While I welcome Dan Hannan’s long tradition of cross-ideological respect and general niceness, it’s interesting to read this piece, as I feel it may give an insight into why Dan is so right wing.
We all have our Weltanshaunge, and I’m no different. I live in a world where the right effectively dominates all forms of media, which is why it came as such a big surprise to me that the right was the first in this country to us blogging for real world political effect, as useful as blogging on the left has always been for making contacts and debating ideas.
For me, blogs offered your average every day socialist an opportunity to broadcast for free, in a media world ruled by the corporate capacity to editorialise and distribute, something the left, representing and comprising of those who are less well off and less in control of their own time, have little access to.
In Dan’s world, however, there genuinely is a big ugly biased BBC stalking the media world, and despite the enormous sales of right wing papers across all classes (a crucial aspect the left misses out on), and the various Sky News, ITV and 5 Live semi-monopolies leaning to the right in their every implicity, the BBCm secretly left wing despite all its impartiality policies, always gets in the way. Has he ever heard 5 Live?
It’s so far from my reality that it must have a part in demonstrating the difference between us.
What about the underlying logics? Does Dan Hannan believe that the right is oppressed, despite reaching far more people than the BBC and being able to heavily outspend Labour at elections? With all that private cash sloshing around among the people whose interests they put first?