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simon maginn

18 Apr, 7 tweets, 2 min read

Exposing the smearing war is necessary for a number of reasons, I think.

The first and most obvious is that it was a lie from start to finish, and lies should always be exposed.

Second, it influenced two general elections and was a significant campaign issue in both.

But there’s more.

Third, it severely undermined trust in our news and broadcast media. Amongst those who knew how dishonest the campaign was (and still is), being bombarded with news you know, with certainty, to be false is not something you can just shrug off afterwards.

The scale of lying, the unanimity of it, the fact that every paper and news programme was pumping out the same lies at the same time showed our news media for what they really are: propagandists.

Fourth, it undermined the concept of truth itself. It sought to present a wholly false facade as truth: it made a mockery of the very idea of truth. It drowned truth out with its deafening trumpeting of falsehoods, and claimed that as truth. It was a conspiracy against truth.

Fifth, it showed how we are two nations in a possibly new way now: low-information and high-information. There were people who knew the facts and there were people who did not. Only those who did not (or who just didn’t care about checking anything) could have believed it all.

Sixth, it reveals an appetite for political violence that should be alarming to us all, I think, whatever our political persuasion. The ferocity of it, the depths to which people sank, the sheer, horrifying hate of it, tells us we are not who we wish to be. Who we claim to be.

News cycles move fast, we’re hustled urgently from one entertaining scandal to another. But I think we should pause. I think we should reflect on what happened here, about what it means, about us and about our democracy.

ENDS

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More from @simonmaginn

simon maginn

@simonmaginn

15 Apr

The offence is committed when:

•a public officer acting as such;
•wilfully neglects to perform his duty and/or wilfully misconducts himself;
•to such a degree as to amount to an abuse of the public's trust in the office holder;
•without reasonable excuse or justification.

cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance…

•Boris Johnson is an office-holder, and was acting as such
•He wilfully misconducted himself by misusing public funds and then lying about it
•This is a major breach of public trust
•There is no imaginable 'excuse or justification'

Read 5 tweets

simon maginn

@simonmaginn

28 Feb

One of the most striking features of the antisemitism smearing war is the fact that many - I’d say most - of the accusers have literally no idea how logic or reason works.

A recent accuser was adamant about his claims. But when asked to produce evidence, he seemed affronted. “Oh, you’re obsessed with evidence, are you?” he said.

There’s a world of revelation behind that statement.

First, he felt fully justified and entitled in making the most appalling accusations imaginable *without first compiling his evidence*. Showing evidence simply had not occurred to him until he was asked to do so.

Read 15 tweets

simon maginn

@simonmaginn

9 Feb

Baddiel's latest intervention in the Labour antisemitism campaign is intriguing. Baddiel claims 'someone on the NEC' told him something - 'and this is probably true…’ - and then the smear.

I think it’s possible this marks a new phase of the smearing war. Previously the smears have been predicated on at least *some* evidence, no matter how flimsy or distorted or exaggerated. There was something concrete to point to - a mural, a wreath, whatever else.

But here, we just have ‘someone said something which is probably true.’ That’s the entire evidentiary warrant for this story - that someone Baddiel doesn’t name told him something, and Baddiel thought it was probably true.

Read 8 tweets

simon maginn

@simonmaginn

8 Feb

@Baddiel

Just for information, I'm assuming this is the source for @Baddiel's accusation about a 'leaflet circulated at a Labour conference about the Holocaust that doesn't mention Jews'. 1

It's a petition (not a leaflet), by the SWP (not the Labour party), at a festival in Derbyshire (not a Labour conference). In 2008. It's hard to imagine it's anything other than a bizarre mistake. 2
workersliberty.org/story/2008/08/…

It's certainly a bizarre error, resulting in the omission, not only of Jews, but of Roma, and reducing the number from millions to 'thousands'. My guess is a sentence got edited, a phrase didn't get copied back in, and no-one checked properly.

Read 5 tweets

simon maginn

@simonmaginn

7 Feb

A long coup was carried out in the UK between 2016 and 2019, the protracted assassination of Corbyn and the left. It was achieved by a section of the Labour party and the media, with BBC/Guardian leading the charge, and with near-unanimous compliance from broadcasters and press.

The coup was successful, and the staus quo ante restored. We now have a compliant and neutered opposition, and a Tory government which is steadily deforming the state in its own image.

The media who carried it out continue as if nothing happened. They carry on in their career trajectories, they are rewarded, they are championed. No adverse consequences attach to them. It’s as if nothing happened.

Read 8 tweets

simon maginn

@simonmaginn

5 Feb

I can recall when I first heard the words ‘second Holocaust’ in relation to Corbyn’s Labour party. It was a BBC report (of course), a vox pop.

I initially (naively) thought it would immediately be condemned as an outrageously extreme statement. But no, it was incorporated into the discourse without a pause. It was now legitimate to debate whether a Corbyn-led government would occasion a second Holocaust or not.

Emotional manipulation in politics is of course nothing new, it’s very much the stock-in-trade. People are motivated by *feelings* not *facts*, goes the received wisdom, illustrated by Bush V Gore, in which Gore had all the facts and Bush had all the feels, and Bush won. (Kinda.)

Read 11 tweets

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