The New York Times is America’s most revered newspaper and has held it steady since the day six years ago when Britain decided to vote against Brexit.
Numerous articles — many given front-page billing — regularly depict Britain as a plague-ridden, poverty-stricken hellhole in terminal decline. Sometimes, the abuse goes beyond the limits and it is impossible to not laugh.
According to the newspaper, we have stopped living almost exclusively on “legs of mutton” and “bowls full of porridge” since very recently. According to the paper, winter still sees us huddle around bin fires in order to stay warm. It was also reported that during the heatwave of 2020, we were reportedly ‘cavorting in the swamps’.
Sometimes, the political analysis can be even more funny. Six months back, Boris Johnson assured us that Britain was’sleepwalking to tyranny’. It was not the wisest of predictions.
Andrew Neil writes that since the referendum in Britain six years ago, The New York Times, America’s most respected newspaper, has been there for us. Pictured: In May 2020, a protestor holds a flag of the United States upside-down, as a sign that he is in distress.
The New York Times’ great minds, who are oh so serious, didn’t think Johnson’s rule could end in farce more than fascism.
Protesters march south on Congress Avenue, in 2020, in Austin, Texas
In force: Minnesota officers prepare for trouble during the march against racism in Minnesota ahead of 2020’s U.S. elections
Johnson would not be leaving 10 Downing Street because Tory MPs forced him out if he was pursuing tyrannical ambitions. The brilliant minds at The New York Times never realized that Johnson’s rule was more likely to be ended in farce than fascism.
The New York Times, America’s newspaper of record is. The New York Times has always surpassed the limits of its Big Apple home. Today, it is a national newspaper that has a worldwide reach thanks to its digital edition.
It is all the more regrettable, considering its power in America and the global stage, to not trust anything it has to say about Britain.
Due to its dark layout and dull headlines, the newspaper is known as The Old Grey Lady. This paper was as reliable about Britain as its reporting on Stalin’s Russia during the 1930s. When its Moscow correspondent repeatedly insisted there was no shortage of food in Ukraine it was only that less-bought journalists (including a few British ones) could discover that Stalin intentionally put 5 million Ukrainian peasants to their deaths.
As to social fragmentation, America also has a lot more to worry about than Britain. This country has been ravaged by a vicious crime wave that saw murders and other violent acts skyrocket in recent years.
The Pulitzer Prize went to The New York Times because of its reporting on the Soviet Union during the 1930s. The New York Times can no doubt look ahead to another award for its coverage of Brexit Britain.
In the six years since its inception, it has attracted a huge number of Britain-haters who spread their hate.
They are all British, which is a surprise considering we have many British-hating Brits. They are unlikely to have been familiar with you. Maya Lothian McLean, who believed Johnson was a despot with all the right ingredients, is this woman (nope. me too).
Richard Seymour (an unknown Brit) was also on it yesterday, and he said that Brexit was cutting Britain down to size, and that Britain was “economically stagnant”, socially fractured, and politically drifting”.
David Edgerton from the Left, a British historian, approvingly quotes him. Edgerton claims the British nation idea is a fantasy; it didn’t exist for decades before World War II, and its demise would be a positive thing. All of this will be new to the rest the world. This nonsense has been written by Edgerton, unsurprisingly for The New York Times.
This paper specializes in gory endings that are painfully honest for the poor people of Blighty. It reported last month that Britain was melting. It reported that we were sinking in the ocean a month earlier. So breakup may not be our greatest worry.
Seymour was described as the editor of Salvage (which turns out to have been a non-dogmatic Marxist quarterly).
Its masthead has the ‘G’, which is the communist sickle and hammer. He once belonged to the Socialist Workers Party. It was a Trotskyite small cabal known for infighting. He remains a Marxist.
He is a big fan of Jeremy Corbyn, and he hates Margaret Thatcher. It is difficult to understand why the New York Times considers that this unidentified ideologue of the extreme British Left merits its top page.
In many parts of America, there is a sense of social decay. Americans are purchasing guns in unprecedented numbers to ensure their safety.
This is evident in the paper’s greater concern for Britain’s problems than the ones it faces.
Let’s not forget that the largest Western economy isn’t Britain. It’s America. America has been experiencing recession all year.
Post-pandemic inflation and supply bottlenecks are affecting all major economies. This is not something that Britain stands out in. It is America’s economy that has suffered the most this year.
America is also more concerned about social fragmentation that Britain. This country has been ravaged by a vicious crime wave that saw murders and other violent acts skyrocket in recent years.
Los Angeles and San Francisco, two of the largest cities in America, have become hotbeds of drug abuse and aggressive shoplifting. There are also homeless encampments. Streets littered and contaminated with excrement from people.
It is clear that there are many people feeling the effects of social collapse in urban America. Americans are purchasing guns in unprecedented numbers to ensure their safety. Whatever social problems may exist, the U.S. is simply not as troubled as it used to be.
The 2020 Protestors in Lafayette Square, Washington DC take a knee. They raise their fists at the White House.
The New York Times does cover these events, however, it is not impartial and doesn’t hold politicians accountable.
That’s because they’re the result of policies pursued by Left-wing Democrats, from defunding the police and making shoplifting a minor misdemeanour to avoiding the incarceration of criminals at every opportunity — policies espoused by the very people The New York Times has urged Americans to vote for.
Britain isn’t nearly as political adrift than the U.S. A Democratic gerontocracy that has outlived its welcome and isn’t very well-versed in the 21st Century rules the White House, Senate, and House. The Republicans remain in Donald Trump’s grip and cannot make progress until this is over.
Each party is in rigor moris. Both have nothing to offer about the future. They have been closer than ever before. Bipartisanship has ended.
Nowhere is this more apparent than when it comes to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to scrap abortion rights by repealing Roe v Wade — the landmark legal ruling of 1973.
Each party is in rigor moris. Both have nothing to offer about the future. They have been closer than ever before. Bipartisanship has ended. Nowhere is this more apparent than when it comes to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to scrap abortion rights by repealing Roe v Wade — the landmark legal ruling of 1973
This has caused another divide in American society that the President loves to stoke. In the aftermath of June’s court decision, Joe Biden stated to U.S. citizens that Roe would be on the November midterm elections.
The political discourse in America is also dominated by violence. If 2024’s presidential election comes as close as 2020, then the loser of the vote will not likely accept it (like Trump in 2020). This would trigger a constitutional crises (and possibly widespread unrest), as grave as anything since the American Civil War 160 years ago.
Britain’s politics seem remarkably genteel by comparison. The party that has the majority of seats in the House of Commons is choosing a new prime minister. This follows the 1990 resignation of Tony Blair. In 2007, David Cameron retired. Theresa May resigned in 2016.
Like previous elections, the leader change is taking place without any gunfire and social unrest. The Palace of Westminster is not being attacked by mobs. To maintain peace, the military is not being mobilised.
Broadcast media can cover it fairly without favoring any particular group, which is a stark contrast to American broadcasters who have become dangerously partisan, making divisions even worse.
America has another problem. America is now more dependent on the Left-liberal ideologies of identity politics. This ideology, also known as wakery, has taken over the university campuses and the media.
Protesters refused to leave after Duante Wright’s police shooting killed them, and police responded with riot gear.
People are often afraid to speak out, even powerful ones. The ascendency of groupthink, which is tolerant of all differences on racial/gender matters, is suffocating freedom speech.
This trend began in America’s elite universities more than 10 years ago. The country’s top newsrooms have now welcomed this new generation of students, who brought their wisdom with them.
The New York Times, while not without exceptions, is America’s media now a quasi-uniparty state in these matters.
Boardrooms in corporate America are also falling apart. Barely a week goes by now without some major U.S. company — be it retail giant Walmart or Delta Airlines or Coca-Cola or McKinsey & Co, the giant consultants, or Disney — touting their woke credentials with some asinine statement about race or gender.
This is a way to pollute policy. San Francisco — after changing the names of any high schools named after Lincoln or Washington (hitherto America’s most revered presidents) — is at the centre of a California-wide initiative to make social justice an integral part of maths teaching.
Oregon did something even better. Because it is supposed to help students of other races, Oregon suspended the requirement that high school graduates must be proficient in maths and reading writing.
San Diego Police officers wearing riot gear, and special tactics are engaged in an altercation with protestors in downtown San Diego. This was in 2020.
And there you have the woke solution in all its absurd glory: don’t fight racial disparities with better teaching and schools for minorities, just ban the testing — then there will be no visible disparities (until, that is, it’s time to apply for a job).
The columns of a true American newspaper would be filled with this kind of nonsense, exposing it day in and day out. It would also fulfill its public obligation. The New York Times, however, is not part of the solution to such problems.
America faces dictatorships marching from Moscow and Beijing. America’s greatest newspaper, however, prefers to fight against Brexit Britain. The 21st-century geopolitical issues are being left unaddressed by America.
The New York Times’ useful idiots across the Atlantic are not affected by this. They are happy to pay a handsome boot for Britain’s paper.
British media coverage of it has become a laughing matter. It is not taken seriously by anyone here, except for some Remainers. But we will all suffer — not just America — for The New York Times’s failure to do its proper job in its homeland.