Gary Lineker has had quite the week. Let’s deal first with the claims that the much-loved commentator should be sacked because, as his critics say, he has broken BBC impartiality rules and angered licence-fee payers because he expressed his views on political matters. Arguments in his defence are clear to me — it’s his Twitter account, he does not report on politics for the Beeb, and he is also a freelancer, not staff. He has stretched BBC guidance but I’m sure the public can, like me, exercise a brain cell or two and work out that his opinions are not those of the BBC. As it stands, it looks like the BBC agrees with me.
Secondly, what of his reference to the language of the Government around illegal asylum seekers being like that of 1930s Germany? It is unwise to refer to Nazi Germany and the horrors there lightly, but the atrocious crimes of Nazi Germany did not start in concentration camps. The roots of their crimes lay in the dehumanisation of vulnerable or minority groups and blaming them cruelly for societal problems. We are in no way near the extreme economic conditions of Weimar Germany nor does the language match. But Lineker’s point was around dehumanising vulnerable groups for political gain.
