What happened to Gary Lineker? For years he was football’s Mr Nice Guy. To some he was the Steve Davis of footie: a tad dull but a good egg. Now he’s been let go by the BBC after sharing an Instagram post that seemed to compare Jews to rats. That’s one hell of a tumble.
I have seen many good men lost to the religion of centrism
My view? He was radicalised online. We often hear about kids being led astray by digital fruitcakes like Andrew Tate. Now we need to talk about the full-grown adults whose minds are turned to mush by drivel on the internet. In Lineker’s case it wasn’t the Tate-like promise of fast cars and sexy women that drove him crazy – it was the fame and glory he won from an even freakier online subculture: toxic centrism.
Lineker has been locking horns with his bosses at the Beeb for years. His ceaseless tweeting of every milquetoast opinion of the dullard classes – Brexit stinks, Tories are bad, Israel is evil – rubbed his bosses up the wrong way. Even though they likely agree with all of it. But he really went too far with his reposting of an Instagram rant about Zionism illustrated with a rat.
What was he thinking? He says he wasn’t thinking. He pleaded ignorance. I thought everyone knew that one of the most rancid acts of the Nazi regime was to liken Jews to rats. ‘When the vermin are dead, the German oak will flourish once more’, said the lowlifes of Der Stürmer. Given his interest in things that are reminiscent of the 1930s, Lineker’s blindspot on ‘Jew rat’ racism is odd indeed.
In his parting message today, he says he ‘recognises the error and upset that I caused’. That’s good. But what’s striking is that leftists are still defending him. They’re saying he was given the heave-ho for opposing ‘Israel’s genocide’ [sic]. That’s a lie. He was let go for reposting a Zio-rat. The left is playing a deadly game when it suggests that sharing fascist-like caricatures of Jews is legitimate criticism of ‘Israel’s genocide’ – they’re giving a licence to extremists everywhere to call Zionists vermin.
The hypocrisy is mindblowing. There’s no way the left would defend a public figure who had shared a post comparing black people to monkeys. Indeed, they cheered the Beeb’s sacking of Danny Baker in 2019 when, following the birth of Harry and Meghan’s first child, he posted an image of a well-dressed couple holding a chimpanzee’s hand with the caption: ‘Royal baby leaves hospital.’
But sharing a post that likens Zionists to rodents? Knock yourself out. That the normally cancel-happy left is slamming the Beeb for dumping Lineker confirms how chillingly blasé they are about commentary that hurts Jews. These are the kind of people who’ll gleefully blacklist a feminist who says you can’t have a penis and be a lesbian, and yet they’ll man the barricades for the right to suggest Jewish nationhood is a verminous ideology.
As Lineker seeks to make amends for his moral error, these people expose their moral rot. It’s undeniable now: Jews enjoy none of the protections of political correctness that the left ostentatiously extends to every other minority group. Speak ill of Islam and they’ll damn you as a bigot; share a post comparing Jews to rodents and they’ll defend you. The socialism of fools is back.
There’s a tragic element to Lineker’s moral decline. He went from being an inoffensive and pretty good sports commentator to being such a permanently online opinion-spouter that he ended up unwittingly sharing a Zionist rat. His fate should serve as a warning to everyone to resist the false charms of online cults.
I have seen many good men lost to the religion of centrism. One minute they’re normal middle-class blokes who listen to Keane and enjoy a pint or two of craft beer of a Saturday afternoon, the next they’re marching in the streets against Brexit and saying insane things like: ‘Rory Stewart was just too good for politics.’
It was Brexit that melted their brains. They became convinced of their own moral perfection in contrast with the moral fallibility of the dumb gammon who voted Leave. Their cult grew, signing up an army of depressed liberals horrified by Brexit Britain and its low-information inhabitants. Toxic centrism was born.
Lineker became their god. They faithfully retweeted his every utterance so that the eyes of the dim might be prised open to Remoaner reason. It seems he became so intoxicated by the fumes from all this digital fawning that he was even willing to sacrifice his career. Continued membership of the group trumped his responsibilities to the outer world: classic cult behaviour.
He became ‘an egotist who mistook celebrity for moral authority’, says the Campaign Against Antisemitism. Ouch. And not wrong. Keir Starmer wants to show Adolescence in schools to warn kids of the dangers of online radicalisation. Scrap that, Keir – instead show Lineker’s downward spiral to fiftysomething men as a warning of what can happen when you give up everything to become a professional centrist irritant.
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