If a lefty said this, the ‘tinfoil hat’ comments would be out in an instant

One of the favourite methods right-wingers fall back on, when there are inconvenient facts they can’t refute, is to make some jibe about ‘tinfoil hats’ and ‘conspiracy theorists’ (as though no conspiracy has ever existed or succeeded). If they can’t win on facts and logic – and they usually can’t – then jibes about paranoia and mental illness are the go-to option. Right-wingers in the Labour party are no different, such as the awful Jamie Reed:

Interesting then to see Ben Bradshaw’s performance on Russia last week, in which he accused them of everything from rigging the EU referendum to creating the refugee crisis to “destabilise the free world” (as though we or the US are particularly ‘free’ under corporate hegemony).

Bradshaw – who infamously had a near-meltdown on BBC News just because Jeremy Corbyn refused to resign when he and his faction threw their toys out of the pram in a staged series of resignations – claimed that:

• it’s ‘highly likely’ that Vladimir Putin used cyber warfare to influence the result of the EU referendum
• Russia’s involvement in the Syria conflict is part of a wider bid to “destabilise the free world”
• driving huge numbers of refugees out of Syria into the rest of the world is a “deliberate” part of that plan
• Russian interference in the American presidential campaign is ‘proven’
• Russian hackers are likely to influence election results in Germany and France – and that in France it’s ‘certain’

Bradshaw admitted that he has no evidence for any Russian involvement in the UK’s EU referendum, but that didn’t stop him claiming in a House of Commons debate that it is ‘highly likely’.

Perhaps he’s simply preparing the ground for blaming Russia the next time a Labour ‘coup’ attempt fails. After all, if anyone was seriously worried about Russian influence over British political matters, you’d expect a full house when the Foreign Affairs Select Committee met this morning to discuss Russia – and at the very least a full complement of Committee members around the table for the discussion. Instead, we saw this:

which suggests their fear of Russian cyber-influence doesn’t really run all that deep.

A little circumspection on the part of Labour right-wingers would be in order when they try to ridicule left-wingers for calling out the right wing’s plots to seize control of the party. At least those conclusions are based on fact.

And often even on the fact that the right-wingers can’t help boasting about it when they do it.

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