Mick Hall slams the Guardian over its attitude to Jeremy Corbyn. Mick Hall is a Marxist blogger @ Organized Rage.


A Corbyn victory will tilt this Nation away from the far right trajectory it's been travelling on since 1979



The relics of a bygone age



Who would have thought it would be the sclerotic old British Labour Party which helped reinvigorate radical politics in the UK? To be fair party politically both the SNP in Scotland and Sinn Féin in Ireland led the way, but it's the leadership campaign of Jeremy Corbyn within England and Wales which has lit the blue touch paper in an anti-austerity fightback against neoliberalism.

This is not as surprising as it might first seem, for when people look around for an alternative to the status quo which no longer serves their interest, they often reach out and grab the nearest viable vehicle to hand. In Greece and Spain it was the newly formed coalitions of the left but as no such political party existed in the UK we looked favourably on Jeremy Corbyn's leadership campaign. If anyone doubts Corbyn has played a blinder they need only look at the hysterical response his campaign has provoked from the media and political elites.

While such a response was expected from the BBC, Murdoch media, the Daily Mail, Independent and Sun, readers of the Guardian may have been surprised if not shocked by the papers coverage of the LP leadership contest. Group think seems to have contaminated the upper echelons of the paper.

The overwhelming majority of the columnists, political correspondents and editorial staff, often one and the same, have been on a rampage against a sizeable section of LP members and supporters for having the audacity to consider voting for Jeremy Corbyn.

We do not know how the membership will actually vote, the ballot papers go out later this week but since Corbyn launched his campaign the upper echelons of the Guardian has done all they can to sabotage it.

One would have thought they would have been overjoyed so many party members have turned out to attend Jeremy's meetings. Not from just within the metropolitan areas but right across the UK, from Portsmouth to the north of Ireland, across to Scotland, down into Wales, across the Midlands and down to London and the south East people have flocked to hear him speak - many attending a political meeting for the first time.

One would have expected a measured response given most of the Guardian's top floor have written countless columns, articles and editorials highlighting and condemning the growing chasm between the Westminster political elites and the electorate, the rich and poor, and the dangers for democracy this must entail. Yet when a politician finds a way to reach out to the Labour Party electorate in greater numbers than we have seen for decades, the Guardian scribes put their hands up and cry like a pale version of Victor Meldrew, you don't want to do that, it will not fly come election day.

Never mind the raison d'être for Corbyn's growing support is an opposition worthy of the name, which challenges neoliberalism at every turn both within Parliament and the nation at large. A government in waiting will take time to evolve. What people want today is an active opposition which offers hope.

If there is one thing life has taught me it's that a class the English middle classes never fail to disappoint, and the Guardian is no exception. Every editor since WW2 has been Oxbridge educated which makes the paper Establishment to the core. Remember this is a paper which claimed Lord Widgery's Report into Bloody Sunday "is not one-sided," when in reality it was a total whitewash. Three of the Guardian's four leader writers joined the SDP on its foundation in 1981 which opened the door for a decade of Thatcherism. The paper endorsed the argument that Iraq had to be disarmed of 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' when no such weapons existed. The editorial floor even fell for Colin Powell's sorry spectacle at the UN Security Council when he used toy lorries in his failed attempt to prove Iraq possessed WMDs which could be launched anytime at the heart of the Western world.

When push comes to shove the Guardian elite always sides with the Establishment, the keepers of the status quo, the ruling class flame.

On this issue if their behaviour weren't so pitiful it would be amusing. Polly Toynbee a senior columnist and doyen of the liberal glitterati had described support for Corbyn as 'summer madness' promoting 'a 1983 man', - 'a relic.'

When it comes to 1980s relics she should know, for unlike Corbyn she deserted Labour in the 1980s and with the papers support played a leading role in forming the breakaway SDP, and by splitting the vote helped keep Thatcher in power for a decade.

Now, when there is hope of a better future for all on the horizon she again gives comfort to the enemy. When push comes to shove you will always find Polly ending up on the wrong side. When a real chance of change emerges she panics and retreats into her class and like all of this type she will try and make a virtue of her betrayal.

She has spent a decades writing about the injustices of neoliberalism yet when a LP Leftist politician challenges it head on, offering hope to millions, she quakes in her boots poor thing and pompously claims:

"Free to dream, I'd be left of Jeremy Corbyn. But we can't gamble the future on him"

But she is quite happy to gamble our future, the working classes, with austerity lite monkeys and the Blairite who are standing for the leadership. If Scotland tells us one thing austerity lite is no longer a runner amongst large section of the UK electorate.

Suzanne Moore who regards herself as a right on radical of the hippie variety wrote; Corbyn is a 'slightly less feral version of Ken Livingstone'. Moore claims she understands why the less enlightened were attracted to Corbyn's authenticity, 'but Blair is right, surely, to talk of the challenges of the future'.

Suzanne please, less enlightened, if the cap fits, have you not learnt a jot about Blair? He is and always has been his master's voice. As to whom that master is, well he was not given a yearly pension top-up of £2 million by J. P. Morgan for nothing, now was he? Lies and deceit spill from the man. Truth - he doesn't understand the meaning of the word.

Zoe Williams, amazed that she was even discussing Corbyn asks:

'How did this man... get on the ballot in the first place?'

Does it really matter Zoe? He is on the ballot and deserves support, but as you asked, he manipulated some dumb fucks of LP MPs who foolishly patronised him and thought they were giving him a pat on the head and then he would become a laughing stock due to lack of support.

If there is one thing Jeremy possesses which many lefties do not, it's patience, he understands history teaches if you sit on the river bank long enough quite possibly the bodies of your enemies might come floating by.

Whatever the outcome of the leadership election Guardian journalists will no longer be able to honestly claim the neoliberal Status Quo offers opportunities to all, and thus has majority support as it occupies the middle ground. Nor will they be able to claim unlike in Greece, Spain, and other EU countries austerity is not part of the problem as far as many British people are concerned.

The paper's political corespondents, especially Nicholas Watt have acted in a deferential way towards both the Coalition government and the current Tory administration. They displayed cringe-making idolatry towards Nick Clegg, giving prominence to anything and everything the wretched man said. Once Clegg was shown the door by the electorate they transferred their loyalty to David Cameron.

Put simply, like the rest of the 'mainstream' media, the Guardian, a multi national corporation deeply embedded in the right-wing political and economic establishment of our age is waging a propaganda war on the British peoples democratic right to choose politically from a plurality of candidates. The message of their coverage of the LP leadership campaign is if you think and act outside the narrow confines of the neo liberal box, then you become fair game.

A victory by Corbyn will tilt this country away from the far right trajectory it's been travelling on since 1979. In a democracy worthy of the name the electorate deserve a plurality of candidates and parties with differing policies. When this does not exist what you have is a democratic dictatorship in which the rule of Capital reigns supreme.

A Corbyn Vctory Will Tilt This Nation Away ...

Mick Hall slams the Guardian over its attitude to Jeremy Corbyn. Mick Hall is a Marxist blogger @ Organized Rage.


A Corbyn victory will tilt this Nation away from the far right trajectory it's been travelling on since 1979



The relics of a bygone age



Who would have thought it would be the sclerotic old British Labour Party which helped reinvigorate radical politics in the UK? To be fair party politically both the SNP in Scotland and Sinn Féin in Ireland led the way, but it's the leadership campaign of Jeremy Corbyn within England and Wales which has lit the blue touch paper in an anti-austerity fightback against neoliberalism.

This is not as surprising as it might first seem, for when people look around for an alternative to the status quo which no longer serves their interest, they often reach out and grab the nearest viable vehicle to hand. In Greece and Spain it was the newly formed coalitions of the left but as no such political party existed in the UK we looked favourably on Jeremy Corbyn's leadership campaign. If anyone doubts Corbyn has played a blinder they need only look at the hysterical response his campaign has provoked from the media and political elites.

While such a response was expected from the BBC, Murdoch media, the Daily Mail, Independent and Sun, readers of the Guardian may have been surprised if not shocked by the papers coverage of the LP leadership contest. Group think seems to have contaminated the upper echelons of the paper.

The overwhelming majority of the columnists, political correspondents and editorial staff, often one and the same, have been on a rampage against a sizeable section of LP members and supporters for having the audacity to consider voting for Jeremy Corbyn.

We do not know how the membership will actually vote, the ballot papers go out later this week but since Corbyn launched his campaign the upper echelons of the Guardian has done all they can to sabotage it.

One would have thought they would have been overjoyed so many party members have turned out to attend Jeremy's meetings. Not from just within the metropolitan areas but right across the UK, from Portsmouth to the north of Ireland, across to Scotland, down into Wales, across the Midlands and down to London and the south East people have flocked to hear him speak - many attending a political meeting for the first time.

One would have expected a measured response given most of the Guardian's top floor have written countless columns, articles and editorials highlighting and condemning the growing chasm between the Westminster political elites and the electorate, the rich and poor, and the dangers for democracy this must entail. Yet when a politician finds a way to reach out to the Labour Party electorate in greater numbers than we have seen for decades, the Guardian scribes put their hands up and cry like a pale version of Victor Meldrew, you don't want to do that, it will not fly come election day.

Never mind the raison d'être for Corbyn's growing support is an opposition worthy of the name, which challenges neoliberalism at every turn both within Parliament and the nation at large. A government in waiting will take time to evolve. What people want today is an active opposition which offers hope.

If there is one thing life has taught me it's that a class the English middle classes never fail to disappoint, and the Guardian is no exception. Every editor since WW2 has been Oxbridge educated which makes the paper Establishment to the core. Remember this is a paper which claimed Lord Widgery's Report into Bloody Sunday "is not one-sided," when in reality it was a total whitewash. Three of the Guardian's four leader writers joined the SDP on its foundation in 1981 which opened the door for a decade of Thatcherism. The paper endorsed the argument that Iraq had to be disarmed of 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' when no such weapons existed. The editorial floor even fell for Colin Powell's sorry spectacle at the UN Security Council when he used toy lorries in his failed attempt to prove Iraq possessed WMDs which could be launched anytime at the heart of the Western world.

When push comes to shove the Guardian elite always sides with the Establishment, the keepers of the status quo, the ruling class flame.

On this issue if their behaviour weren't so pitiful it would be amusing. Polly Toynbee a senior columnist and doyen of the liberal glitterati had described support for Corbyn as 'summer madness' promoting 'a 1983 man', - 'a relic.'

When it comes to 1980s relics she should know, for unlike Corbyn she deserted Labour in the 1980s and with the papers support played a leading role in forming the breakaway SDP, and by splitting the vote helped keep Thatcher in power for a decade.

Now, when there is hope of a better future for all on the horizon she again gives comfort to the enemy. When push comes to shove you will always find Polly ending up on the wrong side. When a real chance of change emerges she panics and retreats into her class and like all of this type she will try and make a virtue of her betrayal.

She has spent a decades writing about the injustices of neoliberalism yet when a LP Leftist politician challenges it head on, offering hope to millions, she quakes in her boots poor thing and pompously claims:

"Free to dream, I'd be left of Jeremy Corbyn. But we can't gamble the future on him"

But she is quite happy to gamble our future, the working classes, with austerity lite monkeys and the Blairite who are standing for the leadership. If Scotland tells us one thing austerity lite is no longer a runner amongst large section of the UK electorate.

Suzanne Moore who regards herself as a right on radical of the hippie variety wrote; Corbyn is a 'slightly less feral version of Ken Livingstone'. Moore claims she understands why the less enlightened were attracted to Corbyn's authenticity, 'but Blair is right, surely, to talk of the challenges of the future'.

Suzanne please, less enlightened, if the cap fits, have you not learnt a jot about Blair? He is and always has been his master's voice. As to whom that master is, well he was not given a yearly pension top-up of £2 million by J. P. Morgan for nothing, now was he? Lies and deceit spill from the man. Truth - he doesn't understand the meaning of the word.

Zoe Williams, amazed that she was even discussing Corbyn asks:

'How did this man... get on the ballot in the first place?'

Does it really matter Zoe? He is on the ballot and deserves support, but as you asked, he manipulated some dumb fucks of LP MPs who foolishly patronised him and thought they were giving him a pat on the head and then he would become a laughing stock due to lack of support.

If there is one thing Jeremy possesses which many lefties do not, it's patience, he understands history teaches if you sit on the river bank long enough quite possibly the bodies of your enemies might come floating by.

Whatever the outcome of the leadership election Guardian journalists will no longer be able to honestly claim the neoliberal Status Quo offers opportunities to all, and thus has majority support as it occupies the middle ground. Nor will they be able to claim unlike in Greece, Spain, and other EU countries austerity is not part of the problem as far as many British people are concerned.

The paper's political corespondents, especially Nicholas Watt have acted in a deferential way towards both the Coalition government and the current Tory administration. They displayed cringe-making idolatry towards Nick Clegg, giving prominence to anything and everything the wretched man said. Once Clegg was shown the door by the electorate they transferred their loyalty to David Cameron.

Put simply, like the rest of the 'mainstream' media, the Guardian, a multi national corporation deeply embedded in the right-wing political and economic establishment of our age is waging a propaganda war on the British peoples democratic right to choose politically from a plurality of candidates. The message of their coverage of the LP leadership campaign is if you think and act outside the narrow confines of the neo liberal box, then you become fair game.

A victory by Corbyn will tilt this country away from the far right trajectory it's been travelling on since 1979. In a democracy worthy of the name the electorate deserve a plurality of candidates and parties with differing policies. When this does not exist what you have is a democratic dictatorship in which the rule of Capital reigns supreme.

6 comments:

  1. The Guardian is a left wing paper and the reason it has been 'sabotaging' Comrade Corbyn's campaign is that it knows he will destroy the Labour Party. The Tories are absolutely ecstatic bout the prospects of him winning the leadership election as it will guarantee them a landside victory in 2020.

    ReplyDelete
  2. In a democracy worthy of the name the electorate deserve a plurality of candidates and parties with differing policies.

    But you dont believe that do you Mick? The left have done more to narrow the electoral field than any section, left leaning media finished the 'far right' NF and BNP (and celebrate violent attacks at UKIP meetings, and their politicians). Did you ever write an article complaining about the undemocratic nature of this? I suspect not, because it isnt really a principle, just words on a page that fit nice.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Cue Bono

    The Guardian is not a LP supporting newspaper, it is true at the last election it supported Labour but in 2010 it supported the Lib Dems and welcomed its coalition with the Tories. Traditionally it has been a supporters of the Liberal Party going back to David Lloyd George and before. It comes out of the liberal mercantile class around the north west of England.

    Some Tories may well be ecstatic but the leadership is not, they have attempted to put dampers on the more shrill tone. Few think change is possible until it happens, if you go back to 1945, from Churchill down all believed that election was a walk in the park, i'm told even Attlee was astonished at the result, shades of Corbyn there.

    You have to ask what is the LP for? If you feel it must be just a conservative party with just a tad more heart, fine, vote for Cooper or Kendall, but if like me you hope for a real change in the UK, and despise and hate the clone like current setup with its crowns, baubles, an unelected second chamber and neo liberal fanaticism and ever more wars, you can only rejoice at the current brouhaha around Jeremy.

    By the way you seem to have missed under its current pro austerity set up Labour has lost the last two general elections, so lectures from lossers about how to win the next election is never going to go down well.

    Take Cooper, if I were in her shoes and voted for the Iraq war which needlessly cost tens of thousands of lives, I would have concluded professional politics is not my game as my judgment is piss poor, and took myself away and begged my god for forgivness for helping to destroy and ruin so many lives. But no, this PR merchant thinks she can say Sorry and keep her snout in the gravy train trough.

    DaithiD

    So, at a time when the left is trying to widen the electoral choices you accuse it of narrowing the electoral field. As to the NF and BNP, both imploded into infighting over whether they should be stormtroppers, or some thing like the FN in France. We on the left would love to claim credit for seeing them off but it would simply not be true. Times changed and feel Ukip might go the same way.

    As to Ukip I understand perfectly why people voted for them, as some were my neighbours, but the problem Ukip have is the Cameronites have stolen many of their clothes over the EU and immigrants and without those policies the party is pretty thread bare policy wise. Most of the former LP voters who supported them in May will imo return to Labour if Corbyn wins and hangs on to the leadership. Many Ukip supporters are a lot like the DUP politically, far right on some issues and social democrat on others and many of Corbyn's policies will appeal to them.

    As to violence against Ukip members I totally oppose it, they are a democratic political party and it should be condemned vigorously.

    Mick
    .





    ReplyDelete
  4. Great piece again. Here is what John Pilger had to say on on Jeremy Corbyn, and I respect Pilger so much.

    “Ordinary people are so frustrated all over the world... that their views are not reflected by their politicians. Suddenly up comes a man who, first of all, is completely incorruptible. He’s decent, he doesn’t abuse people, he doesn’t play games, he doesn’t want to go to war with countries, he doesn’t want to bomb countries, he doesn’t want to see people impoverished and he doesn’t want to see extremely rich interest make off with billions of pounds… he’s cheered people up and given them a sense that maybe change is possible."

    ReplyDelete
  5. HAHA Mick, entirely disingenuous reason as to the collapse of both parties, what was the cause of the infighting? Exposes by the BBC perhaps?
    As it stands, depending on how Jeremy weights his financial aspirations to anti-monarchism (in Britian and Ireland), he may even coax myself to enter the electoral roll.If he does more damage to parition than the financial system, he is my man.
    Ive seen his speeches in Coventry, Liverpool and Camden (in person), when he entered the hall in Camden it was almost the second coming,it was like a SF staged event, but real and loving. But I always thought it would be this way, his orating skills have been forged from thousands of meetings, he puts across something entirely humane and logical and the attacks on him (as a racist for fuck sake!!) are a sign that others know he will connect with the voters.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Mick,

    I think you will find quite a few Guardianistas at the Corbyn rallies. Owen Jones actually writes for them ffs.

    You bring up an interesting parallel with 1945, but there are very important differences. Back then the people had just endured six years of total war and they were hungry for change. What they got was the welfare state and once they had it they promptly re-elected the octogenarian Winston Churchill. Labour to the best of my knowledge was never re-elected into a successful second term government until it fell under the leadership of Tony Blair, and as you well know he was tory lite. When Gordon McDoom swung left he was promptly booted out of office having never been elected PM in the first place.

    The lessons? The British public are well aware that Labour always leave the economy in a worse state than they found it. They have seen the far left experiments in Britain and how they have bankrupted the country and caused utter chaos with strikes, mountains of rubbish and the dead unburied. They know that they suffer in the aftermath of Labour governments because picking up the pieces results in economic pain for the working man in the street.

    The British economy is currently improving despite the doomladen claims from the likes of Ed Balls and Milliband that conservative policies would shrink economic growth. The public have also seen what socialist governments have done to countries like Greece, Venezuala and even France. They are not stupid, and there is not a snowballs chance in hell that they will ever elect a weird beard, lefty, 1970s throwback fruitcake like Jeremy Corbyn to be Prime Minister of the UK.

    That is why the people who write for the Guardian, apart rom the serially wrong Polly Toynbee and Owen Jones, are shitting in their pants at the prospect of him becoming leader of the Labour Party. They know it will lead to electoral annihillation.

    ReplyDelete