Something I cover much less than Woke Waste, open-border charities and Quakers - but am very interested in - is the Leveson lobby.
By this, I mean celebrities and organisations (such as the ghastly Byline Times) that want serious press reform (“Leveson 2”, as they call it) and tend to hate the guts of Rupert Murdoch (and anyone else related to News of the World).
To add, I’m not unsympathetic to their overall movement - many were treated appallingly by the press - but I find some of their lobbying methods rather strange (as well as complicated to keep track of).
Case in point: last week Hugh Grant, one of several celebrities behind Hacked Off (an organisation that campaigns for Leveson 2), announced a joint campaign with 38 Degrees, a radical activist group…
… marketing itself as a people-powered petition site:
And that’s not all: Hacked Off is apparently part of a coalition which includes Just Stop Oil, Extinction Rebellion and Climate Resistance…
… that’s according to the organisation Media Revolution, which claims “The world’s media system; social media, corporate media and state media, has been hijacked by a handful of powerful interests – billionaire-owners, political operators and advertisers.”
To return to 38 Degrees…
Together, Hacked Off and 38 Degrees have released a joint petition for “fair regulation”…
… coinciding with the release of The Hack, a drama about the phone-hacking scandal…
… which Hacked Off has been regularly tweeting about:
As I wrote previously: “I expect [The Hack] to be another nudge-unit-style drama. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that one of the production companies involved, AC Chapter One, is run by a man who produced Mr Bates vs The Post Office - in other words a show that engendered much sociopolitical change.” (Never mind that The Hack is co-written by Jack Thorne, who wrote Agitprop-drama Adolescence.)
Interestingly enough, 38 Degrees previously helped launch a petition calling for Post Office CEO Paula Vennells to be stripped of her CBE “Following the terrible Post Office scandal, as dramatised in the ITV production “Mr Bates vs The Post Office”:
There appears to be a drama-followed-by-petition format going on.
38 Degrees and Hacked Off are rather strange bedfellows when you look at the issues the former cares about.
These include:
expelling Michelle Mone from the Lords/ the so-called Covid “VIP lanes”;
taxing the super rich;
ending support for the Israeli military in Gaza;
anti-Musk and anti-Farage activism;
nationalising Thames Water; and
Having studied activist groups for the best part of two years, I recognise this agenda as being very similar to that pushed by The Good Law Project…
… which makes sense when you know that 38 Degrees funds the organisation:
QUAKER WATCH: Quaker foundations also fund The Good Law Project (Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust) and 38 Degrees (The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and Barrow Cadbury Trust).
It’s also interesting that Carol Vorderman, who has worked with The Good Law Project…
… is also a big advocate of Hacked Off…
… recommending its celebrity members Hugh Grant and John Cleese, as “Good People to Follow” in her book Now What?: On a Mission to Fix Broken Britain…
…. and that attendees of her book launch (including representatives from Byline Times)…
… are some of the most vocal about Hacked Off and 38 Degrees’ joint petition:
Confused yet?!
For a while I’ve been pretty confused myself as to why the Leveson Lobby kept cropping up when I was investigating environmental/ Far Left activist groups, such as The Good Law Project.
I also didn’t understand what (Leveson-lobbying-group) Byline Times had in common with “partner organisation” Bylines Network, whose founder is EU propagandist Mike Galsworthy.
But it seems (and it’s a real tangled web) groups, whose causes are vastly disparate on the surface, are uniting over common enemies. Moreover, celebrities involved in Hacked Off are sympathetic to other causes. John Cleese, for instance, hates Reform…
… and Farage…
… who The Good Law Project isn’t exactly keen on either…
… nor is 38 Degrees:
So you can see how the Leveson lobby makes quite a good team with radical leftists (who hate the Murdoch/ right-wing media for different reasons).
Personally I’m a bit Hacked Off trying to keep up with these propaganda networks…
To end, here are some other types of activism on Hacked Off’s page:
Fascinating work.
There seems no end to these tangled connections.
Seek and ye shall find.
Please keep digging.
Thank you so much for your work. It's good to know what these people are really up to and their connections! The swamp is so deep and needs draining fast!