“They’re Scared” British Comedian Breaks Down What’s Really Happening in the UK

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“They’re Scared” British Comedian Breaks Down What’s Really Happening in the UK

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Summary

De Santos argues that legacy media — specifically the BBC, where he worked from 2009 until leaving in 2022 across BBC Persian and BBC World — is structurally geared toward a single “lefty, woke, globalist” narrative, and that his attempts to question editorial impartiality on Trump coverage landed him in a disciplinary case rather than a debate. He contends comedy is now the last remaining outlet for free thinking, though he says conservative comics in England are pushed into pub basements, derelict warehouses, and secret venues whose locations are emailed to ticket holders the same day to reduce cancellation risk, all while Keir Starmer tells Donald Trump that Britain has free speech. Drawing on his Iranian background, he calls the Islamization of the UK a “horrific deja vu” of the 1979 red-and-black alliance, joking on stage that he might return to Iran because there are fewer Muslims left there than in Britain, and argues that YouTube has let comedians bypass what he calls the “self-righteous gatekeepers of funny.”

Top 5 Key Topics

• From BBC journalist to political comedian: De Santos joined BBC Persian Television in 2009 having grown up in Iran listening to BBC World, Voice of America, and Radio Israel for alternative news. He says he quickly found the newsroom agenda fixed — Trump bad, Brexit bad, mass immigration good, Islam moderate — and notes the irony that his year in Iranian state media was much the same, except the Iranians never claimed impartiality.
• Editorial fights over Israel coverage: He describes constant internal battles at BBC Persian, including over whether to call Jerusalem by the Persian “Shalim” or the Arabic “Bayt al-Maqdis,” which he argued even Arabs don’t use, with the compromise being a hyphenated form. He characterizes the outlet’s Israel-Palestine coverage as consistently slanted well before October 7th.
• Free speech and the UK comedy circuit: He cites the arrest of comedian Graham Linehan as a global story and argues Britain is bringing in blasphemy laws through the back door under public order framing. He jokes that if an Iranian were arrested in Britain for free speech, the Iranian delegation would have a field day at the UN Human Rights Council, and that his own arrest would only boost his career.
• Islamization and the Iranian parallel: Referencing the late Shah’s warning about “red and black” reactionary forces — Islamists and communists — he argues the 1979 alliance is repeating itself in Britain, with the woke left and “Karens” infatuated with Islam. He quotes his friend Nick Dixon’s line that he can go to Iran but “England is all we have,” and invokes Golda Meir’s remark that Israel’s secret weapon was having nowhere else to go.
• YouTube versus the gatekeepers: De Santos says mainstream clubs either won’t book conservative comics or cancel them after a single complaint, so new media has become essential — he was recognized by an El Al security supervisor from his videos. He acknowledges the trade-off that democratized media also silos audiences and lets “insidious actors” dominate the narrative on Israel, and closes by naming Norm Macdonald as the special every politician should watch.