Stuart Cartland on Conservative populism and anti-Woke TV: how the launch of GB News represents updated versions of familiar, tired tropes.

GB News represents an updated version or equivalent to the familiar and well-worn tropes of anti-political correctness of previous years. The political right dominates British media outlets and the political terrain within England in particular, and GB News symbolises the massive right-wing anti-Woke backlash that we have witnessed in recent times, particularly since the Black Lives Matter movement.

It has long been a social and political theme of the right to attack by projecting a sense of being under attack, and thereby reassert dominant ruling-class hegemony. Familiar themes (or rather fantasies) and tropes are wheeled out such as ‘common sense’ and the ‘ordinary person on the street’, which are positioned as being under attack from an aggressive sense of moral modern political correctness and inclusivity. It is also implied that a particular way of national life or culture is somehow under attack, or at risk of being cancelled and erased.

Cancel Enid Blyton!

Turn on GB News and many things might grab your attention, however as with all right-wing media outlets hyperbolic claims or headlines are their stock-in-trade in terms of gaining attention and firing up the audience. On my very first glance I was not disappointed. Enid Blyton, a popular twentieth century children’s writer and paragon of British cultural dominance was headlined: ‘Enid Blyton to be cancelled’.

Headlines for stories such as ‘Enid Blyton to be cancelled’ represent two crucial elements of conservative right-wing populism, nostalgia and a sense of being under attack. Increasingly over recent years (but a common theme of the political right for a long time) there is a sense of social and cultural decay and a pining for times of past glory or ‘the good old days’.

Social or cultural elements that appeal to an older generation in terms of childhood are said to be under attack by an updated P.C police. This acts to enrage but also create a myth of how things were better back then, when you could say what you liked or thought, where everyone was white and spoke English. This also has wider links and connotations to a sense of national glory, dominance and empire. These are all ideologically created myths, but are presented as reality, as truth.

The ‘Cancel Enid Blyton’ myth shows how ruling-class cultural hegemony works. Even according to English Heritage her work is racist and xenophobic. But although what she represents has no place in twenty-first century British society, GB News – just like all other right-wing commentators and mouthpieces – uses these ideological myths to make sense of the present, to deny the racism, sexism and other catastrophic problems we face such as massive social and economic inequality and environmental disaster. The suggestion is that these problems are somehow being foisted upon us, not that we have a responsibility to tackle them. Outlets like GB News promote denial of these fundamental challenges, and also uses them as a tool to prove how the mythical ordinary person of the street and common sense are under attack, and that Great British culture and history is at risk of being cancelled. The message is that luckily for you ,GB News is here to speak up and resist this outrage.

Within this very purposeful ideological re-organisation and over-simplification of the world, there is also the veneer of post-Brexit triumphalism alongside the paradox of a failure of Brexit promises and reality. Again, it is suggested that forces in the modern world have undermined Brexit, but also that Brexit represents a triumph of common sense and a rejection of the forces of modernism.

GB News symbolises an approach to news which is very Farage-esque (indeed, he was one of the first invited guests on the channel), a two-fingers-up to those politicians and a wider society which is pandering to Woke inclusivity. It follows the oft-repeated claims of left-wing bias in the media and particularly against the BBC, which are never substantiated with evidence. It crucially reinforces the familiar and well-worn narrative of left-wing bias, and a society that is dominated by a cosmopolitan, gay, Muslim, black, disabled, female agenda.

GB News has deliberately and proudly positioned and labelled itself as being anti-Woke. Its opening days were beset by continual technical problems and incompetence, yet on its opening day it gained more viewers than BBC News or Sky News. This symbolism can’t be overlooked, it represents an ideologically motivated attempt to dominate public opinion with reactionary, anti-Woke themes. These themes have also been articulated by a host of senior Conservative politicians, and rest on a pernicious mixture of utter incompetence and familiar, tired tropes powered by fantasy and blame.