It's the anti-Corbyn hypocrites who are really trivialising remembrance

It's 100 years to the day since the end of the First World War, a conflict my great-grandfather died in, leaving his two young daughters fatherless. My mother's grandfather was one of 8 million military casualties (a similar number of civilians died during the conflict too).

I've spent the day thinking about my great-grandfather's tragic death and the ramifications that have rippled down through the generations for my family, and contemplating the unimaginably vast waves of grief, suffering, and poverty that WWI wreaked upon millions of other families all across the world.

Today of all days we should be solemnly remembering the horrifying consequences of war, but like clockwork the right-wing virtue signallers are out in force to use Remembrance as a stick to attack their political foes with.

This year they're deliberately trivialising the whole subject with pathetic claims that Jeremy Corbyn's grey raincoat wasn't solemn enough (?!?) and outright lies that he wasn't wearing a poppy (he wore two poppies on his raincoat and suit jacket while he laid a large wreath of poppies at the Cenotaph).

In 2015 the right-wing shreikers made ludicrous efforts to claim that Corbyn disrespected veterans and the war dead by not bowing deeply enough at the Cenotaph (when he was actually the only political leader to stay behind after the ceremony to chat to veterans as the rest of the dignitaries cleared off to a slap-up meal in the warmth).

The next year it was the absurd claims that Corbyn supposedly danced on his way to the Cenotaph, which turned out to be pictures of him having an animated conversation with a WWII veteran who had been crudely photoshopped out by The S*n (isn't photoshopping them out of pictures in order to create cheap political smears a wonderful way for Rupert Murdoch's hacks to 'respect' veterans on Remembrance Sunday?).

Every November 11th this howling right-wing mob set about screeching about Corbyn's coat, the angle of his bow, the size of his poppy, or pictures they've deliberately photoshopped to make him look disrespectful. In doing so they're proving that they don't really give a shit about Remembrance, nor solemnly considering the death and suffering of war, nor the welfare of veterans, nor efforts to ensure that such mass slaughters are avoided in the future.

All they care about is bitterly twisting the whole issue of Remembrance to score ridiculously cheap political points.

This deliberate trivialisation of Remembrance would be absolutely shocking if we didn't know any better.

After all these are people are the mob who have backed the Tory austerity con to the hilt despite the massive death toll; who supported Theresa May's racist and depraved "deport now, hear appeals later" Hostile Environment policy; who caused immense amounts of suffering and death by supporting the Tory defunding the NHS and social care; who believe in selling £billions worth of weapons to the despicable Saudi tyrants who murder their critics with impunity and deliberately use famine and disease as weapons of war to kill unimaginable numbers of civilians in Yemen; who have supported the merciless eight year Tory campaign of impoverishment and abuse against British disabled people; and who sat by and said nothing as the Tories created a huge rise in homelessness on our streets (which is an issue that disproportionately affects veterans who have been left out in the cold by society after having outlived their usefulness in the armed services).

These howling right-wingers are people who have time and again proven themselves willing to sacrifice thousands of people's lives on their horrific austerity bonfire, through their systematic abuse of disabled people, through their deadly NHS and social care cuts, through the massive increases in extreme poverty, homelessness and suicide that they've engineered, and huge numbers more deaths overseas through to their unwavering support for the murderous Saudi war criminals.

Of course these people would gladly trivialise and debase Remembrance to score cheap political points, because they simply don't have the basic human decency to even understand what Remembrance is all about.

Compassion, empathy, and solemn reflection are so alien to these despicable people that howling about trivial nonsense like someone's coat being supposedly disrespectful, or their poppy being too small actually seems like a great idea to them, despite the fact that such crude and unnecessary distractions from the meaning of remembrance are the equivalent of them turning up at the cenotaph wearing pairs of underpants on their heads and shouting gibberish in order to wreck the ceremony.

To them it's a festival of virtue signalling, faux patriotism, furious witch hunts against anyone who dares not conform (by not wearing a poppy, or by choosing to wear a white one instead), and opportunistic point scoring against their political rivals.

They don't even have the wit to realise that their pathetic efforts to paint Jeremy Corbyn as supposedly disrespectful every single year on November 11th are actually infinitely more disrespectful than anyone's choice of coat, depth of bow, or size of poppy will ever be.

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