Is negative reporting from the right-wing press fueling assaults on Insulate Britain?
Ink today – what tomorrow? This 77-year-old ex-doctor is afraid of what the next member of the public will do to him and/or his colleagues – and papers like the Mail are egging on the attackers.
Yes, it’s annoying when your driving experience is disrupted by people who have superglued themselves to the road to draw attention to life-threatening issues including climate change – but that doesn’t justify assaulting them by throwing ink in their faces.
But here‘s the Daily Heil showing off its worst fascistic tendencies by venerating some music promoter for doing just that.
It seems
Andrew Dutton was filmed calmly walking along the line of the protestors sat in the middle of the road and spraying them with ink as they blocked traffic yesterday.
The 38-year-old from Harlow, Essex, who works with bands and arranges concerts, later told friends he lost his temper after asking the protestors to move from the A40 in North Acton, West London, to allow an emergency vehicle through – only for them to refuse and stay put.
I’m not buying that. Insulate Britain activists have a standing rule to let emergency vehicles through.
As Steve Gower said when This Writer interviewed him,
We’ve had accusations of not letting ambulances through. There’s footage – I’m in one of the clips actually, where we let an ambulance through. That is the policy of Insulate Britain – to let any blue light through our barricade.
The Mail‘s report shows footage of Dutton assaulting the protesters with the ink – with not a single emergency vehicle in sight. So I have a couple of doubts about the claim made about him (it turns out his friends told the right-wing rag about the alleged ambulance, not him).
The piece is highly supportive of the aggressor. Besides the ambulance allegation, it said his friends had hailed him as a “hero” and the protesters – who want better insulation for social housing, to stop people from dying of the cold in their own homes and to help tackle climate change – as an “eco mob”.
The result is that these people are scared. This tweet, and the embedded video, sums up the situation:
Legacy media has spent so long smoothing the path for people to feel comfortable physically attacking the elderly who dare to voice dissent. Happened to Labour canvassers in their 70s during GE19, not an eyelid batted. https://t.co/YQ4muvKc9i
— Chaos Burley (@misslucyp) October 27, 2021
We’ve recently seen footage of a woman who tried to run over Insulate Britain activists in her Range Rover because she wanted to drive her son to school. Commenters have questioned why he couldn’t walk.
The hypocrisy is palpable. Only days ago, politicians were calling for “respect” and for people to stop fuelling the kind of “hatred” that led to the death of Tory MP Sir David Amess.
After Tory MPs were criticised for letting water companies pump raw human waste into our rivers and other waterways, they whinged – falsely – that they were being attacked with hate speech.
But when people are confronted by someone with a cause to promote, suddenly it’s okay to roll a Range Rover over them or spray ink into their eyes?
That is the message the Mail is putting out.
And the Tories must be delighted because once again, they have succeeded in getting people to squabble with others instead of casting a critical eye over the many faults of our (Tory) government.
The protesters involved are afraid – but they aren’t going to stop because they know people have already died because they lived in badly-insulated homes and they know that it will happen to others if they don’t succeed in prodding the government to act.
The – video – evidence shows they are right to be afraid.
What happens if one of them ends up suffering serious injury? What if, next time, it’s – well, I’m not going to put ideas in the heads of the irresponsible.
Will the reporter who penned the Mail piece turn himself in for possibly having incited it?
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
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Why do the police not charge drivers that drag protesters or spray them with ink, with common assault?
My home, a private-rented one bedroom flat, has no insulation that I am aware of, virtually no heating, and a huge damp patch spreading across the bedroom wall caused by rain soaking through the stone because it hasn’t been re-pointed since it was built in about 1890, and the gutter & fall pipe is leaking/overflowing. Rent is £80 p/w paid by Housing Benefit. Landlord has been informed but so far done nothing.
Insulate Britain have my total admiration and respect. I had an email from them on Thursday to say that ‘Crowdfund’ appear to have bowed to media pressure and were closing their fundraiser later that day. Bloody disgraceful.