Barbarians at the Gates 229


A Typical Raiding Party of Corbynistas and Cybernats

A Typical Raiding Party of Corbynistas and Cybernats

A key weapon of the neo-liberal establishment in delegitimising the emergence of popular organisation to the left, is to portray all thinkers outside the Overton window as dangerous; actively violent, misogynist and racist.

WikiLeaks have once again done the world a great service by publishing smoking gun evidence that the Democratic National Committee – which was supposed to be a neutral body overseeing the Democrats primary election – was doing everything possible to tilt the field against Bernie Sanders. Just one of the ways that was done was by secretly promoting to the media the idea that Sanders’ supporters were violent, misogynist and intimidatory thugs.

One of the major events used to further this trope was the Democratic state convention in Nevada. This is a powerful demonstration of a phenomenon that we are witnessing daily in the UK – the use of the mainstream media to perpetrate the trope, despite the existence of irrefutable evidence that the narrative being put forward by the mainstream media is factually untrue. I have posted this video before, but please look at it now, whether again or for the first time. This is video of the actual events at Nevada taken from the heart of the “Barbarian crowd of Sanders supporters. The media characterisation of the events you are watching – a characterisation that was spread in active collusion between the media and neo-liberal politicians – includes accusations which we see repeated again and again, of violence, physical threat, misogynist abuse and spitting. What the actual evidence shows is something which we are seeing again and again as the actual reality – neo-liberal members of the paid political class astonished and indignant that their “position” and authority is not being treated with deference by ordinary people. Watch the video.

It is important to say that there is a lot of other video evidence available. This is the clearest I can find. No evidence appears anywhere online which bears out the stories of violence, abuse and spitting – which is quite astonishing given that the entire mainstream media carried and promoted those stories.

The Labour Party constituency meeting at Brighton gives us a precise analogy to the Nevada Democrats meeting. Again claims were made of violent intimidation, swearing and spitting. Again, in this age where everybody has a video camera in their pocket, there is absolutely zero objective evidence of this behaviour and a great deal of evidence to the contrary. It appears the real sin of the Brighton Labour Party members was to elect pro-Corbyn officers. That election has now been annulled. The National Executive Committee of the Labour Party is playing precisely the role against Corbyn that the NDC played against Sanders.

None of this is new. From the start, the Labour establishment has attempted to portray ordinary members as thugs. 7 months ago Stella Creasy claimed that a violent and intimidatory mob had gathered outside her constituency office, and in consequence she and her staff had been too scared to go to work. Here is a video of the actual incident.

Again the obvious and glaring disparity between what actually happened – this “peace vigil” was led by the local vicar to urge Creasy to withdraw her support for bombing Syria – and what Creasy claimed had happened, was ignored by the mainstream media. The mainstream media has become the home of fact free journalism. If you want to find anything approaching truth, you have to go surfing the social media.

It is highly significant that among the “demands” made in a recent letter by 44 anti-Corbyn female MPs was that demonstrations at their offices should be banned, and anyone who participates in one expelled from the Labour Party. I think that in itself says enough about their sense of entitlement and attitude to free speech.

Just a couple more examples of many score I could give. The “brick through Angela Eagle’s window” story is repeated continually by the mainstream media to show the violence of Corbyn supporters. But in fact the broken window was in a stairwell of an office block, actually on a different face of the building to the one on which Angela Eagle’s office has windows. There is no evidence at all that Ms Eagle’s office was the target, let alone that a Corbyn supporter was the perpetrator. I have been able to find no evidence of the existence of the brick. What is interesting, is that on this common stairwell, not connected to the Labour Party, a Party poster was used to close up the void, thus giving a photo opportunity that all of the mainstream media used and reinforcing the false impression – more than impression, false statement in the entire mainstream media – that it was Ms Eagle’s window that was broken. How did this happen? Emergency glaziers carry boards. I have also seen no evidence of the existence of the brick. Was it a literal brick? Where did it come from? Or was it, perhaps, a lump of Portland cement?

My all time favourite for mainstream media distortion of a story comes, naturally, from the BBC. Labour MP Marie Rimmer has been brought to trial for kicking a canvasser. This is how the BBC reported it. This really is beyond satire.

Screenshot (79)

To us Scottish nationalists, the portrayal of those who challenge the status quo as violent and racist is something that we have lived with for years. That is why I use the expression “vauntie cybernat” at the top of my blog, “cybernat” having become the mainstream media term for barbarian during the referendum campaign.

The smearing of critics of the status quo being violent, threatening racists and misogynists was demonstrated perfectly in the killing of the petition against the BBC’s obnoxiously right wing and obviously biased political correspondent, Laura Kuenssberg. A whole wave of obscene, vile and threatening online abuse was alleged to be associated with the petition, but careful investigation – of which zero was done by the mainstream media – proved this to be an outright lie.

Finally, we come to the slur that Corbyn supporters are anti-Semitic. As I have stated before, one obvious flaw in this charge is that almost all Corbyn supporters enthusiastically cheered on Bernie Sanders. Again, the slightest examination of the facts shows that in many cases the accusation absolutely does not stand up, as with the Ruth Smeeth incident where the man demonstrably did not say what she quoted him as saying. Again the mainstream media had no interest in simply provable actual fact.

What has been extremely reprehensible has been the tendency to the mainstream media to slip in, as the Guardian did with the case of Luciana Berger, examples of genuine and appalling anti-Semitic abuse, without making clear that in these cases the perpetrators (and somebody was convicted) were from the far right and had absolutely nothing to do with Corbyn and his supporters. Much the same is true of references to the murder of Jo Cox.

The Establishment will always attempt to characterise any root challenge to its hegemony and ideology as violent, atavistic and subscribing to appalling beliefs and behaviour. The theme of challengers as “Barbarians” runs through history. We will have to put up with it for some time. The good news is, they are seriously rattled.

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229 thoughts on “Barbarians at the Gates

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  • michael norton

    French prosecutors have identified the second man involved in the killing of a priest in a Normandy church on Tuesday as Abdel Malik Petitjean, 19.

    The other attacker had earlier been named as Adel Kermiche, also 19.

    The pair were shot dead by police outside the church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray where they had killed Fr Jacques Hamel, 86, and taken hostages.

    So-called Islamic State released a video of what it said were the two men pledging allegiance to the group.

    “Following DNA tests, it emerged that the terrorist has been identified as Abdel Malik Nabil Petitjean,” a source in the Paris prosecutor’s office said.

    Petitjean, from eastern France, had been on a radicals’ watch list. Police had been looking for him for several days before the attack.
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36911766

    From this young mans photograph, he looks so ordinary,
    just so ordinary.

  • Ba'al Zevul

    Sputnik seems to be the first with this. Due credit given:

    http://sputniknews.com/europe/20160728/1043716121/labour-party-corbyn-leadership.html

    UK Labour Party Jeremey Corbyn has won the right to stand automatically in the leadership election sparked by a fierce split between him and his fellow MPs in parliament as well as within the grassroots of the party.

    The London High Court Thursday (July 28), ruled that Corbyn had the right to be automatically included on the ballot papers, after a leadership election challenge followed a vote of no confidence in him, which he lost by 172 to 40.

    I don’t suppose the Guardian will be highlighting it, anyway.

    • John Goss

      Yes, thanks, I got to know through the Party, that is the Corbyn supporters element of the party. They phoned up looking for volunteers and attenders at the parliamentary constituency meeting tonight. Unfortunately the new rules exclude me from having a voice.

  • michael norton

    Barbarians at the gate

    Corsican nationalists warn jihadists of tough response
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36912541
    A Corsican nationalist group has said it will retaliate for any attack by Islamists on the French island.

    For decades the armed Corsican National Liberation Front (FLNC) carried out bombings and robberies targeting the French state. In 2014 the FLNC declared a ceasefire, but did not disarm.

    The FLNC warned of a “determined response, without any qualms” for any jihadist attack in Corsica, in a message to the Corse Matin newspaper.

    Jihadists stormed a church on Tuesday.

    The two attackers killed an elderly priest, Father Jacques Hamel, and took hostages in the Normandy church, before police shot the pair dead outside.

    So-called Islamic State (IS) released a video of what it said were the two men pledging allegiance to the group.

    It is the latest jihadist atrocity to hit France, still traumatised by the Paris attacks last year in which 147 people died.
    In December protesters in Ajaccio, Corsica, vandalised a Muslim prayer hall and trashed copies of the Koran.

    The FLNC message – issued by a faction called 22 October – called on Muslim leaders in Corsica to “take a stand against radical Islam” and “alert us to any excesses you notice among disillusioned youths inclined towards extremism”.

    Addressing jihadists, the FLNC said “your medieval philosophy doesn’t scare us”. It added: “You should know that any attack against our people would trigger a determined response, without any qualms… The Salafists clearly want to establish the Daesh (IS) policy among us, and we’re prepared for that.”

    Nine French policemen were killed in 34 years of pro-independence violence led by the FLNC.

  • michael norton

    Danish nationalists seek ‘close to zero’ Muslim migrants

    Denmark’s leading voice against immigration, the Danish People’s Party, says it wants to reduce Muslim migration to “close to zero.” Denmark should halt immigration from Muslim countries to stem the threat of violence from extremists, the nation’s second-largest party argued Thursday. The deputy party leader, Soeren Espersen, and other officials said the existing 270,000 Muslims in Denmark, a country of less than 6 million people, already posed a severe risk of harboring sympathizers to the Islamic State militant group. Denmark’s largest party, the opposition Social Democrats, condemned the comments and compared them to the anti-immigrant policies of US presidential candidate Donald Trump. (AP)

    • Paul Barbara

      Don’t you ever question whether the ‘news reports’ you quote are actually true? Does it not occur to you that members of Parliament, and other PTB such as Media moguls, actually LIE on occasion?
      ‘Course, it’s refereed to as ‘sexing up’ when discovered, or being ‘economical with la verite’.

      • michael norton

        Absolutely, I question everything as I read it but I do not immediately go to discover a different write of of the supposedly same incident, which better converges with my own views / preconceptions.
        Let us imagine two incidents in two neighbouring countries.
        One in Buncefield, England 2005 – 60,000,000 gallons of fuel available to ignite.
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buncefield_fire
        The British Geological Survey monitored the event, which measured 2.4 on the Richter scale. News reports described the incident as the biggest of its kind in peacetime Europe and certainly the biggest such explosion in the United Kingdom since
        the 1974 Flixborough disaster. I was out cycling yesterday on Bagshot Heath and I was out cycling there when this explosion happened, we clearly saw it in the atmosphere, we were on the top of the plateu but it is probly sixty miles away.
        Anyway this massive conflagration took no lives.

        Move to Rouen, capital city of Normandy,
        we are told a woman trips with a birthday cake and the candles cause a conflagration which leaves 13 young people dead.
        This was in a cafe, don’t they have fire regulations in France in 2016?
        This was one week after two Islamist cut the throat of a priest in his church during a mass, then hold a blck mass in the church.
        Same part of France.

        So, yes I do question that a birthday cake in Rouen in a cafe killed 13 people BY ACCIDENT.

  • terence kenyon

    My constituency, Stalybridge and Hyde, Reynolds MP (Progress Vice-Chair), simplifies current situation by, mothballing wards and conveniently ‘forgetting’ to invite new members to meetings. Then indicates new members “not prepared to be active” Any complaints to Labour hierarchy are ignored. Many officials and councillors in cosy financial cocoons. As saying goes, ‘they know which side their bread is buttered on”!

    • michael norton

      A fire swept through a Friday night birthday party at a bar in the Normandy city of Rouen, killing at least 13 people and injuring six others, French authorities said.

      More than 50 firefighters battled the blaze at the bar in the city center, said French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve.

      He gave an initial count of 13 dead and six injured in the fire, which started late Friday night or shortly after midnight.

      A judicial inquiry has been opened to determine the cause of the blaze, Cazeneuve said in a statement.

      The local Paris-Normandy newspaper said the fire ignited in the basement of the Cuba Libre bar, which was rented for the evening for the birthday celebration.

      The paper, without citing sources, said the ceiling quickly ignited when candles were lit.

      The neighborhood was blocked off, and Rouen Mayor Yvon Robert was on the scene.

      A tense France is on maximum terror alert after two attacks last month, the latest the killing of a priest in his church outside Rouen. The funeral Mass was held at the Rouen cathedral on Tuesday.
      http://www.france24.com/en/20160806-deadly-fire-roars-through-bar-french-city-rouen-cuba-libre
      (AP)

      • michael norton

        This is truly ghastly.

        A fire broke out in the night from Friday to Saturday in Rouen center bar during a birthday party. The first known record is very heavy: there are at least 13 dead and six wounded.

        Accidental track is preferred.

        Bernard Cazeneuve, Minister of the Interior, said on the night that a “criminal investigation was underway to determine the cause of the fire.”

        According to preliminary information, the fire would have taken with the candles on the birthday cake to the party. The person bringing the cake would have tripped and the fire would have taken. The privatized bar room is in the basement and the victims they are unable to escape.

        According to France Bleu Normandie, the victims would have 18 to 25 years. Firefighters were alerted from 0:50. A psychological unit should be open for families in Rouen University Hospital.
        http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2016/08/06/97001-20160806FILWWW00003-au-moins-13-morts-apres-un-incendie-a-rouen.php

        It seems utterly incredible that someone tripping in a bar with a cake with candles could lead to 13 deaths.

        This is in the same part of France where the priest had his throat cut a week ago.

        • michael norton

          Belgian police attacked with machete in Charleroi
          http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36998449
          Two police officers have been injured by a machete-wielding assailant in the Belgian city of Charleroi.

          The attacker was shot and wounded, Charleroi police said on Twitter.

          The assailant is said to have shouted “Allahu Akbar” (“God is great” in Arabic) during the assault outside the city’s main police station.

          Charleroi was used as a base by some of the jihadists involved in the attacks on Paris in November 2015 and Brussels last March.

          One of the injured police officers is said to be a woman, but this has not been confirmed.

          The area around the police station has been sealed off.

          • michael norton

            The Islamic assailant has been shot dead,
            the two woman police officers, cut, are in hospital.

          • uestions.

            So you can’t manage to reply to the Christopher Bolleyn video?
            I admit, it would knda put a spoke in the ‘Islamophobia’ to which you appear to suffer.

  • Paul Barbara

    Don’t ask me why my reply to michael norton came up as being from ‘uestions’ – nought to do with me.
    Hopefully this will come up under my monicker.

  • michael norton

    Police in southwest France arrested a 21-year-old man in connection with the jihadist killing of a priest in a Normandy church last month, judicial sources said Wednesday.

    The man arrested Monday in the Toulouse area is the second to be held in connection with the murder of 85-year-old Jacques Hamel, whose throat was slit in front of worshippers while he was celebrating mass in the town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray on July 26.

    A police source said he had been in contact with the cleric’s killers, Abdel Malik Petitjean and Adel Kermiche, who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.

    The pair, both aged 19, were shot dead by police after a hostage drama in which a worshipper was seriously wounded.

    The grisly attack — the first committed in the name of IS against a church in the West — came less than two weeks after a Tunisian ploughed a 19-tonne truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in the Riviera city of Nice, killing 85 people and wounding more than 300.

    A cousin of Petitjean named as Farid K. was remanded in custody on July 31 on charges of “criminal association in connection with terrorism”.

    The public prosecutor said the 30-year-old “was fully aware of his cousin’s imminent violent action, even if he did not know the precise place or day.”

    Hamel’s killing, which follows a string of attacks in France over the past 18 months, has raised questions about security failures.

    Kermiche, who lived near the church, wore an electronic tag and was allowed to leave home on weekday mornings under his house arrest terms.

    He met Petitjean through the encrypted messaging app Telegram.

    Investigators have questioned several people over the killers’ links with groups recruiting for jihad in Syria.

    A 20-year-old man has been charged with trying to travel to Syria with Petitjean in June.

    http://www.france24.com/en/20160810-french-police-arrest-second-man-connection-priest-murder-saint-etienne-rouvray

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