Yesterday afternoon England's BBC dropped a teaser trailer for a new production they've made about Roman Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar, better known to history simply as Julius Caesar. If you watch their snippet you can see that they must have expected their production to be controversial, but one can't imagine that they expected it to be as controversial as it's proven to be.
Witness Julius Caesar: The Making of a Dictator
— BBC Studios (@bbcstudios) November 27, 2023
Produced by BBC Studios Specialist Factual Productions, and featuring insights from @holland_tom & @RoryStewartUK, discover how an ambitious power-grab turned to tyranny.
9pm Mon 27 Nov | @BBCTwo @BBCiPlayer | #MadeByBBCStudios pic.twitter.com/fayav1ztn7
Seriously, people really hate this thing.
A dictator that refused the crown of Rome.
— Napoleon Bonaparte Appreciator (@NapoleonBonabot) November 28, 2023
First the British (Ridley Scott) butcher the life of Napoleon and now they are going to plunge more knives into the legacy of Julius Caesar.
Wow I wonder what the subtext here could possibly be.
— Jack Montgomery (@JackBMontgomery) November 28, 2023
The late Roman Republic was ruled by a class of kleptocratic oligarchs that had progressively impoverished the common man, overseen a breakdown in law and order, ignored popular demands for reform, and was obsessed with its own image. Very timely comparison!
— Hippokleides (@Hippokleides) November 27, 2023
They probably didn't mean it to be timely in that way but now that you mention it that's a pretty good point...
Some people argued (tongue firmly in cheek we assume) that this production didn't go far enough.
At least you didn't make him black.
— The Occidental Jihadist (@Occidentaljihad) November 28, 2023
Make him trans!!!1
— The Hanford Institute 🐶 (@ThiccInstitute) November 28, 2023
Let me guess, he’s black and trans?
— Officer of Engineers (@OfficerofEngin1) November 28, 2023
While others took note of the specific 'historians' who had been chosen for this job.
It is genuinely astonishing to witness the depths that the BBC seeks to plumb with the screaming alarm bells that are sounding over the new 'documentary', Julius Caesar: The Making of a Dictator.
— Western Exile (@westernexile) November 28, 2023
Such alarm bells crescendo into veritable sirens the instant that Shelley Haley,… https://t.co/NR26xVic3n pic.twitter.com/KgtbaDbAlM
This is a long one but worth reading in its entirety:
It is genuinely astonishing to witness the depths that the BBC seeks to plumb with the screaming alarm bells that are sounding over the new 'documentary', Julius Caesar: The Making of a Dictator. Such alarm bells crescendo into veritable sirens the instant that Shelley Haley, the utterly discredited 'expert' on 'Black feminist and critical race approaches', whose infamous "I don't care what they tell you in school" comment single-handedly demolished the credibility of Jada Pinkett Smith's Queen Cleopatra, appears in the trailer. This is quite apart from the ham-fisted propaganda that dominates the rest of the piece, which seeks to perpetuate the notion that the Roman Republic, the very apotheosis of absolute oligarchy, whose only currency was naked corruption, was remotely worth defending. It does not matter how hard establishment media tries. The legitimacy of government by committee is at an end. The dawn of government by visionary is rising...
Yeah... she doesn't sounds like the most credible source.
The most ironic bit though is who they chose to close out the video with to make an impassioned plea for the value of Democracy:
For American viewers who don’t know, the woman at the end warning about democracy is an unelected peer who sits House of Lords & can vote on legislation & can’t be voted out.
— 🏛Steven🏛 (@nonregemesse) November 28, 2023
She was appointed after she produced a whitewash report on anti-semitism for Jeremy Corbyn https://t.co/oPdBE4WqDt
Talk about an imperfect messenger!
This doesn't even address the massive number of responses that the BBC is choosing to hide, either. It's understandable to a degree when the person running an account wants to hide spam posts or outright abuse... but these?
Can somebody at the BBC a explain why they chose Rory Stewart and Chakrabarti to give their opinions in this “documentary”.
— Mr Sun (@MercianMenace) November 28, 2023
We pay for this shit, at least get proper historians who know what they are talking about.
Like the fact as to how Westerners are now butchering their own historical figures instead of analysing them without bias, due to some misplaced white guilt. Lol.
— ViduraUvacha (@ViduraUvacha) November 28, 2023
I am enjoying this shit show.🤣
The BBC fashion of putting in non-historian talking heads is bizarre.,.what has Shami Chakrabarti, that arch-hypocrite who sld her soul for a peerage, got to offer in terms of objective academic discourse? It’s just like Ash Sarkar and the Nazis all over again…
— The Kilted Sailor (@Kilted_Sailor) November 28, 2023
We have to assume they know they've got a PR problem on their hands here and they're trying to sweep it under the rug as best as possible.
There's one other important fact here as well... they've been ratioed into the Sun by novelty account Daily Roman Updates, who has a colossal 16,000 likes next to their 540.
If this picture of Julius Caesar ripping a heater gets more likes than your post, your “documentary” sucks. pic.twitter.com/i80czJoehV
— Daily Roman Updates (@UpdatingOnRome) November 28, 2023
That's gotta sting, right?
We look forward to never watching this, but the odds are that it will launch a thousand videos on YouTube deconstructing how terrible it is and we do look forward to watching those, yes indeed.
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