"Shame it wasn't a brick/grenade": the disgusting social media response to Jeremy Corbyn getting egged

On 19 June 2017 an extreme-right activist and Tommy Robinson acolyte called Darren Osborne carried out a deadly terrorist attack against a random group of Muslims in Finsbury park. During his trial it was revealed that his original plot was to go assassinate Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan.

On the day that Osborne was jailed for the extreme-right terrorist attack he committed, the BBC took the extraordinary step of inviting one of the extreme-right hate preachers who radicalised him onto their flagship news show Newsnight. The softball interview they lavished on Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) is one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the BBC and indicative of concerted efforts to actively bring extreme-right views into the political mainstream.

In March 2019 Jeremy Corbyn paid a visit to the Finsbury Park mosque where he was attacked with an egg. This is no big story in its own right, plenty of politicians have had eggs pelted at them. Anyone old enough to remember the 1990s will remember the footage of Labour stalwart John Prescott trying to batter the guy who egged him.

The story here isn't the egging itself, it's the absolutely despicable social media reaction of the political right.

This is a guy who was the target of an extreme-right terrorist plot who was visiting the site of the deadly terrorist attack the plotter eventually carried out, and literally hundreds of right-wingers have responded to him getting egged by wishing that Corbyn had actually been attacked with a brick or a grenade (the comments in the header image are just a tiny selection of an absolute barrage of violence-craving vitriol from the political right).

What a disgusting country we've allowed ourselves to become where people think it's absolutely fine to publicly wish violence and death on people they disagree with politically.

Labour figures like Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott, and Sadiq Khan are the most common targets of these repulsive tides of right-wing hate, but let's not pretend they're the only victims.

There were the High Court judges who ruled against Theresa May's efforts to scrap parliamentary sovereignty who suffered barrages of abuse and death threats after the Daily Mail's despicable rabble-rousing "Enemies of the People" front page (Theresa May subsequently hired the author of this despicable hit piece as her chief spokesperson!).

There are the constant barrages of death threats against anyone who dares oppose, or even moderately critique the absolute shambles the Tory party are making of Brexit.

And there are the endless waves of abuse and threats of violence aimed at left-wing public figures, and especially left-wing public figures who happen to be female, non-white, and/or homosexual.
 

This kind of violent extremist mentality has been fostered by extreme-right figures and hate groups like Tommy Robinson and the Britain First hate chamber, but similar outbursts of abuse and cravings for violence can be found in the Daily Mail and Guido Fawkes comments sections, and especially in pro-Tory Facebook groups.

Huge numbers of people have become absolutely normalised to using social media to do stuff like lobbing abuse, craving and threatening violence, celebrating extreme-right acts of terrorism without any kind of repercussion.

Britain has become normalised to this kind of thing that it's a regular part of people's online experience to witness other people spewing bigoted abuse, wishing for ethnic cleansing, spreading absurd extreme-right conspiracy theories, and craving the violent deaths of politicians, journalists, and public figures.

The kind of stuff that would get us ostracised from our social groups, and probably even arrested if we did it in public spaces in the real world is considered normal in the online world.

I'm not here to tell you that there's some kind of easy solution to this because there clearly isn't. Right-wing websites like Guido Fawkes and the Daily Mail have fostered this grotesque abuse-lobbing violence-craving extreme-right ultranationalist mentality in their comments sections for years, and social media platforms have been letting people spread this kind of hate with impunity for years too.

Ordinary people have little power over these companies to stop them from hosting and actively fostering hate, and they've got a perverse financial incentive to allow it to continue, because their business models are based on maximising the number of users, regardless of whether they're racism-spewing, violence-craving, terrorism-sympathising extreme-right freaks or not.

Of course there are things we can do on the micro scale like reporting individual tweets/Facebook comments, or sending copies of people's hateful comments to their employers, asking advertisers whether they're comfortable placing their adverts next on platforms that allow, or even promote hateful views, but this kind of stuff is bailing out a sinking ship with an egg cup.

So what do you suggest. What can be done about the increasingly common normalisation of hate speech and the repugnant hate-fest that so much of our political discourse has degenerated into?

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Guido Fawkes' interpretation of Jeremy Corbyn's media strategy is blatant 'fake news'

When Jeremy Corbyn announced his plan to empower independent media sources, fund the BBC through a social media tax, democratise the BBC Board of Directors, and give investigative journalists more Freedom of Information powers it was obvious that defenders of the hard-right neoliberal orthodoxy would react with fits of outrage.

Nowhere was that blind right-wing fury more evident than in the Guido Fawkes hate-chamber.

By offering to strip away government control over who sits on the BBC Board of Directors, and to significantly increase Freedom of Information powers for investigative journalists, Corbyn's proposals actually represent a loosening of state control over the media - but you certainly wouldn't know that from the breathless fear-mongering diatribe on the Guido Fawkes blog.

As things stand now the government of the day gets to choose four members of the BBC Board, who then go on to pick the other ten members between them.

What Corbyn is proposing is that licence fee payers and BBC staff should get representation on the BBC Board, which means that if he becomes Prime Minister he'll be giving away his government's ability to hand-pick the BBC Board.

But somehow the deranged hard-right liars at the Guido Fawkes blog have turned this power-giveaway into a terrifying Corbyn power-grab that would see "left-wing activist cranks would get editorial control of the BBC and Laura Kuenssberg would be burnt at the stake".

So the Guido Fawkes analysis is that if the public are allowed to choose who sits on the BBC Board they'd pick more left-wing representatives than Corbyn would pick himself?

And people are thick enough to fall for this drivel?

As for Kuennsberg. The fact that she's still in her job at the BBC after being found guilty of inventing "fake news" is a sign of how dysfunctional the BBC has become.

Perhaps if BBC journalists knew that the BBC Board is made up of elected officials and their fellow BBC staff members with an interest in protecting their own reputations, they'd be a little bit more afraid of the consequences of inventing highly partisan fake news items?

Then consider Corbyn's proposal to scrap the process of BBC Charter renewal. That would remove his own ability to use the threat of cutbacks to demand loyalty from the BBC (as previous governments have done).

How on earth, other than by lying through your teeth, is it possible to present such an obvious removal of government influence over BBC output as a terrifying power-grab.

Then there's this absolute drivel "Profitable news outlets are fearless because they know they don’t have to bend the knee to survive".

We've all seen how mainstream media outlets bend their coverage to suit the interests of their billionaire-owners, and how politicians from Thatcher through to May have gone grovelling before the right-wing media moguls like Murdoch, Harmsworth, and the Barclay brothers in return for partisan political support.

We've also seen how wealthy advertisers have pressurised these "profitable" mainstream media organisations into dropping critical coverage (like HSBC did with the Telegraph, and how the despicable Saudi tyrants do with swathes of the mainstream media).

So not only do the hard-right Guido hacks try to present Corbyn's power-giveaway as a power-grab, they also sing from the corporate mainstream media hymn sheet that mainstream media outlets never "bend their knee" to the political ideology of their owners, or the whims of their advertisers!

In conclusion the Guido hack writes that "The hard-left and their opponents agree on one thing, a free press stands in their way of transforming society…". 

In a way this part is actually true, except the terms they use are loaded as hell.

It's beyond obvious that the shockingly right-wing biased mainstream media would do absolutely everything in their power to stop Jeremy Corbyn from transforming society.

• They'll oppose his efforts to bring public services back under democratic not-for-profit public control (as the majority of the public want).

• They'll oppose his effort to properly fund the NHS and reverse the Tory mass privatisation effort that's been going on since 2012.

• They'll oppose his policy of reversing the vast Tory Corporation Tax giveaway, to put the UK back in line with the G7 average.

• They'll oppose his efforts to improve workers' wages and working conditions.

• They'll oppose his introduction of a National Education Service to provide free education for all, from cradle to grave.

• They'll oppose his efforts to put an end to the systematic government discrimination against sick and disabled people.

• They'll oppose his new proposal to democratise the BBC.

• They'll oppose his proposal to support and encourage more independent journalism.

• And they'll definitely oppose his proposal to allow investigative journalists to submit freedom of information requests to find out what's going on with all the dodgy private sector outsourcing companies making £billions from the public purse.

But in regards to all of this hostility from the right-wing press barons Corbyn isn't actually proposing a crackdown on the corporate mainstream media at all, he's actually offering to give up his own power to pick the BBC Board of Directors should he become Prime Minister, and to give investigative journalists more powers to investigate what his government is up to!

But somehow the fake news merchants at the Guido Fawkes blog have reversed reality in order to present Corbyn's power-giveaway as a power-grab, and his policy of empowering independent and investigative journalists as an attack on the free press!

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Dealing with bigotry accusations Tory style: Purge your accusers!

In 2016 Zac Goldsmith ran a despicable anti-Muslim fearmongering operation during his campaign to become Mayor of London. This campaign included several high profile Tories hiding behind parliamentary privilege to smear an innocent man as a terrorism supporter, and culminated in an absolutely despicable BNP-style propaganda piece designed to associate his Muslim rival Sadiq Khan with the 5/5 London terrorist attacks.

This bigoted Tory anti-Muslim campaign went right to the top of the Tory party, and it's being cited as one of many examples in calls for an inquiry into Tory anti-Muslim bigotry.

One of the leading figures calling for an investigation into Tory anti-Muslim bigotry is the Tory peer Mohamed Sheikh.

It hardly seems like a coincidence that Zac Goldsmith has taken to Twitter to call for Sheikh's immediate expulsion from the Tory party for having attended the same peace conference in Tunisia that Jeremy Corbyn is being smeared over.

Aside from the fact that he's calling for one of his main accusers to be expelled from the party, Goldsmith's choice of source is very telling indeed. It's widely known that the Guido Fawkes comments section is an absolute cesspit of bigotry and abuse, including an awful lot of anti-Muslim hate.

Imagine the kind of person who would actually share a link to one of the most vile anti-Muslim hate chambers on the Internet in order to call for the expulsion of a Muslim man who is calling for an inquiry into anti-Muslim bigotry that would certainly end up investigating their own anti-Muslim hatemongering. That person is Zac Goldsmith.

If Zac Goldsmith and his chums at the top of the Tory party succeed in purging one of the only senior Tory voices who dares complain about anti-Muslim bigotry in the Tory ranks in order to avoid an internal party investigation into their own actions, then we'll have absolute proof that anti-Muslim bigotry isn't just accepted within the Tory party, but that the party actually closes ranks to protect the perpetrators.

Whether you think Jeremy Corbyn is doing a good enough job of handling the Labour anti-Semitism row or not, there's no denying that he's publicly criticised anti-Jewish bigotry on numerous occasions, and that the party has sped up the disciplinary process when it comes to allegations of anti-Semitism.

What the Tories have done is completely the opposite. Theresa May has been stonewalling calls for an investigation into Tory anti-Muslim bigotry for months, and now we've got the disgusting spectacle of one of the worst offenders of all actually seeking the immediate expulsion of one of his accusers!

Don't expect to hear anything about Zac Goldsmith's desperate and transparent efforts to purge one of his accusers from the party, because it simply doesn't chime with the primary objective of attacking Jeremy Corbyn in order to defend the four decade long neoliberal orthodoxy that most mainstream media hacks have done very nicely out of indeed (while millions of others have paid the price of it).

Just imagine the furious reaction if Jeremy Corbyn had spent months denying anti-Semitism and stonewalling calls for an investigation, then a hypothetical senior Labour MP who cynically capitalised on anti-Jewish bigotry in an election campaign actually demands that one of his Jewish accusers is expelled from the party.

There'd be an unprecedented shit-storm of condemnation (and rightly so), but somehow, because it's Theresa May, bigoted Zac Goldsmith, and the Tory party, there's hardly even a whisper about it in the mainstream media.

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Playing 'good Jew - bad Jew' to delegitimise Jewish people you disagree with is blatant anti-Semitism

One of the most extraordinary things about the anti-Semitism furore is the way that Jeremy Corbyn's right-wing opponents are prepared to issue blatantly anti-Semitic statements in order to attack him as an anti-Semite, but they repeatedly get a total free pass from the mainstream media.

First we had Theresa May using the grotesque "self-hating Jew" trope to attack every single Jewish member of the Labour Party as tolerant of anti-Semitism, then we had the Tory government minister Sajid Javid hiding behind parliamentary privilege to smear hundreds of Jewish Labour activists as supporters of the fascist ideology that resulted in the genocide of their forefathers!

Incredibly, right-wingers have tried to argue that silencing and delegitimising Jewish voices you don't agree with by smearing left-wing Jewish people as "self-hating Jews" and "neo-fascists" is somehow not anti-Semitic behaviour!

Now the right-wing (and non-Jewish) Labour MP John Woodcock has gone even further by slamming Jeremy Corbyn for celebrating the Jewish Seder festival with a left-wing Jewish group called Jewdas.

Apparently Corbyn is still an anti-Semite for attending and participating in a Jewish festival, because the people there are somehow the wrong kind of Jews.

Using grotesquely divisive 'good Jew - bad Jew' shit to delegitimise and dismiss Jewish voices you disagree with is about as clear an example of anti-Semitism as it's possible to see. But Woodcock didn't just get a free pass on it, his vile comments were uncritically repeated all over the mainstream media, including the oh-so-impartial BBC.

It's difficult not to resort to anger when you see a person resorting to spectacularly divisive anti-Semitism in order to smear one of their political opponents as anti-Semitic, but perhaps the best response to this kind of sick hypocrisy is humour.

One of the most telling responses to Woodcock's vile effort to delegitimise and silence left-wing Jews came from the poet and children's laureate Michael Rosen, who wrote him a poem (see picture).

Not only did Woodcock resort to the anti-Semitic game of dismissing Jews who don't agree with him as illegitimate Jews, he also attached a link to the filthy extreme-right Guido Fawkes hate chamber to his Tweet.

If anyone has any doubt about why politicians (and especially Labour MPs) should not be giving free publicity to Guido, just find any Guido article about Sadiq Khan or Diane Abbott and take a look through the disgusting tidal wave of bigoted and abusive filth in the comments section.

Not only has Woodcock resorted to the anti-Semitic 'good Jew - bad Jew' game in order to smear Jeremy Corbyn as anti-Semitic for actually attending and participating in a Jewish religious festival in his spare time ... he's also posted a link to one of the most outrageously bigoted extreme-right hate chambers in British politics whilst pretending to oppose bigotry!

Here are a selection of Guido comments about Sadiq Khan and Diane Abbott for you to consider as you evaluate John Woodcock's decision to support this site whilst simultaneously posturing as someone who is opposed to bigotry!

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Tories are actually trying to portray Toby Young as a martyr!

After eight days of damaging revelations about the odious hard-right polemicist Toby Young, he has resigned from the Tory government's new universities watchdog.

Young had tried to hide his disgusting past by deleting some 50,000 Tweets, but people had already taken screenshots of some of the worst comments including anal rape 'jokes', casual misogyny and homophobia, a description of masturbating over images of starving children, and crude comments about the breasts of an underage girl.

Aside from the shower of gross Twitter comments there was Young's journalistic output, which included an article admitting the supply of cocaine, an article describing his efforts to trick lesbian women into having sexual contact with him, and most concerning of all, articles in which he tried to rehabilitate the concept of eugenics.

Had this been a Labour Party figure (like Jared O'Mara for example), we all know what the reaction would have been from the likes of Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, and the hard-right Guido Fawkes blog. But instead of a tidal wave of faux outrage we witnessed a week-long exercise in ridiculous Tory excuse-making.

Theresa May said that she was "not impressed" by Toby Young's comments, but refused to sack him; Boris Johnson described Young as having a "caustic wit" as if describing wanking over dying children is the work of a modern day Oscar Wilde; Toby Young even thanked the Guido Fawkes blog for their support in his ludicrous Facebook self-exoneration; and the universities minister Jo Johnson (the brother of Boris) even found himself defending anal rape jokes and modern eugenics in parliament after opposition MPs secured an emergency debate over Toby Young's appointment.

After a the furore showed no signs of dying down after a week the Tories even circulated a memo urging Tory MPs to deflect attention away from Toby Young by attacking and smearing Labour politicians. This wasn't just members of the Tory boys club sticking up for their horrible mate, it was an orchestrated effort by the Tory party machine to defend the indefensible.

Despite the desperate rearguard action from the Tory party machine, the pressure eventually told and Toby Young gave in and announced his resignation. It's astounding that despite all the repulsive comments and articles, he was allowed to walk away of his own volition, not fired.

The fact that the Tories stuck with such a repulsive and desperately unsuitable appointment to a supposedly neutral and impartial public sector role tells you all you need to know about how nasty they are, but there's another angle too.

The way they spent eight days robustly defending the indefensible and sustaining damage to their reputation just to let the guy resign illustrates their sheer incompetence.

Any competent organisation would have nipped the scandal in the bud by admitting the comments and pro-eugenics articles were unacceptable, and cancelling the appointment. But that's just not the way the Tory party works, especially under the weak and directionless leadership of Theresa May.

Toby Young is part of the Tory boys club and untouchable. Even if Theresa May had the inclination to sack him, she couldn't because she's in such a weak position and Toby's fellow members of the Tory boys club like Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, and Jo Johnson would have kicked up a stink that would have threatened her position as party leader, so as usual she put self-interest above all and let the obnoxious creep keep his position.

Even after Young's resignation, Tories like Jo Johnson are still intent on making the situation worse by continuing to spew one-sided Toby Young eulogies and smearing everyone who objected to his appointment as "armchair critics".

It's as if they genuinely can't see what's wrong with appointing such a savagely biased and repulsive character to a supposedly impartial public position, and they're going to take their fury out on any members of the general public with the rudimentary judgement skills necessary to see why such a person is so catastrophically unfit for public office.

In their warped minds masturbating over starving children, anal rape 'jokes', casual misogyny and homophobia, obsessing over the breasts of a minor, and efforts to rehabilitate eugenics are absolutely fine, and Toby Young is some kind of unfortunate martyr, and that's the ridiculous narrative these out-of-touch Tory boys club buffoons are actually running with!

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The searing Tory hypocrisy over people with histories of posting vile online comments

We all remember the outcry over the newly elected Labour MP Jared O'Mara, and his history of posting grotesque misogynistic and homophobic comments right?

We remember how the scandal was whipped up by the hard-right Guido Fawkes blog, and pushed hard by a load of grandstanding Tory MPs don't we?

We also remember that the Labour leadership were quick to suspend Jared O'Mara from the Labour Party over the scandal.

Well the Tories have triggered a scandal of their own by appointing the obnoxious right-wing polemicist Toby Young to lead their new Universities Watchdog.

Young already had a reputation as a person with very nasty views (he's written columns attacking equality legislation and disabled people, describing working class students at Oxford as "stains", and actively promoting eugenics), but this appointment inspired people to go back through his online comments to highlight all manner of vile and outrageous things he's spouted over the years.
 

These comments range from obsessing over the size of various women's breasts (including those of an underage girl), stating that he'd had his "dick up her arse" about Padma Lakshmi, accusing George Clooney of being "as queer as a coot", and describing Helen Mirren as a grandma he'd like to shag.

Young has subsequently tried to hide the evidence by deleting some 50,000 Tweets, but it's come far too late. If he'd had any sense at all he would have deleted them before applying for a public sector job, or maybe even considered not spewing vile sexist and homophobic comments all over Twitter in the first place.

Given the absolute stink the Guido Fawkes blog kicked up over Jared O'Mara, you would have thought they'd be keen to stick the boot into Toby Young over this scandal too, but somehow no!

Young has actually written a social media post vindicating himself, and thanking Guido Fawkes for the support they've given him!

Then there's the grandstanding Tory MPs who made such a fuss over Jared O'Mara's history of posting sick online comments. They're suddenly much less critical when it's one of their own who has been caught out spewing vile comments all over Twitter. In fact Boris Johnson has even tried to pass off Young's offensive stream of bile as "caustic wit"!

One of the most interesting things to consider is the fact that Jared O'Mara was hastily picked as a Labour candidate in a seat they didn't really expect to win because Theresa May called a snap election, denying Labour the time to conduct the kind of due diligence that would normally be expected.

When O'Mara's grim online comments history was discovered, he was quickly (and rightly) suspended from the party.

Now compare this with the Tory government's decision to overlook more qualified candidates to appoint Toby Young to their Universities Watchdog. They had plenty of time to carefully consider their decision, and to check that he was an appropriate candidate (by reading some of his blogs, or by looking through his Twitter feed for example).

Not only did the Tories fail to do their due diligence when they had plenty of time to do it, they're desperately retreating into defence mode now that his vile comments have been revealed, rather than admitting that a mistake has been made and that he's actually an entirely inappropriate person to have been awarded the supposedly impartial role he's been given.

If there's one thing that's even more glaring than the fact that a supposedly impartial role should never have been given to a vile hard-right polemicist like Toby Young, it's the absolute hypocrisy of the Tory Party (and the Guido Fawkes blog) for bitterly attacking Jared O'Mara for his vile online comments, and then desperately defending Toby Young when he's been caught out posting exactly the same kind of disgusting online abuse.

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Imagine the uproar if an independent left-wing media site had published irresponsible fearmongering fake news like this

Everyone remembers the absolute furore a couple of months ago over that story in The Canary that the BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg was listed to speak at the Tory Party conference right? 

It didn't seem to matter a jot that Kuenssberg was actually listed as a guest speaker in Tory conference publicity, the mainstream media picked up her subsequent denial and created the narrative that left-wing independent media is creating "fake news".

Of course the Canary article attached more importance to the event literature about a Tory party fringe event than it was probably worth, but they absolutely didn't fake the evidence that she was listed as a speaker there, and the question of why the chief political editor at the (supposedly impartial) BBC was listed as a speaker at the Tory party conference was actually a legitimate one.

Now consider the absolutely undeniable fake news that the Daily Mail spread about the incident at Oxford Circus on Friday 24 November. They picked up a Tweet from November 11th and spun it into a headline about a lorry having supposedly ploughed into pedestrians, adding to the fear and panic over the incident.

Whether you think the Canary story about Laura Kuenssberg was justifiable or not, there's a vast difference between picking up on publicity listing her as a speaker at a Tory conference event and then working it up into an article about a lack of political neutrality at the BBC, and picking up a weeks old Tweet, combining it with unverified accounts of gunshots and using it to stoke public panic about an ongoing public safety incident.

One is an example of stretching something real beyond what it's probably actually worth, and the other is deeply irresponsible fearmongering.

Most of the mainstream media let this shockingly inaccurate and deeply irresponsible Daily mail headline pass without comment. 

The only reasonably big news outlets to run the story were the Huffington Post, RT, IB Times and The Irish Post. Apparently this kind of wildly inaccurate fearmongering by one of the most visited websites in the UK didn't warrant any kind of critical coverage on the BBC!

Just imagine how the BBC/Daily Telegraph/Murdoch Press would have dog-piled a site like Evolve Politics or The Skwawkbox had they published a load of pathetically researched, shockingly inaccurate fearmongering fake news about an ongoing public safety incident, then deleted it instead of issuing a proper retraction and clarification?

The question here is a simple one: Why is it that independent left-wing media outlets are apparently being held to very much higher standards than the right-wing press?

Aside from the Daily Mail fake news about the incident at Oxford Circus, there's also the way that the mainstream media regularly churnalise misleading drivel from the right-wing Guido Fawkes blog into headlines, like the fake news story they broke about Jeremy Corbyn having backtracked on a supposed promise to wipe out pre-existing student debts, when no such promise was ever actually made.

There's an ongoing mainstream media tactic of lazily churnalising misleading Guido Fawkes tropes into headlines while the majority of mainstream media coverage of independent left-wing media sites like The Canary, Squawkbox, and Evolve Politics is highly critical on the rare ocasions such sites get coverage at all.

Why do inaccurate and poorly researched Guido Fawkes posts so often frame mainstream media narratives, while a fraction of the inaccuracy or exaggeration from independent left-wing sites would be used to justify the increasingly common mainstream media trope about how such sites are unreliable and inherently untrustworthy?

Of course I'm not arguing that independent left-wing media should be afforded the same leeway as muck-raking right-wing trash sites like the Daily Mail and Guido Fawkes. 

When independent media outlets make mistakes or exaggerated claims it's absolutely right that they issue retractions or clarifications, and everyone in left-wing independent media has a big responsibility to work hard to make sure our assertions are backed up by facts and evidence.

The issue here isn't that certain independent left-wing media outlets have occasionally made mistakes or exaggerated claims (of course they have, nobody is perfect), or even that journalists in the mainstream media are seeking to amplify these mistakes or exaggerations in order to discredit independent left-wing media as a whole (self-interested mainstream media hacks attacking a perceived threat to the established order of things is actually pretty understandable). 

The problems are that the mainstream media fail so badly to dog-pile and eviscerate the Daily Mail and other right-wing media outlets in the same way when they're guilty of publishing very much more irresponsible and inaccurate things, and that they actually churnalise misleading crap from the Guido Fawkes blog into mainstream media headlines without bothering to subject their posts to a fraction of the critical scrutiny they apply to claims from sites like The Canary or Novara Media (on the rare occasions left-wing independent media sites ever actually get a mention in the mainstream media).

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Why do the BBC rate Michael Gove and the Guido Fawkes blog as more reliable sources than the British Medical Journal?

In November 2017 the widely respected British medical Journal published a study suggesting that Tory austerity dogma is linked to 120,000 excess deaths since 2010.

The BBC quashed any coverage of this shocking study on the advice of a shadowy advisory group that is part-funded by organisations like the Daily Mail and the UK government themselves. Apparently the British medical Journal and the academics who worked on the study were not reliable enough to warrant any coverage whatever.

Fast forward one week and the BBC joined various other outlets in championing an absolute sham of an article from the Guido Fawkes blog accusing other websites of being "downmarket trash clickbait" in an attempt to create a furore over fake news.

It is absolutely indisputable that Tory MPs voted to defeat an amendment to the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill designed to ensure that the UK government recognises animal sentience after Brexit. Here's a link to the vote on Hansard. We can all see from the public record that the Tories voted against the amendment to recognise animal sentience, making sure it lost by 313 votes to 295.

Tory MPs such as the current Environment Minister Michael Gove (the 3rd Tory Environment Minister in the space of two years!) gave assurances that the Tories would one day legislate to recognise animal sentience, but surely such promises from Brexiteers like Michael Gove are only as believable as their outright lies about using Brexit to give £350 million a week to the NHS?

Claiming that they have no intention of scrapping the thing whilst simultaneously voting against amendments to prevent them from scrapping the thing is exactly the same Tory trick used to justify voting against amendment 58 to the EU (Withdrawal) Bill which sought to stop them from using Brexit as an excuse to revoke workers' rights, equality legislation, environmental protections, workplace safety rules, and consumer protections.

Anyone with a grain of sense should be able to see that any government with an honest commitment to recognising animal sentience, or protecting our EU derived rights could have no real objection to supporting amendments designed to ensure that they can't just scrap these things further down the line.

The crux of the Guido Fawkes article was that the horrified public reaction to the Tory scuppering of the animal sentience amendment was "fake news" because we're simply expected to believe Michael Gove's subsequent statement that "this government will ensure that any necessary changes required to UK law are made in a rigorous and comprehensive way to ensure animal sentience is recognised after we leave the EU"

How naive would you have to be to believe that this statement would have been made without all the negative publicity and petitions?

And how naive would you have to judge Michael "350 million for the NHS" Gove on his words, whilst completely ignoring his actual actions in colluding with his Tory colleagues to vote down an amendment which would have prevented him (or any future Tory Environment Secretary) from backtracking on that commitment.

So the Guido Fawkes article is accusing everyone who shared articles and petitions criticising the Tory vote against the animal sentience amendment of spreading "fake news" because ... well ... we're supposed to just believe politicians like Michael Gove are not lying to us!

This Guido article clearly uses the term "fake news" in the same way Donald Trump uses it. Not to describe news that is demonstrably fake, but as a pejorative term aimed at discrediting news that they don't like.

In a way the Guido Fawkes article is an example of fake "fake news" news.

But that didn't stop the BBC from jumping on the bandwagon and promoting the narrative that the uproar about animal sentience is "fake news" because everyone is suddenly supposed to take Michael Gove at his word now, instead of judging him by his actual actions.

Incredibly the BBC gave Michael Gove (the man who told us that Britain "has had enough of experts") a platform to whine that "there is an unhappy tendency now for people to believe that the raw and authentic voice of what's shared on social media is more reliable than what is said in Hansard or on the BBC".

One minute he wants the public to disregard experts, analysis and evidence when it suits his Brexiteering agenda, then the next he's crying that people don't believe his claims that his words have more weight than his actions!

The way that the central argument from this Guido Fawkes fake "fake news" news narrative was hastily turned into BBC headlines, while an academic study from the British Medical Journal was deemed unfit for coverage just goes to show how standards of journalism and impartiality at the BBC have degenerated:

A study conducted by reputable academics from some of Britain's top universities and published in the British Medical Journal was deliberately buried in order to keep it out of the public consciousness as much as possible because it would reflect very badly on the government, and none of the academics involved were invited onto the BBC to discuss the implications of their study.

Yet some cobbled-together nonsense labelling all social media criticism of the government as "fake news" because we're all suddenly supposed to take lying Brexiteers like Michael Gove at their word now is deemed worthy of BBC news coverage because it fits with the mainstream media groupthink that independent media and social networks are significant threats to their ability to control public perceptions in the way that they did so brazenly when they decided to not bother reporting on the 120,000 excess deaths scandal.

Is it any wonder that more and more people are turning to independent media for their news when the BBC treat the likes of Michael Gove and the Guido Fawkes blog as more reputable sources than the British Medical Journal, the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, and University College London?

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