As Gideon Falter’s standoff with the police demonstrates, it’s important to be able to see the bigger picture
The terrible massacre of innocent Israelis by sadistic Hamas agents on 7 October last year has set in motion a dreadful chain of events, exploited by bad faith actors on all sides to sow division and hate. Last week the campaigner Gideon Falter tenaciously stage-managed a confrontation with the Metropolitan police by demanding to walk through a peace demonstration at a non-designated crossing point. Why did Gideon Falter cross the road? Was it to emerge with evidence that Jewish people were under threat, and that the police were racist? Or was it because he was stapled to the person he had filming him?
Falter’s 55-second framing of his confrontation with the police emerged on Friday 19 April, before anyone had properly looked at an illuminating 13-minute clip Sky was sitting on that compromised his account. But it was too late. Suella Braverman, who’d done no research as usual, was already saying Sir Mark Rowley should resign as police commissioner. The usually reliable shoot first and ask questions later approach backfires again.
Stewart Lee’s new live show, Stewart Lee vs the Man-Wulf, opens in London in December before a national tour. He interviews Iain Sinclair about his new book, Pariah Genius, at London’s Swedenborg House on 2 May
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