THIS IS NOT ABOUT JOURNALISTS FROM THE 1930S, IT’S ABOUT JOURNALISTS FROM LAST MONTH: We need to talk about those journalists who praised Hitler: Both the BBC and CNN have reporters who seemed to sing the praises of the Führer. That’s messed up.
Over the weekend it was revealed that a BBC employee, Tala Halawa, tweeted in praise of Hitler in 2014, during the last major flare-up of tensions between Israel and Gaza. Ms Halawa is a digital journalist for the BBC. She specialises in Israeli-Palestinian affairs. Last week I watched a video report she made of the growing trend for celebs like Bella Hadid to noisily signal their support for Palestine. I thought it was quite interesting. Little did I know that the person who made it has previously said nice things about Hitler.
Has anyone asked Bella Hadid for comment? Plus:
CNN’s seeming fan of Hitler is one Adeel Raja. He is a freelance journalist in Pakistan. He isn’t employed by CNN but he has contributed to the channel in recent years. This month, as the Israel-Hamas conflict flared up once more, Raja tweeted: ‘The world today needs another Hitler.’ Yes, that’s right – the American news giant that has spent the past five years telling us that everything is fascism, constantly insisting that Trumpism and Brexit and other populist revolts have ugly echoes of the 1930s, had a contributor who wants Hitler to return to teach those filthy Jews a lesson. To borrow a phrase from journalism on this side of the pond: you couldn’t make it up.
It wasn’t the first time Raja expressed admiration for Hitler.
Plus:
We have got to be crystal clear about how perverse this situation is. Both the BBC and CNN, the self-styled moral consciences of the West’s right-thinking set, had reporters who relatively recently, or very recently, expressed support for Hitler. Just think about that. This should alarm us. It should alert us to how mainstream anti-Semitism disguised as anti-Zionism has become.
What is most striking is the relative lack of fuss and fury these cases have generated. Yes, there has been a lot of commentary, some of it rightly angry. But generally it feels muted. This scandal hasn’t trended in the way one might expect. The cancel-culture mobs of the radical left have been especially schtum. The kind of people who will spend days and days agitating for the sacking of someone who made a joke about ‘trannies’ 20 years ago have been strikingly quiet about mainstream reporters who PRAISED ADOLF HITLER.
Well, Nazis were socialists, and so are most of our media now.