I don't generally write about political issues and I don't pretend to be unusually well-informed, but I followed links to an opinion column in The Daily Mail today and it's stayed with me. I'm not aiming to fact-check every detail of the article, but I felt moved to explore the dishonesty of its language.
The piece is headed 'From the lockdown to the destruction of statues, these febrile weeks show the pillars of our freedom and civilization are rotten. As the Left now controls every lever of power, we face nothing less than regime change.' The piece is written by Peter Hitchens.
For anyone unfamiliar with it, The Daily Mail is rated as a questionable source by MediaBiasFactCheck, with a right wing bias and low reliability with regard to fact-checking. On this occasion, though I don't make a habit of it, I've read it so you don't have to. If we're ever going to achieve rational dialogue on national issues, we have to address the perspectives of those who're persuaded by these arguments. There's little point engaging with frothing extremists, but I'm sure that some readers of The Daily Mail would be willing to engage in civil debate.
The piece was published at 1.09 am today (14th of June) and updated at 12.33. It could therefore have alluded to last night's 'racist thuggery', but doesn't mention it at all. Hitchens choses instead to focus on an amorphous and sinister threat from 'the new orthodoxy' of the 'radical left'.
Those supporting the Black Lives Matter movement are, according to the article, 'strange crowds', 'ignorant armies', who feel a 'vague rage' but 'do not know what they want, or understand what they are destroying'. They exist in a 'febrile' and 'feverish atmosphere' in this 'Covid frenzy'. Having 'willingly made a bonfire of our freedoms' in the Lockdown, the public have been 'scared into pathetic timidity' by a 'Dictatorship of Fear' (apparently the pandemic isn't a big deal at all really and the number of deaths in the UK 'are grossly inflated by an incredibly lax recording system', but that isn't the nonsense I want to focus on here). 
As a result of these restrictions, we've been subject to 'house arrest' and will now be forced to wear 'muzzles' (=masks) on public transport. The British people have 'gone soft, accepting absurd and humiliating diktats, believing the most ridiculous claims' (as testament to personal experience of humiliation, the author alludes to the cap that formed part of his school uniform). The implication of all this is that the public in general, but particularly those who protest are infantile, irrational and easily led.
So why are they behaving like this? Through isolation and fear, they've become 'strained and suggestible' to 'forces hostile to our country, its history and nature' (an anti-immigrant dog-whistle). Although these forces are ill-defined, they appear to be 'the British radical left', which is 'militant', 'frothing' and 'intolerant'. Growing jealous of 'the surging crowds, the rioting and the looting in the USA', 'the British radical left' used them as the spark to ignite the simmering discontent of the people in the UK who weren't allowed to express their anger against its proper object (government policy in relation to COVID-19). During the Lockdown, we have 'bit by bit forgotten who we were before, how we lived, what we thought, what we expected of life' (the 'we' here is another emotive but characteristically ill-defined dog-whistle).
Against this sinister force, 'all the pillars of British freedom and civilisation are hollow and rotten'. The police are 'conquered slaves to the new god of woke', who negotiate with demonstrators 'rather than reclaiming the streets from them' (an allusion is made at this point to Cressida Dick's gender, either to undermine her authority or to imply that she's in league with The Feminists). Boarding up Winston Churchill's statue was 'an act of appeasement' and the dog-whistle wartime allusion is reinforced by the remark that perhaps we shall 'never again see the lights lit as they had been before'. The BBC is characterised by 'barefaced dishonesty and unlawful bias', though no evidence is given. 
The political class are no better. Labour are variously, Trotskyite, Marxist or Blairite (the downing of statues is compared with the downfall of 'the Soviet Empire', though that 'was a matter for rejoicing'). In contrast, the Conservatives are 'in office but not in power', merely 'keeping Downing Street warm for Sir Keir and his Blairite Legions'.
Neither can science defend us. Hitchens asserts that government policy 'is now completely exploded by scientific experts'. Two such experts are alluded to, without any detail or links: Sunetra Gupta and John Lee posit views contrary to government policy and advocate further study and consideration of all available evidence. My understanding is that dealing with a new virus is complex and that new information is becoming available all the time. The scientific advice informs government policy, which will also be shaped by economic and ideological considerations. It would be odd if there weren't differences of opinion along the way.
Where should we turn in this turmoil of misinformation and malice? Well, the author has learnt 'to trust [his] instincts … [which] may be inherited from our forebears or learned by decades of experience.' Note the dog-whistle shift from singular to plural. It appears that this is a national and natural British ability to know what's right, though presumably only if we agree with Hitchens: 'we know more than we think we do', and we can even see into the future: 'As soon as this lockdown began I could see most of this coming', he writes. 
Unfortunately, it is 'very hard' for this columnist in a national newspaper to express his 'traditional, normal, Christian conservative and patriotic opinions' because 'they' use social media 'as a form of discipline' and 'no actual debate can take place in these conditions'. By this stage in the argument, it's entirely unclear who 'they' are: are the 'they' who are protesting the same as the 'they' who shut down debate on social media? Are the sinister 'they' who're inciting the crowds the same as the 'they' who are infiltrating and undermining 'the pillars of British freedom and civilisation'?  These groups are conflated as facets of an underlying conspiracy working towards a 'cultural revolution' in which 'regime change' has already been achieved. As before, no actual evidence is provided.
This piece is not, as the author implies 'carefully and generously' argued. Neither is my analysis an accusation of 'thought crime'. Hitchens is entitled to believe whatever he chooses, and I'm entitled to argue that using loose reasoning, emotive language and unevidenced claims in this way, he stokes the fearfulness he complains of and encourages 'ignorant armies' to a violent response.