Delingpole: Rees-Mogg Is Right – the AfD Talks a Lot More Sense on Brexit than the BBC

The BBC has attacked Jacob Rees Mogg-for the alleged crime of quoting a stirring speech on Brexit by the co-leader of Germany’s AfD party.

I mention this storm-in-a-teacup for two main reasons.

First, so that you can see — if you haven’t already — the truly inspirational, hard-hitting, and deadly accurate speech delivered in the Bundestag last month by Alternative für Deutschland co-leader Alice Weidel.

Weidel is an interesting character: lesbian; economics graduate; spent six years working in China for the Bank of China (where she learned to speak Mandarin); fiercely critical of Angela Merkel’s immigration policy (“Donald Trump said that Merkel is insane and I absolutely agree with that”); supports German membership of the European Union but thinks Germany should withdraw from the single currency; very anti-political correctness…

Here’s a taste of her speech, which began with an attack on Angela Merkel — whom she blames for the mishandling of Brexit:

Frau Chancellor, you spoke about the uncertainty that Brexit will bring. Not that we have learned anything new. It was just the usual phrases mixed with some valerian.

[Valerian is what a lot of Germans drink in their herbal tea to help them go to sleep…]

On to Brexit, for which you are partly responsible due to your negligence and your refusal to help out the UK. Our historically good relationship with the UK has been jeopardised as a result.

Weidel refers to the period in the run up to the referendum when David Cameron went on his whistlestop tour of EU member states begging for something, anything, to take back home to appease Leavers. The EU, of course, offered zilch.

And now we’re counting the cost. 15 billion Euros from Britain will soon be missing from the budget…The UK is the second biggest economy in the EU — as big as the 19 smallest combined. From an economic perspective the EU is shrinking not to 27 but to 9 states. The nonchalance, the indifference displayed by Brussels and Berlin in the face of such an enormous event verges on pathological denial of reality.

There are several key take-homes from this most excellent speech.

1. There are sensible voices in German politics who totally get it; who are not globalists; who believe in free speech, free markets and regulated borders; who are well aware of the European Union’s flaws.
2. Brexit is a two-way street. It is in the mutual interests of the divorcing parties to come up with a clean and non-Carthaginian break. This is not just a bizarre, deluded fantasy of a few hardcore Brexiteers. Wiser heads on the Continent — including my new favourite German lesbian — understand this very well.
3. Germans. When they’re great, aren’t they just amazing? I’m certainly a massive fan — and, if you’ve a moment, you might enjoy my paean here titled 15 Reasons to fall in love with Germany and the Germans (which really pissed off some lefty British academic specialising in Germany — so: job done!)

Anyway, it’s perfectly clear why Jacob Rees-Mogg — a leading Brexiteer and a civilised man of intelligence and reason — should have chosen to draw attention to Dr Weidel’s speech.

Now onto my second reason for drawing your attention to the story. The BBC’s disgracefully biased behaviour towards Jacob Rees-Mogg, which the Mogg quite rightly called out during an appearance on its flagship radio politics show the Today programme.

You can hear the clip here:

Rees-Mogg was being quizzed by arguably the most woke of the Today programme’s in-house Social Justice Warriors Mishal Husain.

Husain asked why he had chosen to retweet a link to the speech by Weidel given that she belonged to a party whose “core principles are anti-immigration, anti-Islam, whose leader in the German parliament includes views about Germany being overrun by Arabs and Roma. Is there nothing in that that gives you pause for thought? That at least you should clarify what it is that you don’t support.”

The question was disingenuous for a number of reasons.

First, it presupposes that the AfD’s political views are so wrong and embarrassing and extreme that no respectable MP could possibly associate himself with them. But the AfD is a perfectly legitimate, mainstream party — the second most popular in Germany — which commands around 18 per cent of the vote. If it is seen as extreme or “far right” in the UK, that is largely because the BBC has branded that way in its biased coverage.

Second, it wilfully obfuscates and distracts from Rees-Mogg’s point. It would have been perfectly legitimate of Husain to quiz Rees-Mogg on the contents of the linked speech by Weidel. But it was quite absurd, dishonest, and underhand of her to try to make Rees-Mogg accountable for any of the other views held by Weidel or her party. The next time Rees-Mogg quotes, say, Osama bin Laden’s assertion that “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong” will Mishal Husain then seize the opportunity to ask why he’s tacitly endorsing Islamic terrorism?

Third, it deliberately pretends that Twitter is something it is not. Imagine how boring it would be if, every time you tweeted out a link to something interesting you had to append a note explaining exactly how and where you disagreed with the person you were quoting?

Fourth — and this is what is so infernally devious about these lines of attack so frequently employed by BBC apparatchiks — it puts the victim in a hopeless situation. There is simply no way that in the limited time available Rees-Mogg could have defended his position reasonably, eloquently, and good-humouredly. It was designed not to elicit an answer but merely to put Rees-Mogg on the spot, to humiliate him, and to tar him with an accusation — you’re an Islamophobe and racist by association — against which he could not possibly defend himself.

This is why Rees-Mogg quite understandably got irritable with Husain and accused her style — which included frequent interruptions as he tried, with characteristic courtesy and patience, to develop his point — of being “typical of the Today programme’s lefty approach.”

It goes almost without saying that the BBC would never pull a similar trick on one of its approved left-liberal politicians.

Of course, it isn’t just the Today programme that is at fault here. It is the entirety of the BBC.

Truly it is a disgusting organisation, no longer fit for purpose as the nation’s state broadcaster — for it only speaks for a minority. The BBC’s position on any issue is now so doctrinaire metropolitan liberal-left — virulently anti-Brexit, anti-Trump, pro-feminism, pro-identity politics, anti-Tory, anti-Israel, pro-Palestine — that it cannot be trusted. Its news is fake, its bias relentless and shameless.

Politicians like Rees-Mogg have no choice but to appear on the BBC because of its near-monopolistic dominance of Britain’s broadcast media. But like a lot of people here, I’ve lost patience with it completely. I hardly ever watch or listen to its output any more because I’m really not interested in what SJWs like Mishal Husain have to say about the world. I know already, I’ve heard it all before, and it just stinks.