The War of Corbyn's Hat

You know the world has gone bizarro when Peter Hitchens seems reasonable.
In his piece in The Daily Mail he argues "In the past few days I have begun to sense a dangerous and dark new intolerance in the air, which I have never experienced before."
And weirdly he's not talking about himself at all. 
"I have been to many countries where free speech is dangerous. But I have always assumed that there was no real risk here.

Now, several nasty trends have come together. The treatment of Jeremy Corbyn, both by politicians and many in the media, for doing what he is paid for and leading the Opposition, seems to me to be downright shocking."

Bloody hell.   You know it's time to grab the gin and head for the bunker when Peter Hitchens is the voice of reason you turn to.   But in the light of the whole "Russiaphobia-gate" possible Russian assassination of a bloke no one had heard of before in a small part of England that no one had heard of before there has been a wave of denunciation of Russia, Putin and anyone with a Russian name (eek, ) and woe betide anyone who doesn't publicly state that they are for some kind of nuclear retaliation against these Russian monsters.    And that's why Jeremy Corbyn is a traitor.   Because he traitorously suggested that perhaps we ought to wait for some evidence that Russia carried out 'a hit' rather than have a knew jerk reaction like we do on any topic involving forign policy about a country we don't rely on for trade.

Hitchens actually points out, very reasonably, that:

"Mr Corbyn has earned the right to be listened to, and those who now try to smear him are not just doing something morally wrong. They are hurting the country. Look at our repeated rushes into foolish conflict in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan. All have done us lasting damage."

So, yeah, I'm in agreement with Peter Hitchens.   God, what next?   Am I going to start saying Boris Johnson is a misunderstood fellow and I admire him greatly even if he invokes Godwin's law over Putin and Russia?
“I think that your characterisation of what is going to happen in Moscow, the World Cup, in all the venues – yes, I think the comparison with 1936 is certainly right.” B. Johnson 21/3/18

Odd then that the UK have just been courting the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman to whom they've sold 48 Typhoon fighter jets despite them being used in what the UN call the worst humanitarian crisis in the world in Yemen.   How did the dear old BBC report on the visit?

A business piece on how it's saving our aerospace industry...
"The announcement of this proposed deal is both a shot in the arm for Britain's aerospace industry and a metaphorical punch on the nose to human rights and anti-war protesters."

A World Service piece on how Saudi are going all fundamentalist Islamic feminist...
"On a visit to the U.S, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman spoke about the advances being made in his country with regard to women's rights."

And a lengthier piece about the dinner dates the Prince would be attending and how "PM raises human rights concerns in Saudi crown prince visit."   Though her concerns didn't get in the way of flogging the fighter jets to a country flouting UN regulations and that "the UK hopes to capitalise on Saudi plans to open up and diversify its economy by agreeing up to £65bn in mutual trade and investment opportunities over the next 10 years."

"The PM said ties with Saudi Arabia had saved hundreds of UK lives [in some unspecified way] but she had urged full access for humanitarian aid in Yemen and a political solution and if that isn't forthcoming then she hoped these state of the art multi role Typhoon fighters really come in handy against those Houthis armed with Kalashnikovs and machetes.

Labour leader and Soviet style communist Jeremy Corbyn accused the government of "colluding" in war crimes by selling arms to Riyadh."

Anyhow, why the Corbyn is a communist rhetoric?   Well, there's been a twittery storm over a BBC Newsnight backdrop of Jeremy Corbyn's red saturated face and black saturated Lenin hat over a Russian constructivist backdrop of a stylized Moscow skyline.

Sort of like a Rodchenko & Popova wet dream. 
All round nice guy Owen Jones appeared on a following Newsnight pointing out that the image used painted (figuratively...or literally?) Corbyn as a "Soviet stooge" because the Labour leader had not immediately called for an SAS Navy SEALS/Osama BL style Putin take down.  Newsnight immediately ordered a neutral internal investigation carried out by the neutral BBC and found no wrong doing.   A statement by the BBC (Full response here) read:

"Complaint

We received complaints from people unhappy with a backdrop used in the programme, which showed Jeremy Corbyn alongside Russian imagery.

Response

The backdrop ran during a report on the relationship between sections of the British Left and the frankly evil Russia, prompted by the debate within the Marxist Labour party about how communist Jeremy Corbyn had reacted to government sanctions against Russia (monsters).

Newsnight is a late night current affairs programme with a distinctive style and the picture sat firmly within its long-running tradition of arresting graphics, applied to all types of stories. The backdrop was used earlier in the year, when the Defence Secretary, cuddly Conservative Gavin Williamson, was similarly superimposed. Mr Corbyn has been photographed wearing this particular hat and coat many times, and they were not in any way altered or ‘photoshopped’ to appear ‘more Russian.’"

Of course all such composite images are "photoshopped" in the sense that one image is professionally superimposed over another.   As many pointed out, the Gavin Williamson image is not saturated or centred or changed in any way.   So the comparison is pretty disingenuous.

It's particularly ironic as BBC Newsnight have been running with a fake news strand in the light of Cambridge Analytica and just over a year ago ran a lengthy piece on how fake news is used by dictatorial governments to manipulate the news, an example used here is the John Kerry superimposed onto an Anti-Vietnam rally with Jane Fonda...

Which is, of course, totally different to superimposing Corbyn in a Lenin hat over a Moscow backdrop.   Though the BBC deny darkening the hat to make it look like a Soviet fur hat but have they doctored it?  I guess it's hard to say...

That hat.   It seems a little darker to me.

The Newsnight of February 2017  was titled: Fake News: How can we know what's true (Corbyn is a communist)?

Nice video here:

In which Kirsty Wark talks about her fear of not knowing what's real anymore.   She turns to philosopher Simon Blackburn and asks:

"Are you a ghost?"

And asks Claire Wardle of First Draft News "how are you meant to know if they're real or false...I suppose you're not meant to know, that's the whole point?"

Wardle replies: "Yes, and there are very systematic campaigns now, specifically to make sure people see the same messages over time...

"systematic campaigns to try and persuade people...

a lot of these things are really easy to fool people..."

Wark: "because the people who are great beneficiaries of this are dictators and people who presumably manipulate the news for their own ends. And how do you counter that?"

Blackburn: "Well, thank god for the BBC."

Wark: "And so say all of us. Well you look for gold standards..."

Blackburn: "We have hierarchies of reliability I think. How long that will remain and, for example, if the BBC will remain independent in the way that Trump that has ensured no state departments can be independent..."

No one is suggesting that someone tuning into Newsnight will see the graphics and say "Why is Corbyn in Russia dressed as a Russian he must be a communist just like Newsnight and all the red tops and broadsheets and nearly every other news outlet suggest?"   Well...  but juxtapositions are a psychological tool of classic old skool propaganda, Peter Hitchens suggests we should all join Isis in the fight against Muslim immigrants...

More insidious in the Newsnight piece on Russia and "the Labour left" response was a series of images in which communist Trotskyite Jeremy Corbyn is shown next to the word Labour...

which begins to unravel...

and turns into Russia...

See, if you re-order the word Labour and add some letters and take some away it makes "Russia."  Labour communists bent on making you their red slaves.
I noticed you can do the same trick with "Conservatives" and "Lower than Vermin."

And then you superimpose a picture of Putin.   Have him larger than Corbyn, looking down on him, under the thumb of the Russian Commies. 

It's horribly simplistic but horribly effective, old boy.

So lovely Owen Jones had a very valid point that was thoroughly independently reviewed by the independent BBC complaints procedure carried out by the BBC Complaints Procedure people.

Next time Owen Jones is on Newsnight they'll put a terrible watercolour of him up as a backdrop as punishment.

 And woe betide that Communist sympathizer, Peter Hitchens re-appearing on Newsnight...after all, they were just re-using a backdrop...if they didn't reuse that backdrop they would have to throw it away...what a waste...

Going back round to the beginning, Hitchens piece on the end of democracy as we know it...he argues, again very reasonably-:

"Everyone I meet now thinks they were against the Iraq War (I know most of them weren’t, but never mind). So that’s over.

But Libya remains an unacknowledged disgrace. David Cameron has not suffered for it, and those who cheered it on have yet to admit they were mistaken."

Yet still somehow he turns his piece round into a rant about how Christians are vilified and Muslims are muslimy and the media are just crazy about Islam:

"Because the authorities are terrified of upsetting Islam, nothing much will happen to Muslim militants. But conservative and Christian views such as mine will suffer.

Christian and Jewish schools, especially ones which have conservative views on marriage and sex education, increasingly find themselves in trouble. Even mainstream Catholic and C of E schools are under stealthy attack, with attempts made to stop them ‘discriminating’ in favour of pupils from Christian homes."

It's an impressive feat and I bow down to him.   Today he's written a piece on how the pay gap is terrible for women, gender inequality is divisive, his admiration for Germaine Greer and how Muslims are just awful in every way.

The Corbyn piece on Newsnight is part of a much wider bias in the news media.  A report by Media Reform Coalition and Birkbeck, University of London found a widespread bias against Corbyn in the news media but the report singled out the BBC for particular criticism for their stance of neutrality:

"The BBC often responds legitimately to accusations of television bias with reference to the diversity of its news output across channels. This is legitimate because it is consistent with both its own guidelines and Ofcom’s Broadcasting Code, which applies to all UK broadcasters, and allows for impartiality to be achieved across a series of editorially-linked programmes rather than within a single bulletin.

But the guidance in both cases is nevertheless vague on this point, and the BBC Trust has in the past emphasised the need for ‘mainstream’ news programmes to demonstrate impartiality within, as well

as across, its output.

In its comprehensive review of the breadth of opinion in BBC output carried out in 2013, the Trust also made clear that whilst it is fitting for wider programming to explore the ‘wagon wheel’ of diverse views on any given topic, news programmes are rightly inclined to focus on the most prominent binary or opposing views."

Given their much stated neutrality the report found that:

"More problematic was the way in which BBC reporters used particular language and imagery when

discussing the crisis that systematically undermined the legitimacy of arguments in support of the

Labour leadership. This was evident in a qualitative analysis that looked at both the early and late

evening bulletins, as well as ‘in studio’ elements including anchor introductions, headline sequences

and live ‘two-ways’ between anchors and correspondents.

One of the most striking patterns that emerged was the repeated use of language that invoked

militarism and violence. This is not surprising given that the prospect of Labour facing a ‘civil war’

was inherently newsworthy. But BBC correspondents tended to ascribe militancy and aggression

exclusively to Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters rather than Labour rebels, in spite of the fact that

the leadership was, throughout this period, largely on the defensive in responding to attacks and

accusations by rebel MPs. The picture conveyed was one of Corbyn and his supporters adopting hard

line stance in ‘refusing to back down’ and risking the future of the Labour Party in doing so."

And...

"In contrast to the notions of hostility and intransigence, there was also repeated use of language and

imagery that associated Corbyn with weakness and failure. Descriptive words and phrases such as

“awkward”, “laughing stock” and “no authority” were used repeatedly without qualification.

Particularly noteworthy in this respect was the closing statement of a report on the BBC News at Six

which concluded that “This is a fight only one side can win. The others being carted off to

irrelevance. The place for political losers”. This was set against a shot of a moving garbage truck

emblazoned with the word ‘CORBYN’."

Underlying the BBC's neutrality are two assumptions.   Firstly, give both sides of a debate.   Of course, this fails repeatedly, I've seen numerous news pieces in the past week on "Russia-gate" without one bearing a reflection of the Russian side of the debate.   The BBC infamously use their supposed neutrality to repeatedly give a platform to Nigel Lawson's discredited 'thinktank' The Global WArming Policy Foundation when discussing Climate Change.  Why not invite creationist groups on a discussion of evolutionary concepts or moon landing skeptics on space programme articles?    The second point is far more important.   The news is reported, produced, edited by the same elite that govern and create the culture industries.   The BBC has been singled out for its class bias in its employment process and in its workforce demographic Posh BBC.   The findings of a report last year by the BBC director of Radio and Education, James Purnell.   Purnell was privately educated and went to Balliol, Oxford, of course.   

It's 'natural' that if those in government went to the same private schools and Oxbridge with the very people reporting on them that anyone outside that elite would be seen as outsiders, or in the case of Corbyn and his closest allies as dangerous and unstable, after all The Guardian, the supposedly left wing broadsheet in the UK has been ever bit as hostile to Corbyn.

Ultimately, in the case of the death of Sergei Skripol the news media in general and the BBC in particular have painted Theresa May as a strong leader because of  her denunciation of  Russia and Corbyn as weak for suggesting evidence was needed.   Again, this is nothing new.   Ed Milliband came in for the same treatment in 2013 over the Syrian intervention commons vote, which most now view as the sensible and reasonable response as opposed to David Cameron's belligerent call for an air offensive against the Syrian government (which would have been a disaster).  So Corbyn's hat is merely one small article of clothing in the BBC's wardrobe department of Corbyn criticism.   And it isn't going to go away.