The BBC and the fingernails of white supremacists

The BBC has deleted an article from its website that, in some way, linked wearing nails without adornments to being a white supremacist. Based on the cultural observation that so-called nail art emerges mainly from Black and Latino communities, the piece ended up suggesting that a clean manicure had become the beauty standard for white racists. It is possible that supremacists do not mostly go around with nails like Rosalía's, but that does not mean – as is otherwise obvious – that any person without multicolored cuticles, impossible porcelains, or embedded diamonds belongs to the Ku Klux Klan. The fact is that media outlets of all kinds, especially those on the right, have critiqued and mocked the article.

It may seem anecdotal, but in this case, various phenomena converge that portray the present moment of communication. On one hand, the excess of zeal in political correctness and the danger of confusing progressivism with the 'International of Simpletons'. However, the fact that the BBC article has garnered so much media attention speaks to us of ragebait or angry clickbait: getting visits to your media outlet, and dwell time, by way of infuriating people with nonsense of dubious significance. Behind the laughter of the press, there is a very clear political agenda: to make things difficult for a BBC that conservatives perceive as too skewed toward progressive positions. The real victory of this campaign is not getting the Corporation to withdraw the story by admitting it did not meet journalistic standards, but rather to shift pressure so that journalists self-censor. That, for safety and to avoid mockery, they write only ideas and notions confined to the center lane. Today it is this triviality about nails, certainly ridiculous. But tomorrow it could be Israel.