 Five years ago, a Labour MP was attacked and murdered by a neo-Nazi. However, while liberal and left-wing politicians and journalists continue to receive death threats, few would argue that our political class has come to terms with the dangers posed by the far right in Britain. This week we had a reminder of the far right's modus operando when they harassed a BBC journalist. The incident took place on Monday as Boris Johnson announced that England's planned escape from coronavirus restrictions would be delayed until July the 19th. At the time of that announcement, a group of anti-lockdown protesters appeared outside Downing Street, Newsnight's political editor Nick Watt was walking through the area, and this is what happened. That was really, really unpleasant to watch, like really, really frightening behaviour, getting right in his face. I mean, they were putting their hands on him. I mean, that was that looked quite scary and you saw him run away. I mean, a really horrible thing to see done to a journalist. Whatever you think about someone's journalism, that's a terrible thing to do to them in the street. Now that footage was from an anti-lockdown YouTube channel called ResistanceGB. They branded Nick Watt as BBC's stew, so they were obviously sharing that in a sort of supportive manner. They're journalists who endorse attacking journalists essentially. The most striking thing from that video, other than the pure aggression from those protesters, I think, was the inaction of the police. They didn't seem to do anything at all about what was going on. Now we're going to discuss that more in one moment. First of all, let's go to a couple of reactions. The BBC director general Tim Davy put out this statement. The safety of journalists is fundamental to any democracy. They must be able to report unhindered, free from abuse. There is absolutely no justification for any journalist to be treated in this way. The Prime Minister, for his part, described the incident as disgraceful. The Home Secretary, Priti Patel, said it was appalling and Labour's Shadow Culture Secretary Joe Stevens said it was absolutely unacceptable. Now that's all to be expected. The reaction from the Metropolitan Police was a little bit more worrying though, as I say, as you saw from that clip. They seem to stand by while Nick Watt was being harassed. This is in a context where we know that protesters like that, the far right, can be very, very frightening. The police should be worried about what was going on there. They didn't appear to do anything at all. Now the Guardian has a write-up of their response. The Met drew further criticism after initially saying officers were not in the immediate vicinity of the incident, a statement which it later said had been drafted after viewing a 45-second clip which had circulated online. On the basis of a longer clip, the force that it was clear the incident began on Whitehall where officers were present. The behaviour shown in the video is unacceptable. Members of the public of any profession have the right to go about their day without being subjected to verbal harassment or actions that put them in fear for their safety, said the force. The Met went on to say they had identified and were interviewing individuals from the video and finished by saying, we acknowledge the concerns that have been raised about the police response during this incident. We take those concerns seriously and we'll be reviewing our actions with a view to improving the policing of events for all Londoners. These statements were made on the day that Daniel Morgan Murder Inquiry found the Met to be institutionally corrupt and their big reason for finding that is they're saying the police were fairly willing to lie or to not investigate things properly if it would embarrass them. Now seeing that video where you've got the police standing by while someone's being harassed and then immediately after the police say, oh the police went in the vicinity, not much has changed. Let's say those criticisms which were made of the police still stand. 57 year old Martin Hochridge from Hartfordshire, he's been charged with a public order offence on Facebook. He posted, I stand by my actions. It is unacceptable that the BBC lies and spreads fear among the nation. The propaganda pushed out by this man and the insidious organisation he works for. Nicholas Watt is a traitor cast from the same mould as Lord Haw-Haw. Lord Haw-Haw was the last person in the UK to ever be executed for treason. His real name was William Joyce. He broadcast Nazi propaganda to the UK from Germany during the Second World War. So I mean, you can see the grim significance of making that particular comparison, someone who was executed for treason. This is someone who's been charged for public order offences. Hochridge also says he thinks Nick Watt was hoping to be harassed. So he said, never expect the truth from the BBC and did the weasel engineer that incident by milling around in a BBC lanyard in a crowd bearing the media is the virus placards, a movement that has and is currently protesting at the BBC. I think he was hoping for that reaction. I mean, it goes about saying, I don't need to say that's a ridiculous thing to say a journalist hanging out in Westminster walking between Whitehall and BBC offices. That's not someone milling around waiting to be harassed. I doubt any journalist mill around waiting to be harassed in such a manner. But I find I think the the confidence this person feels expressing these kinds of attitudes publicly to be pretty chilling in a way, I suppose. There is obviously an incredibly worrying trend here of deeply embedded conspiracy theories and their conspiracy theories that seem to sort of spread very quickly, but very quietly, very underground. They trot along underground until suddenly they kind of burst onto our screens in these kind of coordinated, what often looks like coordinated or planned acts of violence. So I'm thinking about, you know, pizza gates and, you know, the attempted insurrection in the US earlier this year. What I do know is that this is somewhat bolstered, you know, we can kind of blame fringe kind of, you know, oh, like there's a lot of, I think there's a lot of reductivism that happens where it's like, oh, it's just because of social media. And it's like, well, you know, that probably changes the temporality in the way in which, you know, the particular iteration of the far right and the particular way that the far right is gaining power now, you know, the far right predates the internet, like the far the far right predates social media. So we can't just kind of blame it on that. And not to mention as well that a lot of this thinking is kind of bolstered by, you know, legitimized news outlets, like, you know, talk radio, like GB news, you know, we've had many like conversations on Tiskey about how, you know, the sort of the fermenting of doubt in sort of like the basic science of the pandemic and the efficacy of lockdowns by people like Julia Hartley Brewer, you know, the fact that Dan Wooden used his first monologue on GB news to sort of like ferment this real distrust against, I think he used the term doomsday scientists and public health officials who are addicted to power and who have taken control. Think about the front page of the Daily Mail when, you know, Theresa May announced that snap election and it called on her to crush the saboteurs, you know, this kind of language of things like traitors, which you know, we saw in that video, you know, that is very integral to kind of far right lexicon in the murder of the when the murderer of Joe Cox was turned up to trial. The only thing that he actually said, and when he was asked what his name was, was he said that he his name was death to traitors, freedom for Britain or something, something along those lines. And, you know, Joe Cox's traitorness was seen was perceived through the lens that, you know, she was unreasonably sympathetic towards refugees. And I think that so I think, you know, yes, it is this kind of like, in many ways feels like a fringe thing, and that is happening in the dark. But we also have to wonder, you know, about where the kind of like, where a lot of money is being invested in, you know, really irresponsible news media coverage in quite a, you know, in the middle of the day, you know, it's not happening underground, it's happening, you know, with a big weight of capital and, well, kind of low budget production, to be honest. But, you know, this is the scary thing is that it kind of creates this sort of on this sort of power base, this sort of silent power base, which then lays the groundwork for a very dangerous figure, you know, like, like a Trump or an Orban, to kind of rise to power as the sort of alleged truth teller in that context when, you know, they are obviously anything but really horrible seeing people shout traitors at people in the street on the five year anniversary of the killing of Joe Cox, really horrible to see.