Jeremy Corbyn, de Britse Labourleider zal en moet vallen: hij neemt het op voor het arme deel van de bevolking en dat ‘kunnen we uiteraard niet hebben in de huidige ijskoude, inhumane neoliberale maatschappij….’ Vandaar dat de politiek in samenwerking met de reguliere Britse (en ook buitenlandse) media Corbyn op alle mogelijke manieren belasteren en demoniseren met leugens en andere achterklap……
Jonathan
Cook schreef een uitgebreid en prima artikel over de krachten die
alles op alles zetten om Jeremy Corbyn, de Britse Labourleider, ten
val te brengen en te voorkomen dat hij de volgende landelijke
verkiezingen zal winnen…..
Cook
wijst op de politieke gang van zaken in Groot-Brittannië, al voordat
Trump in de VS aan het bewind kwam. Een groot deel van het volk zag en ziet volkomen terecht de politiek als vooropgezette lobby ten gunste van de bedrijven en de
welgestelden, zaken waaraan eerdere Labourleiders meededen en die zoals gezegd werden gesteund door de reguliere media…. Het neoliberalisme had
immers ‘het communisme’ overwonnen, ‘het communisme’ dat nooit
werkelijk heeft bestaan op onze aarde, althans voor zover bekend is (gezien de voorhanden zijnde en niet gemanipuleerde geschiedenis*).
De reguliere westerse media en politici zijn zelfs zover gegaan dat ze Corbyn durfden te beschuldigen van
antisemitisme, terwijl Corbyn in zijn partij o.a. wordt bijgestaan
door politici die Joods zijn, voorts was hij bevriend met Hajo Meijer, het intussen overleden bestuurslid van Een Ander
Joods Geluid….. En waarom die beschuldiging van antisemitisme? Omdat Corbyn regelmatig
volledig terecht het Israëlische terreurbeleid t.a.v. de Palestijnen
heeft bekritiseerd, zeker als Israël weer een zoveelste bloedbad aanrichtte
onder de Palestijnen…. De Palestijnen, als de Joden voor en tijdens
WOII, het vervolgde volk, niet in Duitsland maar in Israël, NB een illegaal gestichte
staat waar o.a. Joden naar toe vluchten om zaken te voorkomen, die Israël tegen de Palestijnen gebruikt……
Jeremy Hunt, een psychopathische mafketel van de Tories, durfde Corbyn af te schilderen als de nieuwe Hitler…… Te ernstig om over te lachen, daar er voldoende figuren zijn die een tweede Hitler met veel plezier om zouden leggen, zeker voordat deze politieke macht krijgt….. Ofwel Hunt heeft Corbyn een schietschijf omgehangen en dat met een bewering die kant nog wal raakt…..
Nogmaals: nooit heeft Corbyn anti-Joodse geluiden laten horen, het gaat uitsluitend om kritiek op de staat Israël, iets dat volkomen legitiem is en niets met antisemitisme te maken heeft…..
In de VS
heeft men een grote bek over de ‘door de Russen gemanipuleerde
presidentsverkiezingen van 2016’, waar geen flinter aan bewijs voor
werd geleverd, anders dan een aantal advertenties die qua kosten niet eens in
de schaduw kunnen staan van de bedragen waarmee die verkiezingen
worden gekocht……. Terwijl diezelfde VS in persoon van o.a. Pompeo
heeft gesteld dat Corbyn de volgende landelijke verkiezingen in GB
niet mag winnen….. De VS zou nu zelfs al actief in GB bezig zijn met het
demoniseren van Corbyn…… Zo geeft Pompeo toe (waarschijnlijk ongewild, het is bepaald geen intellect) dat de VS overal en nergens de
verkiezingen manipuleert, als men de idee heeft dat belangrijke figuren als politici op belangrijke posities niet in het belang van de VS en/of Israël zullen werken…..
Lees het
volgende artikel van Cook (eerder gepubliceerd op Common Dreams en overgenomen van Anti-Media) en zegt het voort, er moet een eind komen aan de smerige campagne tegen Corbyn, een campagne waar ook Nederlandse media aan meewerken…..
The
Plot to Keep Jeremy Corbyn Out of Power
July
5, 2019 at 9:24 am
Written
by Jonathan
Cook
As
the establishment’s need to keep him away from power has grown more
urgent and desperate so has the nature of the attacks
(CD Op-Ed) — In
the latest of the interminable media “furores” about Jeremy
Corbyn’s supposed unfitness to lead Britain’s Labour party –
let alone become prime minister – it is easy to forget where we
were shortly before he won the support of an overwhelming majority of
Labour members to head the party.
In
the preceding two years, it was hard to avoid on TV the figure of
Russell Brand, a comedian and minor film star who had reinvented
himself, after years of battling addiction, as a spiritual
guru-cum-political revolutionary.
Brand’s
fast-talking, plain-speaking criticism of the existing political
order, calling it discredited, unaccountable and unrepresentative,
was greeted with smirking condescension by the political and media
establishment. Nonetheless, in an era before Donald Trump had become
president of the United States, the British media were happy to
indulge Brand for a while, seemingly believing he or his ideas might
prove a ratings winner with younger audiences.
But
Brand started to look rather more impressive than anyone could have
imagined. He took on supposed media heavyweights like the
BBC’s Jeremy
Paxman and
Channel 4’s Jon
Snow and
charmed and shamed them into submission – both with his compassion
and his thoughtful radicalism. Even in the gladiatorial-style battle
of wits so beloved of modern TV, he made these titans of the
political interview look mediocre, shallow and out of touch. Videos
of these head-to-heads went viral, and Brand won hundreds of
thousands of new followers.
Then
he overstepped the mark.
Democracy
as charade
Instead
of simply criticising the political system, Brand argued that it was
in fact so rigged by the powerful, by corporate interests, that
western democracy had become a charade. Elections were pointless.
Our votes were simply a fig-leaf, concealing the fact that our
political leaders were there to represent not us but the interests of
globe-spanning corporations. Political and media elites had been
captured by unshored corporate money. Our voices had become
irrelevant.
Brand
didn’t just talk the talk. He started committing to direct action.
He shamed our
do-nothing politicians and corporate media – the devastating
Grenfell Tower fire had yet to happen – by helping to gain
attention for a group of poor tenants in London who were taking on
the might of a corporation that had become their landlord and wanted
to evict them to develop their homes for a much richer clientele.
Brand’s revolutionary words had turned into revolutionary action
But
just as Brand’s rejection of the old politics began to articulate a
wider mood, it was stopped in its tracks. After Corbyn was
unexpectedly elected Labour leader, offering for the first time in
living memory a politics that listened to people before money,
Brand’s style of rejectionism looked a little too cynical, or at
least premature.
Ideologically
he was resolutely against the thrust of four decades of a
turbo-charged neoliberal capitalism. (Photo: Anthony
Devlin/Getty Images)
While
Corbyn’s victory marked a sea-change, it is worth recalling,
however, that it occurred only because of a mistake. Or perhaps two.
The
Corbyn accident
First,
a handful of Labour MPs agreed to nominate Corbyn for the leadership
contest, scraping him past the threshold needed to get on the ballot
paper. Most backed him only because they wanted to give the
impression of an election that was fair and open. After his victory,
some loudly regretted having
assisted him. None had thought a representative of the tiny and
besieged left wing of the parliamentary party stood a chance of
winning – not after Tony Blair and his acolytes had spent more than
two decades remaking Labour, using their own version of entryism to
eradicate any vestiges of socialism in the party. These “New
Labour” MPs were there, just as Brand had noted, to represent the
interests of a corporate class, not ordinary people.
Corbyn
had very different ideas from most of his colleagues. Over the years
he had broken with the consensus of the dominant Blairite faction
time and again in parliamentary votes, consistently taking a minority
view that later proved to be on the right
side of history.
He alone among the leadership contenders spoke unequivocally against
austerity, regarding it as a way to leech away more public money to
enrich the corporations and banks that had already pocketed vast sums
from the public coffers – so much so that by 2008 they had nearly
bankrupted the entire western economic system.
And
second, Corbyn won because of a recent change in the party’s
rulebook – one now much regretted by party managers. A new internal
balloting system gave more weight to the votes of ordinary members
than the parliamentary party. The members, unlike the party machine,
wanted Corbyn.
Corbyn’s
success didn’t really prove Brand wrong. Even the best designed
systems have flaws, especially when the maintenance of the system’s
image as benevolent is considered vitally important. It wasn’t that
Corbyn’s election had shown Britain’s political system was
representative and accountable. It was simply evidence that corporate
power had made itself vulnerable to a potential accident by
preferring to work out of sight, in the shadows, to maintain the
illusion of democracy. Corbyn was that accident.
‘Brainwashing
under freedom’
Corbyn’s
success also wasn’t evidence that the power structure he challenged
had weakened. The system was still in place and it still had a
chokehold on the political and media establishments that exist to
uphold its interests. Which is why it has been mobilising these
forces endlessly to damage Corbyn and avert the risk of a further,
even more disastrous “accident”, such as his becoming prime
minister.
Listing
the ways the state-corporate media have sought to undermine Corbyn
would sound preposterous to anyone not deeply immersed in these
media-constructed narratives. But almost all of us have been exposed
to this kind of “brainwashing
under freedom”
since birth.
The
initial attacks on Corbyn were for being poorly dressed, sexist,
unstatesmanlike, a national security threat, a Communist spy –
relentless, unsubstantiated smears the like of which no other party
leader had ever faced. But over time the allegations became even more
outrageously propagandistic as the campaign to undermine him not only
failed but backfired – not least, because Labour membership
rocketed under Corbyn to make the party the largest in Europe.
As
the establishment’s need to keep him away from power has grown more
urgent and desperate so has the nature of the attacks.
Redefining
anti-semitism
Corbyn
was extremely unusual in many ways as the leader of a western party
within sight of power. Personally he was self-effacing and lived
modestly. Ideologically he was resolutely against the thrust of four
decades of a turbo-charged neoliberal capitalism unleashed by
Thatcher and Reagan in the early 1980s; and he opposed foreign wars
for empire, fashionable “humanitarian interventions” whose real
goal was to attack other sovereign states either to control their
resources, usually oil, or line the pockets of the
military-industrial complex.
It
was difficult to attack Corbyn directly for these positions. There
was the danger that they might prove popular with voters. But Corbyn
was seen to have an Achilles’ heel. He was a life-long anti-racism
activist and well known for his support for the rights of the
long-suffering Palestinians. The political and media establishments
quickly learnt that they could recharacterise his support for the
Palestinians and criticism of Israel as anti-semitism. He was soon
being presented as a leader happy to preside over an
“institutionally” anti-semitic party.
Under
pressure of these attacks, Labour was forced to adopt a new and
highly controversial definition of anti-semitism – one rejected by
leading jurists and later repudiated by
the lawyer who devised it – that expressly conflates criticism of
Israel, and anti-Zionism, with Jew hatred.
One
by one Corbyn’s few ideological allies in the party – those
outside the Blairite consensus – have been picked off as
anti-semites. They have either fallen foul of this conflation or, as
with Labour MP Chris Williamson, they have been tarred and feathered
for trying to defend Labour’s record against the accusations of a
supposed endemic anti-semitism in its ranks.
The
bad faith of the anti-semitism smears were particularly clear in
relation to Williamson. The comment that plunged him into so much
trouble – now leading twice to his suspension – was videoed. In
it he can be heard calling anti-semitism a “scourge” that must be
confronted. But also, in line with all evidence,
Williamson denied that Labour had any particular anti-semitism
problem. In part he blamed the party for being too ready to concede
unwarranted ground to critics, further stoking the attacks and
smears. He noted that Labour had been “demonised as a racist,
bigoted party”, adding: “Our party’s response has been partly
responsible for that because in my opinion … we’ve backed off far
too much, we have given too much ground, we’ve been too
apologetic.”
The
Guardian has been typical in mischaracterising Williamson’s remarks
not once but each time it has covered developments in his case. Every
Guardian report has
stated, against the audible evidence, that Williamson said Labour was
“too apologetic about anti-semitism”. In short, the Guardian and
the rest of the media have insinuated that Williamson approves of
anti-semitism. But what he actually said was that Labour was “too
apologetic” when dealing with unfair or unreasonable allegations of
anti-semitism, that it had too willingly accepted the unfounded
premise of its critics that the party condoned racism.
Like
the Salem witch-hunts
The
McCarthyite nature of this process of misrepresentation and guilt by
association was underscored when Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL), a group of
Jewish party members who have defended Corbyn against the
anti-semitism smears, voiced their support for Williamson. Jon
Lansman, a founder of the Momentum group originally close to Corbyn,
turned on the JVL calling them
“part of the problem and not part of the solution to antisemitism
in the Labour Party”. In an additional, ugly but increasingly
normalised remark, he added: “Neither the vast majority of
individual members of JVL nor the organisation itself can really be
said to be part of the Jewish community.”
In
this febrile atmosphere, Corbyn’s allies have been required to
confess that the party is institutionally anti-semitic, to distance
themselves from Corbyn and often to submit to anti-semitism training.
To do otherwise, to deny the accusation is, as in the Salem
witch-hunts, treated as proof of guilt.
The
anti-semitism claims have been regurgitated almost daily across the
narrow corporate media “spectrum”, even though they are
unsupported by any actual
evidenceof
an anti-semitism problem in Labour beyond a marginal one
representative of wider British society. The allegations have reached
such fever-pitch, stoked into a hysteria by the media, that the party
is now under investigation by
the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) – the only party apart
from the neo-Nazi British National Party ever to face such an
investigation.
These
attacks have transformed the whole discursive landscape on Israel,
the Palestinians, Zionism and anti-semitism in ways unimaginable 20
years ago, when I first started reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. Then the claim that anti-Zionism – opposition to Israel
as a state privileging Jews over non-Jews – was the same as
anti-semitism sounded patently ridiculous. It was an idea promoted
only by the most unhinged apologists for Israel.
Now,
however, we have leading liberal commentators such as the Guardian’s
Jonathan Freedland claiming not
only that Israel is integral to their Jewish identity but that they
speak for all other Jews in making such an identification. To
criticise Israel is to attack them as Jews, and by implication to
attack all Jews. And therefore any Jew dissenting from this
consensus, any Jew identifying as anti-Zionist, any Jew in Labour who
supports Corbyn – and there are many, even if they are largely
ignored – are denounced, in line wth Lansman, as the “wrong kind
of Jews”. It may be absurd logic, but such ideas are now so
commonplace as to be unremarkable.
In
fact, the weaponisation of anti-semitism against Corbyn has become so
normal that, even while I was writing this post, a new nadir was
reached. Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary who hopes to defeat Boris
Johnson in the upcoming Tory leadership race, as good
as accused Corbyn
of being a new Hitler, a man who as prime minister might allow Jews
to be exterminated, just as occurred in the Nazi death camps.
Too
‘frail’ to be PM
Although
anti-semitism has become the favoured stick with which to beat
Corbyn, other forms of attack regularly surface. The latest are
comments by unnamed “senior civil servants” reported in the
Times alleging that
Corbyn is too physically frail and mentally ill-equipped to grasp the
details necessary to serve as prime minister. It barely matters
whether the comment was actually made by a senior official or simply
concocted by the Times. It is yet further evidence of the political
and media establishments’ anti-democratic efforts to discredit
Corbyn as a general election looms.
One
of the ironies is that media critics of Corbyn regularly accuse him
of failing to make any political capital from the shambolic disarray
of the ruling Conservative party, which is eating itself alive over
the terms of Brexit, Britain’s imminent departure from the European
Union. But it is the corporate media – which serves both as
society’s main forum of debate and as a supposed watchdog on power
– that is starkly failing to hold the Tories to account. While the
media obsess about Corbyn’s supposed mental deficiencies, they have
smoothed the path of Boris Johnson, a man who personifies the word
“buffoon” like no one else in political life, to become the new
leader of the Conservative party and therefore by default – and
without an election – the next prime minister.
An
indication of how the relentless character assassination of Corbyn is
being coordinated was hinted at early on, months after his election
as Labour leader in 2015. A British military general told
the Times,
again anonymously, that there would be “direct action” – what
he also termed a “mutiny” – by the armed forces should Corbyn
ever get in sight of power. The generals, he said, regarded Corbyn as
a national security threat and would use any means, “fair or foul”,
to prevent him implementing his political programme.
Running
the gauntlet
But
this campaign of domestic attacks on Corbyn needs to be understood in
a still wider framework, which relates to Britain’s abiding
Transatlantic “special relationship”, one that in reality means
that the UK serves as Robin to the United States’ Batman, or as a
very junior partner to the global hegemon.
Last
month a private conversation concerning Corbyn between the US
secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and the heads of a handful of
rightwing American Jewish organisations was leaked. Contrary to the
refrain of the UK corporate media that Corbyn is so absurd a figure
that he could never win an election, the fear expressed on both sides
of that Washington conversation was that the Labour leader might soon
become Britain’s prime minister.
Framing
Corbyn yet again as an anti-semite, a US Jewish leader could be heard
asking Pompeo if he would be “willing to work with us to take on
actions if life becomes very difficult for Jews in the UK”.
Pompeo responded that
it was possible “Mr Corbyn manages to run the gauntlet and get
elected” – a telling phrase that attracted remarkably little
attention, as did the story itself, given that it revealed one of the
most senior Trump administration officials explicitly talking about
meddling directly in the outcome of a UK election
Here
is the dictionary definition of “run the gauntlet”: to take part
in a form of corporal punishment in which the party judged guilty is
forced to run between two rows of soldiers, who strike out and attack
him.
So
Pompeo was suggesting that there already is a gauntlet – systematic
and organised blows and strikes against Corbyn – that he is being
made to run through. In fact, “running the gauntlet” precisely
describes the experience Corbyn has faced since he was elected Labour
leader – from the corporate media, from the dominant Blairite
faction of his own party, from rightwing, pro-Israel Jewish
organisations like the Board of Deputies, and from anonymous generals
and senior civil servants.
‘We
cheated, we stole’
Pompeo
continued: “You should know, we won’t wait for him to do those
things to begin to push back. We will do our level best. It’s too
risky and too important and too hard once it’s already happened.”
So,
Washington’s view is that action must be taken before Corbyn
reaches a position of power. To avoid any danger he might become the
UK’s next prime minister, the US will do its “level best” to
“push back”. Assuming that this hasn’t suddenly become the US
administration’s priority, how much time does the US think it has
before Corbyn might win power? How close is a UK election?
As
everyone in Washington is only too keenly aware, a UK election has
been a distinct possiblity since the Conservatives set up a minority
goverment two years ago with the help of fickle, hardline Ulster
loyalists. Elections have been looming ever since, as the UK ruling
party has torn itself apart over Brexit, its MPs regularly defeating
their own leader, prime minister Theresa May, in parliamentary votes.
So
if Pompeo is saying, as he appears to be, that the US will do
whatever it can to make sure Corbyn doesn’t win an election well
before that election takes place, it means the US is already deeply
mired in anti-Corbyn activity. Pompeo is not only saying that the US
is ready to meddle in the UK’s election, which is bad enough; he is
hinting that it is already meddling in UK politics to make sure the
will of the British people does not bring to power the wrong leader.
Remember
that Pompeo, a former CIA director, once effectively America’s spy
chief, was unusually frank about what his agency got up to when he
was in charge. He observed:
“I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. It’s –
it was like – we had entire training courses.”
One
would have to be remarkably naive to think that Pompeo changed the
CIA’s culture during his short tenure. He simply became the
figurehead of the world’s most powerful spying outfit, one that had
spent decades developing the principles of US exceptionalism, that
had lied its way to recent wars in Iraq and Libya, as it had done
earlier in Vietnam and in justifying the nuclear bombing of
Hiroshima, and much more. Black ops and psyops were not invented by
Pompeo. They have long been a mainstay of US foreign policy.
An
eroding consensus
It
takes a determined refusal to join the dots not to see a clear
pattern here.
Brand
was right that the system is rigged, that our political and media
elites are captured, and that the power structure of our societies
will defend itself by all means possible, “fair or foul.” Corbyn
is far from alone in this treatment. The system is similarly rigged
to stop a democratic socialist like Bernie Sanders – though not a
rich businessman like Donald Trump – winning the nomination for the
US presidential race. It is also rigged to silence real journalists
like Julian Assange who are trying to overturn the access journalism
prized by the corporate media – with its reliance on official
sources and insiders for stories – to divulge the secrets of the
national security states we live in.
There
is a conspiracy at work here, though it is not of the kind lampooned
by critics: a small cabal of the rich secretly pullng the strings of
our societies. The conspiracy operates at an institutional level, one
that has evolved over time to create structures and refine and
entrench values that keep power and wealth in the hands of the few.
In that sense we are all part of the conspiracy. It is a conspiracy
that embraces us every time we unquestioningly accept the
“consensual” narratives laid out for us by our education systems,
politicians and media. Our minds have been occupied with myths, fears
and narratives that turned us into the turkeys that keep voting for
Christmas.
That
system is not impregnable, however. The consensus so carefully
constructed over many decades is rapidly breaking down as the power
structure that underpins it is forced to grapple with real-world
problems it is entirely unsuited to resolve, such as the gradual
collapse of western economies premised on infinite growth and a
climate that is fighting back against our insatiable appetite for the
planet’s resources.
As
long as we colluded in the manufactured consensus of western
societies, the system operated without challenge or meaningful
dissent. A deeply ideological system destroying the planet was
treated as if it was natural, immutable, the summit of human
progress, the end of history. Those times are over. Accidents like
Corbyn will happen more frequently, as will extreme climate events
and economic crises. The power structures in place to prevent such
accidents will by necessity grow more ham-fisted, more belligerent,
less concealed to get their way. And we might finally understand that
a system designed to pacify us while a few grow rich at the expense
of our children’s future and our own does not have to continue.
That we can raise our voices and loudly say: “No!”
By Jonathan
Cook / Creative
Commons / Common
Dreams
====================================
* Je zou
de eerste christengemeenschappen kunnen zien als communistisch, daar
iedereen er gelijk was en men samen besliste over de dagelijkse gang
van zaken. Echter gegarandeerd dat die gemeenschappen in
werkelijkheid meer weg hadden van een sekte, daar de enige echte
autoriteit het godsgeloof was en twijfelen aan die autoriteit zou
tot onmiddellijke verstoting/uitstoting hebben geleid…..
Zie ook:
‘Verkiezingen in Groot-Brittannië gemanipuleerd door de massamedia‘
‘Boris Johnson vs. Jeremy Corbyn en de massamedia‘
‘Niet Rusland maar Trump beïnvloedt nu al de verkiezingen in Groot-Brittannië‘
‘Britse kinderen lijden anno 2018 honger, vooral in de vakanties…….‘
Voor meer berichten over Corbyn, antisemitisme, Israël en of de Palestijnen, klik op de betreffende labels, direct onder dit bericht.
