The coming storm, radio 4 - series 2

It wasn't very interesting since it skimmed over what had been done in previous episodes in more detail. There was no discussion of the narrative that child safeguarding is a conspiracy-minded project. One interesting thing was that Gatehouse said that much of what has been going on isn't a Left vs Right battle but is the fringes against the centre.

Epiosde 3 broadcast on Sunday www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001fq60 focused on Hunter Biden's laptop and the main message was that the progressive media, the government, the intelligence community, and the FBI all worked to suppress/discredit the story, and it's quite reasonable to assume that had the story been given the prominence that it deserved, eg imagine if there had been a similar laptop from one of the Trump children, then it's quite possible Trump would have won the 2020 election. There was some collusion although the degree isn't clear. The claims made by the Right about the contents of the laptop were overstated, although there was sufficient material there to have generated considerable public interest had the story not been suppressed/discredited.

There's a bonus episode this morning, at 11.30 in which Louis Theroux interviews Gabriel Gatehouse www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001fcgx. I don't expect much but I'll be pleased to be surprised.

Absolutely this! It's disgraceful that the Nolan Investigates series still hasn't been broadcast on R4.

James Lindsay did go OTT, not least with his support for Trump as a bulwark against "Wokeism", but his Grievance Studies hoax (with Peter Boghossian and Helen Pluckrose: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair
) exposed some serious failings in the world of academic publishing and research in some fields. And Lindsay's
book (also with Helen Pluckrose) Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity - and Why This Harms Everybody is an interesting and insightful exploration of post-modernism's contamination of branches of academia.

Gatehouse seemed to shy away from any acknowledgment of this; and the portrayal of anyone concerned about the spread of gender ideology in schools or the huge increase in the "gender-affirmed" medicalisation of young people as MAGA-hatted conspiracy loons was extremely disappointing.

At least Gatehouse did admit that the Hunter Biden laptop story was real and there was substantial content. And that FaceBook and twitter suppressed the story when it first broke, parts of the media labelled it as "Russian misinformation" and that their efforts in doing this effectively killed the story for years.

But while doing this, Gatehouse continued to throw shade on those who persisted in trying to get the story out.

The programme has good content but I now can't unsee the agenda in its presentation and that leaves a sour taste.

I did get that impression from the first series.

Gatehouse points out that laptop man (the man who received Hunter Biden's laptop) only gives accounts of what happened to Right wing media.

Maybe that's because other parts of the media, including Gatehouse, spent years rubbishing the story.

It supports my conspiracy theory, that Gatehouse is not engaged in journalism but in narrative creation and does this by trimming his findings so they fit under a Right wing conspiracy theory umbrella.

Episode 2 has just started. It's on a different theme.

It’s about a laptop which Hunter Biden, the son of the Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, had supposedly left in a computer repair shop in Delaware. The laptop allegedly contains damning information about the Biden family. Gabriel thinks it’s fake news and ignores it at the time. But that is a mistake.

Blimey, to have dismissed that laptop is a major mis-step for a journalist.

While searching online to find out when or where this is on, this review by Miranda Sawyer in the Guardian popped up. It's from January 2022.

Interesting bit of context on how the series came about and reference to programmes covering some of the same ground previously by others.

www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/jan/08/the-coming-storm-review-gabriel-gatehouse-bbc-qanon-conspiracy-movement-now-where-were-we-podcast-barry-cryer-bob-gemma-cairney-gets-classical

Gatehouse is getting some pushback on Twitter, people pointing the inaccuracies.

That’s a good point re. Magic mushrooms! It was literally one of the leading stories on bbc news last week. Kings college london uni I think and other uni’s similar findings.
so not evidence of a conspiracy theory at all.
quite a few things wrong or just not getting (or not explaining for the listeners) the nuance so not great journalism.

I'm furious about this. On GoFundMe today, both the 'Top Surgery' and 'Bottom Surgery' pages are at their max - 1000 individuals, many very young looking at their photos (if you want to check what I'm posting, the green bar at the bottom of the GoFundMe page fills up at the 528 mark but keep clicking - there are many more pages).

On a lighter note, the man at the US conference with the idea of magic mushrooms for depression that Gatehouse includes as an amusing crank...er, this was a news story running on the BBC 10pm news this week as a major medical breakthrough.

I heard this on a long drive yesterday. It's a disgraceful piece of journalism that picks and chooses its 'facts' to suit the narrative. I was as stunned as others at what I was hearing. He was saying that opposition to GI and the mutilation of children is a far right conspiracy. In what way is GI theory is based in Marxism? I've no doubt that some far-right US groups are using fear of grooming to rouse support, but that's not the whole story.

I think it was the most irresponsible piece of 'journalism' I've heard on the BBC for a very long time. It separated the issue of children potentially being groomed from the whole misogynistic, homophobic, fetishistic mountain of GI nonsense that is opposed by most rational people, regardless of politics.

The 282 girls who'd had mastectomies were from the state of Florida alone and only included those who'd claimed on their health insurance for the operation. I suspect many, many more pay for it themselves: there have been thousands of crowdfunders for surgery. There are 50 US states. We could be talking about thousands of girls who've had surgery paid for by insurance companies alone. But it's a tiny number, according to Gatehouse and he said, the mastectomies are a therapeutic treatment for girls so tormented by dysphoria that the operation enables them to go on to live happy lives... No mention of autism, sexual abuse, homophobic parents, eating disorders and all the other co-morbidities that are now widely recognised.

I listened to some of The Coming Storm and thought on a couple of occasions he'd got too close to his subject and this just proved it. He doesn't want to tell the full story, just a simplified version that fits his agenda. The Stephen Nolan Stonewall podcast has been completely ignored.

Honestly, this kind of reporting is why people start to believe more radical conspiracy theories or at the least lose all trust in mainstream soources.

You have to wonder what kind of real research went into this. It seems like either a deliberate snow job or the ravings of a slightly thick person determined not to disturb his own worldview.

I suspect a lot of people might equate groomer to pedophile though.

It was a little confusing as to what point they were making. They downplayed gender identity ideology in schools by calling it “stuff” and did the classic trick of referring to older children as “ young adults” in a context of a clearly inappropriate book in a school library.
And the gendered glacier paper that was the inspiration for one of the men to research gender ideology IS nonsense and it IS alarming that reputable science journals are publishing papers that claim glaciers have a gender and that penis’s are responsible for climate change conceptually and from what I am make out the Twitter account libsoftwitter ( or whatever it is called) uses genuine videos of genuine teachers and they do say ridiculous things and if I had a child in that school I would be concerned.
it was an unsatisfying listen overall and is making me question his approach and the accuracy of season 1 when he glosses over parents concerns as “moms” concerns.
I’ll listen to episode 2 to see where he goes with that.

Does groomer always mean paedophile?

Groomers groom to exploit others. Not always paedophilia, men groom women to abuse or sexually traffic them, others groom to take financial advantage, drug dealers groom children to take drugs or for country lines.

Groomers also don’t just groom their intended victims, they also groom those around them. So paedophiles will groom the family of the child they are targeting, they will groom politicians who oversee safeguards, they will groom others to promote inappropriate sexual content in schools. Groomers might, for example, use a diversity award schemes to do groom, one which promotes an incorrect understanding of law and safeguarding but looks all shiny and colourful. That is why safeguarding is so important because people who seek to exploit others will go to great lengths to do so.

Does groomer always mean paedophile? Paedophiles will take advantage of the situation groomers create, but I think it’s a stretch to say all of the people promoting gender identity and inappropriate materials and therefore grooming are paedophiles. The problem is probably a chunk don’t realise what they are doing or enabling. They think they are being progressive and supportive. Some do, of course, but not all.

I feel that Biden should have got a he'll of a lot more flack for getting Sunak's name wrong.

This is a good point. Did Trevor Noah comment on this?

deadwildroses.com/2019/10/07/handy-venn-diagrams-the-radical-feminist-position-on-gender/

Believers in gender ideology have as much in common with the Christian right as feminists do. I'm getting utterly sick of academics and journalists that will not address this misogynist bias.

Please contact Radio 4's 'More or Less' too on these statistics. Oh, and Gatehouse et al may prefer fluffy nursery school euphemisms like 'top surgery' and 'bottom surgery' but Professor Robert Winston, the Labour peer, uses the term mutilation, because it is.

I’ve submitted a complaint to Radio 4 and said that I want a response. It’s either deliberate twisting of the narrative or really sloppy, lazy journalism.

I think this must be the source the programme used www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-data/