BBC veteran journalist Gabriel Gatehouse branded a reference to Americans “pursu[ing] our manifest destiny… to plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars” in President Donald J. Trump’s inaugural address a “nod and a wink” to the “white supremacist movement” on the de facto state broadcaster’s flagship politics show.
The BBC, which all Britons who watch live programming—even if none of it is BBC content—are required to fund through a television license fee, is using social media to promote a clip of Gatehouse discussing his idea of “manifest destiny” on its Newsnight program, where he was formerly international editor.
“Manifest destiny was an ideology in the 19th century that talked about moving westwards, the kind of manifest destiny of American colonists to colonize the land, to expand the United States and, you know, wiping out indigenous people as they went,” Gatehouse said.
“I don’t know whether Donald Trump knows what the resonance of that is, but I know that quite a few of his audience do; people on the kind of fringes of the white supremacist movement,” he alleged, adding: “That was a nod and a wink”—which would only make sense if President Trump did, in fact, believe “manifest destiny” was a coded allusion to white supremacy.
Contrary to the claims on the BBC, manifest destiny—properly understood—is actually rooted in the belief that America is an exceptional nation with a providential place among the nations in the world.
The BBC is required by law to be politically impartial. Still, it has been widely regarded even by its own employees as biased and institutionally liberal for years. Reform Party leader Nigel Farage accused it of feeding a hysterical anti-Trump narrative leading up to the assassination attempt against him in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024.
show less“For people on the fringes of the white supremacist movement, that was a nod and wink”
Gabriel Gatehouse tells #Newsnight of his surprise at President Trump’s use of “manifest destiny” in his inauguration speech, which he says was a historic ideology of colonisation.#Newsnight pic.twitter.com/pLHkBcdPTH
— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) January 20, 2025
