Bartholomew's Notes

In the Radio Times, Stephen Graham talks about writing the much-discussed Netflix television drama Adolescence:

“Where it came from, for me,” explains Graham, who co-created and wrote Adolescence with Jack Thorne (The Virtues, Toxic Town), “is there was an incident in Liverpool, a young girl, and she was stabbed to death by a young boy. I just thought, why?

“Then there was another young girl in south London who was stabbed to death at a bus stop. And there was this thing up North, where that young girl Brianna Ghey was lured into the park by two teenagers, and they stabbed her. I just thought, what’s going on? What is this that’s happening?”

Graham here alludes to the killing of Ava White by the unnamed “Boy A” in Liverpool in 2022, and to the killing of Elianne Andam by Hassan Sentamu in Croydon in 2023. In both cases, an altercation with a girl in a public place escalated to the girl being murdered by a boy. The Brianna Ghey case involved a different dynamic, in which a boy and a girl in a Leopold and Loeb-type relationship pre-planned the murder of a transgirl as a way to satisfy sadistic impulses. Clearly, Graham was speaking very generally about some high-profile cases of youth knife crime in which the victim was not targeted as a boy (in GQ, Graham makes a distinction with “gang-on-gang violence”, although that shouldn’t be assumed as the context when the victim of a gang member is a teenage boy).

Graham’s reference to south London got picked up by Surrey Live, which published the headline “Netflix’s Adolescence inspired by true story of Croydon girl’s horrific murder”. This overstated Graham’s comment, giving the false impression that Adolescence was an adaptation of the Sentamu case. Bad actors on social media seized their chance: Sentamu was black, yet the killer in Adolescence is white. Was the drama therefore not an attempt to obscure black crime while vilifying the white working-class? (1) The false complaint that the show “race swapped the actual killer” was amplified in particular by Ian Miles Cheong, even though his assertion was made incoherent by his reference to “real life cases” in the plural (2).

Cheong also complained that the protagonist was portrayed as having been “radicalized online by the red pill movement”. Graham’s co-author Jack Thorne has discussed this in an article published in the Guardian:

At first, we didn’t know why Jamie, the perpetrator of the attack, did it. We knew he wasn’t a product of abuse or parental trauma. But we couldn’t figure out a motive. Then someone I work with, Mariella Johnson, said: “I think you should look into ‘incel’ culture.”

I expected to be confronted by anger and aggression; what I didn’t expect was to quickly grasp the attraction of the so-called “manosphere”. I knew almost immediately that if I was an isolated kid, I would find answers as to why I felt a bit lost. One of the central ideas – that 80% of women are attracted to 20% of men – would have made adolescent me sit up and, frankly, nod. The path then becomes: what do you do to upset that equation? How do you manipulate and harm in order to reset a female-dominated world that works against you? If you believe one part of the logic, the other half becomes conducive.

This, then, provides the context for the drama, rather than the specifics of the three cases cited by Graham.

Although not mentioned in Thorne’s article, the drama includes a passing reference to Andrew Tate, who has complained in a statement to Newsweek about being linked to the story. Some online comments about Tate were gathered by GB News under the headline “Andrew Tate fans flood Netflix Adolescence with backlash as they claim influencer is victim of ‘woke agenda'”; however, their round-up ignores aspects of this “backlash” aimed at Thorne in particular personally. On Newsnight, he noted that some online posters are falsely claiming that he is Jewish, or making comments about this appearance – it is claimed that he objects to masculinity due to being slightly built (something that can hardly be said of Stephen Graham).

Notes

1. Both authors of the drama are from working-class backgrounds. Graham refers to class in his Radio Times interview:

“I wanted him to be a kid from a working-class background whose parents were hard-working. You know, his mum wasn’t an alcoholic, his dad wasn’t violent, and he hadn’t been molested by his uncle. I didn’t want there to be a reason we can go, ‘Oh, well, we blame it on this.’ I think we’re all accountable in some way. We just wanted to throw it out there, ask the question why, and see where it lands. And if it can create debate within living rooms with people watching it with their families, our objective is completed.”

2. Cheong refers to “the Southport murderer” as one such case, even though the authors haven’t mentioned Southport or Axel Rudakubana anywhere (as far as I know). However, the parents of one of the children who survived being stabbed multiple times by Rudakubana recently referred to the drama in a statement that was read out in the House of Commons by Paul Foster MP:

“…We must support parents, caregivers and schools better, not only in how they identify and support young people who may be at risk to themselves or others—we can all agree that these pathways need overhauls, and the Southport inquiry will serve this purpose—but, before that, working with all children, establishing the fundamentals of healthy relationships, friendships, and girls and boys being equal.

Our young people must be exposed to counter-messaging from what they may be consuming online, or at home. The work required is vast and complex but the long-term reduction in knife crime will only be seen if we go back to the start and raise our children better.

In the context of violence towards women and girls, current topics are important. Netflix’s show ‘Adolescence’ has opened a conversation about our children’s exposure to harmful messaging and themes about women and girls. We are grateful for the coverage happening this week, which is further highlighting the terrifying impact of Andrew Tate and others on vulnerable young boys.”

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(Updated post after more sources became available)

From the New York Post:

New York Post columnist Douglas Murray won a libel claim Tuesday over an article that falsely accused him of “supporting violent racist attacks” during anti-immigration protests in the UK last year.

Murray — a conservative author, journalist and commentator — clinched the victory against the Guardian Media Group over an Aug. 11, 2024 column by Kenan Malik in The Observer which mistakenly attributed Murray’s comments from months prior to the widespread unrest surrounding immigration in the UK last summer, Murray announced on X Tuesday.

In Malik’s piece, he used Murray’s interview with former Deputy Australian Prime Minister John Anderson about Israel and Islam — from six months earlier — claiming that Murray made the comments about migrants during the UK’s protests that erupted after the stabbing of three young girls.

Similar coverage of the outcome has appeared in the Spectator and the Jewish Chronicle. However, none of the reports explain why Malik’s mistake occurred, despite a detail on this point appearing in the joint statement that was read out in court as part of the settlement. According to Murray’s legal representative:

8. On 6 August 2024, in the immediate aftermath of the riots, an edited version of the interview was, for a short period, uploaded on Mr Anderson’s website and YouTube, which gave the misleading impression that Mr Murray was encouraging the riots.

This video has been removed, and Anderson has also deleted a post on Twitter/X that referred to it. However, it can still be accessed via the Internet Archive. Titled ” ‘They’ve Lost Control Of The Streets’ | Douglas Murray on Illegal Immigration’, it begins with Murray in full flow:

But clearly they’ve lost control of the streets. Now, is it time to send in the army? At some point probably yes, but if the Army will not be sent in then the public will have to go in and the public will have to sort this out themselves and it’ll be very very brutal. it’ll be very brutal.

I don’t want them to live here. I don’t want them here. They came under false pretenses, many of them came illegally and continue to come illegally and we don’t want them here and I’m perfectly willing to say that because it needs to be said…

Although presented as a seamless discourse, these two statements are disparate extracts taken from the full version, which was uploaded as “Israel, Immigration & Islam | Douglas Murray” on 8 November 2023 and which can still be seen here. In the full version, the “But clearly…” statement is at 01:00:19, whereas “I don’t want them to live here” was from earlier, at 00:24:28. Later on in the short video Murray says

…They have defaced and defiled all of our holy places and I think I know that the British soul is awakening and stirring with rage at what these people are doing.

In the full video from 2023, this is at 01:00:45.

The editing of the short video meant that the original context was missing. By “lost control of the streets”, Murray was actually referring to the police allowing “Muslim groups, Palestinian groups, pro-Hamas groups” to hold marches; his comment about the “rage” of the “British soul” refers to his prediction that the protestors “will again defile the Cenotaph and the statues of our dead and our war leaders” during a planned protest on Saturday 11 November 2023 (1).

So why did Anderson upload his “edited version” when he did? After a week during which rioters had been attacking mosques and hotels hosting migrants, he apparently thought it would be a good idea to promote Murray referring to “loss of control of the streets” and to the British soul “awakening and stirring with rage”. Did he think it was pertinent to the situation? If Murray is angry with Anderson’s “misleading impression” he’s not saying so publicly, despite crowing about winning what he calls a “major libel claim” over the Guardian Media Group.

Malik’s error was corrected and acknowledged when his article went online, as was noted by Murray on Twitter/X at the time:

Dear @kenanmalik . I see your own newspaper had to correct your column because of your sloppiness. They had to correct that the interview you refer to was from last October, not recent weeks. What you all failed to realize was that I was referring to Hamas leaders in Britain. Sloppy and bigoted of you as usual.

However, despite the importance attached to a context of “Hamas leaders” here, this particular complaint does not not appear in the joint statement. Here’s the context from the full video:

[00:24:17] We have thousands, tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of people in the UK who have no love at all for the UK but yet live here. I don’t want them to live here. I don’t want them here… [00:25:33] We stripped citizenship from Isis members… we need to start doing the same thing with Hamas we have Hamas leaders in the UK, Hamas members in the UK.

The “probably hundreds of thousands of people” that he doesn’t want here is plainly a larger set than “Hamas leaders”.

A a couple of week after Malik’s column was published, Murray wrote a piece for the Spectator in which he complained about the police investigation into Bernie Spofforth (discussed by me here). He contrasted this with lack of police interest in Nick Lowles, who had amplified a false rumour that a rioter had committed an acid attack on a Muslim woman, but also made a passing reference to Malik:

Yet so far as I know Mr Lowles has not had his collar felt, perhaps because he enjoys the government’s favour, as well as backing from prominent left-wing philanthropists such as Trevor Chinn. Kenan Malik of the Observer similarly passed around misleading reports in print and online this week, but also seems strangely immune from the law.

Murray does not clarify what “misleading reports” he means, but readers familar with his history with Malik would have interpreted this to be a reference to Malik’s column. However, the supposed comparability with Spofforth is strained, and the inclusion seems shoehorned in.

UPDATE: As part of his crowing over the libel settlement, Murray expressed the view that “I should have noted that the Guardian group (which had to apologise and retract their falsehoods in court this morning) left X last year because of alleged ‘disinformation’ on this platform”. This caught the attention of Elon Musk, who amplified the post while adding his own view that “The Guardian is pure propaganda”. This in turn was then amplified by Murray. I would not doubt Murray’s claim that he suffered “considerable distress” from Malik’s mistake, or that felt the need to take legal action as a matter of deterrence as well as compensation. However, his insistence on taking the matter to court (once again, with the help of Mark Lewis) rather than accepting the correction as an adequate remedy also served narrative-building purposes.

Note

1. In the event, the Cenotaph was not targeted; 11 November for the protest was chosen because it was a Saturday afternoon rather than because of the symbolism of the date.

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Via the Press Association:

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said on Friday: “On Thursday 6 March we received an allegation of verbal threats made by a 67-year-old man on Friday 13 December.

“Officers are carrying out an assessment of the allegations to determine what further action may be required.”

As is widely known, the “67-year-old man” is Rupert Lowe MP, and the complainant is Zia Yusuf, the Chairman of his party, Reform UK. A few days ago, Yusuf and the party’s chief whip Lee Anderson MP issued a “Statement from Reform UK” claiming that “Mr Lowe has on occasions made threats of physcial violence against our Party Chairman. Accordingly, this matter is with the Police”.

The Yusuf/Anderson statement did not explain or even acknowledge the long delay between the alleged incidents and the police complaint, which was made the day after Lowe gave an interview to the Daily Mail in which he criticised party leader Nigel Farage as “messianic” and warned that “I’m not going to be by Nigel’s side at the next election unless we have a proper plan to change the way we govern from top to bottom.” The article also referred to Elon Musk’s stated preference for Lowe over Farage.

Perhaps Yusuf had wanted to make a complaint all along but had been holding back, but it seems more reasonable to suppose that the decision to involve police at just this moment is tactical: the existence of a police complaint lends an air of substance and seriousness to an allegation even where evidence is thin or non-existent.

Farage, meanwhile, notably fails to refer to the matter in his own statement on Lowe, which has been published in the Sunday Telegraph. Perhaps he thinks it’s a bit much: back in 2016 when he was leader of UKIP he famously described one of his MEPs punching a colleague as “one of those things that happens between men”, adding that “I don’t see any need for the police to be involved” despite the victim having been hospitalised with a (temporary) brain injury.

On the other hand, though, Farage did raise the possibility of police involvement last year when alleging that a vetting company had been deliberately negligent in weeding out unsuitable election candidates: “Lawyers have been instructed. We do not rule out police action”, he declared. The matter then disappeared from view (1), although it is unknown whether he dropped it or if the police themselves “ruled out” taking action.

Note

1. Another matter from the same period that has disappeared from view is Farage’s claim that Andrew Parker, a Reform activist filmed making racist comments, had been planted by Channel 4 (discussed here). Weak evidence collapsed under scrutiny, after which it was announced via Paul Staines that an unnamed “senior barrister” was investigating the claim on behalf of a group called “Ofcom Watch”. It is reasonable to suspect here a contrivance by which Reform UK could “move on” while not appearing to back down.

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