The Cloying Desperation of the Tory Press
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Title : The Cloying Desperation of the Tory Press
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Title : The Cloying Desperation of the Tory Press
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Like many people, I'm a member of some Facebook groups. These include the recently famous We Support Jeremy Corbyn, a gathering of some 69,000 users and the subject of a double Sunday Times and BBC News splash. Riddle me this. Because some people have posted on there comments ranging from the unconscious to the overtly anti-semitic, and despite their being challenged for doing so, does that make me one as well? As it happens, I'm also a member of another group going by the name of British Politics. It's something of a cesspit, as well as a magnet for white supremacists, racists and Islamophobes. Does that mean I hate Muslims? And then many years ago, my mates and I used to regularly frequent a pub that was the known haunt of local BNP activists (this was before their suited-not-booted makeover under Nick Griffin). Does that mean I'm fash?
We can all play this stupid, silly guilt-by-association game, and deploying it to attack Jeremy Corbyn is a cloyingly desperate move. If this was such a massive big deal in the public interest, which is what the hacks (among whom is the celebrated "Shippers") would claim, then why have Murdoch's scribbling little helpers sat on it until it could be deployed for maximum effect? You don't need to be the brain of Britain to realise this is a deliberate political ploy designed to talk up Labour's anti-semitism issues and drive the news agenda for at least another day.
Tim Bale in his The Conservative Party: From Thatcher to Cameron makes a useful three-fold characterisation of the Tory party. There is the parliamentary party which, unsurprisingly, comprises the party in Parliament. I.e. The MPs (the action and shenanigans here are the main focus of his history). Then we have the party-in-the-country, or the thinning ranks of the voluntary party. Here are the activists, the members, and anyone daft enough to have ever paid a sub to drink in their local Association bar. And then we have his most important innovation: the party-in-the-media. Here, the small ecology of editorial offices and right wing commentators are considered as much a part of the Tory party as the 1922 Committee. Formally separate, certainly, but thanks to the influence it holds over leading party cadres, it is an organic constituent of it. Therefore expecting the right wing press to give Labour a fair hearing over anything is like supposing the Conservative Party proper ceases politicking for its, well, politics. It behoves the left, especially those tipping toward the centre, to come to grips with what the right wing press is. It is not a conspiracy nor a few bad apples, it's a structural relationship that has persisted over a long period of time, and one marked by special access, off the record briefings, and underpinned by private ownership of the press. This demands we have a media strategy to deal with it, and the nous to acknowledge that on no account should the Labour Party ever consider kowtowing to them.
There is something more than party politics going on here as well. Day after day the power of social media grows and the press are locked in long-term decline without the means to arrest, let alone reverse their crumbling influence. Talking up the dark side of social media, particularly the companies who have ate into the advertising market at their expense add a few more dirges to the cacophonous mood music that it's all sinister and represents a threat - even if it means trashing the once-fine reputation of your paper. For example, from an aggregate of groups weighing in at 400,000 members (minus a few tens of thousands for overlapping subscriptions, etc.), The Times front page could only rustle up three dodgy examples - after a "two month investigation". That said, there are likely to be more. Why? Because anyone can post in a group. Take all the Corbyn-supporting groups that exist out there. How many posts and comments do you suppose that involves per day? We're talking thousands upon thousands. Search hard enough and you might even find a couple who think Dan Hodges is a great writer, for example.
"Dodgy" Facebook groups are a foil to attack Corbyn in defence of their party and class interests, but raising the pitch on social media abuse and goings-ons is designed to cater for their immediate commercial concerns. We all know how much value was wiped from Facebook in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica allegations, which suits the press fine. The more toxic Facebook is, the more likely companies will want to dispense their advertising spend with them. Though it is ironic how the comments on articles for The Mail and friends are much worse than anything you'd find in a Corbyn supporting group. For example, even The Times's own Facebook page is, as Dan Hancox puts it, "a shitshow of anti-semitism, Holocaust denial and grim whataboutery". Are they going to do anything about it?
None of this is to minimise what we have to do in Labour. Our party does, after all, operate in the sewer of bourgeois politics and can't help but imbibe the effluent of its surroundings from time to time. But when the Tory party, whether its the formal guise of the present government or the network in command of Britain's most influential opinion-forming machines, when they have to resort to such desperate measures, you know we have them on the run.
We can all play this stupid, silly guilt-by-association game, and deploying it to attack Jeremy Corbyn is a cloyingly desperate move. If this was such a massive big deal in the public interest, which is what the hacks (among whom is the celebrated "Shippers") would claim, then why have Murdoch's scribbling little helpers sat on it until it could be deployed for maximum effect? You don't need to be the brain of Britain to realise this is a deliberate political ploy designed to talk up Labour's anti-semitism issues and drive the news agenda for at least another day.
Tim Bale in his The Conservative Party: From Thatcher to Cameron makes a useful three-fold characterisation of the Tory party. There is the parliamentary party which, unsurprisingly, comprises the party in Parliament. I.e. The MPs (the action and shenanigans here are the main focus of his history). Then we have the party-in-the-country, or the thinning ranks of the voluntary party. Here are the activists, the members, and anyone daft enough to have ever paid a sub to drink in their local Association bar. And then we have his most important innovation: the party-in-the-media. Here, the small ecology of editorial offices and right wing commentators are considered as much a part of the Tory party as the 1922 Committee. Formally separate, certainly, but thanks to the influence it holds over leading party cadres, it is an organic constituent of it. Therefore expecting the right wing press to give Labour a fair hearing over anything is like supposing the Conservative Party proper ceases politicking for its, well, politics. It behoves the left, especially those tipping toward the centre, to come to grips with what the right wing press is. It is not a conspiracy nor a few bad apples, it's a structural relationship that has persisted over a long period of time, and one marked by special access, off the record briefings, and underpinned by private ownership of the press. This demands we have a media strategy to deal with it, and the nous to acknowledge that on no account should the Labour Party ever consider kowtowing to them.
There is something more than party politics going on here as well. Day after day the power of social media grows and the press are locked in long-term decline without the means to arrest, let alone reverse their crumbling influence. Talking up the dark side of social media, particularly the companies who have ate into the advertising market at their expense add a few more dirges to the cacophonous mood music that it's all sinister and represents a threat - even if it means trashing the once-fine reputation of your paper. For example, from an aggregate of groups weighing in at 400,000 members (minus a few tens of thousands for overlapping subscriptions, etc.), The Times front page could only rustle up three dodgy examples - after a "two month investigation". That said, there are likely to be more. Why? Because anyone can post in a group. Take all the Corbyn-supporting groups that exist out there. How many posts and comments do you suppose that involves per day? We're talking thousands upon thousands. Search hard enough and you might even find a couple who think Dan Hodges is a great writer, for example.
"Dodgy" Facebook groups are a foil to attack Corbyn in defence of their party and class interests, but raising the pitch on social media abuse and goings-ons is designed to cater for their immediate commercial concerns. We all know how much value was wiped from Facebook in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica allegations, which suits the press fine. The more toxic Facebook is, the more likely companies will want to dispense their advertising spend with them. Though it is ironic how the comments on articles for The Mail and friends are much worse than anything you'd find in a Corbyn supporting group. For example, even The Times's own Facebook page is, as Dan Hancox puts it, "a shitshow of anti-semitism, Holocaust denial and grim whataboutery". Are they going to do anything about it?
None of this is to minimise what we have to do in Labour. Our party does, after all, operate in the sewer of bourgeois politics and can't help but imbibe the effluent of its surroundings from time to time. But when the Tory party, whether its the formal guise of the present government or the network in command of Britain's most influential opinion-forming machines, when they have to resort to such desperate measures, you know we have them on the run.
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You are now reading the article The Cloying Desperation of the Tory Press With link address https://newstoday-ok.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-cloying-desperation-of-tory-press.html