{"id":42424,"date":"2018-02-26T05:00:17","date_gmt":"2018-02-26T10:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=42424"},"modified":"2018-02-25T08:59:11","modified_gmt":"2018-02-25T13:59:11","slug":"taking-corbyn-seriously","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/02\/26\/taking-corbyn-seriously\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking Corbyn seriously"},"content":{"rendered":"

In The Spectator<\/em>, Brendan O’Neill<\/a> begins considering the threat of a Corbyn premiership:<\/p>\n

This week, the Corbynistas bared their teeth. They gave us an insight into the mob-like authoritarianism that lurks behind the facade of their \u2018kind\u2019 politics. They insisted Jeremy Corbyn wasn\u2019t a spy for the Stalinists while at the same time exposing their Stalinist tendencies. \u2018How dare you lump us in with Stalinists?\u2019, they cried, while in the next breath making manic-eyed videos threatening the press and forming online mobs to punish those who criticise their Dear Leader. The irony has been dark.<\/p>\n

For the first time, I feel fearful of Corbynism. Until now, I\u2019ve seen the Corbynistas as a somewhat tragic movement, a kind of cosplay for middle-class millennials who doll up their rather staid politics \u2014 their love of the nanny state, their fear of Brexit, their preference for identity politics over class politics \u2014 in Marxist memes and Red blather. But this week we have seen another side to them. We have seen their intolerance of rowdy political criticism, their instinct for political interference in the press. This looks increasingly like a movement of petit-bourgeois vengeance.<\/p>\n

Exhibit A is Corbyn\u2019s positively Trumpite threat to the press<\/a> that \u2018change is coming\u2019. For all the Corbyn camp\u2019s loathing of Trump, they share his brutish disdain for the trouble-making media. In the video, Corbyn\u2019s contorted face takes to task right-wing newspapers that have indulged the Czech spy story over the past week, and warns that when the Corbynistas come to power there will be a shake-up of press ownership and pressure on press oligarchs to pay more taxes.<\/p>\n

His supporters present this an anti-establishment act: a brave Labourite standing up to filthy rich newspaper men. Please. Corbyn\u2019s threatening video was directly inspired by the press\u2019s attacks on him over the past week. He publicly denounced the press in the manner of a tinpot tyrant for one reason only: because the press has been ridiculing his naff, Soviet-tinged shenanigans in the late 1980s. This is political<\/em> interference: angry at the press attacks on him, he whipped up an online mob to agitate for more press control.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

The Corbynistas\u2019 reactionary clamour for official interference in the press was captured in an article at Novara Media<\/a>, home to the weird mix of nanny statism, anti-democracy and middle-class pity for the poor that motors the millennial wing of the Corbynista movement. It congratulated Corbyn for \u2018send[ing] shivers down the spine of the media establishment\u2019, and promised that under a Labour government Leveson 2 would \u2018finish the job and open up this bankrupt industry\u2019. This promise of Leveson 2 is reason enough never to vote for Corbyn\u2019s Labour: it would ride roughshod over the great radical history of this nation, from the Levellers to the Chartists, all of whom were repulsed by the idea of state meddling in the press.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In The Spectator, Brendan O’Neill begins considering the threat of a Corbyn premiership: This week, the Corbynistas bared their teeth. They gave us an insight into the mob-like authoritarianism that lurks behind the facade of their \u2018kind\u2019 politics. They insisted Jeremy Corbyn wasn\u2019t a spy for the Stalinists while at the same time exposing their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,53],"tags":[188,476,1090,143],"class_list":["post-42424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-politics","tag-electionwatch","tag-espionage","tag-jeremycorbyn","tag-labour"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-b2g","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42424"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42425,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42424\/revisions\/42425"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}