Whites enter a non-White district, that’s “gentrification,” which is wrong and racist.

How HWWTYL works: Everything Whites do is racist (meme from Dranklestein)

There you have HWWTYL in action. But there’s a much more important example of HWWTYL currently ripening among leftists. It centers on a term that’s simultaneously smarmy and sinister: “global majority.” How is it sinister? That’s what I’ll try to explain. First, let’s look at the definition given by the leftists at Wikipedia:

“Global majority” is a collective term for people of Indigenous, African, Asian, or Latin American descent, who constitute approximately 85 percent of the global population. It has been used as an alternative to terms which are seen as racialized like “ethnic minority” and “person of color” (POC), or more regional terms like “visible minority” in Canada and “Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic” (BAME) in the United Kingdom. It roughly corresponds to people whose heritage can be traced back to nations of the Global South. […] The term was used as early as 2003 as a way to challenge the normativity of a white majority or Eurocentric perspective, through Rosemary Campbell-Stephens’ work on leadership preparation within the school sector. Its proponents argue that terms like “ethnic minority” marginalize the skills, the ways of thinking, and the lived experiences of those from African, Asian, indigenous, or dual-heritage backgrounds. Collectively, these groups are said to constitute 85 percent of the global population. Therefore, terms like ethnic minority, person of color, visible minority, and BAME were criticized as racializing ethnicity. (“Global Majority” defined at Wikipedia)

If you’re naïve, you might suppose that the term “global majority” is even more open to criticism on core leftist principles than terms like “ethnic minority” and “person of color.” After all, “global majority” seems to be an horrific example of erasure and Eurocentrism. How can the hugely diverse “skills,” “ways of thinking” and “lived experiences” of Somalis and Sinhalese, Tibetans and Tongans, Inuit and Indonesians, be crammed together in such a reductive, complexity-crushing way? Plainly, the only thing that the “global majority” have in common is that they aren’t stale pale Europeans. They are being defined and homogenized purely by reference to Whites, which is repulsively wrong and rebarbatively racist.

Rise of the righteous: usage of “global majority” has soared in recent years (graph from Google nGrams)

Except that it isn’t. To the pure in heart, all things are permitted. Nothing is wrong when leftists do it to advance the cause of leftism. They can delete difference and crush complexity to their hearts’ content. And that’s exactly what they’re doing when they use the term “global majority.” If you thought that leftists believed passionately in minority rights, you need to think again. When Whites are the minority, they will have no rights at all. Up till now, leftism has justified the privileging of non-Whites and punishment of Whites on the basis that Whites are the oppressive majority and non-Whites are vulnerable minorities. The term “global majority” represents a shift to a new way of thinking. In the past, non-Whites have had mojo as minorities. In the future, they will have mojo as the majority. Non-Whites will be privileged not because they are vulnerable minorities but because they are the virtuous majority. Simultaneously, Whites will shift from the oppressive majority to a villainous minority. And they will continue to be punished.

Virtuous votes and true democracy

In short, there will be no minority rights for Whites. No, Whites will be a global minority who will have to accept the orders of the global majority — as interpreted by leftists. If Whites vote in their own interests within a Western nation, their votes will be over-ridden by the interests of the non-White majority outside the nation. And that will be true democracy at last. In the past, leftists have had to circumvent false democracy, when the White majority has tried to defend itself. For example, White majorities across the West have consistently opposed non-White migration, but non-White migration has inexorably increased. In Britain, millions of White working-class voters switched their votes in 2019 from the overtly leftist Labour party to the covertly leftist Conservative party, because the Conservatives had promised, hand on heart, to reduce immigration and control the borders. Once they were in power, the Conservatives increased immigration even further and abandoned control of the borders. That might seem anti-democratic, but it wasn’t. Not in the slightest. In true democracy, votes count only when they are cast in the right way. And the right way is, of course, the leftist way.

HWWTYL in action: the Indigenous Irish are vilified for resisting invasion and colonization by non-Whites

The same applies to language. Words have to be interpreted in the right way, namely, the leftist way. Recall the Wikipedia definition above. It says that the term “global majority” includes all people who are  “Indigenous” (with a sacralizing capital I). But the adjective “indigenous” is an excellent example of HWWTYL in action. Leftism regards non-White Maoris as fully indigenous to New Zealand, even though they’ve inhabited those islands only since about the 1300s. But leftism does not regard Whites as indigenous to any part of Europe, even though Whites have inhabited Europe for 10,000 years and more.

In short, “global majority” isn’t an honest term. It’s yet another rhetorical weapon in the leftist campaign to privilege non-Whites and punish Whites. But the privileging of the global majority and punishment of a global minority won’t apply to groups like homosexuals and particularly not to the transgender community. Those groups have been and will continue to be sacred. Yes, “transwomen” are much more of a global minority than Whites are, but “transwomen” are virtuous and will retain full privilege at the top of the leftist hierarchy. Whites are villainous and must have no rights either as the majority or as a minority. “Heads Non-Whites Win, Tails Whites Lose.” That’s all implicit in the increasingly popular term “global majority.” But suppose that the Hollow Earth hypothesis turns out to be true and that 100 billion Whites reveal their presence next week from a vast underground world. In that case, Whites would become the undisputed “global majority” and leftists would instantly convert the term from positive to pejorative. HWWTYL — “Heads We Win, Tails You Lose.” Leftists don’t have principles, only the pursuit of power. George Orwell satirized this leftist power-lust more than seventy years ago:

Oceanic society rests ultimately on the belief that Big Brother is omnipotent and that the Party is infallible. But since in reality Big Brother is not omnipotent and the party is not infallible, there is need for an unwearying, moment-to-moment flexibility in the treatment of facts. The keyword here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. (Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949, Part Two, Chapter 9)

The term blackwhite still applies to modern leftism, but to capture other aspects of the ideology you’d have to add two new terms: blackbless and whitevice. Modern leftists believe that whatever Blacks do is virtuous and whatever Whites do is villainous. All apparent failure by Blacks is the fault of Whites, all apparent success by Whites represents theft from non-Whites. That’s why the term “global majority” is simultaneously smarmy and sinister. It clearly proclaims that Whites will never have rights and that Whites will always be punished. As I pointed out in “The Yoke of Woke,” leftists are preaching equality even as they plan to practise enslavement and extermination. When a leftist uses the term “global majority,” you can see the egalitarian mask slip and a tyrant peep out with bloodlust in their eyes.

Afterword: I’d like to thank Jack Antonio for first drawing my attention to the sinister significance of the term “global majority.” If you enjoy good writing, good stories and good jokes, then believe me: you’ll find plenty of all three in Jack’s memoir Boy Outa Brooklyn.

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png 0 0 Tobias Langdon https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png Tobias Langdon2024-09-13 08:40:372024-09-13 08:40:37Globo-Mojo: Minority Rights Will Not Apply to Whites

To Burn or not to Burn, Part 2

September 12, 2024/3 Comments/in Featured Articles/by Ganainm

Part 1 of “To Burn or Not to Burn”

Most of this information comes from MSM or from the wonderful world of the Spider’s online web. Perhaps none of it is true, and it is all a psyop….

It is very likely this article will be read by Irish Police (Gardaí Siochána), and it should be clearly stated that this writer does not condone, encourage, facilitate or do any act, word, thought, emotion or prayer which in any way could be construed as inciting either hatred or violence. The deliberate intention is to encourage people to laugh and seek positive solutions.

Big, dramatic fire in the midlands town of Longford. Residents had to run for their lives. Very little media coverage. The Garda Press Office gave no reply when asked if the burnt out residents were ethnic Irish or non-Irish. This tends to suggest they were non-Irish. This is the first EVER anti-foreigner fire directed at a building with people actually living there. Luckily nobody was killed or injured, buíochas mór le Dia. Isn’t it just as well the foreigners are good at running? It is very significant that there was zero comment from the politicians about this, although it would have made an excellent “think of the children” moment for them. Was it Noam Chomsky who said something about the threat of a good example? The non-lethal Longford fire of 2024 will be written about in future history books.

The MSM tells us everyday that the Israelis have burned or bombed ten, or twenty or two hundred refugees or international aid workers. The “On The Ditch” website recently stated that several planes packed with ammunition for Israel flew over Ireland. Two top politicians — the suspiciously named Simon “the Nose” Harris and the equally dubious Michael “the Nose” Martin — claim to know nothing about it. The burning question asks itself, in the most pro-Palestinian country in Europe: If Shlomo can get the Yanks to donate incendiary devices to burn two hundred refugees alive and get standing ovations in the US Congress, maybe Paddy can do it too? If we play our cards right, we could probably get the US taxpayer to pay for it…

There is a lot of resentment in the Irish Defence Forces of Israeli involvement in killing Irish peacekeeping soldiers in Lebannon. The Garda Síochána have earned a place in Jewish history books by being the first police force ever to arrest and charge a Rabbi (Father of ten Londoner  John Abraham) for the crime of foreskin chopping while not being a doctor.

The Camfil fire in a Dublin industrial estate is more puzzling. Another spectacular fire, seen by hundreds of thousands of people. The web rumour mill says there are a lot of data centres in that estate. Another theory is that it was an Amazon fulfillment centre. The website of the company (camfil.com) claims they are innocent makers of air filters and extraction systems.

It’s possible they were planning to flip the building for refugee use. With any fire in an insured building, one must be aware of the possibility of insurance fraud. Perhaps the owners set it on fire themselves, and that will allow them to refit it for refugees, and claim compensation for the fire? Silverstein would be proud of them! A so-called socialist party in Dublin had a debate at a conference last year asking: Is it OK to burn dáta centres? Was it the lefties?

A decent sized fire at the — empty — former Augustinian priory in Ballyboden, Dublin. Rumour has it this was a potential refugee site.

Next to the River Liffey, in the centre of Dublin at Merchant’s Quay, a more direct approach was taken. A large group of foreigners had been squatting the property. A group of unmasked men, some with noticeable beer bellies, went and threw them out, with a little bit of roughing up. MSM reported very briefly on it, saying that a couple of men had to go to hospital, but did not mention any refugee angle. Apparently, the owner of the property hired a few lads to throw the darkies out. It’s technically not an anti-refugee thing, just a financial disagreement. Most remarkable that the beer bellied men did not mask their faces. They must be very sure of their  ground, and why wouldn’t they be?

It seems that Gardaí took a loooong time to get there, even though Garda HQ is five minutes away. Gardaí who want to turn a blind eye to evictions of foreigners have an excellent and true excuse: “We are very understaffed, and the crimes you report are unlikely to lead to any serious injury. We will get to you after we have dealt with more serious matters.”

Rope Games in Cork city centre. An Indian student chap is walking down the street in broad daylight when an ethnic Irish man sneaks up behind him and starts hitting him with a rope. The Indian moves away and takes a photo of the Irishman. He issued a statement claiming that he felt upset and scared. Bad idea! This will only encourage future copycat Rope Man attacks. There was no mention of a noose or a knot on the rope, so there’s no suggestion of hanging or anything.

This is possibly a false flag psyop of some kind, but if not, Rope Man no doubt has a perfectly reasonable explanation, in the highly unlikely event that the Gardaí bother to find him and ask him:
“Oh, I was just having laugh. Messing. Slagging. No harm done. Traditional expression of Irish culture, protected by the Constitution, EU law and the Good Friday Agreement.”

The fact that Rope Man was unmasked tends to show that this was just jolly japes. No harm done, and none intended. Traditional Irish proverb: “If you can’t take a joke, why don’t you go back to where you came from?” An Irish judge has determined that this specific phrase, while it is very rude, does not meet the threshold for criminal speech, in a case brought by a ethnic Nigerian against an ethnic Dublin bus driver.
In Northern Ireland, not one but two Protestant churches have been burnt. Traditionally this would suggest a Catholic/Republican attack (or a devious Brit/Mossad false flag operation). The first burning was a central location and it was reported that fifty percent of the congregation were foreign. An angle grinder was used to remove a steel grid to allow better access for burning. As the radio newsreader smirked, not much damage was done. It was possibly unwise for the MSM to taunt the burners on the lack of burn. The next church burnt, in a more prosperous looking area, was badly burnt. Nobody was hurt or injured, buíochas mór le Dia.

Some Catholic sites (LifeSiteNews and Catholic Arena) have noted a trend of burning churches in France, North America and elsewhere, supposedly for ideological reasons: Islam, feminism, abused boys or just plain old satanism. It’s possible that these Belfast church burnings are not related to the migration thing, but just part of a general Judaeo-Satanic church burning programme, cleverly using the migration issue to slip in a few discrete fires. Insurance fraud is an ever present possibility, and what better time to burn your own church than when there is a wave of attacks on migrant accommodation?
Over 3,000 people (including eight Black British soldiers) were killed in a variety of locations and with various methods in the NI conflict. Possibly thousands of buildings were destroyed or damaged. No-one was ever killed inside a church and no church — of either side — was ever destroyed. Some people were killed on their way to or from church, because of the practical advantages such an kill zone can offer. But destroying a church? Not once. It wouldn’t be Christian…

The burning of two Christian churches is a historic occasion. It probably hasn’t happened anywhere in Ireland since the Royal Navy bombed Dublin in 1916.

There have been almost no claims of responsibility for anti-migrant attacks. This is in contrast to the time of the Troubles. Mostly, even after appalling, senseless attacks, one side or the other would claim responsibility, possibly with some apology for civilian lives lost. The Merchant’s Quay eviction of foreigners is the only case of people claiming credit: there’s a slightly beer bellied gentleman online vaguely hinting about it.

(One of the very few incidents in the Troubles where there was NO claim of responsibility was in the killing of a NI policeman named Harris. The media said the IRA did it, but the IRA never claimed responsibility. That man’s son was also a Special Branch NI policeman, and is the current, and deeply unpopular, head of the Gardaí. Pure cohencidence folks, move along now, nothing to see here. But for further details you could check out Mícheál’s research at freepress.ie. Caveat Lector! As rabbit holes go, it’s pretty rabbity. You will need a strong stomach and nerves of steel. There is reference to the unusual death by fire on a boat on the Shannon of a very brave, honest, ethnic Irish lady cop. RIP.  Deep State. Say no more. And whatever you say, say nothing.)

In Ballina, Co. Mayo, they have a very diverse set of tactics. Diversity is our strength, don’t you know? The hotel is hosting both refugees and regular tourists, and seem surprised that they are being attacked. Here’s what they say:

“These incidents include the breaking of windows with rocks and pellet guns. damage to water and gas mains pipes, blocking of entrances, stopping tourists to ask for identification, rocks being thrown at staff members, verbal abuse of staff, the threatening of both staff and suppliers, abuse of animals and an attempted arson attack.

“The protest camp also attracted a considerable amount of anti-social behavior including the aiming and firing of fireworks and lasers on tourist accommodation rooms, late night roadside drinking, burning of tyres, loud music and litter.

“On Saturday the protesters reinstated a campsite and a fire on the public roadside.

“It is the view of the hotel that it can not be allowed to continue due to the non-peaceful nature of incidents attracted by the previous camp.

“While we respect the rights of protesters, we also would like to highlight the rights of our staff to attend work without harassment and make a living for themselves and their families.

“We ask that the ability of tourist guests, club members and international protection families to use the hotel and leisure club facilities are not blocked and is respected.

“If you have a booking to stay with us here in Ballina and feel apprehensive about staying due to the protest camp, we offer free cancellation and apologies for any inconvenience in finding new accommodation.

“Management of Twin Trees Hotel and Leisure Club.”

The careful reader will notice that there is absolutely no mention of the cops in this statement. Why not?

If you have cheap phone calls to Ireland, you can see the potential here for a bit of armchair activism. Call them up and make enquiries about booking a room. Tell them you’ve heard rumours about the refugees, and quiz them on the details. Obviously, don’t incite hatred or violence, as that would be a criminal offence here. But you can certainly ask if any of the refugees are convicted criminals, or if they come from ethnic groups with a tendency to violence or if they smell bad.

It’s quite possible that the hotel employee will be ethnic Irish or European, and in that case, you can certainly have a bit of good natured banter with them. Christians from Kerala and the Filipines will also enjoy anti-refugee banter.

This could work by email as well, but direct voice impact works better.

There seems to be a strong Jewish involvement in the refugee thing, which is surprising. As is well known, there are very few Jews in Ireland.  Alan Shatter is the notorious evil mastermind of migration, and he was boasting the other day that he has just come back from seven weeks in the US. What was he up to?

Jewish school teacher, Mr Simon Lewis (pro-refugee, pro-trans, anti-Christian, etc.) claims that what starts as civilised online discussions about education policy often ends with the Christian Irish person asking him: ”Why don’t you fuck off back to Israel and kill some Palestinian babies?”

Good old Harry Crosbie, well known Dublin businessman and highly respected member of the Jewish community, was complaining on Joe Duffy’s RTÉ radio show. Apparently, there have been repeated attacks on his wife’s cafe in the Canal Docks area, and it has even had to close on occasion.

Several alleged eyewitnesses confirm his account. One talks of four balaclaved youths aiming and firing illegal fireworks directly at a crowd outside the cafe. Extremely dangerous, and equivalent to attempted murder. If they shouted slogans in support of the Palestinians, perhaps their actions would be covered by the Geneva Conventions on warfare? Harry supports the Israelis, so his wife’s cafe could, potentially, be seen as a legitimate military target. Or perhaps it was just an accident caused by the fog of war, like the Jewish-American protesting the Netanyahu government killed by the IDF?

Another eyewitness describes youths with wetsuits swimming in the canal, climbing out, climbing onto Crosbie’s roof, damaging guttering and chimneys. The youths were reportedly very abusive, but everyone was very careful not to mention what they said.

There seem to be two types of incident: simple damage to property and intimidation versus serious attempts to kill and injure people. Perhaps the perpetrators are different?

Two possible explanations (not justifications):

1.These kids grew up with almost non-stop violence on TV, and that’s not even counting what’s online. Monkey see, monkey do.

2. The lads have been radicalised by reading all this crazy conspiracy stuff on The Occidental Observer and Unz.com.

Meanwhile, at Thornton Hall, north County Dublin, on some of the finest agricultural land in the country, they are preparing refugee accommodation for 10,000 people. A fifty-year-old woman was arrested for threatening behaviour and obstruction. When big strong policemen are arresting little old grannies, because the men are scared, it is a sign that the system is about to collapse under the weight of public mockery.

To conclude, would you like to hear the story of the very first burning of an (empty) refugee property in Ireland?

Fadó, fadó, fadó(a long time ago), in the days before Covid 21, in the lovely village of Roosky on the banks of the mighty Shannon, there was a little hotel that wanted to be a refugee centre. But the hotel’s neighbours did not want it to transform into a refugee centre.

A fire happened in the little hotel. It was a very very, very tiny little fire. It was one of the tiniest little fires that were ever lit in the whole history of man and fire. The dark-skinned foreign gentleman who was working security did not ring the fire brigade or the cops when he noticed the fire. The first thing he did was ring his boss, some kind of greedy half-English atheist businessman. Only after ringing his boss did he ring the fire brigade. The MSM bigged it up as a shocking racism thing. Roosky residents suspect it was simple insurance fraud.

And that’s the end of the story of the little Hotel who wanted to become a big refugee centre.

Nothing in this article should be taken as an endorsement, encouragement, facilitation or admission of any illegal acts, words, thoughts, feelings or prayers. Just having a laugh, officer…
Beir Bua!

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png 0 0 Ganainm https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png Ganainm2024-09-12 09:37:352024-09-12 09:40:06To Burn or not to Burn, Part 2

The Debate about the Debate

September 12, 2024/5 Comments/in General/by Ann Coulter
THE DEBATE ABOUT THE DEBATE

        Debate winner: CNN’s Candy Crowley. In 2012, she — the moderator — interjected herself into a Romney-Obama debate to fact-check Mitt Romney with a lie. But unlike ABC’s crack moderators on Tuesday night, at least she only did it once.

            I’m exhausted from fact-checking ABC’s fact-checkers, so I’m just going to tell you about a brilliant experiment that pretty clearly established who won the Trump-Clinton debates in 2016.

The media say Trump whiffed Tuesday night, but that’s what we were told in 2016, too. It also could be that Kamala Harris came across as a smirker — MSNBC’s signature move — just like Hillary Clinton did. You’ve probably forgotten this — if you ever knew it — but notwithstanding Clinton’s allegedly devastating debate performances with Trump, she bombed. There’s scientific proof.

Feminists were ecstatic when Trump called Clinton “a nasty woman” at one of the debates, rushing out with “nasty woman” T-shirts, pins, backpacks and other merchandise. With the feminists’ usual finger on the pulse of the nation, it never occurred to them that maybe she was nasty.

Trump was responding to Clinton’s snotty aside — while describing her Social Security plans, of all things:

Clinton: “My Social Security payroll contribution will go up, as will Donald’s — assuming he can’t figure out how to get out of it — but what we want to do is —”

Trump: “Such a nasty woman.”

In order to test the feminist theory that Clinton, as a woman, was judged much more harshly than Trump, a couple of professors at New York University and INSEAD designed the perfect experiment. Two months after the election, they re-created the 2016 debates, but with a man playing Clinton and a woman playing Trump.

Professional actors were hired to reenact segments from each of the three debates, using the candidates’ exact words, gestures, intonation and stances. During rehearsals, they even had a screen with the actual debate running behind them to ensure a precise replica of the candidates’ performances, with only the genders inverted. (For you confused Gen Z’ers, back then there were only two genders.)

The professors and their (sold-out) audiences were stunned by the result. As NYU professor Joe Salvatore put it, instead of confirming their “liberal assumption” that “no one would have accepted Trump’s behavior from a woman, and that the male Clinton would seem like the much stronger candidate,” audience members found themselves hating the male Clinton and being impressed by the female Trump.

This is how Salvatore described the reactions:

“We heard a lot of ‘now I understand how this happened’ — meaning how Trump won the election. People got upset. There was a guy two rows in front of me who was literally holding his head in his hands, and the person with him was rubbing his back. The simplicity of Trump’s message became easier for people to hear when it was coming from a woman — that was a theme. One person said, ‘I’m just so struck by how precise Trump’s technique is.’ Another — a musical theater composer, actually — said that Trump created ‘hummable lyrics,’ while Clinton talked a lot, and everything she said was true and factual, but there was no ‘hook’ to it.” (Sadly, the Trump bump among the musical theater crowd was short-lived.)

One audience member said she found the [male] Clinton “really punchable.”

I suspect the Trump-Harris debate will elicit similar reactions. Trump is Trump, a known quantity. His scattershot delivery isn’t going to shock anyone. If you already detest the man, your view was confirmed. But if you don’t hate him, Trump put a lot of points on the board, while Harris said nothing, and said it smugly.

The debate sure didn’t give undecided voters what they wanted from Harris. As has been widely reported, they are waiting breathlessly for some hint of what she believes and what she would do as president. After the ABC debate, they’re still waiting. About all they learned is that Harris comes from a middle-class family. (That regular guy routine worked great for John Kasich!)

But they know that life was better under Trump. And they know that Harris, like Clinton, is a nasty woman.

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png 0 0 Ann Coulter https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png Ann Coulter2024-09-12 06:46:132024-09-12 06:46:13The Debate about the Debate

Horus: Chaos of the Ether

September 11, 2024/2 Comments/in Featured Articles/by Horus

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Chaos of the Ether

Or “The Second Marconi Scandal”: On the origins of the BBC

In the last article I discussed the role of the press and broadcast media in undermining peace in the years preceding the British declaration of war against Hitler’s Germany. My research led me to examine the origins of the British Broadcasting Corporation, which I found to be closely related to the forming of the Radio Corporation of America (owner of the National Broadcasting Company) and the Columbia Broadcasting System,  long-dominant  and first two broadcasting corporations in the USA. The role of the small Jewish minorities in the USA and Britain in the forming of each of these corporations, and in ownership and management of major media organisations ever since, has been of historic importance. By the late 1930s, the BBC, NBC and CBS were all actively assisting the forces aiming at war with Germany. In the cases of both Britain and America, the first two decades of what came to be called public broadcasting set the trend for the relationship between the media, the public, and the state that exists now.

Marconi and Isaacs

The BBC was intentionally founded as a broadcasting monopoly reliant on technology patented by Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company. The BBC’s founders followed the example of Guglielmo Marconi himself. According to James Crowther, Marconi “aimed from the first at a monopoly of wireless”, following “his first patent, the first in wireless, with every possible patent of each conceivable improvement”, trying to “establish an impregnable defensive position” around his innovations.1 His family wealth and connections “helped him to secure financial support for founding the first wireless company in 1897”.2 An American subsidiary followed. The Marconi Company produced a series of innovations but was of limited financial success under Marconi’s management.3 Looking to delegate so as to focus on research, in 1909 Marconi was recommended “a very young but fairly experienced businessman”, Godfrey Isaacs, by whom he was impressed, “chiefly because of [Isaacs’] City connections, and his influence with finance houses in London and Europe.” After a trial period, Isaacs became Marconi’s managing director.4 In March the following year, his brother Rufus, Liberal MP for Reading, became Solicitor-General in the government of Herbert Asquith, and in October the same year became Attorney-General and the second professing Jew in a British cabinet.5

Marconi and Godfrey Isaacs

Godfrey Isaacs “set out first to consolidate the Company’s hold on the key wireless patents. Then he sought to increase turnover by offering new technical services, by using aggressive salesmanship to capture business from rivals in established markets, and by building up the financial interest of the parent company in associate companies abroad.”6 Guglielmo Marconi had lobbied the British government to adopt his ‘imperial wireless chain’ project, which would create a vast state monopoly with his firm as the sole supplier. Largely due to the persistence of the new managing director and his “vague threats about the possibility of selling the Marconi system to Germany if the British government was not interested”, the government took the proposal with increasing seriousness, eventually contracting Marconi as the construction supplier—less than the full monopoly sought but a lucrative and prestigious contract.7 In March 1912, “having virtually concluded the dealings with the English government”, Isaacs and Marconi travelled to New York, “ostensibly for a legal action against the American Marconi Company’s chief rival, the United Wireless Company of America, over a question of patent infringements.” United Wireless was in a perilous state due to corruption and mismanagement and the Marconi action aimed to “eliminate their rival” before new owners could revive it and “obtain the assets” of the company; in order to benefit by making use of the newly-acquired assets, Marconi needed to increase its working capital by issuing new shares. “The directors of American Marconi insisted that, before they would agree to the increase in capital, the English company should guarantee the ‘whole amount to be subscribed’.”8

The assets were acquired successfully. The parent company’s aggressive attempts to enact the guarantee, and the coincidence of the RMS Titanic disaster in April, which caused a surge of demand for Marconi’s ship-to-shore communication devices, led to the infamous Marconi Scandal of that year; Godfrey and Rufus Isaacs, with their brother Harry, along with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, and a senior government whip, Alexander Murray, were accused of insider trading, though were not found by Parliament to have done wrong.9,10 The Postmaster-General, Herbert Samuel (born Eliezer ben Pinchas Shmuel), the first professing Jew in a British cabinet, was accused of favourable treatment of Marconi’s imperial wireless project.11

Herbert Samuel

David Sarnoff and RCA

The career of David Sarnoff, a Jewish immigrant to the US from a village near Minsk, began at the American Marconi Company. Sarnoff appears to have excelled as a wireless operator when wireless technology was primarily used for shipping communication. Guglielmo Marconi had expected his own innovations to result in ‘wireless telephony’ between two individual parties. According to Ronald Coase, in about November 1916 Sarnoff wrote to Isaacs envisaging “the possibility of a broadcasting service”, wherein sound would be transmitted openly to all those with the ability to receive and listen to it.12 Sarnoff, at the age of 25, had in the US already become a “spokesman for the industry, in his capacity as secretary of the Institute of Radio Engineers.”13 When the USA declared war on Germany in April 1917, the government “took control of all high-powered radiotelegraphy stations, including those of the Marconi Company.”14 By the end of 1919, the government, especially the Department of the Navy and the protectionist element in Congress, compelled American Marconi to yield its assets to the new Radio Corporation of America, which, according to Eugene Lyons, was “the old American Marconi Company in a revised corporate form, with major ownership and dominant control vested in General Electric.” RCA’s articles of incorporation obviated foreign control.15 Owen Young, the first chairman of RCA, was a senior executive at General Electric, which was firmly aligned with the business and political interests centred upon J P Morgan.16

David Sarnoff began at RCA as the commercial manager, but with great influence over the whole company. As Eugene Lyons describes,

At the time RCA was born, research engineers … were concentrating on a transmitter for radiotelephony. Point-to-point communication still seemed the essence of the challenge. Almost at once Sarnoff began to press them to switch priorities, to concentrate their energies on apparatus for household reception and transmission geared to the same purpose.17

Sarnoff’s intention of bringing about a broadcasting service required the ‘pooling’ of patents held by RCA with those of other, potentially rival, firms. As Lyons says,

Young’s business acumen solved the problem by drawing Westinghouse into the GE-RCA pool. Through an agreement that became effective in mid-1921, the Westinghouse storehouse of radio patents and licenses became accessible to GE and RCA. In return, Westinghouse won a 40 percent share in all manufacturing for RCA, with GE retaining 60 percent for itself.

United Fruit also owned some important wireless patents and joined the ‘Radio Group’ patent pool.18

David Sarnoff

Sarnoff’s long-term strategy consisted of gathering and leveraging patents and excluding most, or if possible, all rivals from being able to compete; thus, though RCA separated from Marconi, both companies were led by men driving at very similar cartelist or monopolist strategies relying on Marconi’s patent power.19 Historians, especially Lyons, portray Sarnoff as a public-spirited visionary, but even the most laudatory accounts clearly show that he resembled a baron ruling a fief, and was as willing to deprive the public of the benefits of innovation as he was to deliver them.20

Chaos of the ether

The American government and its favoured business partners had effectively nationalised wireless technology to an extent sufficient for the needs of the navy. The private, small-scale use of the same technology was of doubtful legality but had occurred sporadically in both the US and UK after it became possible. The US Secretary of Commerce from March, 1921, Herbert Hoover, a ‘co-operationist’ (between the government and the largest businesses), issued a hopeful decree: “There were … an estimated 14,000 amateur radio operators and in January 1922 the Department of Commerce ordered them to stop sending signals[.]”.21 He had already attempted unsuccessfully to deprive small companies of radio licences, but for his purposes the Radio Act of 1912 had been found wanting. Thus “Hoover called his first radio conference in Washington DC from 27 February to 2 March 1922 to ask for industry advice on regulation.”22 David Sarnoff had by then already been a leading ‘industry adviser’ for the best part of a decade and was an advocate for the interests of RCA, which were then largely in manufacturing and selling wireless equipment.

In Britain, according to Asa Briggs, “[d]uring the first years of broadcasting experience it was not distaste for American advertising which influenced the first British critics of American broadcasting, but alarm at the ‘chaos of the ether’ in the United States.”23 That alarm was carried across the Atlantic by F. J. Brown, the British Post Office’s Assistant Secretary, who attended the conference in February 1922 and transcribed a speech by Hoover. Hoover argued for broadcasting to be distinctly more restricted and centralised than the press and raised the threat of “material of public interest” being “drowned in advertising chatter”, though he “did not say that it was already happening. … The conference recommended an outright ban on ‘direct’ advertising citing a shortage of wavelengths; a decision Brown would highlight upon his return to London.”24

As Ian McIntyre says, in Britain “the Wireless Telegraphy Act of 1904 vested the power to license all transmitters and receivers in the Post Office”; the Post Office was not yet licencing any transmission other than occasional experiments.25 The BBC-approved historian Briggs treats Brown’s portrayal as accurate:

The multiplicity of radio stations and the scarcity of wavelengths led to interference and overlapping, ‘a jumble of signals’ and a ‘blasting and blanketing of rival programmes’. Even in America itself, despite its tradition of free enterprise, there was pressure for government ‘policing of the ether’. The government’s powers… were quite inadequate to control the new medium. A few Americans were even tempted to look with approval on the British Post Office.26

Yet, according to David Prosser, who attends more closely to the details,

‘so-called interference by amateur radio operators was exaggerated’. The real problem was that early radio transmitters could not adhere to a wavelength with any degree of accuracy and receivers similarly tended to drift.27

Interference among stations appears to have been imaginary at the time Brown reported back. “Reports of actual interference between stations would not appear until October (by which time negotiations to establish the BBC were concluded), and then only on one occasion in New York.”28 Brown himself reported hearing radio in America without interference. “That Brown was ‘certain’ stations interfered with one another, yet what he heard was ‘quite clear’, remains a puzzle. Pressed on this question in later evidence to a parliamentary committee, Brown admitted ‘chaos’ may have been an exaggeration but ‘experts’ had assured him ‘there was a good deal’.”29

The ‘chaos of the ether’ was less an empirical statement than an implicitly normative one based on growing opposition among businessmen and politicians to competition; the “tradition of free enterprise” mentioned by Briggs had already been partially supplanted by ‘progressive’, cartelist ‘co-operation’ from Morgan, Rockefeller, Kuhn, Loeb and other major business interests and politicians since at least the turn of the century.30 To allow a market in broadcasting would go against their wishes. Additionally, from the start, the manufacturers of wireless equipment were important military contractors. The broadcasting operations established on either side of the Atlantic became seen as strategic assets by the state, as became especially evident in the Second World War.

Difficulty of selection

According to Prosser, when Brown returned to London, he found that “the Postmaster General faced mounting pressure from manufacturers and amateur enthusiasts to allow regular broadcasting. … By April, twenty-four firms had applied for transmitting licences.” Brown anonymously briefed The Times, saying that “wireless has become a ‘perfect craze’ with ‘a great deal of mutual interference between stations …  [that] the [U.S.] Government has had to appoint a committee with a view to imposing restrictions’.”31

Brown’s selective reporting helped make the case for a highly restrictive application of the broadcasting laws in Britain, the likes of which Hoover wanted for the USA but was at that time unable to secure. Briggs attributes to Brown’s advice an answer by his superior, the Postmaster-General, Frederick Kellaway, in Parliament in April 1922. Kellaway asserted that “a large number of firms broadcasting … would result only in a sort of chaos” which would compel him “to lay down very drastic regulations indeed for the control of wireless broadcasting”, which, nevertheless, Kellaway said was “what we are now doing at the beginning”.32 The deception succeeded. “Within three weeks, the Wireless Sub-committee agreed that broadcasting should be allowed between the wavelengths 350-425 metres from 5 PM – 11 PM weekdays and all day on Sundays and the decision was made that advertising should be prohibited.”33 “[N]ews not previously published in the Press” would “be banned”.34 Most aspiring broadcasters were ruled out. “In early May, Kellaway announced that a ‘limited number of radio telephone broadcasting stations’ were to be permitted, but this time added that only ‘bona fide manufacturers of wireless apparatus’ were invited to… ‘cooperate’”, a euphemism for forming a cartel. Kellaway stated that, faced with “the difficulty of selection” among applicants, limiting the number of providers was necessary.35 Thus, in the first place, “the problem to which a monopoly was seen as a solution by the Post Office was one of Civil Service administration. The view that a monopoly in broadcasting was better for the listener was to come later.”36

Frederick Kellaway

Kellaway stated that he wanted “no danger of monopoly”; Prosser says this was an allusion to “Marconi’s market dominance.”37 A statement from Godfrey Isaacs in April had implied that he expected or intended that Marconi would be granted sole control of broadcasting, probably because of its patents.38 This did not eventuate, but at any rate, as Ronald Coase says, “the manufacturers’ main interest was not in the operation of a broadcasting service but in the sale of receiving sets.”39 The scheme soon to be agreed on and approved by the Post Office would oblige the public to buy from an approved list of suppliers. As McIntyre says, “[t]he origins of British broadcasting … were almost purely commercial” in that the manufacturers’ profits were a priority.40

Formation of the company

The Marconi company was ideally positioned to be the prime beneficiary of the Post Office’s scheme. Isaacs, more than anyone else, also determined what the scheme would be at a meeting of the ‘Big Six’ manufacturers in May 1922. A written account of the meeting was only discovered or revealed in 2018 and, according to Prosser, “[a]lthough the meeting was chaired by Sir Evelyn Murray, the Secretary of the Post Office, it is Godfrey Isaacs, the managing director of Marconi, who emerges from the pages of this transcript as the dominant force in the room.”41

Godfrey Isaacs

Contrary to myths prevailing before the transcript was discovered, the Post Office “was prepared to issue multiple licences”, or at least to allow discussion along such lines, and “Metropolitan Vickers, the Manchester-based company formed out of British Westinghouse and still associated with its American former owner, resisted the idea of a single provider and called for competition”.42 ‘Met-Vick’, “along with the Radio Communication Company … and the Western Electric Company … constituted the nucleus of a possible ‘second group’.” The ‘first group’ comprised Marconi, the General Electric Company plc (unrelated to the US firm of similar name), and British Thomson-Houston. As Briggs says,

There were definite business links between the Marconi Company, GEC, and BTH. The Marconi Company and GEC jointly owned a valve-manufacturing company, while BTH, linked with the American General Electric Company, had a common interest with the Marconi Company through the Radio Corporation of America and a patent-sharing agreement.43

The Marconi group had the trump card. “Isaacs made clear that he didn’t believe a ‘transmitting station can be erected to work efficiently’ without using Marconi patented technology, which he would only make available to a single scheme.”44 The strongest concurrence to Isaacs’ view came from Hugo Hirst (born Hugo Hirsch), chairman of GEC, which he had co-founded with his fellow Jewish immigrant from Germany, Gustav Binswanger.45 After strenuously protesting, Metropolitan Vickers, the last resisters, “[fell] into line behind a single scheme” in June.46

Isaacs also successfully demanded a licence fee scheme that would guarantee revenue for the manufacturers. Thus “[w]hat emerged was a single broadcaster operating at arms-length from the Post Office providing a ‘public service’ with national content shared between regional stations, funded by a licence fee with advertising prohibited.”47 Historian of the Marconi company Tim Wander credits Isaacs with “deftly negotiat[ing] a coming together of the disparate wireless-producing companies … in order to create the new British Broadcasting Company” and lauds him as “[t]he man who made the BBC”.48

John Reith

Isaacs’ importance in the founding of the BBC only began to be publicised after the meeting transcripts emerged in 2018. Until then, historians appear to have universally attributed its creation and its ethos to the Post Office and then to John Reith, the company’s first general manager.49 Reith’s appointment was, in fact, a further manifestation of the power of the patent-rich ‘first group’ at the May meeting: Marconi led by Isaacs, GEC led by Hirsch and British Thomson-Houston acting for the American Morgan-controlled General Electric, part-owner and partner of David Sarnoff’s RCA. Contrary to myth (and the BBC’s own website), it was Sarnoff, not Reith, who first declared that the mission of public broadcasters was to “inform, educate and entertain”.

Reith, responding to an advertisement, applied to become general manager of the new Company (the British Broadcasting Corporation came later) in October 1922, with the Company due to begin operating at the start of 1923. Though he appears to have had little involvement in politics before this time, he had spent some of the previous months as an aide-de-camp to William Bull MP, a Tory supporter of Austen Chamberlain (brother of Neville and son of Joseph), who was, at that time, working for a continuation of the existing coalition government under David Lloyd George, Liberal Prime Minister since 1916. Between applying for the BBC job and being interviewed, Reith was introduced privately to Lloyd George.50 The coalition lost power in the election of November.

Reith appears to have been chosen for the job before his interview in December. According to Asa Briggs,

… unfortunately there are no surviving records in the BBC archives or elsewhere of what was happening behind the scenes. There is not even a surviving short list of the six people seriously considered for what was to be a strategic post in British twentieth-century history.

Kellaway was said to have been considered but “moved instead after the Coalition Government’s defeat to the more lucrative post of Managing Director of the Marconi Company.”51 When Isaacs died in 1925, Kellaway replaced him as Marconi’s member of the BBC board.

Reith was interviewed by his former employer, William Bull MP, who was a director of the British branch of Siemens, and William Noble, a director at Hirsch’s GEC. According to Ian McIntyre,

Noble greeted him ‘with the cordiality of an old friend’. The previous night, Reith had ‘put all before God’, but that was the limit of his preparation:

‘They didn’t ask me many questions and some they did I didn’t know the meaning of. The fact is I hadn’t the remotest idea as to what broadcasting was. I hadn’t troubled to find out. If I had tried I should probably have found difficulty in discovering anyone who knew.’”52

John Reith

As Briggs says, Reith was “ignorant of broadcasting”.53 He continues:

The following day Noble, who at the end of the interview ‘almost winked as if to say it was all right’, telephoned Reith to tell him that the Board was unanimous in offering him the post. Reith had asked for a salary of £2,000, but Isaacs insisted on seeing Reith before he would agree even to a lower figure of £1,750. At this second interview, when the dominating figure in the talks leading up to the incorporation of the BBC met for the first time the man who was to be the dominating figure in the events which followed its foundation, all went off well and Reith was approved. In his formal letter of acceptance he noted that the General Manager would ‘have the full control of the company and its staff’, and would be ‘responsible to the Directors’.54

According to Tim Wu, “his selection was something of a mystery, even to him.”55 Reith attributed it to the divine:

He believed that he was called to the BBC not by Bull or Noble (who chaired the committee which interviewed him) but by Providence. ‘I am properly grateful to God for His goodness in this matter’, he wrote in his diary.56

With due respect to Providence, there are reasons to suspect that Reith’s appointment owed to more material factors, specifically the interests of GEC, BHT and Marconi and their directors.57 Reith certainly accorded closely with those interests. Better still for them, he added to the covetous demands of the Company’s directors for safe and protected revenues his own arguments for the BBC in ‘high’ terms of quality and public service. He and the board, with Isaacs and Noble foremost, also intoned the myths Brown had brought across the ocean and devised their own.58,59

Robbery

The BBC board made no secret of its desire to force higher prices on listeners. In the autumn of 1922, soon after the BBC was announced and before it began operating, firms began to import radio components and market them partly assembled with instructions for completion. They “could thereby avoid buying the more expensive British-made sets which bore the BBC mark” and “avoided the necessity of paying royalty to the BBC on the purchase price of the apparatus—they might even evade paying royalty to the Marconi Company”. Briggs’ particular mention of Marconi suggests that they received royalties that even the other big manufacturers did not. As “the market was flooded with foreign-made parts … the revenue of the BBC both from royalties and licences was far smaller than had been anticipated when the Big Six went into combination. The estimated 200,000 licence-holders were proving extremely difficult to recruit.”60 The BBC board issued a statement castigating “importers” who were “prepared to reap where others have sown,” and who would “rob the British radio industry of its protection and … jeopardize good standards of broadcasting.”61

The board simultaneously asserted that “[t]he initiative which had led to the formation of the BBC had come from the Post Office.” William Noble, speaking at the Sykes Committee in Parliament in 1923, asserted that “It was the desire of the Post Office that we should have one company and one company only… and we fell in with the view.”62 Nobody knew better than the authors of these statements that they inverted the truth.63 As we have seen, the Post Office was prepared to issue multiple licences while Marconi’s patent power enabled Isaacs to ensure that there would be only one.

William Noble

Sportsmanship

After Kellaway joined Marconi, less than two months after leaving his position as Postmaster-General, his successors were reluctant to enforce the BBC’s demands, contrary to Noble’s claim that the scheme was “the desire” of the Post Office. As the licence fee was the means by which listeners were compelled to buy equipment from the member companies of the BBC, the board lobbied for its enforcement. They complained in a meeting with Brown in January 1923 that no prosecutions were being made and that “police action was necessary”.64 Neville Chamberlain, the Postmaster-General until March, was “entirely unhelpful” and “scoffed” at the idea of enforcement when Reith and Noble lobbied him informally in February.65 Chamberlain’s successor, William Joynson-Hicks, was even less congenial at first. In Parliament, William Bull repeated Noble’s assertion that Isaacs and Hirsch’s scheme had been the Post Office’s idea. Joynson-Hicks appears to have known better, referring to the negotiations of the previous year, and attributed the agreement to Kellaway personally; Kellaway, writing in The Times, threw the potato to Chamberlain who threw it back, and Kellaway dissembled to evade attribution for a scheme he had carefully framed as Postmaster-General and of which he was, by then as a director of Marconi, a leading beneficiary.66,67

Hunting for pirates

Joynson-Hicks, struggling to adjudicate, had a committee appointed with Frederick Sykes, son-in-law of the Prime Minister, Andrew Bonar Law, in the chair. It began hearings in May, on which sat John Reith and to which the BBC board and Reith argued that “it was ‘one of the fundamental essentials of the Agreement’ that there should be no evasion” and that “the only satisfactory way of preventing evasion was to prosecute people who did not possess wireless licences”. Detection was often possible thanks to the “prominent outdoor aerials.” In Briggs’ words, “Although it might have been difficult to prosecute all offenders, the psychological and moral effect of prosecuting a few known offenders would have been very great.”68 By the time the committee reported, another new Postmaster-General, Laming Worthington-Evans, had been won over by Reith in private and the licence fee began to be enforced in earnest. “Post Office motor vans” were sent out “not to detect but to intimidate” the “scroungers”, “eavesdroppers” and “pirates” who showed a dearth of “sportsmanship” by using equipment lacking the required BBC marque.69 The public began to be habituated to obey the broadcasting monopoly and its directors.

Get one. Or get done.

Press and advertising ban 

While the Post Office granted royalty rights, protection and licence enforcement to selected radio manufacturers, it also helped secure the revenue of the major newspapers. The BBC was prohibited from broadcasting “any news or information in the nature of news ‘except such as they may obtain from one or more of the following news agencies, viz.: Reuters Ltd, Press Association Ltd, Central News Ltd, Exchange Telegraph Company Ltd, or from any other news agency approved by the Postmaster General.’”70 The intention was to ensure that the BBC could not make newspapers obsolete. The ban on advertising on the BBC worked to the same effect. The BBC’s monopoly on broadcasting obviated the threat of commercial radio stations competing with the newspapers for advertising space. No wonder, then, that the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association under Harry Levy-Lawson, the first Viscount Burnham and owner of the Daily Telegraph, who sat on the Sykes Committee, “thought that newspapers had nothing to fear from broadcasting” and supported a single broadcasting authority.71

The leading newspapers benefited from the existence of the BBC long after its formation. From 1929, commercial stations based in continental Europe began to gain the use of relay stations in Britain, a combination which “could break the BBC’s monopoly with the ordinary British listener.” As Briggs notes,

Two conceptions of broadcasting… — public service broadcasting by a public corporation — the other, commercial broadcasting … were in danger of clashing … . In the conflict of conceptions the BBC had the full support of the press, which sent deputations on its own account to the Post Office to protest against foreign commercial broadcasts. It also agreed through the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association and the Newspaper Society that newspapers would not make use of foreign stations for advertising or publicity purposes.72

Thus, the BBC’s monopoly, granted by Parliament, was a pretext for the prohibition of commercial broadcasting which would have competed with the press for advertisers, the press, or at least the largest and most organised section thereof, lobbied to maintain it even as the BBC gradually eroded the founding restrictions on its own news operations.73

Royalties

Reith’s advocacy for the BBC in its earliest and most commercial phase secured for the wireless cartel most of the profits available in broadcasting’s most rapid period of growth. These came from royalties on devices sold and a share of each licence fee paid. As McIntyre says, the BBC board “saw the royalty system as ‘the cardinal principle on which broadcasting was established’”, i.e., as “the bulwark that protected the manufacturers against competition from foreign sets and components.” In June 1923, fortunate to deal with the new, sympathetic Postmaster-General, Reith secured an extension of the royalties and a higher share of revenue from each licence fee paid. The agreement with the Post Office caused the number of licences issued to rise from 180,000 at the start of October 1923 to 414,000 just ten days later and more than 1.1 million by the end of 1924.74 In October 1923,

Godfrey Isaacs, by far the toughest of the members of the Board, made a special telephone call to Reith congratulating him and telling him that he could not find adequate words to express his admiration. Reith was surprised, for Isaacs was usually ‘so undemonstrative’.75

As we have seen, the “main interest of the manufacturers was not in broadcasting” but rather in selling receiver sets.76 Reith appears to have delivered receiver sales far beyond their expectations.

He also presented the BBC to Parliament and the public in a better light than they could have done themselves. Reith’s own interest, beside pleasing his directors, was increasingly in broadcasting as such, and he had, according to his own precepts, higher ambitions for it. According to Briggs, “In retrospect the company shell in which broadcasting was so successfully developed between 1922 and 1926 appears at best as temporary, something to be discarded when the organization grew and when the radio industry had ceased to have a compelling motive for continuing to sponsor broadcasting.”77 That motive diminished as the increase of receiver sales passed its steepest phase. Reith’s ambitions grew, and by his own description he acted more and more on a ‘high conception of the inherent possibilities of the service’.78

Beneficiaries

Until 2018, historians typically credited the founding of the BBC to that “high conception” and to Reith personally.79 The role of Godfrey Isaacs was only partially known and was generally condoned. In light of the transcript of the May 1922 meeting, it became clear that Isaacs, primarily supported by Hirsch and armed with essential patents, effectively presented the market and the state with a choice between a manufacturers’ cartel and a continuing prohibition on broadcasting, a field in which other countries were rapidly advancing. Directors of Marconi and GEC then falsely asserted that the advantageous scheme had been pressed upon them by the Post Office.

In fact the Post Office under Frederick Kellaway acted as though it had been bought. Kellaway professed openness to multiple broadcasters in 1922 but assisted in fulfilling Isaacs’ demands. Before the meetings of the Big Six, Kellaway refused requests for permission from any other prospective broadcasters. At the meetings, though alternatives were discussed freely, Marconi’s control of essential patents predictably ensured that Isaacs’ scheme prevailed. The best outcome for Marconi was one in which sales as a manufacturer were guaranteed; that is what Kellaway and Isaacs’ actions delivered as if by design. Within two months of leaving his post, Marconi rewarded Kellaway with a directorship; a month later he speciously attributed the creation of the cartel to his successor, Neville Chamberlain. How fortunate it was for Kellaway and his new employer that his then-assistant F. J. Brown brought back from America just the right misinformation to forestall the emergence of ‘chaos’, i.e., an open market. Though the manufacturer’s cartel lasted only five years, and in its most lucrative form only for two, those were the plum years.80 Marconi, GEC and the other founding companies appear to have had little complaint when the BBC became a ‘public corporation’ in 1927.81 GEC went on to become one of the biggest companies in Britain and, under its managing director Arnold Weinstock, acquired Metropolitan-Vickers and British Thomson-Houston in 1967 and Marconi in 1968.82

A diligent investigator of what could be called the second Marconi scandal would inspect afresh the affairs of one of the suspected would-be beneficiaries of the first, the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George. Kellaway’s proposals for prohibiting advertising and imposing a licence fee were initiated by Sir Henry Norman, Chairman of the Wireless Sub-Committee of the Imperial Communications Committee and an old ally of Lloyd George.83 John Reith’s first appointment at the BBC, his secretary, was Miss F. I. Shields who had been recommended to him by Frances Stevenson, the secretary, lover and later second wife of David Lloyd George.84 Recall that Reith met Lloyd George two months earlier between applying for the BBC job and his cursory interview.

The BBC’s relationship with the press through the 1920s was negotiated at a joint committee presided over by Lord Riddell, a long-standing friend and benefactor of Lloyd George; it was under Lloyd George’s premiership that Levy-Lawson had been made Viscount Burnham by the latter’s friend, King George V.85 Levy-Lawson’s father Edward, the first Baron Burnham, had been a rare member of King Edward VII’s ‘Jewish court’ who continued in royal favour after the ‘cosmopolitan king’s’ death. Baron Burnham’s father, Joseph Levy, owned the Daily Telegraph at the time of the 1881–82 riots in the Russian Empire; the paper echoed the alarmist reporting of the Jewish World and the Times, helping sway British public opinion in favour of accepting tens of thousands of Jewish ‘refugees’.

David Lloyd George and Arthur Balfour

Lloyd George had much in common with his ally of several decades Winston Churchill, including wanton spending and personal dependence on favours and gifts. Like Churchill, Lloyd George was a friend and comrade of wealthy and powerful Jews, including the Isaacs brothers, Herbert Samuel, Chaim Weizmann and others, and like Churchill could generally be relied upon to side with Jews, especially Zionists, in all matters. He secured British control over Palestine at the Versailles conference in 1919. And in the following year, he appointed Herbert Samuel as the first High Commissioner of the British administration there. Churchill became the Colonial Secretary in 1921, and in 1922 issued his famous white paper on Palestine calling for the greatest possible increase in the Jewish population. Churchill became more explicit in the 1930s about his intention to make Jews the majority. In 1923, Pinhas Rutenberg founded the Palestine Electric Corporation with Rufus Isaacs as a director; the Corporation was a joint venture between Rutenberg, the British state, the British element of the World Zionist Organisation, the aforementioned American General Electric and others. The senior Liberal peer Alfred Mond, the first Baron Melchett, later a founding member of the Focus along with Churchill and Lloyd George, was another director. The BBC broadcast “a tribute on 11 April 1931 by Sir Herbert Samuel and Chaim Weizmann, who spoke at a dinner in honour of Lloyd George in recognition of his services to the ‘Jewish people’”.86 Weizmann credited Lloyd George with co-initiating the Balfour Declaration.87

Isaacs, Hirsch, Kellaway and Reith got what they wanted; Britain was saddled with a state broadcaster which, ever since, has worked to indoctrinate and discipline the public. The BBC today avows an anti-White ideology and pacifies the public in favour of foreign rapists of British children. It avoids the need for revenue from external advertisers (though it advertises favoured books gratis). A century after the original agreement with the Post Office, the BBC is spared from having to satisfy customers, instead drawing upon the sordid racket referred to as the licence fee, which entails thousands of ordinary Britons being fined and imprisoned every year for their lack of “sportsmanship”. Still, its supporters can remind us of the corporation’s benevolence in sparing Britain from “the chaos of the ether.”


1

Six Great Inventors (3rd ed.), James Crowther, 1960, p138

2

The Marconi Scandal and Related Aspects of British Anti-Semitism, 1911-1914, Kenneth Lunn, 1978, p1

3

Lunn, p2

4

Lunn, p3

5

The ability of Jews to sit in Parliament owed to the lobbying of Lionel de Rothschild in the previous century. Lionel’s friend Benjamin Disraeli was of Jewish ancestry but professed Christianity.

6

Marconi, W P Jolly, 1972, p190

7

Lunn, p222

8

Lunn, p4-5

9

David Sarnoff, Eugene Lyons, 1966, p60. Also see Lunn, p4-5. Eugene Lyons, a biographer of Sarnoff, was also a Jewish immigrant from the same village and was Sarnoff’s junior by seven years.

10

“[GK] Chesterton… made much of the fact that Godfrey Isaacs had been at the head of or implicated in no less than twenty bankrupted companies, and someone with a sandwich board with words to this effect had wandered up and down the street outside Godfrey’s office.” https://counter-currents.com/2016/03/the-marconi-scandal/

11

We mention five different Postmaster-Generals in this essay; it was a vital position in relation to telecommunications.

12

Coase adds “doubtless the same idea had occurred to others.” The Origin of the Monopoly of Broadcasting in Great Britain, Ronald Coase, Economica (New Series), Volume 14, Number 55, August 1947, p190.

13

Lyons, p75

14

Lyons, p76

15

Lyons, p80-4

16

J P Morgan, son of the famous financier of the same name, had influenced the US in favour of joining the Great War on Britain’s side and profited enormously from the outcome. Morgan partners, and Morgan senior himself, had since the start of the century been leading advocates of ‘progressivism’, ‘preparedness’ for war and ‘elasticity’ in money.

17

Lyons, p97

18

Lyons, p94-5. “All manufacturing was to be done by GE, all marketing and communications services rested with RCA. By means of a cross-licensing arrangement, each organization had full access to wireless patents held by the other. Not a word was said, forthrightly, about broadcasting; even at the end of 1919 its business potential was underrated or ignored—except by the commercial manager.” Lyons, p84

19

Sarnoff became president of RCA in 1929.

20

To be discussed in a future article.

21

Marconi Proposes, David Prosser, Media History, Volume 25, Number 3, p5

22

Prosser, p3

23

The Birth of Broadcasting, Asa Briggs, 1961, p64

24

According to Hoover, “…the wireless has one definite field, and that is for the spread of certain pre-determined material of public interest from central stations. This material must be limited to news, to education, to entertainment, and the communication of such commercial matters as are of importance to large groups of the community at the same time. It is, therefore, primarily a question of broadcasting, and it becomes of primary public interest to say who is to do the broadcasting, under what circumstances, and with what type of material. It is inconceivable that we should allow so great a possibility for service, for news, for entertainment, for education, and for vital commercial purposes, to be drowned in advertising chatter, or to be used for commercial purposes that can be quite well served by our other means of communication.” Prosser, p4, 6. “Note also here the morphing of Hoover’s original phrase that it is ‘inconceivable’ that the ether should be used for ‘advertising chatter’ to there being already a ‘mass of “advertising chatter”’.” Prosser, p10

25

The Expense of Glory, Ian McIntyre, 1993, p120

26

Briggs, Birth, p64

27

Prosser, p5. Prosser is a BBC employee.

28

Prosser, p5. “The first issue of Radio Broadcast in May 1922 (published several weeks after Brown’s visit) counted ‘altogether, according to present available information … more than twenty stations which broadcast extensively’.” The magazine described the experience as one of “watching and waiting”, which “does not suggest the editor of Radio Broadcast felt the airwaves were overly congested by this time. In New York, where 15 stations operated on a single frequency, an agreement was reached in July 1922 for allocation of time. Reports of actual interference between stations would not appear until October (by which time negotations to establish the BBC were concluded), and then only on one occasion in New York.”

29

Prosser, p1-2. Brown “…failed to communicate another, and ultimately for American broadcasting, more significant development. Toll broadcasting, defined as ‘broadcasting where charge is made for the use of the transmitting station’…” Prosser, p6

30

See The Progressive Era, 2017, by Murray Rothbard which draws heavily on The Triumph of Conservatism, 1963, by Gabriel Kolko.

31

Prosser, p7-8

32

Briggs, Birth, p67-8

33

Prosser, p8

34

The BBC, Asa Briggs, 1985, p29

35

Coase, Origin, p208. See also Briggs, Birth, p159. The Daily Mail and Daily Express were among newspaper applicants for broadcasting permission. In the 1950s, selection must have ceased to be perceived as a difficulty, as the state selected various private consortia to broadcast alongside the BBC.

36

Coase, Origins, p210. My emphasis.

37

Prosser, p9 and McIntyre, p120

38

“A noteworthy omission in Mr. Isaacs’ statement is that he makes no reference to the repercussions which the Marconi Company plan would have on those of the other companies which desired to start broadcasting or to the problem of how the wavelengths would be allocated between the various companies.” British Broadcasting – A Study in Monopoly, Ronald Coase, 1950, p9

39

Coase, Study, p18-19

40

McIntyre, p120

41

Prosser, p11

42

Prosser p11, 13

43

Briggs, Birth, p108

44

Prosser, p11, 13, 16 and Briggs, Birth, p108

45

Prosser, p12. GEC was originally named after Binswanger.

46

Prosser, p13

47

Prosser, p16

48

Godfrey Isaacs and the BBC, Tim Wander, 2024. “We can identify the exact moment the BBC was conceived. It was not the Post Office that proposed the BBC, but Godfrey Isaacs of Marconi.” Prosser, p16

49

The BBC itself published a history omitting mention of Isaacs or Sarnoff.

50

McIntyre, p116

51

Briggs, Birth, p137. Kellaway’s move to Marconi was mentioned in Parliament.

52

McIntyre, p116

53

Briggs, BBC, p43

54

Briggs, BBC, p45

55

The Master Switch, Tim Wu, 2011, chapter 4

56

Briggs, BBC, p44

57

The other directors of the BBC are listed here.

58

William Noble was remarkably supportive of a scheme he claimed had been imposed on his firm by the Post Office.

59

“‘BBC programmes are often rendered farcical’, Noble complained [in January 1923], ‘by interference caused by amateurs tuning up and causing disturbance and by the transmission of messages.’” Briggs, Birth, p148. This appears to be a fabrication.

60

Briggs, Birth, p146-7

61

Briggs, Birth, p160-1

62

Briggs, Birth, p180-2

63

Briggs, Birth, p160-1

64

Police action “should be preceded by the publication of an official notice in the newspapers stating that the Postmaster General was aware that many unlicensed sets were being used and that their owners would immediately be prosecuted.” Briggs, Birth, p147

65

Briggs, Birth, p149

66

“Sir William Bull, who was the only director of the BBC who was also a member of parliament, reminded Joynson-Hicks that it had been the Post Office which had suggested this arrangement. The Postmaster-General equivocated, saying that it had been ‘the result of numerous negotiations between the Broadcasting Company and the then Postmaster-General.’” Briggs, Birth, p161-2

67

“Sir W. Joynson Hicks (who had become Postmaster General after Mr. Neville Chamberlain) said in the House of Commons that Mr. Kellaway had made the agreement. Mr. Kellaway thereupon wrote to The Times saying that the agreement was made by Mr. Chamberlain three months after he had left the Post Office. Mr. Chamberlain replied in a speech that “this was a transparent quibble. He had only put his name to it and not altered a word”. Mr. Kellaway then wrote another letter to The Times in which he claimed that “this involved the most startling evasion of responsibility”. See The Times for April 21st, 23rd, 24th and 26th, 1923.” Coase, Origins, p201, note 4

68

Briggs, Birth, p166

69

Briggs, Birth, p192, 220

70

Coase, Origins, p204. Reuters had been founded by Paul Reuter (born Israel Josaphat) and came under the control of Roderick Jones; Jones’ acquisition was financed by Mark Napier and Starr Jameson, the latter being chairman of the British South Africa Company, an imperial company chartered by the British state and closely associated with the De Beers company and Cecil Rhodes, Alfred Beit, Nathan Rothschild and Ernest Oppenheimer.

71

Briggs, BBC, p48-9 and Coase, Origins, p58

72

The Golden Age of Wireless, Asa Briggs, 1965, p359. My emphasis.

73

Reith was able to liberate the BBC from its newscasting restrictions in stages over the 1920s and 30s. Briggs, Golden Age, p159. The BBC also created its own press: Radio Times became one of the best-selling publications in the country (nearly 3 million weekly sales in 1938) and it, World Radio and The Listener became very profitable for the BBC. Briggs, Golden Age, p281

74

Briggs, Birth, p192

75

Briggs, Birth, p199-200 and McIntyre, p129-30

76

Coase, Origins, p200

77

Briggs, Birth, p401

78

Briggs, Birth, p180-2

79

Reflecting on his early days at the BBC, Reith wrote in 1949 that

“The trade had put me in office, [he wrote in his autobiography,] expected me to look out for them; there was a moral responsibility to them. But I had discerned something of the inestimable benefit which courageous and broad-visioned development of this new medium would yield. There lay one’s commission; and there need be no conflict of loyalties. Whatever was in the interests of broadcasting must eventually be in the interests of the wireless trade.” Briggs, Birth, p176

80

According to Briggs, broadcasting “was a curiously competitive industry, despite its continued pressure for protection.” Briggs, Birth, p196. It would be truer to say that broadcasting was curiously protected despite pressure for competition. The pressure for protection was from Marconi, GEC and their allies, precisely because the industry would otherwise have been competitive.

81

Marconi continued as a major supplier of microphones, recording equipment and other devices to the BBC throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Briggs, Golden Age, p97/100. Kellaway faithfully continued Marconi and Isaacs’ patent-centric approach: “[W]ith the demise of the Company some of the old issues of 1922 were re-emerging in the relations between the constituent companies which made up the BBC. At the meeting of 12 November Kellaway on behalf of the Marconi Company argued that the British Broadcasting Company was in no way obliged to transfer the use of its patent rights to the new Corporation. The question of patents remained troublesome and complicated long after the new Corporation was founded, although the Corporation itself escaped serious difficulties: it was fortunate that its sole concern was with broadcasting.” Briggs, Birth, p387. Unfortunately Briggs does not elaborate on the continuing patent question.

82

Metropolitan Vickers and British Thomson-Houston had merged in 1928.

83

Norman also sat on the Sykes Committee in 1923 along with Reith and Viscount Burnham. He wrote an article which “cleared the way for a small number of wireless manufacturers to be favoured over other potential applicants in the award of transmitter licences. He explicitly linked advertising, dismissed as ‘chatter’ about clothing, to interference in the United States. As for who would pay for broadcasting, ‘since the organization and cost – no trifling matter – will be with the commercial object of selling receiving apparatus, the answer is obvious’: the manufacturers.” Prosser, p10

84

McIntyre, p120. Frances Stevenson was the second wife of David Lloyd George both in the sense that he was in a relationship and had a separate home with her before his first wife died and that she became his wife in law after his first wife died.

85

Briggs, Golden Age, p154

86

“The BBC motto, Nation Shall Speak Peace Unto Nation, is… derived from an early Semitic language exhortation, from the Old Testament prophet, Isaiah, an Israelite [Isaiah 2:4].” Jews and the British Broadcasting Corporation (1922-1953), Michael Jolles, 2004.

87

Jewish Telegraphic Agency report, April 13th 1931.

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