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Kate Maltby Smears Corbyn and his Supporters as Conspiracy Theorists
Last Thursday, 22nd August 2019, Kate Maltby decided to give us all the benefit of her views on Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn and the 'Trumpification of British politics' in the pages of the I. She opined that both BoJo and Corbyn were like the megalomaniac manbaby over the other side of the pond. She was also irritated by the fact that the similarity between Corbyn and Trump hadn't been picked up by the public in the same way the similarity between Johnson and Trump had. She then went on to whine that both Trump and Corbyn's politics were based in conspiracy theories undermining western democratic politics, conspiracies which she thought came straight from Putin and the Kremlin. She wrote
Yet to those of us hwo have followed Corbyn's rise closely, the sight of him comparing any other politician to Donald Trump felt like an act of such shamelessness that it might only be matched by the Ponzi President himself. If there is a single line running through Tump's politics, it is the practice of rule by conspiracy theory. Yet it is from those who believe that the existing democratic order is essentially a conspiracy that Corbyn also draws his base. As researcher Peter Pomerantsev writes in his superb new book, This Is Not Propaganda, "we live in a world of mass persuasion run amok, where the means of manipulation have gone forth and multiplied". The digital imprint of the Russian state has been particularly successful in undermining the confidence of voters in western democracies in our own democratic norms and even our ability as voters to understand our political realities.
The analyst Ben Nimmo has summed up the Russian approach to disinformation as "dismiss, distort, distract, dismay". Hence, the birth of a whole new online culture populated by voters who don't even share a basic epistemology with existing "elites". Johnson and the Brexit campaign benefited most clearly from this crisis of trust, but so does their fellow Eurosceptic, Jeremy Corbyn. Track the pro-Corbyn and pro-Trump networks online, and you'll find a commitment to anti-vax theories that tell you the Government wants to make your children ill. Johnson, to his anti-Trumpist credit, has just announced a campaign to counter this particular theory.
Both are surrounded by supporters who trade in conspiracy theories about Jews. While Corbyn's party is under formal investigation for anti-Semitism, only this week Trump was manically R'Ting the conspiracy anti-evangelical Wayne Allyn Root, who attacked Jewish Democrats for not supporting him.
She then goes on to take Corbyn to task for not coming down hard enough on the Russians about the Skripal poisoning, and for using the memory of the lies over the Gulf War to cast doubt on the Russian's guilt.
This is all shameless bilge and propaganda itself. The I also reviewed Pomerantsev's book, and declared that while it was very good on the subject of Russian propaganda, there was very little material about how the West also manipulates information.
And manipulate it the West certainly does. The conspiracy magazine Lobster has been showing since the beginning of the 1980s how the British and American secret state and other covert organisations have manipulated information and worked secretly to influence state policy to their advantage. During the Cold War there was an entire department, the IRD, or Information Research Department set up within the British state to counter Russian and other enemy propaganda. It also tried to undermine the Labour party by producing disinformation and fake texts linking Labour politicians with the IRA and Soviet espionage. And we've seen this campaign start up again under the Tories in the form of the Integrity Initiative, with its extensive links to British intelligence and the cyberwarfare division of the SAS producing smears trying to link Corbyn to the Russians. When various right-wing loons and shameless liars haven't been trying to claim that Corbyn was somehow an agent for the Czechs.
That the British secret state has also done its best to undermine democracy is solid fact. Britain's disinformation campaign against its foreign enemies is the subject of a book, Disrupt and Deny: Spies, Special Forces, and the Secret Pursuit of British Foreign Policy, by Rory Cormac, (Oxford: OUP 2018). The blurb for this reads
It has long been an open secret that British leaders use spies and special forces to interfere in the affairs of others-as discreetly as deniably as possible.
Since 1945, Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, has spread misinformation designed to divide and discredit targets from the Middle East to Eastern Europe and Northern Ireland. It has instigated whispering campaigns and planted false evidence on officials working behind the Iron Curtain, whilst GCHQ now uses the internet to undermine terrorist recruiters. MI6 has tried to foment revolution in Albania, and to instigate coups in Congo, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran. It has sabotaged ships to prevent the passage of refugees to Israel, secretly funnelled aid to insurgents in Afghanistan, and launched cultural and economic warfare, not only against Cold War enemies such as Communist Czechoslovakia, but also NATO allies.
Through bribery and blackmail, Britain has rigged elections as colonies moved to independence. It has fought secret wars in Yemen, Indonesia, and Oman-and discreetly used special forces to eliminate enemies, from colonial Malaya to Libya during the Arab Spring. This is the world of covert action: a vital, though controversial tool of statecraft and perhaps the most sensitive of all government activity. If used wisely, it can play an important role in pursuing national interests in a dangerous world. If used poorly, it can cause political scandal-or worse.
In Disrupt and Deny, Rory Cormac tells the remarkable true story of Britain's secret scheming against her enemies, as well as her friends. He uncovers a world of intrigue and manoeuvring within the darkest corridors of Whitehall, where officials fought to maintain control of this most sensitive and seductive work. A fascinating tale of covert operations in its own right, it is also the story of Britain's attempt over the decades to use smoke and mirrors to mask its decline as global power.
As readers of this blog will be aware, it's blatantly untrue that Corbyn and his supporters, or at least the vast majority of them, have conspiracy theories about Jews. What they are aware of is the way accusations of anti-Semitism have been levelled at Corbyn and the Labour left for purely political reasons. The Right, including the Blairites in the party, like Tom Watson and John Mann, are using it to try to maintain the Thatcherite status quo. And the Israel lobby is doing it simply to smear and discredit anyone critical of that nation's apartheid system and its slow-motion ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
I am at a loss, however, to know where Maltby got the idea that Corbynists are opponents of vaccination. The American anti-vaxxers, from what I've seen, tend to be on the political right, Conservatives and Libertarians. The kind of people who watch Alex Jones' InfoWars and have the same bizarre ideas of 'Purity Of Essence' as the mad American general Jack D. Ripper in Stanley Kubrick's Cold War satire, Dr. Strangelove. The type of people, who think putting fluoride in the water is a globalist plot, and any kind of welfare state is a horrendous Commie assault on democracy. Definitely not the kind of people, who support Jeremy Corbyn. In fact, it looks like the accusation is simply a shameless invention of Maltby herself.
I'm not surprised that Maltby has come out with this lying screed. Along with her CV, in which she informs us she's written for The Financial Times, The Spectator, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The TLS, The Times, and The New Statesman, and appeared on various TV and radio programmes, she also declares that
Much of what I've gleaned about the workings of Westminster I've learned from my time on the team behind Bright Blue, the liberal Conservative pressure group and think tank.
See: http://www.katemaltby.com/about-me/
She's a Tory, and the only difference I can make out between 'liberal' and right-wing Tories, is that the 'liberals' are less open in their hatred of the poor and disabled, and their determination to punish, humiliate and kill them. Oh yes, and their better at deceiving the Tory rank and file that they don't want to destroy the welfare state and privatise the health service.
She's just another right-wing hack, upset and irritated by the fact that an increasingly media-savvy public are aware of how much the lamestream media is manipulated by corporate and right-wing political interests. And she's just following a well-worn media path by trying to link Corbyn and his supporters to anti-Semitism, conspiracy theories and the Russians. It's time she, and the various shameless hacks like her, were given the boot. Then people might start believing in their politicians and their media.
Tags: 'Bright Blue', 'Disrupt and Deny', 'Dr. Strangelove', 'I' Newspaper, 'The Telegraph', 'This Is Not Propaganda', Alex Jones, anti-semitism, Anti-Semitism Smears, Ben Nimmo, Boris Johnson, Cold War, Congo, Conservative Party, Conspiracy Theories, Democratic Party, Donald Trump, Espionage, Ethnic Cleansing, GCHQ, Infowars, Intelligence Agencies, IRA, Israel Lobby, Jeremy Corbyn, Jews, John Mann, Kate Maltby, Labour Party, Libya, Malaya, Margaret Thatcher, MI6, NHS, NHS Privatisation, Northern Ireland, Oman, Peter Pomerantsev, Rory Cormac, Stanley Kubrick, the Disabled, the Elite, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The New Statesman, the Poor, The Spectator, The Times, The TLS, Vaccination, Wayne Allyn Root, Welfare State, Westminster
This entry was posted on August 25, 2019 at 4:34 pm and is filed under Afghanistan, Africa, America, Arabs, Comedy, communism, Czechoslovakia, Democracy, Disability, Egypt, European Union, Film, Health Service, Indonesia, Industry, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Judaism, LIterature, Persecution, Politics, Poverty, Radio, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Television, The Press, Water, Welfare Benefits.	You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
4 Responses to "Kate Maltby Smears Corbyn and his Supporters as Conspiracy Theorists"
I don't think it so much a conspiracy 'theory' as more of a fact that British Intelligence has conspired with a sinister organization with Masonic connections called the Institute for Statecraft to smear Corbyn. No mention of that in Maltby's article.
beastrabban Says:
Ah yes, the Institute for Statecraft. Which is connected to the Integrity Initiative! No, she definitely didn't mention that. And their smears of Corbyn and connections to the British secret state are a fact. And you're absolutely right – none of this appears in Maltby's wretched article.
The first time I ever came across the term 'Statecraft' was in some esoteric writings of Max Heindel dating from the early 20th C. around a hundred years ago, where it was used to describe the activities of some Freemasons who take it upon themselves to interfere and influence the social/political/economic affairs of nations. No surprise then that the Institute for Statecraft is situated in Scotland, the home of British Freemasonry (Scottish Rite) with its connections to the Sinclair family and the Lairds of Roslyn (Prince Henry St.Clair of Orkney) and further connections to the Knights Templar. The registered address of the Institute for Statecraft is in London, at Temple House! All verifiable facts.
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