Grimes and Starkey Now Feeling Heat for Racist Comments in Slavery Video

This is a kind of update to my last post. This followed a great piece from Zelo Street reporting that Darren Grimes, another former inmate of the Paul Staines massive, and the TV historian Dr David Starkey had appeared in a video in which Starkey had definitely made a racist comment about Blacks. The video had been about Black Lives Matter supposedly aiming to delegitimise British history. Grimes and Starkey had been agreed that the British empire had been a good thing. Grimes had also asked the A.J.P. Taylor of TV programmes about the Tudors if slavery was a genocide. It’s a reasonable question, as although the enslavement of Africans by Europeans wasn’t intended to exterminate them, it led to the devastation and abandonment of whole communities due to slave raiding. Starkey denied that it was a genocide, because of the subsequent increase in the Black population, which he expressed in very racist terms. He said it wasn’t, because ‘otherwise there wouldn’t be so many damn Blacks in Britain and Africa, would there?’ (my emphasis). This naturally upset many people, and had led to strong criticism of both of them. Grimes should have stopped Starkey making any such comment, but instead sat there nodding in agreement at what his hero said. So one of the peeps on Twitter put up a video of him nodding along to one of Hitler’s speeches.

In my piece about this sordid episode, I quoted Zelo Street’s conclusion that this should effectively end both Starkey’s and Grimes’ careers. But I felt that it wouldn’t harm them at all. Starkey appeared to me to be far too established as a popular historian, while for some reason it doesn’t seem to matter what they do, Grimes and the other members and former members of Guido Fawkes are still invited on TV programmes and treated as regular journalists.

But events this morning show I was wrong. Starkey and Grimes are both feeling the public’s disapproval, and it does threaten to harm their careers. 

Zelo Street has put up another video discussing the effects of Grimes’ video. Starkey has resigned from his position at the Mary Rose Museum, which said that it was appalled at his conduct. Dan Snow, another presenter of TV history programmes, most of which have been about the two World Wars, has said that his channel, History Hit, has never made any original programmes with Starkey. He appears in one programme, which the channel has on license from a third party, and which they have now taken down. And next week Cambridge University’s Fitzwilliam College will review Starkey’s honorary fellowship.

As for Grimes, he has issued a long, kind-of apology for his failure to stop or correct Starkey’s comments. He’s tweeted the following:

“Hand on heart, I wasn’t engaged enough in this interview as I should’ve been. It goes without saying that Reasoned UK does not support or condone Dr David Starkey’s words … I am very new to being the interviewer rather than the interviewee and I should have robustly questioned Dr Starkey about his comments”.

“However, whether it’s on the BBC, ITV, Sky News or on YouTube, no interviewer is responsible for the views expressed by their guests”.

This last remark isn’t entirely correct. Zelo Street also comments that Grimes could have cut Starkey’s offensive remark, and asked him to rephrase it. He didn’t. Grimes fouled up.

He then goes on to give a lame excuse for regarding Starkey as a hero. It was because he really appreciated Starkey’s history programmes when he was growing up, because he had gone to a ‘crap state school which did little in the way of history’. This was untrue. Others, like James Wilson pointed out that his old school had been rated ‘good’ by Ofsted, and its curriculum ‘excellent’ while he was there. Michael Dunn had also gone to the same school, Tanfield, and had made a career in history. He said “I went to the same school, same teachers, I’ve made a career out of my history education, have a degree in history and work in a museum with a collection of national significance, he’s lying again”.

And Miffy Buckley added further that the episode reflected very badly on the current state of the media:  “The fact that such a frankly stupid and out-of-his-depth ninny like Darren Grimes can segue from failed trainee hairdresser to pundit on prime time Sky News programming must surely tell us something about the state of our media, and of our political & civil discourse”.

The Street concurred, and concluded:

‘Broadcasters keep inviting them on their shows, and they keep showing the world the true extent of their expertise – or lack of it. Grimes and Starkey should not be the only ones repenting at leisure this morning. Hello all you gullible media bookers.’

Absolutely. It has surprised me that they are facing criticism and censure for Starkey’s comments. I didn’t think this would happen. I’m not sure it will result in either disappearing from our screens for good. The broadcasters are desperate to find a popular voice for right-wing politics, which means that they have valued personality and opinion over informed content and the bounds of decent speech. It’s why Hatie Katie Hopkins was given a platform by so many newspapers and websites before she proved too toxic even for the Scum and the Heil. Grimes may yet escape her fate, but even if he doesn’t, it’s likely the media will just find another ignorant loudmouth from the extreme right to replace him.

And that also shows how grotty our national media really is.

See also: https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/07/darren-grimes-repents-at-leisure.html

 

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Tags: 'Guido Fawkes', 'Reasoned', Adolf Hitler, BBC, Blacks, Cambridge University, Dan Snow, Darren Grimes, David Starkey, Fitzwilliam College, Genocide, History Hit, ITV, Katie Hopkins, Mary Rose Museum, Michael Dunn, Miffy Buckley, Museums, Paul Staines, racism, Schools, Sky News, Slave Trade, The Daily Mail, The Sun, Tudors, World War I, World War II, Youtube, Zelo Street