Oh, The Guardian…

13/12/2019

There is really no nice way to put this. There are only two words that sum up my response to how the Guardian has carried itself in relation to the Labour Party, specifically Jeremy Corbyn, over the past few years, and in the immediate aftermath of the election results. They are simply: get fucked.

Every time I read a Guardian article, their little (or rather, lengthy) pleas for donations are getting more desperate and tragic. They claim to want to “protect [their] independence” and that “factual information is a necessity”, believing wholeheartedly that their righteous crusade promotes “accurate reporting with integrity at its heart.” It’s laughable to read those begging paragraphs at the bottom of a string of articles dedicated to smearing the greatest leader the UK has seen in decades.

The Guardian is complicit in the Conservative victory. They facilitated the landslide majority.

I should take a moment to clarify a couple of points. Firstly, the media is not solely to blame, nor specifically the Guardian. However, at least the Murdoch rags don’t pretend to be unbiased, and the BBC has clearly, like the ABC, become a mouthpiece for the government. The Guardian boasts about its independence, its investigations, and its attention to the “big issues”, the biggest of which include “the escalating climate catastrophe to widespread inequality”.

Shame that they turned against the man who had a legitimate plan to tackle those issues.

There are a number of factors that go into shaping how an election will pan out, but the media is one of the most impactful, setting the agenda and moulding public opinion. The second point is that Corbyn is not bulletproof. There are undoubtedly things he could have done better as leader of the Labour Party and during his bid for PM this election. Arguments and discussions could be had over countless concerns, but they are all redundant because, like Bill Shorten in Australia, you don’t have to like the leader to vote for the Party.

But it’s personality over policy in our modern butchering of political life, and once the establishment and their media lackeys across the spectrum pick an “enemy”, it’s open season. Columnist Polly Toynbee was dismayed at Johnson’s win, and even admitted the Manifesto was brilliant, but swung blame onto Corbyn for being “devoid of agility, charisma and credibility”.  “A coterie of Corbynites cared more about gripping power within the party than saving the country by winning the election.”

Further down, she claims that he can never tell a lie, with the next sentence stating he does not have the qualities (“mental agility, articulacy, strategy, good humour or charisma”) required of a leader. What is that supposed to imply? That you want your leader to be malicious and deceitful? Go to Johnson’s side if you want crap like that – honestly is a trait we sorely lack in this screwed up world, particularly from our mischievous leaders.

She also repeats the anti-Semitism line, which I have written about a number of times. It is a myth that has survived for years, tarnishing Corbyn’s reputation. It’s not like Corbyn actively tried to remove anti-Semitism from his Party, that he himself was never anti-Semitic (defending Palestine is not anti-Semitic, you Zionist dolts), and that the Conservatives are the greater hub of racism and bigotry (against more than just the Jewish population) than any other party of note in the UK.

Toynbee’s last jab was to call out his lack of patriotism as, Queen-saving-God forbid, the man didn’t sing the national anthem. If your perceptions of a person, whether they are a leader or not, is based on their “patriotism”, then you are merely a subject of the tribal and outdated concept of the State. Is there no understanding that there are varied and more nuanced ways to view your “country” and its history? I have no desire to patriotically declare myself “Australian”, and if I were British, I’d rather renounce my heritage before I even considered celebrating it in any form.

The Guardian also seems to want to give a positive spin on the Johnson victory, which in turn tends to suggest they are hesitantly “okay” with Brexit – optimism is key, right? Not like you’re about to be swallowed up by the US, the EU, and other larger markets, or that your domestic situation is a powder keg that, if it explodes, could signify the end of the UK as we know it. Some are now clinging onto the notion of a “soft Brexit”, but such a thing is impossible and foolish. It will only end in disaster for the UK. Scotland is pushing for independence again, and chatter about Irish reunification has cropped up.

All of these papers, including the Guardian, were against Corbyn from the start. They made this whole fiasco about one man, and even laid Party-wide issues at his feet. Now that he has lost, they blame him, and it seems the loudest voice out there at the moment is the crowd of aimless “election winning” fools who care more about political expediency than any actual convictions. But hey, at least there are more women in Parliament, and if you have the money and other circumstances to travel, you can ignore reality! The Guardian clearly understands the plight of the people.

It has been said that this election signifies the rise of the “right” over the “left”, but if we want to use vacuous terminology like that, I would argue another stance. What we are seeing is the rise of the “right” because the “left” doesn’t exist, and what we call the “left” is a bunch of “right-wing” dicks masquerading in red. Corbyn was the best option the UK has had in decades, and already people have twisted his legacy into one of the darkest in history.

We truly are in an Orwellian world.

Liked this? Read Brexit Will Never End: What About a Global Community Instead?

Previous piece: Religious Discrimination Bill Is Just Hypocrisy and Contradiction