WHY was anyone shocked when a baying anti-lockdown mob surrounded and hounded a BBC journalist in the middle of London? This is Britain 2021, after all. The word ‘mob’ isn’t used rhetorically – there was a sense of real violence in their air. It began when a woman identified Newsnight’s Nick Watt and started haranguing him.

For what reason? What reason is needed today in a land where the BBC is despised because it dares challenge the lies and conspiracies stored in angry minds?

A crowd of men respond to the woman and are on Watt in seconds. Scum, they shout. Liar. Trai-tor.

You know what happens to traitors, right?

The mob is frenzied. The men are in Watt’s face, grabbing, screaming. One bangs a metal tray. Watt runs for safety, and the mob is after him. The journalist makes it to the protection of a police line as the mob boo, jeer and laugh.

This is our country – we made this. Are we proud of ourselves yet?

Where do we go from here? We know the hounding of Watt is far from the worst that we’ve seen when we consider what we’ve become as a country.

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Britain has a wilful amnesia – a collusion of forgetfulness. We seldom talk about the murder of Jo Cox MP, assassinated in the street before the Brexit vote by a radicalised white supremacist.

That murder was the klaxon – the warning bell that we’re on the road to hell.

This isn’t a grassroots madness we’re seeing unfold. What’s happening is the consequence of a cynical game played by the establishment which has now run out of their control.

Brexit, and it’s sidekick the culture war, has been a path to power for the Tory party, and a tool of enrichment for many in the British media. The forces unleashed are today beyond containment.

Many remarked with anger and derision at a statement by the journalist Andrew Neil condemning Watt’s “disgraceful treatment”. Neil was called a “bloody hypocrite”, blamed for opening “Pandora’s Box”.

On Sunday night, two days before the thuggery suffered by Watt, Neil’s GB News launched in the wake of statements by Neil Oliver that lockdown is “the world’s biggest mistake”. On opening night, presenter Dan Wootton ranted against lockdown. People must “fight back against this madness … get freedom back”. Lockdown has taken our “God given civil liberties”.

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He attacked “doomsday scientists … addicted” to power; said lockdown should be “wiped from the public health playbook”. Officials want a “biosecurity state, copying the likes of China”.

“I say ‘hell no’, to that,” Wooton exhorted. “And I hope you do too.” He urged Boris Johnson to “set us free” from a “semi authoritarian state”.

If you don’t think there’s many among us who can be affected by words like this, then you haven’t been listening – or else you’re colluding in forgetfulness. Remember those headlines about ‘saboteurs’ and ‘enemies of the people’ – then remember those scenes of Remainer politicians abused in the street. Remember the hate spilled by Trump’s media supporters – then remember the Capitol.

Words matter. Just like America, in the UK the internet has gone overground. The rules of the physical world are fading, replaced by the only currency the internet knows: rage.

The British government – in the shape of Johnson’s administration – has fed this sickness like a stoker on a steam train feeding coal to the engine. It unleashed the forces of nationalism and anger, then weaponised them – now the monster is loose and on the streets.

Make no mistake, the same problem exists in Scotland. The hate and fury of extremists on both sides of the constitutional question has been stoked by nationalist and unionist politicians. Online, people are intimidated and hounded daily for their beliefs. Scotland is no better. England is just larger, more noticeable, and locked in the afterglow of Brexit – and anti-lockdown rage feeds from the same dish as Brexit rage: a fake sense of ‘freedom’, which in truth is simply a demand to behave without rules or respect for others. We in Scotland have yet to face the ugliness of what a second referendum will unleash. It’ll be just as bad as what we see in England today.

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It’s fittingly ironic that the British Culture Secretary seems addicted to waging culture wars. Oliver Dowden finds anger to stoke wherever he can – flags, statues, Land of Hope and Glory, racist tweets by England cricketers, The Crown on Netflix. They’re all tools for Dowden to spread rage in the UK. Rather than bringing a divided, unhappy country together – and leading with decency and respect for all – politicians like Dowden get into the online trenches fostering division.

Little wonder then that Johnson’s former race adviser now warns Britain could experience another possible event like the Jo Cox killing if the government continues to inflame the culture wars. “There are some people in the government who feel like the right way to win is to pick a fight on the culture war and to exploit division,” said Samuel Kasumu. Cox’s killer, Kasumu believes, was potentially radicalised by culture war narratives. Kasumu also criticised government minister Kemi Badenoch for verbally attacking a journalist who asked questions about Covid.

Of course, we’re forever told that it’s rightwing voices being cancelled. But rightwing voices run the government. Nigel Farage was made into a public figure thanks to BBC exposure. Andrew Neil would never have set up GB News – an outlet for right wing voices – without years of airtime from the BBC. Talk radio stations are effectively right wing propaganda outlets.

Yet, the right is silenced. Cancelled. Only in Britain 2021 could controlling the narrative of political debate and wielding power in government and the media be described as silencing or cancellation.

The establishment – the world of Johnson and his media cheerleaders – is genuflected to reflexively in Britain. The merest hint of pushback, by those who’d like to see a different world, unleashes a torrent of rage. That rage has now broken free – free from Westminster, free from the pages of newspapers and the airwaves – and it’s out of control. Where it goes from here, we can only tremble to guess. But we know who to blame.

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald