[rad-green] Someone Interfered in the UK Election & I t Wasn’t Russia

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/12/13/someone-interfered-in-the-uk-election-it-wasnt-russia/

*Consortium News          December 13, 2019 *

Someone Interfered in the UK Election & It Wasn’t Russia
*Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn was targeted by billionaire-controlled media
outlets, along with intelligence and military agencies, as well as state
media’s BBC.*

*Cartoon of Boris Johnson, big winner of the UK election.*

*By Caitlin Johnstone <https://consortiumnews.com/tag/caitlin-johnstone/>*
*CaitlinJohnstone.com <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/>*

Ladies and gentlemen I have here at my fingertips indisputable proof that
egregious election meddling took place in the United Kingdom on Thursday.

Before you get all excited, no, it wasn’t the Russians. It wasn’t the
Chinese, the Iranians, Cobra Command or the Legion of Doom. I’m not going
to get any Rachel Maddow-sized paychecks for revealing this evidence to
you, nor am I going to draw in millions of credulous viewers waiting with
bated breath for a bombshell revelation of an international conspiracy that
will invalidate the results of the election.

In fact, hardly anyone will even care.

Hardly anyone will care because this election interference has been
happening right out in the open, and was perfectly legal. And nobody will
suffer any consequences for it.

<https://twitter.com/RaniaKhalek>
Rania Khalek
✔@RaniaKhalek
<https://twitter.com/RaniaKhalek>
<https://twitter.com/RaniaKhalek/status/1205280724640763905>

The centrists and mainstream media outlets are responsible for the right
wing win in the UK. They spent all their time bashing and smearing Jeremy
Corbyn bc they will always prioritize smashing the left, even if it means
allying with the far right. Shameful.
5,208 <https://twitter.com/intent/like?tweet_id=1205280724640763905>
4:18 PM - Dec 12, 2019
<https://twitter.com/RaniaKhalek/status/1205280724640763905>

1,669 people are talking about this
<https://twitter.com/RaniaKhalek/status/1205280724640763905>

Nobody will suffer any consequences for interfering in the U.K. election
because the ones doing the interfering were extremely powerful, and that’s
who the system is built to serve.

As CNN reports, the Tories’ “Boris Johnson delivered a Margaret
Thatcher-like win,
<https://edition.cnn.com/2019/12/13/uk/boris-johnson-analysis-ge19-intl/index.html>
crushing
the opposition in the biggest general election victory for the Conservative
Party since 1987.”

Numerous factors went into this result, including most notably a Labour
Party ambivalently straddling an irreconcilable divide on the issue of
Brexit, but it is also undeniable that the election was affected by a
political smear campaign that was entirely unprecedented in scale and
vitriol in the history of western democracy. This smear campaign was driven
by billionaire-controlled media outlets, along with intelligence and
military agencies, as well as state media like the BBC.

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has been described
<https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/opinion/jeremy-corbyn-is-the-most-smeared-politician-in-history/18/07/>
as
the most smeared politician in history, and this is a fair description.
Journalist Matt Kennard recently compiled documentation of dozens of
incidents
<https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-12-04-how-the-uk-military-and-intelligence-establishment-is-working-to-stop-jeremy-corbyn-from-becoming-prime-minister/>
in
which former and current spooks and military officials collaborated with
plutocratic media institutions to portray Corbyn as a threat to national
security. Journalistic accountability advocates such as Media Lens
<https://www.medialens.org/2019/the-campaign-to-stop-corbyn-smears-racism-and-censorship/>
 and Jonathan Cook
<https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/07/04/plot-keep-jeremy-corbyn-out-power>
have
been working <https://www.jonathan-cook.net/?s=corbyn> for years
<https://www.medialens.org/?s=corbyn+smear> to compile evidence of the mass
media’s attempts to paint Corbyn as everything from a terrorist sympathizer
to a Communist to a Russian asset to an IRA supporter to a closet
anti-Semite. Just the other day *The* *Grayzone* documented
<https://consortiumnews.com/2019/12/11/us-uk-military-intelligence-apparatus-deploy-media-smears-against-corbyn/>
how
establishment narrative manager Ben Nimmo was enlisted to unilaterally
target Corbyn with a fact-free Russiagate-style conspiracy theory in the
lead-up to the election, a psyop that was uncritically circulated by both
right-wing outlets such as *The Telegraph* as well as the ostensibly
“left”-wing *Guardian*.

Just as Corbyn’s advocacy for the many over the plutocratic few saw him
targeted by billionaire media outlets, his view of Palestinians as human
beings saw him targeted by the imperialist Israel lobby
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/01/uk-corbyn-calls-probe-israeli-interference-170113202756949.html>
as
exposed in the *Al Jazeera* documentary *The Lobby*. For a mountain of
links refuting the bogus antisemitism smear directed at Corbyn, a lifelong
opponent of anti-Semitism
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vR-tiGv2w89fnqY1_cPygN8VlP4uROfF9ys8THXB1p0r-UTAPgmx5g3pgWfr-aeo3G3Ka1S-bbtmD1w/pub>
, check out the deluge of responses to this query I made on Twitter the
other day <https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1199701832634753024>.

This interference continued right up into the day before the election, with
the BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg flagrantly violating election
rules
<https://off-guardian.org/2019/12/12/did-laura-kuennsberg-commit-massive-breach-of-electoral-ethics/?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=eb662cd67d84ecd1ac8d1c9b08859633e360c16e-1576203465-0-AYW2F0Oj5XkDXZyRcsaxhtsWqiLH_t5XM_9F938naSrxPN0sP8-puBvJggDg4QnsEbK6td6D5Zwgp2dxqdXex8eRphTgWrU5j9cfMdEs8QZrnvADV4PWkj1mZwVoeL8eZp25UqtYiK9aXcacOxUB8s8Cue0mUdgkvxhoxUr99Ty4goF5rwVDMAs0xffEbsaLedhk-mAB8KIUNHWFGt9DZOMr-uCbS_aVxxPqvBd2lvErxGEAeV6xoC_qi5QAmsQXtKLs4h1I5PPZEaZPhpkSN00qZZCAJTF9MsSpcnFFUZ8fisjvhIqi2BWDgqPlp_4PdMpnjGD-QuOy08hqkf5C8BwglRpoH7Am0ZRCXWgQ5kmu>
 by reporting <https://twitter.com/asankade/status/1204777087485255685?s=20>
that
early postal votes had been illegally tallied and results were “looking
very grim for Labour.”

<https://twitter.com/caitoz>
Caitlin Johnstone [image: ⏳]@caitoz
<https://twitter.com/caitoz>
<https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1205251933788729345>

There was extreme election interference in the #UKElection
<https://twitter.com/hashtag/UKElection?src=hash>. It didn't come from the
Russians. It didn't come from the Chinese. It came from the billionaire
class and its political/media lackeys. And it was perfectly legal.
3,772 <https://twitter.com/intent/like?tweet_id=1205251933788729345>
2:23 PM - Dec 12, 2019
<https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1205251933788729345>

1,446 people are talking about this

<https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1205251933788729345>

The historically unprecedented smear campaign that was directed at Corbyn
from the right, the far-right, and from within his own party had an effect.
Of *course* it did. If you say this today on social media you’ll get a ton
of comments <https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1205274925671411713?s=20>
telling
you you’re wrong, telling you every vote against Labour was exclusively due
to the British people not wanting to live in a Marxist dystopia, telling
you it was exclusively because of Brexit, totally denying any possibility
that the years of deceitful mass media narrative management by which
British consciousness was pummeled day-in and day-out prior to the election
had any impact whatsoever upon its results.

Right. Sure guys. Persistent campaigns to deliberately manipulate people’s
minds using mass media have no effect on their decisions at all. I guess
that’s why that whole “advertising” fad never made any money.

I am not claiming here that the billions of dollars’ worth of free mass
media reporting that was devoted to smearing Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour
Party had a greater effect on the election results than Brexit and other
strategic stumbles in the party. I’m just saying that it definitely had a
much greater effect than the few thousand dollars
<https://www.thenation.com/article/russiagate-elections-interference/> Russian
nationals spent on social media memes in the U.S., which the American
political/media class has been relentlessly shrieking about for three years.

To deny that a media smear campaign the size and scope of that directed at
Corbyn had an effect is the same as denying that advertising, a trillion-dollar
industry
<http://towersofzeyron.com/the-advertising-industry-is-now-worth-1-2-trillion-marketing-in-its-various-forms-continues-to-grow-through-mobile-content-marketing-social-platforms-and-new-digital-platforms/>,
has an effect.

Which means that plutocrats and government agencies indisputably interfered
in the British election, to an exponentially greater extent than anything
the Russians are even *alleged* to have done. Yet according to British law
it was perfectly legal, and according to British society it was perfectly
acceptable. It’s perfectly legal and acceptable for powerful individuals to
have a vastly greater influence on a purportedly democratic election than
any of the ordinary individuals voting in it.

A free and healthy society would not work this way. A free and healthy
society would view all forms of manipulation as taboo and unacceptable. A
free and healthy society would not allow the will of members of one small
elite class to carry more weight than the will of anyone else. A free and
healthy society would give everyone an equal voice at the table, and look
after everyone’s concerns. It certainly wouldn’t tolerate a few individuals
who already have far too much abusing their power and wealth to obtain even
more.

*Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who
publishes regularly **at Medium* <https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone>*.
Follow her work on **Facebook* <https://www.facebook.com/CaitlinAJohnstone/>
*, **Twitter* <https://twitter.com/caitoz>*, or her **website*
<http://caitlinjohnstone.com/>*. **She has a **podcast*
<https://soundcloud.com/going_rogue>* and is author of **“**Woke: A Field
Guide for Utopia Preppers*
<https://www.amazon.com/Woke-Field-Guide-Utopia-Preppers/dp/064823455X/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8>
*.”*

-- 

--- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sid-l" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected].
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sid-l/CACKppcwexvieJr533rmWWNbhgWRuJM65mGPfi%3D_ezWnkzGckQw%40mail.gmail.com.

---
To unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]>
List help: <https://riseup.net/lists>