Media Storm - News Watch: The UK's radicalised right, Charlie Kirk trans conspiracy, Gaza war is a genocide

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

It's time for another News Watch, helping you get your head around the headlines. This week we start by looking at Trump’s new Caribbean front in the ‘war on terror’, and rising authoritarian usage of “anti-terror” laws in the West. Helena reflects on the unreported stories from a weekend of nationalist protests in the UK: people of colour trapped inside their houses. 100,000 people joined the march, which was led by far-right Tommy Robinson and riddled with racist violence. We consider the root causes of rapidly rising radicalism in the UK, and the lessons that populist press and politicians are all-too-slow to learn. To listen to our episode 'Radical thinking: How to fight the far-right', click here. Next - Charlie Kirk was an American right-wing political activist who campaigned against gun controls, before he was shot and killed in yet another political assassination in the US. His shooting gave rise to many conspiracy theories, but the one peddled across mainstream media was that the suspect was motivated by “transgender ideology”. Here’s everything wrong with that. Finally, we turn to Gaza, where genocide has just been declared by a UN commission. The expert panel examined actions and statements made publicly by Israeli leaders and soldiers, and concluded that genocidal intent is “the only reasonable inference”. So why haven’t most Western media reached the same conclusion? The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@mathildamall⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠) and Helena Wadia (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@helenawadia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠)  The music is by⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @soundofsamfire⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok ⁠⁠ Support us on⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit square.ca to get started. The Hulu original series Murdoch Death and the Family dives into secrets, deception, murder, and the fall of a powerful dynasty. Inspired by shocking actual events and drawing from the hit podcast, this series brings the drama to the screen like never before. Starring Academy Award winner Patricia Arquette and Jason Clark. Watch the Hulu original series Murdoch, Death and the Family, streaming October 15th on Disney Plus. That is the sound of a boat engine. Hello, media stormers. Welcome to this episode very early on Wednesday morning we are recording.

Once again, as you can probably hear, we are coming to you not with studio quality. No. I am still at home with Broken Foot and Matilda is still at sea. Yeah, I'm pretty much sitting on a boat engine, which is why you might be able to hear. the set of a boat engine. I am on the family boat, which is the lead ship of the global summer flotilla. I have asked everyone to try to avoid using internet for the next hour and a half and we have gotten up very early to try to make sure that is actually the case. I'm a post-night watch so I have barely slept at all. But the news doesn't wait and the media storm show must go on.

Exactly. The news waits for no one. how are you where are you what can you tell us so i am currently south of sicily and by the time this episode goes live my current fleet of 24 boats should have merged with another fleet of 18 boats that are setting sail from italy and that will make us officially the biggest civilian attempt to get aid to gaza by sea since israel intensified its elite legal blockade in 2007. Some people might be listed to this, just possibly in a bit of disbelief, that you're coming to us from a boat in the middle of the sea right now.

Safety-wise, how are you feeling? Safety-wise, fairly good in that, you know, everything we can prepare, we have prepared. We all participated in mandatory training, in non-violent resistance, de-escalation, to make sure, you know, that if, as is likely, we are intercepted by Israeli military forces, that we should be able to avoid violent escalation at all costs. And we've also been doing drills on deck now. We're going to start doing that every day. But I do have to say from the perspective of the flitilla, there is one news update from the outside world that has particularly concerned me. Okay, getting into News Watch, which one is that? Yeah, well,

Just a quick intro point, I suppose, because it's more about the state of the world than the state of the media. But Trump, a man who I gather is currently in the UK on his second invitation from the King of England. Yep, despite having an even lower popularity rate among Brits than Benjamin Netanyahu. So sad I'm missing him. Yeah, Trump, he has now ordered two deadly strikes on Venezuelan boats in international waters in the Caribbean. without following any due course of justice, nor providing any evidence about who was in the boats. Wow. Was anybody killed?

Yeah. So this week's strike, three people were killed, and in another strike at the start of the month, 11 people were killed. Now, look, Trump claims that the boats were heading towards the US and were linked to drug trafficking cartels. But he gave no details about this boat's location. and he also didn't specify a single organization with which he believed these boats to be associated.

So even if what he says is true, we simply have to take his word for it. But I mean, even if this is true, since when is it a license to bomb a boat in international waters? Well, yeah, no, you're totally right. It's not you can't just bomb a boat because you think it might have drugs on it and you think it might be heading towards your country.

And that's why I wanted to highlight this story because it is something we've covered before on media storm. Trump called the people on board narco-terrorists. Ah, the old terrorist label, the green card for authorities to do whatever they want. Yeah, look, we have always seen this label weaponised by authorities as a way to circumvent you process, but it feels very, very prominent at the moment as a political tool being used by governments to shut down criticism or just to score, like in this case, maybe, quick political points

without having to follow the normal courses of democracy and justice. We've seen this in the UK's criminalisation of protesters carrying signs to end genocide. And we saw it at the start of this year in the US when Donald Trump prescribed a Venezuelan gang as terrorists and then randomly began deporting people of colour to an El Salvadorian prison by falsely claiming. that they were part of that group. Look, I've genuinely come to the conclusion

that the term terrorist does more harm than good and is entirely unacceptable on principle. Like, everyone should be equal before the law. All that the term terrorism does is circumvent the judiciary and eradicate basic human rights. Right, because drug smugglers can already be arrested under a whole host of laws,

but they just can't be bombed. Yeah. And look, this is scary. to me because I'm currently in a boat, moving lawfully through international waters, carrying only humanitarian aid and civilians, hoping to reach Gaza. And far right members of Israel's government have already claimed that the people I'm traveling with

are terrorists. What the hell kind of precedent does this set? If the US president can just bomb whoever he wants in international waters without providing any evidence that a crime has occurred, just by calling them terrorists. These people that I'm with, they're not terrorists, they're peaceful carriers of aid.

And if we are to be harmed by Israel in what would be a direct contravention of international law, I would want the people of the world and the media to be in uproar. And so by the same principle exactly, we should be in uproar about the bombing of these boats

because without evidence, without due process, the world is just a lawless playground for powerful men. And I don't think that any of us want to live in that world? I definitely don't. So yeah, on that's scary. Let's just get on with Newswatch, shall we?

We'll talk about the far-right marches, the way the media reacted to them, and the effect they have on people of colour. And with that, we'll talk about the media's role in radicalising our society. Then we'll talk about Charlie Kirk's killing, with a focus on a particular scapegoating you may have missed.

And we'll end with eyes on Palestine. 150,000 people took to the streets of London over the weekend for that Unite the Kingdom March, which of course was led by the far-right convict, Tommy Robinson. Some outlets are reporting that the suspect lived with a transgender partner. The United Nations investigation team says Israel has committed genocide

against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Welcome to Media Storm's News Watch, helping you get your head around the headlines. I'm Matilda, Malinton. And I'm Helena Wadia. This week's media storms. Charlie Kirk conspiracies, UK's far right march and Gaza's genocide ruling. I want to start today's news watch with a quote from distinguished feminist philosopher and gender study scholar Judith Butler. Once you decide that a single vulnerable minority can be sacrificed, you're operating within a fascist logic. That means there

might be a second one you're willing to sacrifice, and a third and a fourth. Then what happens? Last Saturday, approximately 100 to 150,000 far right Tommy Robinson supporting flag wearing, mostly white men marched through the streets of London, from Waterloo to Whitehall. You probably saw the scenes on the news or on social media. You probably have seen a flag or two, or 10, depending on where you live, on a lamppost, painted on a roundabout. But what you won't have seen, unless you, like me, lived it, was people of colour staying inside their homes that Saturday. The fear, the sadness, the anger of communities of colour all around the UK.

This was, and continues to be completely underrepresented in the media. I was so upset that day. I sent you messages, Matilda, saying, how upset I was because I really just reached a level on that day where I felt pretty hopeless. Yeah, it was awful to see and there's really nothing I can say except just, I'm sorry, it's so horrid. And what I want to kind of point out is that it's not just about feelings, it's about actions because I've seen many accounts from people of colour who were either on the counter-protest

or found themselves in central London on Saturday. who had racist abuse shouted at them, who were intimidated on the streets of their home. Yesterday, I saw a video of two brown women being chased by marchers, and one is shouting, smack her, smack her. And racist abuse being shouted is the tip of the iceberg. So I want to highlight a story that shook me to my core, but that I felt didn't get enough media attention.

A British-born Sikh woman in her 20s, in Birmingham was attacked and raped by two men and was told during the attack, you don't belong in this country, get out. It's being treated by the police as a racially aggravated attack. What an appalling failure, by the way, of Kirstama, whose attempt to pacify a population that rioted in a racist fashion last year was by speaking to that population in their language, giving an immigration speech calling us an island of strangers. Just first thing to point out is what an absolute abject failure on his part to squash by identifying hate for what it was.

It's this horrific irony as well because the anti-migrant narrative is often paraded under the socially acceptable guise of being about protecting our women, right? Protecting our women from predatory migrant men. And when you say our women, of course they're referring to white women. White women. Yeah. Protests last year and this year, correct me if I'm wrong because I am in a bit of a Mediterranean sea bubble, but appeared to have been seemingly triggered by incidents of male violence against women by foreign nationals. An asylum seeker convicted of sexual assault this year. A fake asylum seeker blamed for last year's Southport Stavings. It doesn't

have to be true, right? It just have to give angry people the excuse to storm about with justified bigotry. Of course it's bullshit. Even the premise that migrant men abuse women more than non-migrant men is bullshit. I mean, statistically, that's bullshit. Unbelievably, the Times actually did a fact check on this. This might be the first time we're going to praise the Times, everybody. Did you see this? I did. They published an amazing video explainer showing that not only the migrant crime wave is untrue, the opposite is true. Violent crime in the UK has dropped significantly

over the past 20 years in which time Britain's immigrant population has doubled. In the Times' video, you have journalist Fraser Nelson saying, and I quote, Britain certainly has a lot of problems, but a migrant crime wave just isn't one of them.

And it's so ironic because the thing is we have literally said this so many times in reaction to articles in the Times that imply the exact opposite. it. Exactly. If a paper religiously publishes every crime they can find that involves a migrant suspect or perpetrator without contextualizing the relative numbers or covering non-migrant crime nearly as arduously, they may as well be publishing the misinformation itself, like they are pushing a false narrative. And by the way, the spectator, which Fraser Nelson was the editor

of until last year, that is one of the worst papers of all in pushing the false. migrant crime narrative but let's look at the silver linings right I think this video is a sign that the right wing press is slowly waking up to the dangers of radicalization they see the beast that they've helped to unleash and they're worried and I'm glad the times has stepped up here though they are doing it far too late after profiting happily from legitimizing far-right propaganda with their own clickbait for years no institution has done more than our right-wing media when it comes to falsely painting migrant men as predators.

Yeah, and we pointed out a couple of episodes ago that the far-right co-opting women's safety fears was completely illogical and false. And we could point out so many inconsistencies and hypocrisies from the far right, this racially aggravated rape, for one, where attackers used the racist rhetoric from the far right. On the march itself, men were sheltered. vulgar misogynistic chants like tits out for the lads like oh yeah I'm sure the women around you feel real safe men were shouting racial abuse at women of color I mean the list goes on how is that showing concern for women and girls and there's a million other hypocrisies but something else I've been thinking about recently is does pointing out these fallacies these hypocrisies

get us anywhere what do you mean I'll tell you what kicked off this thought process. So I put an Instagram reel up where I did an explainer about how we could deport every migrant in the UK right now and our problems, including like the cost of living crisis, the housing crisis, male violence against women, they wouldn't go away. And I used facts like about the relevant small numbers of refugees the UK takes in to make my case. And listen, like it did well. I felt proud about getting the facts out there and pointing out how illogical the far-right mass deportation idea is. And then a couple of days ago, I got a comment from a man called David Metcalf,

who I would say is clearly not a fan of MediaStorm. From his profile picture, I would say he is a white man in his 50s. His account has 21 followers. And he commented, we don't want them here, whatever you say. Them, of course, referring to refugees. And it was this, whatever you say, that really got me. But that sounds like a bot, right? Is that even a real man, 21 followers?

Such a generic statement that could be thrown onto like 75,000 different posts a day. Sounds like a bot. Possibly could be a bot. But still, I mean, it shows the resources being used by far right radicals to try and sway people because the comments sections are where they do a lot of their recruiting. Yeah. And this is when I started thinking, we can point out. how illogical the far-rights mantras are all day long.

Like we can say, did you know that St. George wasn't English and a marcher was filmed on the far-right riot buying Indian food in the middle of the riot? And people were pointing out the irony and the hypocrisy. And, you know, we can say, well, the majority of sexual assaults in the UK are committed by white men and by an intimate partner. But the thing is, they know. like they know all this and if they don't know they don't care to know because clearly their movement isn't based on logic it's based on sweeping statements on fear and hate i'm not saying it's pointless

to talk in fact and logic not at all like that's important work and that's great to help people learn but i don't think it's going to help people unlearn so if logic isn't going to work what do you think will. First of all, showing up. So on Saturday, 100 to 150,000 people turned up to Tommy Robinson's march. There was a counter protest and I'm thankful to every person who turned up to that. If I didn't have a broken foot, would have been there. But there were about 20,000 counter protesters. And a lot of people who would absolutely stand against to everything that this Tommy Robinson March represented said they didn't even know that March was happening. let alone that there was a counter demo.

So we need to be engaged. We need to put our bodies on the line here and show up physically if we really want to stop the growing far right. We need to show up to every counter protest. We need to create our own protests. We need to get involved in community organization. Because, by the way, although the 100,000 people line was repeated countless times in the media,

and it's certainly not an insignificant number, we must remember that there were one million people who marched against Brexit in 2019. 300,000 marched for Palestine in November 2023. So you have to put these numbers in context. You know, all is not lost. It was significant, but it doesn't mean that they're winning. It does, however, show that it is far easier for those like Farage and Tommy Robinson to galvanize their fan base.

Nigel Farage actually stayed away from the protest because he's been very deliberately trying to distance himself from Tommy Robinson in his bidge to appear like a legitimate politician. However, you are right, this is largely the reform support base and those of them who said they'd vote said that they would only vote for Farage. Secondly, I think that our focus needs to change away from responding to or calling out far-right rhetoric and towards real solutions.

I couldn't put it better than London musician Lava Leroux did. So I thought I'd play this clip for you. So Lava Leroux is a Jamaican Latvian singer. Their grandparents were part of the Windrush Generation. They grew up in West London. And as well as making great music, they also speak out about community and organising. Here's what they had to say about the recent marches

and how we can react to them. This just really stuck with me. If we want to see progress, we need to tackle the non-partisan issues first. That is an issue that isn't about proving your left, isn't about proving your right, but just focusing on community-based issues that affect us all. By the way, this clip may sound like it's sped up, but it's not. This is just how fast they talk.

I was recently watching an interview with a professor of political theory at LSC, and she highlighted the fact that in the present climate, there isn't a clear left or a widespread left narrative. Because there used to be. It used to be very clear that we wanted to unionize the working class and create socialist infrastructure for marginalised communities. These days, all they're doing is chasing the narrative of the right. All of our politics seem to be reactionary to what the right are doing.

We are reacting to right-wing and saying, stop the boat. And we're like, hey, man, that's racist. when we should be responding, being like, well, we want to advocate for safe and legal routes. We're advocating for integration support. We're advocating to tackle exploitation and smuggling networks that generally do affect vulnerable asylum seekers. No matter what side of politics you're on, these things are real solutions that are in the interest of everyone. And that's just one part of the debate. It's very frustrating when you and I both know,

asylum seekers only make up a tiny fraction of this country's issues and resources. But still, the internet has amplified the topic so much that if we want to reframe this toxic narrative, we need to fully understand what is this narrative. And a mistake I think a lot of left identifying people make is when they want to tackle fascism, you know, they come across a so-called patriot and they're like, you're racist. I think you're Islamophobic. And that definitely might be true, but that doesn't do anything, because a lot of these people generally do not believe their races.

Though there's not even grounds for dialogue between half of the population and the other half, which gives more power to the government's divide and conquer tactic. If you're at the rally or the counter rally this weekend, then you will have noticed there is a lot of black and brown who called reformers or patriots. I think a mistake a lot of people are making it is they think reforms tagline is we hate all non-white people. Actually, they are framing it as a culture clash, people who either identify with traditional British values versus migrants who don't integrate.

And that is actually very palatable for a lot of swing voters. My local reform representative is Tadung Galati. He's been going around Edra Road collecting the black and brown vote. Meanwhile, we're trying to prove to people online that we're not racist or we're compassionate. These are literally on the streets claiming to be the voice of the people. And what we need to do is provide an alternative voice with real policies. And the people who are falling for this movement are people you should care about. It's your local postmen, your florist, your taxi drivers.

People are used to work with. It might be your uncles, your aunties. They are still part of your local community. And we've already lost the culture war if we reject the fact that people do want to be proud of their British identity. We have to advocate for working class kids, whether they're black, brown, white, trans, who can't just move to bloody Barcelona because we've lost this country to fascism. This country is all they have. And that doesn't mean forgetting our colonial past.

but rejecting national symbols only weakens our position. It has historically been so much more powerful and effective in culture wars to hijack powerful symbolisms and reframe them. How many powerful fascist symbols used to previously represent something else entirely? Right-wing people are so good at jumping on powerful symbolism and claiming it for their own. So why can't we flip the script instead of surrendering those images to them? And a great example of that is recently a mosque was targeted by a patriot

who hung a British flag outside thinking it would intimidate the mosque and instead the people who ran the mosque put the flag up inside to say that they are proudly British Muslim. And that story reached far and wide. Or all the activists have been spray-pain refugees well. across them, that symbolism is so much more louder than just taking the flags down and rejecting the flags because you're creating a presence of an alternative narrative rather than an absence of narrative. We need to focus our resources and our shared needs to safer schools, fair wages,

a stronger healthcare. And these are human issues. It'll be a lot louder to advocate for these issues if we stop fighting each other and start fighting for each other. Now, this is media storm, so I also need to talk about the media. The name of this march, as named by Tommy Robinson was called the Unite the Kingdom March. Tilda's reaction just slapped her for her. Oh, fine, just have the kingdom there. I thought it was so telling

how different news outlets reacted to this march. Some actually described the march. For example, this Channel 4 news headline, 100,000 attend far-right rally in London. and some outlets chose to use the language of the march organisers. For example, this BBC headline, thousands gather for Unite the Kingdom Rally. Now see, if you didn't know about this,

on the face of it, uniting people sounds great. So to just use the language of Tommy Robinson in your headline is, in my opinion, unforgivable, at a time where misinformation is king. Yeah, if I'd read that, I'd be like, oh, where was my invitation? Yeah, you're like, I want to be united. Yeah, exactly.

Other terms I saw in the mainstream media were pro-British march and anti-immigration protesters. Yeah, I see your issue with those descriptors, like pro-British or even anti-immigration. These are very speculative. People there were talking about wildly different things from asylum seekers to... To burning the flag of Palestine.

It feels like it's just trying to avoid the unifying term, which was this far. right ideological placement. These descriptors that have been given are they're watering down, maybe the sentiments. Yeah, it pulls away from the truth that this march was formed on the basis of racism and particularly Islamophobia. I saw footage coming in over the weekend from the UK and there is an urgent lesson here for all of us and that is how easy it is for radicalisation to take hold. This is particularly a lesson for our politicians and our news outlets who are playing with populism, thinking that they can ride the wave and it won't ultimately drown them.

Not everyone on that much was racist, but they are definitely very vulnerable to becoming so. Many of the interviews at the protest showed men on the march saying, I'm not racist but, I'm not racist but I just care about Britain. We have heard this before, right? I mean, on MediaStorm, we have heard this before. MediaStorm did an earlier episode about far-right radicalisation. We spoke to former neo-Nazis, young victims of radicalisation and their families. One of the speakers, he co-founded the English Defence League, the EDL, with Tommy Robinson. And he told us, in his mind, it was never meant to be racist.

It was meant to be about belonging and pride. But that was something that racists and radicals, pounced on. I think we should listen to his interview in full here because it's really important to try to understand the processes underway in our society. My name's Darren, Darren Carroll. I'm a father, the grandfather now. And that's me really. That's about who I am. I could give Darren Carroll many introductions, founder of the Migs in the 1980s, Luton Towns Hooligan Firm, uncle of Tommy Robinson, of far right notoriety, ambassador for exit hate UK, or the title that led him there and sits him here today,

founding member of the English Defence League. I was a good lad at school. I was a prefect at school. I was an altar boy in church. Didn't have a lot. No more happier than when I was out playing with my mates playing football or with my mum. After its origin in 2009, the EDL swiftly rose to global infamy. They are a notorious right-wing group accused of being violent, racist. An intelligence suggests the EDL is essentially made up of football hooligans. I can give you the backstory of where I think it led to from this point. Well, my dad died when I was 12.

My mum died very shortly after. So at the time I was 13, I started playing up at school when I was getting into a lot of fights. So I got expelled. And then, you know, I've done a big long, lonely walk home. And I got home and I just sat there for weeks on end, really, trying to think of something to do. I've always been a very passionate person and my passion in life was my football I'd be down to my local football club

which is Luton Town Football Club and I was someone I was somebody at the football ground it was at a time when there was a lot of hooliganism going on around the country and you saw clearly the thuggery of a group of hooligans who could never have claimed to have come along simply to enjoy the football

there was a lot of violence in the grounds and indeed I was hurt you know punched a few times etc even as a kid by older men. Maybe it was my anger and my anger turned to hate. I started a football hooligan firm myself in Luton. There was a lot of social economic issues going on in the town. People leave in town. And that brings in its own fears as well. So if I'm going to stay, what's going to become of my future? The thing is that so many people feel these things, what made you take such drastic action that you set in motion one of the fastest rising far-right

groups in the country? 2009. I was going down to welcome the troops home. They had come back from Iraq. There was a demonstration or a protest. I wasn't expecting that. So it kind of like rooted me to the spot now. I felt leaden about it. We started a demonstration. And in my mind, it was to welcome the troops back through. I thought 20 people had turned up. But hundreds turned up, hundreds. But it just got out of hand. And it all went wrong. The home secretary bandled demonstrations in Luton for three months. There's probably really no excuses for me at this point. We started a demonstration, Birmingham, and that's when we decided to start the EDL on that particular day. It was the biggest

mistake of my life. Why was it the biggest mistake of your life? The kind of the EDL turned into an anti-Islam thing really, very quickly. Liberties have been taken across a whole nation and the days of militant Islam walking across our country, unchallenged, gone. It was just there all of a sudden, you could see organizations, like neo-Nazi organizations, and then the chance went up about Islam and Muslims. The battle for it was lost. To try and turn it into anything other than that, it was lost. The EDL are now being urgently investigated by various police forces.

This thing was like holding onto a team of horses with one rain. There was EDL in every village, town or city. It was like, where's this going to end up? Do you feel responsible? I feel responsible for people that turned up that were looking for help. Those people looking for friendships, for groups, to belong to, and we're turning up thinking, is this the answer? The gravity of like someone looking to you for leadership to give them the answer for their

issues and their life, that weighs heavy. And I'm looking at them thinking, wow, you think, I've got answers to your problems. I haven't. And I kind of never told them that I did, but there are people that do. And that's worrying. Darren, was there a moment that shook you out of it that caused you to turn your back on the movement you helped to start? One of the things that rooted me to the spot was I was walking in demonstration in Birmingham

and there was two ladies about my mum's age when she died. And I went to give way as you do and they spat in my face. They just said, Nazi scum, getting out of Brum. At that stage I just felt so little about myself. I felt like if the ground would open up, me drop into it, and then the pavement would cover it back over my head. It was probably the best thing that would happen at that moment for me. You know, I wonder what, let's call her Mao.

I wonder what Mao would think or say or do it at this stage, you know. And I know she would have been saying, then first 13 years I raised you, I raised the altar boy, the prefect type thing. You should be ashamed of yourself, really. Why not leave all this behind you? Why sit here with me today reliving it? There is a want of,

of rectifying things. There is that. But there's also more strongly for me is if this can happen to me, I know it's happening to others. And I know there's people that are feeling disenfranchised, polarized, if you like, all those words that I've learned. Okay. But if I'm speaking up, I know then that there'd be people that may hear maybe this podcast or my story. It just might stop them. Words break through at different times for people. And that just might be the right time and right moment for them to come off that path. That was Darren Carroll, former founder of the EDL and uncle of Tommy Robinson. Now, Helena, I understand really why you don't want to see this behaviour excused in any way.

And you're right because of the impact that it has on our brothers and sisters in society whose lives are put at risk. But there is a science to de-radicalisation. Radical recruiters target people who are in some way vulnerable and often lonely. The telltale with this protest is in the title, Unite. It's not about economic grievance, as a lot of right-wing papers are describing, right? It's not about immigration, not in any factual sense, given that we know the migrant crime narrative is entirely false, as discussed.

And it's certainly not about women's safety. But it is about something. and we desperately need to understand what that something is in order to combat it. And what I think that is, is it's about wanting to belong desperately to something bigger. Let me read you this quote from Labour MP Clive Lewis in response to the protests because it reminded me again of what we repeatedly heard in our investigations on far-right radicalisation. He said, quote, for decades, we've hollowed out our national life. Land, labour and life are treated as commodities.

We've replaced collective experience with atomisation. We've watched Netflix, Disney Plus, Prime or Paramount, alone in algorithmic silos. Football used to be affordable and rooted in community. Now it's millionaires playing for the profitability of billionaires. The NHS, post office, the railways all chipped away, run down, sold off or centralised, leaving people feeling powerless and disconnected. There are many lessons, this is me now, okay, that was the end of the quote.

There are many lessons we all need to learn from this, and we need to learn fast. The right-wing media in particular has underestimated the force of radicalisation and freely profited from peddling fear-mongering, opening the floodgates to hate in our society. I'm glad the Times is fact-checking migrant crime now, but a couple of months ago, on Newswatch, we outed them for republishing a highly misleading study by a xenophobic think tank on exactly the same thing. two weeks ago we called them out for a front-page splash of Nigel Farage

complete with cutesy photo shoot and unchecked sweeping lies about immigration. Yeah, the right-wing media has to seriously look in the mirror. But I also call on the left to consider its approach to policing

other people's symbols of belonging, even when it's about national pride. And I say that as someone who really doesn't like patriotism, but is learning to understand that it's okay if other people do. As long as it's not racist or whitewashed, and it doesn't have to be. We all know good people who are patriotic. The thing is people need to feel like they are belonging to something. And in today's world, that's hard. I say this to the left, simply because

what we are doing is not succeeding to prevent fascism. And also because I have done research into what works and doesn't work. And as I said, there's a science to de-radicalization. We need to learn it now. The studio guest in Media Storm's far-right de-radicalization episode was a man called Nigel Brumage, a former neo-Nazi recruiter, now dedicated to pulling people out of the far-right's grip, using his first-hand understanding of what actually works. He told us about how his charity, exit hate UK, teaches people to reimagine patriotic symbols that they're attached to, as symbols not of exclusiveness and hate, but of inclusiveness and joy. Now, however you feel about this particular point,

Media Storm's ethic is to respect the expertise of lived experience. So listen to his perspective. The rest is up to you. We've worked with over 600 people now since exit's been going, and in only one case, have I ever heard one individual say that their experience in the far right was positive. many of these people getting involved are doing so because they have suffered sexual misuse and they've been abused.

You've got others who have suffered bereavement, domestic violence. You know, the list goes on and then often many of these people are looking for a community whereas they can not only belong, but they can be supported. And what we need to do is get people back into society. And, you know, one of the comments we talk about is many of those who get involved in any form of extremism, You know, they're not monsters.

In many cases, they are victims, and we have to look at that. And extremists do have a human face. You know what I mean? All of us are individuals, and we've got to look at the individual and not the extremist, because that's the way you destroy the ideology, myself and others. Many of the reasons we became, like, national socialists or Nazis, whichever term you want to use, is because everybody kept calling me a Nazi or a racist. You know, I'll join the far right to stop the IRA.

and terrorism. I wasn't a racist. You know, I didn't give a monkeys about anybody's religion or colour, but the more you kept called me a racist than a Nazi, eventually I just thought, do you know what, I'm going to take the label because it's going to stop the arguments. And the minute I said, well, yeah, actually, I'll support Hitler and I'm a Nazi. Nobody come back with me, anything. And I just thought, why didn't I do this years ago? Because it literally just stopped the left wing in its tracks, because they didn't have anything more abusive to call me. And I think it's really dangerous to use these terms because

you're pushing people to the next level. So I went from an anti-IRA activist who hated terrorism and extremism to becoming a racist, to then becoming a Nazi, not through an embrace of the ideology. It was because anti-racists and left-wing individuals kept calling me that. And I just thought, I'm going to embrace it now. Actually, no, I'm really glad that. you are bringing this all up because, you know, on Media Storm and particularly because, you know, we work with minority groups. Often the criticism tends to be leveled against right-wing media and actually the left-wing media and the left-wing political party culture as well is definitely culpable in the polarization of society that we're seeing. So it would be great to talk about

what the left could be doing better. And I've heard from, a lot of forms I've interviewed this idea that people feel excluded from the conversation or spoken down to. You know, a common theme was patriotism and people resented that patriotism was being or is being equated with racism or colonialism and that they weren't allowed to be proud to be British. Yeah, I think that when people talk about patriotism, we'll go out into the communities and talk about, well, actually, patriotism, real patriotism, is about place, not race. And it doesn't matter you know, where you come from, whether you were born in the UK or come from another country, you know, you can embrace things like St George because St George was the patron saint of,

not just England, but Palestine, Syria, Ethiopia. So if we do it properly, we can challenge the far right. You know, if you look back to 1939, if you were a patriot, you stood against the far right. You didn't like stand with it. You know, many, many servicemen come from lots of different ethnicities and religion. And if we are, you know, giving the far right the flag, then we're actually failing them on that. Calling all book lovers. The Toronto International Festival of Authors

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Your dad, your brother, your partner, your friends. It isn't just a men's issue. It's a human one. That's why Movember exists. change the face of men's health. From mental health and suicide prevention to prostate and testicular cancer research and early detection, Movember is tackling the biggest health issues facing men today. Join the movement and donate now at Movember.com. Welcome back to MediaStorm's Newswatch. I want to talk about the Charlie Kirk shooting.

Charlie Kirk was a far-right speaker and founder of Turning Point USA, an organisation that pushes conservative politics on high school, college and university campuses. His views included saying black people were better off in slavery before the 1940s. He called being gay an error. He didn't believe in empathy. He suggested trans people should be dealt with in the way we did in the 1950s and 60s. He said the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza. was a propaganda campaign, he was vehemently anti-abortion, and he argued that gun deaths are a

price worth paying to protect the Second Amendment. Charlie Kirk was fatally shot while addressing an audience on the campus of Utah Valley University last week. The suspect has been identified as Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old trade school student. Now, what I want to talk about is not to add to the seemingly never-ending discourse about so-called compassion and empathy and grief, not even to point out very obvious inconsistencies between the reaction from Republicans to Charlie Kirk's death and the reaction when a Democrat,

Minnesota state lawmaker Melissa Hortman, was shot and killed this summer. Trump actually very recently said that he was not familiar with the case of Melissa Hortman's death. So, you know, huge inconsistencies. But gun violence is the real issue here. And in many ways, Charlie Kirk is a casualty of the very violence that he advocated for. So in the days that followed Charlie Kirk's shooting, before a suspect was even ever identified,

Kirk's supporters and those on America's hard right spent a lot of time blaming the violent left. And actually, many of them declared all-out war on what they were calling the left or the violent left. But there was one false narrative that was thrown out that I want to talk about in a media storm context because it was then amplified by the media. The narrative that the shooting was in some way linked to the transgender community. Now this is not a new narrative in the US. Those on the far right have long been pushing a portrayal that school shootings in particular are always carried out by transgender people. An internal report shared online that a bullet casing found in connection with Kirk's killing was engraved with transgender ideology.

This was later found to be false. However, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and in the UK, the Telegraph, the Times and the Sun repeated the false report in their headlines and on their front pages, publishing a lie and putting trans people at risk. I mean, the Telegraph's headline was literally Charlie Kirk's killer ammunition engraved with pro-trans messages with those pesky single quotation marks we so regularly call out on Media Storm.

God, the transphobic aspects of our media are so trigger-happy that they would literally leap on the most bizarre piece of fake news to get their anti-trans clickbait of the day. Even the term transgender ideology, as we heard on Media Storm's episode with trans rights activist Charlie Craggs,

that term is so seditious. It's just an opportunity to casually like de-legitimize the existence of trans people. And you know what? This ties straight back to the predatory, migrant men narrative we were talking about earlier, that attempt to depict a certain vulnerable group as predatory in order to justify

what would otherwise be mindless hate. It's such a transferable narrative. Hate groups paint trans people as predatory all the time, especially predatory against kids. They used to do the same thing with gay people, And unfortunately, again, as we're seeing, it's hugely helped by the mainstream legacy media. And unfortunately, even when the bullet casing story about trans ideology was falsified, this wasn't the end of trying to link the shooting to the transgender community.

Listen to this from CNN. Well, some outlets are reporting that the suspect lived with a transgender partner. What is that accurate? It's looking at this part of his life as a possible motivation. Why? Would that be a motivation? Yes, definitely. And yes, I can confirm that. I know that has been reported and that the FBI has confirmed that as well, that the roommate was a romantic partner, a male transitioning to female. I can say that that he has been very cooperative. This partner has been incredibly cooperative, had no idea that this was happening. And why don't you cooperate and stop misgenital?

Yeah, I also noticed. And how is that relevant to the investigation when it comes to the motive? Are you learning that? Sure. Well, yeah, that's what we're trying to figure out right now. Again, it's, I mean, it's easy to draw conclusions from that. You said that the roommate is being very helpful. Has that individual explained to law enforcement what the mindset,

of the shooter was and whether or not it is connected to his ideology or his his situation as transitioning. Oh, this is so hateful. I'm not sure about that piece right now, Dana. Okay, so we're not sure of that the fact that... We're not sure if this is remotely relevant to the investigation, but I'm still asking you my fourth question. It's relevant to the motive of the murder based on the investigation. Well, sure. Again, all of these things are, we're trying to figure it out.

I know everybody wants to know exactly why and point the finger, and I totally get that. I do too. Also, the like stuttering about trying to describe this person as if there's some new age robot or something. This presenter may as well just be plainly asking, and how can we pin this on trans people? Like, give me something, you know? This is so weird. Since when would we like start publishing details about the roommate when that roommate is someone with no criminal, I'm assuming no criminal conviction? Since when would we determine that that was relevant? This is just an opportunity to trans bash on live news.

Exactly that. And unfortunately, it wasn't just CNN. Headlines about the Charlie Kirk suspect's trans roommate were found on Sky News, The Times, the Evening Standard, the Sun, and once again our friends at the Telegraph, whose recent article bore the headline Charlie Kirk's suspect was in romantic relationship with his transgender roommate, a dehumanising headline that once again links the small transgender community with gun violence.

And it's not news. It's not news. I don't care who, like, oh my God, they were fucking their roommate. Aren't we all? Why did I do a journalism degree? Like, if these papers can just publish something that's completely irrelevant and maybe even untrue in a lot of cases.

I completely understand your reaction and your frustration because when I first saw the headlines, I mean, my jaw was on the floor. It's not journalism. It's not journalism. It's far-right propaganda. And listen, at Media Storm, we give space to the voices of the people from these communities.

So I wanted to play you a clip from Jamie Windust, a writer and creator who is non-binary. And this is how Jamie reacted to that telegraph headline, Charlie Kirk's suspect was in romantic. relationship with his transgender roommate. What other reason would you have to publish this article if you were not trying to in some way dehumanise, vilify a group in society, trans people, and blame them in some absolutely apparent way for what happened?

How can he tell me that headlines like this don't do that? Because that's exactly what they're doing by associating Tyler's. connection with trans people, alluding to it as a motivation, perhaps, or an insight into his motivation. The media, this country, politicians in both the UK and the US, specifically, there is a targeted malicious attack of trying to associate anything that could go wrong with society, anything that could be blamed. It's on marginalised people. In no world, does Tyler Robinson's alleged relationship with a transgender person mean that he is a killer for that reason.

What are they trying to say? That everyone who's in a relationship with a trans person is therefore an assassin, like, what are you talking about? How do these things get so far that we have these conversations being peddled? Yet, all of the statistics point away from what these headlines are trying to assume. Time for eyes on Palestine.

On Tuesday, a United Nations commission of inquiry ruled that what Israel is doing in Gaza meets the legal definition of genocide. So why is most of the media not using this term? The report concludes that Israeli authorities and forces have committed four of the five acts of genocide, as defined under the 1948 Genocide Convention. It concludes they are therefore committing a genocide, against Palestinians in Gaza. These four acts include killing members of a group, in particular targeting civilians.

Now Israel's own military data indicates that 83% of people killed by Israeli forces since October 7, 2022, are civilians. This was recently revealed in an investigation by The Guardian and Plus 972 magazine. The second criteria, causing them serious bodily and mental harm, which we have seen with the continual forced displacement of people in Gaza and the severe mistreatment of Palestinian detainees.

The third criteria is deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to destroy the group. Israel has destroyed infrastructure and agricultural land, essential to Palestinian life. Aid workers report that with the trickle of AIDS now coming in, fruits with pips and seeds have been confiscated. They believe this is because Israel doesn't want Palestinians to be able to grow their own food in Gaza again. Now the final criteria listed is acting to prevent births. Through the December 2020, attack on Gaza's largest fertility clinic, reportedly destroying around 4,000 embryos and 1,000 sperm samples and unfurtilized eggs. It is on this basis, the report says genocidal intent is, quote, the only reasonable inference.

This is just embarrassing for the UK because last week, David Lamy, who was foreign secretary, announced that the government has not concluded Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. This now just looks like denialism. Now, of course, Israel's foreign ministry says it categorically rejects the report, It denounces it as, quote, distorted and false. And it calls the three experts on the commission Hamas proxies. It's worth saying here, the chair of the panel was also the president of the tribunal on Rwanda's genocide back in the 90s. So she's been assessing genocide since before Hamas even came to power in Gaza.

I guess the media storm question is, if the UN panel can come to this conclusion, why has most of the media been? unable to. Exactly, because the UN report cites publicly available information and evidence, right? It's actions committed by Israeli forces and statements made by Israeli leaders. Many of these leaders have made openly genocidal statements, but those have been excluded from Western media coverage of the genocide, who instead give voice to the watered-down statements of Western-trained Israeli spokespeople and ambassadors. For example, the report quotes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowing to inflict, quote, mighty vengeance on all of the places where Hamas is deployed. He calls Gaza City a wicked city. We will turn them into rubble. That is what we

are witnessing today in Gaza City. Netanyahu pledged to treat the entire city as a target for vengeance and currently he is doing so. This is genocidal. But look, Netanyahu said that nearly two years ago. The evidence is not recent. And all of this evidence is stuff that happened for the public to see, especially for the media to see as they've been reporting on it. So why is our legacy Western media not calling it a genocide? I have seen at least one positive and powerful change since the ruling. The Guardian published an editorial, in other words, an opinion piece that represents the paper as a whole, saying the UK government must stop hiding behind legal fictions and recognise the reality. So they are accepting the genocide definition. That is definitely

something and I really hope more outlets will follow. But papers did not have to wait for reviews like this when reviewing the evidence is also their job, right? For example, my other news organization, Middle East Eye, changed its language guide, mandating that we use the word genocide for what's happening in Gaza. It did so over a month ago. Before then, we were using it with quotation marks and ascribing it to experts. I just want to read what my editor-in-chief said when he emailed everyone about this decision. He said, there are various reasons for rethinking the tags we use to describe what Israel is doing to Gaza and the West Bank. There is unanimity among experts, some of them renowned experts on the whole.

Holocaust that what Israel is doing in Gaza is genocide. The threshold includes killing members of the group, causing serious bodily harm and measures calculated to bring about the destruction of the group. He went on. A legally respected determination of genocide, which can only be made by a court such as the International Court of Justice, could take years to be issued. So if leaders, human rights groups, scholars and UN experts have come up with their own judgments, so should. we. As a news organization, we do not have the luxury of waiting for a consensus. If not now, when? And so, David Hurst, my editor-in-chief, told all of his journalists, I think there is no need to place the word genocide in inverted commas. Genocide is a process, not a single

event. The combination of statements, policies, and on-the-ground actions provide substantial evidence that genocide is being carried out. For the topic page, we will now be going with Israel's genocide in Gaza. Damn. So news organizations, governments and every single one of us need to work with the evidence available to us, not wait years for a retrospective ruling on something being live streamed before our eyes. The duty to prevent genocide is already in place. It's up to us not to wait until it's too late. Thank you for listening.

Next week, we'll be bringing you an interview with the founder of Cheer Up Love, the platform dedicated to ending gender-based violence, discrimination and bias through education, art and storytelling. Plus, you'll hear about a new campaign to call out misogyny in the media. If you want to support MediaStorm, you can do so on Patreon for less than a cup of coffee a month. The link is in the show notes and a special shout-out to everyone in our Patreon community already. We appreciate you so much. And if you enjoyed this episode, please send it to someone. Word of mouth is still the best way to grow a podcast, so please do tell your friends.

And obviously, leave us a five-star rating and a review. You can follow us on social media at Matilda Mao, at Helena Wadia, and follow the show via at MediaStorm Pod. Media Storm is an award-winning podcast produced by Helena Waddea and Matilda Mallinson. The music is by Samfire.