A Twitter thread by a Labour member who took the time to listen to a programme on radio station LBC on consecutive days has revealed an unmissable example of the stark imbalance in the handling of the leaders of the UK’s two major parties that is typical ‘mainstream’ media coverage.
But it has also yielded a list comprising many of the key terms used by centrist “people’s vote”/’FBPE’ groups in their attempts to damage Labour electorally.
Those terms betray the motivations of the PV/FBPE mob – but they also provide a useful ‘block list’ for Twitter users who want to prevent or reduce the pavlovian and often bot-driven attempts to clutter every positive Labour thread with inane and clearly coordinated comments:
There is a concerted push among the left to block Twitter accounts using the #FBPE hashtag to free time and resources for Labour’s positive message and to prevent the usual centrist tactic of trying to bog down positive threads.
Many will now be adding some of the words and phrases above, too.
The SKWAWKBOX needs your support. This blog is provided free of charge but depends on the generosity of its readers to be viable. If you can afford to, please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here for a monthly donation via GoCardless. Thanks for your solidarity so this blog can keep bringing you information the Establishment would prefer you not to know about.
If you wish to reblog this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
Comparing the extension of public ownership to the demand to “Build That Wall” is going rather far. Yet I am not surprised that the corporate, Blairite PV/FBPE are anti-nationalisation. One of the main motivations for staying in the EU or Single Market or Mrs May’s deal is to place limits on political democracy by entrenching the market system and ruling out public monopoly as “anti-competitive”.
https://www.thefullbrexit.com/extend-public-ownership
James OBRIEN (in addition to Ferrari , Majit and other LBC presenters) has an almost hysterical loathing of Corbyn and extremely arrogant and dismissive when the rare callers defending Corbyn’s leadership call in. One of the words used that then became an anti Corbyn word on twitter and to anti Corbyn callers was Clown. I really wish someone like Skwarkbox or any of the alternative media would listen in and call to give an alternative voice on the radio. I feel if I tried I would be gobbled up alive and spat out!
Here’s a few more from the Guardian’s “Labour supporters”.
Where’s Jeremy Corbyn?
Lifelong Euro-sceptic.
Backbencher who doesn’t know what he’s doing.
A leader who acts on the behalf of the deluded few.
Corbyn is a halfwit.
He ignores the wishes of 90% of his members.
How are the Tories still in power? Answer Corbyn.
Corbyn and his little bunch of small minded helpers.
He has no intention of helping Labour remainers.
The vast majority of Labour voters, members and supporters want a Peoples vote and to stop brexit.
90% of members want a Peoples vote and 88% would vote to Remain.
Corbyn breaks his promises by saying he listens to members and voters, and then on brexit completely ignores them.
Corbyn scorns his voters.
It is becoming clearer by the day the man is a fool! and a phoney.
I hereby declare I have no confidence in Jeremy Corbyn to lead the Labour Party.
It’s Gods way of keeping a Marxist out of power?
The blokes a pillock and he needs to go!
Corbyn was over 60 seats short of the hated Tories and the most useless PM ever. Do you think that was good?
A change of leadership might soon be possible.
Remainers have not had much of a voice in Westminster. It isn’t right.
I would not advocate violence either, but I would not be surprised if we see some in 2019.
Do you seriously think a man who ignores 80% of members, 2 out of 3 voters and 78% of young people with his approach to brexit is capable of winning an election?
So much for ‘all options being on the table’! That was a lie!
There are plenty of state owned enterprises receiving Government funding within the framework of the EU.
Most sane people accept JC is letting down his own members and voters.
I am fairly sure there will be civil unrest from others who are being pushed over the edge.
He is even more disconnected from his people than Mrs May is from hers.
May and Corbyn are Putin’s foreign policy Angels.
May was barely mentioned.
A recent Owen Jones article rightly castigating the utterly useless Chris Grayling was simply full of anti-Corbyn comments relating to cancelling Brexit or attacking Diane Abbott, by so called “centrists”.
If anything they are the ones out of touch. Graylings’ attacks on the justice system, probation service and railways have caused serious issues for fair access to legal representation, public safety from crime, customer service and operational safety on the railways.
If these “centrists” were in touch with reality, they’d be concerning themselves with the lack of access to legal aid for vulnerable people, the fact that repeated offenders are often left with dumb terminals to check into rather than being properly monitored, that train passengers have been shafted by awful timetable farces, and that removing guards on trains is putting the disabled at risk and causing drivers to make operational errors as they subsume all the responsibility and liablity the guards have.
Instead they are too busy sobbing over the EU and democracy and criticising Diane Abbott, and giving useless muppets like Grayling a free pass to undermine society.
Radio 4 Today programme Saturday morning. Humphrys interviewing Kenneth Clarke, Clarke.says ERG are Brexit fanatics,Humphrys says they might dispute that definition. Clarke says Labour are led by a group of “hard line Neo Marxists who are hell bent on Brexit and are determined to ignore the wishes of their colleagues and members.” Humphrys does not comment.
The “centre ground” (in reality establishment viewpoint) in the UK is considered the following:
* Support for the EU, NATO, US, Saudi Arabia, Israel and
* Support for the marketisation and private delivery of public services where possible in all areas (bar the cherished BBC).
* Support for privatisation, outsourcing, offshoring, free trade, de-industrialisation, trickle down theory and austerity.
* Support for global finance capitalism and the biggest multinational corporations via managed trade deals and investor protection clauses.
* Support for open borders and immigration.
* Opposition to trade unionism, local activism, nation states, patriotism and protectionism.
Essentially the market is God and anything which opposes it, whether left wing, green, patriotic or nationalist is evil.
Anyone who disagrees with any / all of the above is fair game, although if they are within the Tory Party (other than the far right of them) and within “acceptable” groupings within Labour and the Lib Dems, they are largely immune from the same level of abuse as those outside of it.
The only reason Farage, Lucas and Sturgeon are tolerated by the establishment at the moment is because Lucas and Sturgeon are 100% behind Remain and Farage represents no threat to the economic order. At the moment it is open season not only on Jeremy, but anyone who essentially supports any part of his worldview – be it the unions, strikers, protestors or whoever.
Should Corbyn be deposed and a David Miliband clone brought in, then Farage, Lucas and Sturgeon will all go back to being “evil” again.
If O’Brien is really left wing, then why is he spouting rhetoric about “quasi-marxist” nonsense (the same rubbish incidentally thrown at Ed Miliband and Gordon Brown)!! And can he explain how privatised rail, and the likes of G4S, foreign royalty or the Chinese government running public services are better than nationalisation?
One thing I will also add. For ages we have been told that internet trolls are all “far left”, “alt-right”, “kippers”, “Daily Mail commenters” “Putinbots”, “Cybernats”, “Momentum trolls” or whatever.
One thing I will give all of the above, is that they are in many cases quite happy to argue policy. I’ve had plenty of interesting debates with Tories, Kippers and libertarians and so on, even if we don’t agree.
We are now seeing the rise of the “centrist” troll – and the crucial difference is between any of the above and them is that they never ever argue policy other than “Fuck Brexit”.
The first inkling I saw of this lot was when TTIP was in the wings, and many of them were simply calling opponents of it “conspiracy theorists”, but refusing to get into any discussion over the contents, lobbying, and risks involving ISDS (which perversely even the Trump administration and Tories like Peter Lilley appreciate).
I’ve never heard any coherent argument from them against nationalisation or whatnot. Simply screaming “Marxism” and “1970s” is simply the playbook of simpletons. The average right winger can at least put up a spirited defence of competition with a few real world examples.
Thanks for your extensive list of anti-Corbyn black propaganda platitudes dogpole, though I would definitely replace “simpletons” with ‘propagandists’ (the Establishment’s propagandists).
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Propaganda-Blitz-Corporate-Distort-Reality-ebook/dp/B07HL82JMH/ref=pd_rhf_gw_s_msx_wsixn_v1_0_38?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B07HL82JMH&pd_rd_r=d9137eda-c69d-41a4-ad5d-41fc8b8aaac2&pd_rd_w=lWeUr&pd_rd_wg=lf6th&pf_rd_p=cc02e4c5-ca30-40ee-9489-6e9400aab6f7&pf_rd_r=Y7259K77V6B7SJW24H59&psc=1&refRID=Y7259K77V6B7SJW24H59
AND lundiel!!!
James O’Brien is a horrible piece of work. He epitomises the smug middle class who have deluded themselves into thinking that they are somehow on the left because they support everything that Blair stood for. And he epitomises the contempt these people have for a working class they idolised up until the referendum result; after that, they became thick, uneducated knuckle-scraping racist scum, literally overnight. He’s a spoilt middle class brat, and as with so many, Brexit has exposed his bogus left wing credentials. There’s an excellent put down of him on LBC by Ian Collins, who never mentions him by name, but it’s very clear who he’s talking about:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tnn6QmaagqI
Well worth a listen, as it sums up much of the attitude of Remainers to a class for whom they once, dishonestly, professed sympathy.
Any decent content/discourse analysis will show up the inherent biases of the metropolitan media. It’s been around for a long time.
However, I see a pot to the kettle when I note the mirror image in the sort of wild-eyed rants on display with :
” the smug middle class who have deluded themselves into thinking that they are somehow on the left ”
“hey support everything that Blair stood for.”
“the contempt these people have for a working class”
” a spoilt middle class brat”
“it sums up much of the attitude of Remainers to a class for whom they once, dishonestly, professed sympathy.”
Admittedly it has a miniscule readership – but it also is generalised prejudiced garbage.
Aping the frothing Murdoch mouth of the ‘Sun’ really isn’t a good look for progressive (allegedly) politics.
“Aping the frothing Murdoch mouth of the ‘Sun’ really isn’t a good look for progressive (allegedly) politics.”
I suggest you stop doing it, then.
(Btw, I hit recommend instead of reply.)
You are right RH. The vast majority of the 1,500 who joined our CLP or rejoined Labour after resigning over Iraq War or because Blair, and came back as activists when Corbyn became leader, would regard themselves as lower middle class poor, or middle class but not at all wealthy, educated (teachers, council officers, nurses, students) but not working class although descended from at least one parent who could be defined as working class. Most so-called working class around here don’t have jobs, or have part time service jobs in supermarkets, hate immigrants and vote UKIP and support Brexit. Most rejoiners have been quite disappointed in the way it is all going. Lot of self delusion around and ignorance about economics.
“Most so-called working class around here don’t have jobs…”.
You sound like a real socialist… Thanks for making my point.
Forthestate : All the ‘frothing’ in my post is taken from other posts aimed at attacking core Labour support.
Thanks for that Forthestate. Happy New Year to you too. ‘Bogus left wing credentials’ seems to be the epithet you dispense for those you disagree with on Brexit. You can persuade no one with that. Such vileness puts barriers in the way of Corbyn’s route to power, which would be a bloody shame and make me very cross indeed after all the efforts I have made to keep him as leader. Can you be a 5th columnist, more interested in splitting the left movement than strengthening it. No. of course not. But you have to understand the consequences of your vile words. McDonnell says we are a broad church. Listen to him for heaven’s sake. What you say is obtuse and divisive . Personally, I have contempt for thick idiots pro- Brexit or against Brexit. I have utter contempt for LBC. Someone, who it seems does not know me that well, bought me James O’Brien’s book How to be Right in a World Gone Wrong for Christmas. I had never heard of him because LBC has a long tradition going back ( to the 70s )of being the most dominantly extreme right wing news broadcaster- Have you noticed how it always May’s first choice for radio interviews. Could they possibly have counterbalanced all that with one person or brought in a socialist I thought? No they hadn’t -but he is keen to take on the distorted fears of a large strata of ill educated racist nutters, so that is useful. I switch off such chat shows as engaging with such vileness gives me grief. My own run-in with LBC happened in 1987 at the General Election. Labour had paid for a series of national newspaper and poster ads quoting on-yer-bike Conservative grandee Norman Tebbit saying in May 1983 on LBC that “if unemployment reached 3 million by the time of the next General Election the Conservatives did not deserve to be elected.” Well it did reach that. But Tebbit denied he had ever said it. Labour had spent loads on the ads and were about to pull them all and be humiliated. It was the lead story in all the nationals. The Mirror (Alastair Campbell) had found a quotation in the Mirror but had no back up evidence. Tebbit had contacted LBC who said they would deny it ever happened. That shows you what debased broadcasters they were! Actively supporting Thatcher and her henchman Tebbit. Tories were amazingly confident that Labour had no other source or evidence and that it had been too disorganised at the time of the 1983 election to have ever had any media monitoring that worked. The story was playing big for 24 hours. Tebbit challenged Kinnock -there was a wager about donating £500 to a charity if no evidence could be found Kinnock was going to lose. I came on Press Office duty and discovered what was going on. I had not been around in 1983. I was largely ignored as a Press Officer, regarded as too left wing for the likes of Mandelson who came in to post a year after I did from LWT where I came from. I supported the Miners’ strike for example. Kinnoick did not. Mandelson certainly did not. I was briefed on the Tebbit story. So I took myself off to a dusty cupboard in a far off office in the bowels of Walworth Road,. telling no one where I had gone. I had institutional memory as most of the people in the office were more recent, and I had some iniatiative I suppose. I had come in in 1984 I recalled, some old videos and such like had been stored by the rather dishevelled worker now retired, who had been tasked in 1983 with monitoring media, She turned out to have been far more diligent than her forgetful manner indicated. . After about two hours, hidden away in a corner, I found a box of sound cassettes dutifully labelled . They were recordings of the Brian Hayes show from the election period including May 23rd 1983…and sure enough, Tebbit could be heard making the claim about unemployment. I took it into the office where Mandelson was tearing his hair out and presented it to him., It then took a further hour to find a tape player that worked so we could hear it properly. We kept it quiet overnight, and at 10 am the next morning held a press conference with Bryan Gould at Transport House, where Tebbit, LBC and Brian Hayes were proven to have lied. !!!! Tebbit was caught on camera with ITN lying and then having to eat his words as the tape was played back to him. (Unfortunately , any genuine PRO’s embarrassment happened to me when TV and photographers were directed towards me as the finder of the cassette by Gould, and I became the picture on the front page of the Guardian and in other nationals the next day holding the cassette. I never liked to be the story). But it is an anecdote that tells you what LBC is really like and always has been. In the Tories’ pocket.
Happy New Year to you too, poetrymuseum, and all good things.
“Bogus left wing credentials’ seems to be the epithet you dispense for those you disagree with on Brexit.” No, it’s the epithet I use to describe the right wing of the Labour Party who form a large percentage of those attempting to dishonour the results of the referendum. That Blairites hold bogus left wing credentials is the reason Corbyn was voted into office, by both myself and you, it seems. So holding bogus left wing credentials may be said to have form amongst the so-called left in this country. They are not vile words as long as they accurately describe a class of people who have highjacked the Labour Party for over 20 years in order to deliver Thatcherite neoliberalism, to the great disadvantage of its traditional constituency, those you decry as racist, unemployed, or working in part time supermarket jobs, as if the first were universally true, and the second and third were their own fault. Reversing Brexit is not going to make them or their grievances disappear, but up until now, I see no attempt whatsoever by the Remainers to address either; their obsession is all about themselves.
And I used the phrase to refer to James O’Brien. If you want an example of vile language, then just listen to the endless stream of abuse he launches at working-class people. I have read that abuse again and again and again by people who profess to support Labour. In fact, the abuse of the working class by such ‘leftwing’ people is probably the most salient feature of the post referendum reaction. I have never seen any section of our society behaving so rabidly in my life. That’s vile.
You might be interested in this: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/nov/27/economy.euro
It dates from 2003 and I am trying to find out the impact of the Pact on UK post 2008 crash. But this looks like Germany and France put two fingers up to to the policy in 2003.
I agree with everything you say, apart from the basic premise that the bourgeoisie have ever given a damn about the working class. The contempt shown by the comfortable middle classes for the lower class has always manifested itself in how the poor are represented in MSM. The only time it was ‘cool’ to be working class was just after WW2 & into the 1950s with the era of the ‘angry young man’ as a reaction to the bourgeois Noel Coward of Home Counties Britain, challenged by gritty realism from the North.
The bourgeoisie have always been desperate to maintain their differentials & the Guardian is a classic example of how MSM has always despised socialism.
‘Why Brexit Is Good For Working People In Clear, Simple Terms’
Excellent discussion by Jimmy Dore of Mark Blythe’s comprehensive take down of the EU. This is what the real left sounds like:
Am interested in what Mark Blythe is saying -Thanks for posting this. It feels very thin however and sweeping.
What is the ‘real left’? Do you mean those who aren’t centrist labour or only those who support Brexit?
Who does not think that Trumpism is a populist game played by an indolent, intellectually challenged spoiled brat, conning the workers, who got his chance because of neo liberal elites venal behaviours.
Before I research Blythe and his thoughts, I find it odd he says deficits ‘are not allowed’ in the EU. There are no EU rules that preclude deficit based economics except where an economy is bailed out and a priority charge is placed on repayments as in Greece. Greece entered the EU for its benefits based on creative accounting with an unplugged hole arising from massive non payment of domestic tax. Note the video has ‘Athens live’ in the top left hand corner. Blythe is talking about Greece, not about the UK. Deficit building actually happened in the UK in 2004-10, We are not part of the Euro monetary system either. Larry Elliot of the Gdn is probably right about the Euro pushing down wages in Greece, but that is not the case in Germany. It was a good thing we never joined it. Immigration has driven down wages in agriculture (always low), and in service industries (Amazon), but our economy has gradually been taken over by banks, money market gamblers, multi nationals based abroad, our manufacturing industry collapsed and £trillions of tax is based offshore. Of course Capitalist bosses would love to pay wages that are as low as in Eastern Europe, . But one socialist argument has been who is going to buy the goods? Austerity imposed by the Tories and supported by some of the New Labour centrists at the time, does not lead to domestic prosperity. It makes profits to pay the shareholders of companies largely owned abroad having been sold off by the Tories and New Labour while capitalism’s inherent contradictions are becoming more starkly visible. But we are not ready for the consequences of Brexit.
Here’s the full interview for context.
Interesting….Ta very much!
Never heard of the Stability and Growth pact then? All 27 countries signed a declaration to pay off their deficits and run a small surplus. How long do you imagine the EU is going to turn a blind eye for. And imagine what the future holds for many countries in the Eurozone who have to use a large part of their fixed budgets to pay interest on loans they had to take out to pay pensions and social security.
“Before I research Blythe and his thoughts, I find it odd he says deficits ‘are not allowed’ in the EU. There are no EU rules that preclude deficit based economics except where an economy is bailed out…”
Italy has just had its budget rejected by the EU because it is based on a deficit of 2.4%. The maximum deficit limit acceptable to the EU is in fact 3%, but they consider Italy’s debt too high to sustain a deficit at 2.4%. I don’t know where you got the notion that EU member states are free to run whatever deficit they like, as long as this doesn’t entail a bail out. They’re not. Look up the Stability and Growth Pact. It’s all there.
I will. Never heard of it.
“Each Member State, to implement a fiscal policy aiming for the country to stay within the limits on government deficit (3% of GDP) and debt (60% of GDP); and in case of having a debt level above 60% it should each year decline with a satisfactory pace towards a level below. As outlined by the “preventive arm” regulation, all EU member states are each year obliged to submit a SGP compliance report for the scrutiny and evaluation of the European Commission and the Council of Ministers, that will present the country’s expected fiscal development for the current and subsequent three years. These reports are called “stability programmes” for eurozone Member States and “convergence programmes” for non-eurozone Member States, but despite having different titles they are identical in regards of the content. After the reform of the SGP in 2005, these programmes have also included the Medium-Term budgetary Objectives (MTO’s), being individually calculated for each Member State as the medium-term sustainable average-limit for the country’s structural deficit, and the Member State is also obliged to outline the measures it intends to implement to attain its MTO. If the EU Member State does not comply with both the deficit limit and the debt limit, a so-called “Excessive Deficit Procedure” (EDP) is initiated along with a deadline to comply, which basically includes and outlines an “adjustment path towards reaching the MTO”. This procedure is outlined by the “dissuasive arm” regulation.[7]”
All European governments are hamstrung by the stability and growth pact, even us outside the Eurozone. It focuses economics on deficit repayment and halts capital investment which leaves a social Democratic party with no options except PFI, privatisation, outsourcing and shrinking government. It is so blatantly awful yet middle classes have bought it because they still see the economy in terms of “a bank account” and a “household budget”.
@lundiel
“All European governments are hamstrung by the stability and growth pact, even us outside the Eurozone. It focuses economics on deficit repayment and halts capital investment which leaves a social Democratic party with no options except PFI, privatisation, outsourcing and shrinking government”
Exactly !
I agree and I just cannot understand why the PBPE PV supporters cannot grasp this fact that if we stay in the existing version of the EU then it will be impossible for Labour to enact its manifesto promises of renationalisation and state aid help for the economy to help the many and not the few.
Maybe that’s their whole point dare I say !
I agree Rob, all they seem to care about is keeping house prices as high as possible now they are on the ladder. Corbyn and his Keynesian economics and public investment bank is a step too far for fair weather lefties who refuse to believe their professional qualifications won’t protect them in the end. Just as long as they can buy a cheap retirement cottage in France or Spain and get cheap Polish builders to put a new extension on their overpriced homes.
“But we are not ready for the consequences of Brexit.”
I think those who have seen a steady decline in their standard of living over the last forty years are as ready as they ever will be. I understand that that may not include you.
>>I think those who have seen a steady decline in their standard of living over the last forty years are as ready as they ever will be. I understand that that may not include you.
Oh So every Disabled person in the UK who if Brexit really tanks our economy will be the first lot who’s benefits must be cut for the national good Tory policy is ok in you book?
Thanks maybe you want to live on a pittance be hassled and stressed by the current system may be many of us want a better future thanks!
Oh and because of your wonderful brexit drugs are already being in very short supply in the last 3 months 1 well known nerve suppressant has been very hard to obtain because 90% is being held to warehouses in birmingham.
It’s consequences like extra pain because we cannot obtain sometimes life saving medication quickly and safely.
It’s the oh a bit of pain and everything will be wonderful Brexit supporters that worry me greatly because the poor,disabled and other sections of society can go hang as long as you get your way that’s nice.
To use your words ‘I understand that may not include you’
“Oh So every Disabled person in the UK who if Brexit really tanks our economy will be the first lot who’s benefits must be cut for the national good Tory policy is ok in you book?”
That would be a UK government policy decision, austerity is a political choice. UK has its own currency and central bank so cannot run out of funds, the never ending aggressive foreign policy is a prime example… there is always money for regime change operations and destruction of societies and even whole countries with ‘humanitarian’ bombs and support for ‘humanitarian terrorists and mercenaries… Here’s a reminder of how taxes, banks and central banks work.
Sigh, Yes i know it will be the government decision but Tory policy has alwase been throw disabled people under the bus every time there is a downturn in the economy.
Just look at the last year 7 times they have lost tribune cases and had to pay back thousands of people money taken from them. these are the poorest in scotity the less able to fight back people with cancer why should we suffer just because of brexit.
The point I am making is all these people saying don’t worry it will be great well sorry won’t believe you been kicked to many times to believe rosy future fairy tales.
‘Oh such sadness as middle class liberals,
realise they are no longer the font of all knowledge.
And more politically articulate Left Wing Democratic Socialist working class stars.
Make them choke on their bloody expensive porridge!’
Where is the critical thinking from our opponents?
Perhaps we are winning on IDEAS and they being devoid of ideas in desperation resort to misinformation etc.
JC4PM!
I am not reassured by this ‘I am more socialist than you are’ stuff on the left and on this blog. Can you do something about this trend Steve? A a long time supporter of Skwawk I am worried about the recent nastiness on here from self styled holier than thou lefties banging on about middle class liberals. Or are they trolls too? They are disunifiers. I spend my time fighting centrists New Labour trolls and the Tories without having tosuffer the slings and arrows opf my own side.It is putting me right off Skwawkbox.
“It is putting me right off Skwawkbox.”
Skwawkbox is not responsible for nor should it be assumed to be aligned with comments. I do agree there is a nasty, divisive, sneering and intolerant atmosphere created in the comments sections at times. I take breaks from reading comments, it is a good way to stay in touch with the value of Skwawkbox.
A brief argument on how the MSM came to be like this:
https://www.academia.edu/38092057/The_Land_of_the_Lie
Just came across this on medialens, which I hadn’t seen before:
http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2017/850-the-breaking-of-the-corporate-media-monopoly.html
What I was actually looking for (on medialens) was the following:
Labour was defeated in the general election of May 7, 2015, causing leader Ed Miliband to resign. On June 3, the BBC reported that Corbyn had joined the contest to replace him. We monitored this period closely and it is simply unarguable that Corbyn was portrayed by journalists, and even party political foes, as a basically decent person. He was depicted as a left relic, certainly – irrelevant and ridiculous – but also as sincere and well-intentioned. There was no sense whatever in ‘mainstream’ media coverage that Corbyn was a malign individual.
In July, we conducted a ProQuest newspaper database search, which found the following hits for UK press articles mentioning:
‘Jeremy Corbyn’ and ‘antisemitism’ before May 2015 = 18 hits
‘Jeremy Corbyn’ and ‘antisemitism’ after May 2015 = 6,133 hits
None of the 18 mentions before May 2015 included any accusation that Corbyn was antisemitic. And it was not, as some people have claimed, that Corbyn, a leading anti-war MP, was unknown or unworthy of attention. ProQuest found 3,659 hits for ‘Jeremy Corbyn’ before May 2015.
http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2018/879-without-merit-jeremy-corbyn-antisemitism-norman-finkelstein-and-noam-chomsky.html