Surprise surprise, Tory FACTS are actually a bunch of lies!

The Tories are lying through their teeth about the NHS on social media.

Just look at the state of the Tweet they sent out accusing Labour of lying about their intentions towards the NHS.

Before we get to the meat of the criticism, there's the crude social media illiteracy of it to deal with.

Everyone knows that it's pathetic to beg for retweets once in a Tweet, let alone doing it twice. And anyone who hasn't learned by now that all-capitals use of "FACT" or "FACTS" is almost inevitably followed by a load of lies really shouldn't be allowed unsupervised access to the Internet should they?

Aside from the cringeworthy social media illiteracy, one of the first things to jump out is the turn of phrase "Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly made it clear that ...".

We've been assured by a notorious liar who has twice been sacked for lying, repeatedly lies to parliament and the public alike, and even lied to the Queen about his reasons for suspending parliament ... so we'd better take him at his word eh?

Then let's look at what the proven liar is assuring us about:

Apparently the Tories say they'll never agree to any free trade deal that puts the NHS on the table ...

But if this is true, why on earth did Boris Johnson whip his Tory MPs into voting down a Labour party motion to rule out a post-Brexit NHS privatisation frenzy?

If there are "no circumstances" in which they'd allow it to happen, why on earth did they feel the need to shoot down legislation aimed at making it legally impossible for it to happen?

It seems as if, shock horror, the Tory party might not be being entirely honest here!

Then there's their reiteration of their spectacularly misleading new "Get Brexit Done" propaganda trope.

Anyone with the remotest understanding of the actual Brexit process must understand that finalising the Withdrawal Agreement is only actually the end of phase one of a multi-phase process, and furthermore that if the withdrawal deal is hastily botched by an incompetent Prime Minister, it will cause all kinds of problems, deadlocks, and delays further down the line.

But unfortunately we've now entered the age of idiocracy in which mainstream media journalists actually praise political parties for glib content-free sound bites like "Get Brexit Done" or "Bollocks to Brexit" whilst vitriolically damning anyone who dares to venture any political position that can't be expressed in three words or fewer!

We've entered a dangerously dumbed-down, attention deficit political era where a three word lie has infinitely more political currency than a few sentences of truth, and things only seem to be getting worse.

Hence political pundits these days expend infinitely more effort criticising the font a dishonest political trope is written in, than the zero effort they've expended on explaining that the actual words are lies!

Then finally we get to the infographic itself, which starts off accusing the Labour Party of telling lies, right above a massive £9.2 billion whopper of their own.

The duplicitous Tories state that "the NHS is not for sale" as they're actively carving it up for the benefit of their private profiteer mates at a historically unprecedented rate!

And this isn't just some wild accusation by a small independent blogger, it's evidenced by their own damned figures, which show an all-time record £9.2 billion of the NHS budget distributed to private profiteers in 2018, up 14% from the previous year!

The Tory party are now so used to being not held to account by the mainstream media that they feel emboldened to spread outright lies all over social media, safe in the knowledge that nobody in the old media will actually call them out on it.

And this is why independent media is so important.

Yes, 'Tories are telling lies' is as surprising as 'bear shits in woods', but somebody still needs to do the work of spelling out how dishonest they're being, and what the actual reality is, while most of the mainstream media occupy themselves with the much more important task of uncritically regurgitating whatever ridiculous lies they've been spoon-fed by anonymous 'government sources'.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

12 left-leaning independent media sites you should be following

The UK mainstream media is the most right-wing and the least trusted in Europe. For decades a handful of savagely right-wing propaganda barons have been allowed to debase the standard of political debate by relentlessly attacking and smearing anyone who dares to stand up and argue against the neoliberal orthodoxy (privatisation mania, deregulation, wage repression, tax cuts for the rich, social security cuts for the poor, and ruinous austerity dogma) that has served the interests of billionaires so well at the expense of the rest of us.

Instead of counteracting the toxification of UK political discourse by the right-wing propaganda barons, the supposedly left-liberal media have repeatedly joined in the dog-piling of alternative voices. 

The Guardian, The Independent, and The New Statesman all host some of the worst offenders when it comes to pretending to be left-wing, but actually arguing for the continuation of neoliberal economic policies at home and imperialist war-mongering overseas.

A monthly online subscription to The Guardian costs £12, but instead of using that cash to fund an organisation that hosts some of the most insidious anti-left commentators of all, why not consider making a few smaller £1 subscriptions to truly independent left-leaning sites?

If you can't afford to subscribe to all/any of the following sites, you can still help by sharing this article, and by following the social media accounts of these pages and sharing their posts to help them reach a wider audience.

Here are twelve suggestions (in no particular order):

Novara Media

[Website - Twitter]

Novara Media have been running for five years, and they're going from strength to strength, despite the fact that the majority of their contributors are unpaid volunteers. Most of the other sites on this list concentrate on blog posts, articles, and occasionally infographics. Novara Media are one of the leading left-leaning producers of video content.

One of the best reasons to support Novara Media's work is that they helped spring the phenomenal Ash Sarkar onto the political scene. With a bit more support Novara Media could easily become a production line of left-wing talent.

Vox Political

[Website - Facebook]

Vox Political is a one-man blog operated by Mike Sivier since 2011. The blog usually focuses on disability rights, welfare issues, and Labour politics.

Mike is a Labour Party member so a pro-Labour slant is to be expected, however he has done amazing work, including extensive investigations into the number of people to have died within weeks of being declared "fit for work" under the Tory government's dehumanising and discriminatory assessment regime for sick and disabled people.

Pride's Purge

[Website - Twitter]

Pride's Purge is a one-man political blog established in 2011 that is mainly focused on disability and welfare issues. Articles range from compelling evidence based critiques to outright satire.

In the early days of Another Angry Voice Tom Pride was a major inspiration for my work, so if you see some value in what I do now, please consider supporting one of the guys who inspired me to do it.

Evolve Politics
[Website - Facebook]

Evolve Politics is a left-wing news and current affairs website that was founded in 2015. During the 2017 General Election they were one of the most mega-viral pro-Corbyn websites on Facebook (the other two being Another Angry Voice and The Canary).

Since 2017 Evolve has gone from strength to strength, improving the standard of their content and the breadth of their coverage.

The Canary

[Website - Facebook]

The Canary is an unashamedly left-wing and socially liberal website that was established in 2015 by Kerry-Ann Mendoza who previously ran the Scriptonite Daily blog.

The site has multiple contributors meaning the quality of the articles are extremely variable, ranging from superb examples of evidence based journalism to annoying clickbait. What is undeniable is that The Canary has played a massive role in holding the Tory government to account over issues the mainstream media have tended to downplay or outright ignore, especially the devastating impact of hard-right Tory austerity dogma.

We Own It

[Website - Twitter]

We Own It is a campaign against privatisation mania that has been running since 2013. Their mission statement says that "Public services should belong to all of us - whether that's the NHS, schools, water, energy, rail, Royal Mail, care work or council services".

Setting up a small donation to support We Own It would help them continue to fight against Tory privatisation scams, and to promote the concept of not-for-profit public services run for the benefit of the British people rather than a handful of corporate shareholders.

Zelo Street

[Website - Twitter]

Zelo Street is the blog of a left-leaning social liberal from Crewe called Tim Fenton that's he's been running since 2009.

Fenton is an astoundingly prolific writer, producing an average of three articles per day, every day for the last six years. He's always at his best when he's critiquing extreme-right fanatics and the output of hard-right propaganda rags like the S*n, Daily Mail and Express.

Tax Research UK

[Website - Twitter]

Tax Research UK is the personal blog of the economist Richard Murphy, which he's been running since 2006.

Richard has campaigned on a number of important issues from tax-dodging to inequality. Probably the most famous blog post he's ever produced is the myth-buster post that proves that Tory governments always create more debt than the Labour governments!

Murphy would probably deny that he's an out-and-out lefty, but there is certainly a huge amount of crossover between us full-on lefties and his anti-austerity pro-investment economic views, his opposition to tax dodging, and his work on inequality, so he's definitely worth a follow.

Double Down News

[Website - YouTube]

DDN have produced some absolutely outstanding videos since they were established in January 2017. Aside from left-leaning UK political content, they've also conducted some outstanding interviews with the likes of  Lowkey, Akala, and DMC.

The Skwawkbox

[Website - Twitter]

The Skwawkbox is a left-wing news blog founded in 2009 that mainly focuses on Labour Party politics which exists to present information that rarely makes it into the mainstream media (except when mainstream media hacks nick Skwawkbox exclusives and pass them off as their own work, which is heppening more and more regularly).

The Skwawkbox is particularly hated on the Labour party right for its effectiveness in providing rapid counter-narratives to fight back against each anti-Corbyn attack point the Labour right-wingers come up with.

The London Economic

[Website - Twitter]

The London Economic is a left-leaning news website that rose to prominence during the 2017 General Election campaign. It was originally founded as a personal blog by the editor Jack Peat. Of all of the sites listed here it's the one that most closely resembles a traditional mainstream media source, with various sections ranging from the economy to sports, which is partly down to their relationship with the South West News Service news agency.

Another Angry Voice

[Website - Facebook]

When I started the Another Angry Voice in 2010 I had absolutely no idea that it would become one of the most recognisable left-wing sites on the British political scene, let alone make me by far the most viral political writer on Facebook during the 2017 General Election!

I'm very proud of what I've achieved without any establishment or mainstream media connections whatever, but I'm also well aware that I couldn't have achieved any of it without the support of people who see some value in my work. 

Without all the likes, comments, and shares I could never have reached an audience of millions of people, and without the subscriptions and donations there's absolutely no way I could devote so much of my time to writing articles and creating infographics.

Conclusion

That 11 of the 12 sites in this list has been founded in the last decade just goes to show how much social media has opened up the UK political landscape to the kind of left-wing voices who would never have been given a platform by the mainstream media gatekeepers of political discourse.

The rise of left-wing independent media sites has finally created a little bit of counter-balance to a mainstream media that has consistently favoured the hard-right neoliberal orthodoxy for the past four decades. But the reach of all of these 12 sites combined is still a drop in the ocean compared to the enormous reach of right-wing propaganda operations like The S*n and The Daily Mail.

That's why every £1 counts. Every pound that ordinary people spend supporting bloggers, independent websites, and campaign groups, rather than mainstream media outlets, makes a difference because pretty much everyone working on independent left-wing media sites is either earning a tiny fraction of what their mainstream media counterparts get paid for protecting the neoliberal orthodoxy, or working on an entirely voluntary basis.

There's no way that self-serving billionaires like Rupert Murdoch, Jonathan Harmsworth, or the Barclay brothers would ever fund writers who critique the hard-right neoliberal orthodoxy that has served their interests so well, so it's absolutely up to ordinary people to begin funding and supporting the kind of media that's going to stick up for their interests, rather than the vested interests of right-wing billionaires.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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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!

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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The Facebook blackout 'glitch' censored independent media, but left the mainstream media untouched

Facebook has initiated a massive purge of independent media content. This blackout includes barring multiple independent media sites from posting links to their own site on their Facebook page, deleting independent media posts without warning or reason, marking independent media posts as spam so ordinary members of the public can't share them, and deleting ordinary people's posts without reason.

This issue has impacted multiple left-leaning independent media sites like Another Angry Voice, Evolve Politics, Vox Political, People's Campaign for Corbyn, EU Citizens for an Independent Scotland, and many others. With pages left unable to post links to their own articles.

Facebook have tried to dismiss the independent media blackout as a "glitch" but interestingly the Facebook pages of mainstream media outlets were unaffected by the "glitch". Mainstream media outlets that have been able to continue posting articles throughout the blackout include the Daily Mail, The S*n, Evening Standard, The Times and Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Spectator, Daily Mirror, Daily Express, Sky News, BBC News, and BBC Politics.

Additionally the hard-right Guido Fawkes blog was also allowed to continue posting links to their vile echo chamber of hate throughout the Facebook blackout.

The fact that a select few pages were allowed to continue posting throughout the Facebook blackout suggests that there's some kind of Facebook 'whitelist' protecting them from whatever measures they've been taking against independent media sources.

So a range of left-wing, pro-independence, anti-Tory, pro-Corbyn, anti-fracking independent media pages were barred from sharing links, while mainstream media outlets and hard-right blogs were completely unaffected.

Given that the mainstream media is overwhelmingly biased in favour of the Tory party and the permanent Westminster establishment class, and that independent media is often the only place that Labour, the Green Party, the SNP, and Plaid Cymru get a fair hearing, it's deeply concerning that Facebook is capable of basically shutting down independent media's ability to communicate, whilst allowing the mainstream media and hard-right smear-mongering operations like Guido Fawkes to continue posting links.

What's even more horrifying is the thought that Facebook could easily launch another independent media blackout like this in the middle of an election period.

We all know that super-viral independent media content played a significant role in the Labour surge at the 2017 General Election, so shutting down independent media's ability to communicate during an election period would clearly favour the Tories.

It's an extraordinary coincidence that Facebook launched a massive blackout of independent media pages on the very same day that Jeremy Corbyn announced new policies to promote independent media, democratise the BBC and fund it via a social media tax, and provide investigative journalists with much greater Freedom of Information powers.

Apparently there are actually no rules whatever to stop Facebook from interfering in British politics in this way, just as there were no rules in place to prevent them from making £millions by undermining democracy by targeting secretive and highly misleading political dark ads at the Facebook users deemed most liable to fall for them (during the EU referendum in 2016, and for the Tory party at the 2017 General Election).

Facebook have so many users that they've developed an ability to dramatically influence political discourse, from extremely positive aspects like allowing non-corporate writers, investigators, and journalists a means of promoting their work, to extremely negative aspects like targeted dark ads and independent media blackouts.

Either the British electoral authorities step in with new rules to ensure that Facebook provide a fair and level playing field (especially during election periods), or things will almost certainly get a lot worse.

Perhaps Jeremy Corbyn should add another proposal to his 'Change the Media' strategy to  ensure that social media platforms provide a fair and balanced arena for political debate, rather than launching targeted blackouts that somehow don't affect mainstream media and pro-Tory pages?

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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Don't fall for extreme-right "freedom of speech" victimhood narratives

The extreme-right are once again programming their followers to wallow in victimhood narratives over the wild conspiracy-monger Alex Jones getting his InfoWars channel thrown off multiple free-to-use online media platforms for breaching their conditions of use.

Before InfoWars they were wailing persecution about the extreme-right gay-paedophilia advocate Milo getting thrown off Twitter for his abusive behaviour.

Before that they cried victimhood over the vile terrorism-promoting money-scamming Britain First hate chamber eventually getting chucked off Facebook for hosting an absolute festival of hate that made a total mockery of their community standards.

The extreme-right wail and cry as if being pushed off free-to-use online platforms is the modern equivalent of Nazi book burning, which it obviously isn't.

Back in the days before the Internet you couldn't just go around demanding that people print your book for free, and that they continue printing your books indefinitely, no matter how horrific the things you write in them.

Back in the days before the Internet you couldn't go around demanding that your local newspaper print every single crackpot hate-mongering letter you sent them about your ridiculous conspiracy theories either.

Of course nobody could stop you from writing your own book and submitting it to publishers, or sending batshit letters to your local paper, but when they rejected your manuscript or refused to print your letters, they weren't denying you free speech, they were protecting their own right to publish what they saw fit to.

That misattributed Voltaire quote says "I wholly disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it". 

It doesn't say "I wholly disapprove of what you say and will defend to the death your right to demand other people continue publishing your views forever, free of charge".

Nobody is saying that Alex Jones, and Milo, and the Britain First hate mob can't continue spewing their venom elsewhere, they're just saying they can't take advantage of their free-to-use services to do it.

It's simply laughable to imagine that online media companies have some "free speech" obligation to provide a free platform to anyone, to say whatever they like, no matter how extreme, how defamatory, how dishonest, how dangerous, or how threatening to the very financial viability of the online media company itself.

Nobody reads the terms and conditions when they sign up as users of online media sites. Nobody carefully reads their "important updates" either. But if you actually do, you'll find that you've entered into a contract with them, and that they reserve the right to deny you access to their free services if they feel they are being misused.

Interestingly the traditional right-wing narratives have been completely reversed in regard to contracts to acommodate these "free speech" victimhood narratives.

It used to be that the political right would defend the sanctity of contractual agreements above absolutely anything else, including fundamental human welfare. But now we've got right-wingers bitterly railing against the contracts they voluntarily signed up to because they don't like the conditions!

Some might argue that Facebook, Spotify, YouTube, and Apple hoofing Alex Jones' conspiracy rambling off their free platforms is the thin edge of the wedge, and while I'm naturally sympathetic to this argument (as someone who relies heavily on social media to spread awareness of my work) it's simply incorrect.

I have absolutely no intention of ever posting malicious and defamatory diatribes, incitements to violence, grotesque conspiracy theories about the parents of murdered school children being 'fake crisis actors', calls for ethnic genocide, or hateful abuse - so I'm fairly confident they won't be coming after me with an outright ban.

What I'm afraid of is much more subtle: Tweaks to the algorithms (possibly as a result of government pressure) to dramatically curtail the reach of independent media sites.

One hopes that they wouldn't bend to such pressure, but knowledge of social media companies' history of collusion with spy agencies (as revealed by the Snowden leaks), and the staggering sums of money pumped into targeted ad campaigns by political parties that have never been keen on having their malice, corruption and incompetence uncovered by renegade independent journalists, it would be foolish to rule out the possibility entirely.

The real threat to freedom of speech isn't the upfront high-profile de-platforming of depraved extreme-right conspiracy-mongers for their outright contempt towards the terms of service contracts they all willingly signed up to.

The real threat is that independent sources of information are simply tuned out by the algorithms, with few people ever even noticing that independent non-conformist anti-establishment pages are disappearing from their social media feeds.

If they wanted to crack down on the true rebels (those who use facts, evidence and logic to build their cases rather than rhetoric, conspiracies, and abuse) then why would they use a sledgehammer, when they've got much simpler and subtler means at their disposal to crack nuts?

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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'Centrist' dupes are giving tiny handouts to corporations to own the left!

The last time I looked at my PayPal donations account I noticed something odd, a spate of tiny attempted donations of just 1p or 10p. This was great news for PayPal because the corporation simply kept the entirety of these small payments for themselves in transaction fees, but I couldn't think of a reason for multiple people to attempt to send micro-donations all at the same time.

It turns out that the reason for this spate of tiny donations to my blog is that there's a ludicrous conspiracy theory spreading in right-wing political circles (from pro-austerity "centrist" Labour right-wingers to extreme-right ultranationalists) that sending tiny donations to independent left-wing media sites actually costs them money.

The people sending these micro-donations are so hopelessly gullible that their great fightback against the growing influence of independent left-wing media sites like Another Angry Voice, the Skwawkbox, Evolve Politics, Novara Media, and The Canary is actually to send us micro-donations in the ridiculous hope that it somehow costs us more money to receive them than they're worth.

On planet reality these micro-donations don't cost us anything, they actually just serve as free gifts to PayPal because although they take all the money for themselves in fees their policy is that if the donation is really small, the fee never exceeds the payment.

Just imagine being such a hopelessly gullible believe-everything-I-read numbnuts that you'd not only actually believe that the biggest online payments system on the planet has a glaring flaw that allows enemies of political free speech to shut down websites by sending them micro-payments, but actually attempt to join in such a futile attack.

If so-called centrists as so mind-bogglingly gullible, is it any wonder at all that they lap up and mindlessly regurgitate every single ridiculous pro-establishment propaganda trope the mainstream media drip feeds them? 

It's actually pretty hilarious that in their efforts to harm the independent left-wing media sites that speak out against the ruinous impact of right-wing economic dogma and the crony capitalist economy this rotten ideology has created, these delusional people have ended up lobbing free money at a giant corporation.

Attempting to attack left-wingers and getting owned by capitalism. If that isn't 'centrism' in a nutshell, I don't know what is.

On a serious note

Independent left-wing media provides a small but vital counterbalance to the hard-right, pro-austerity, pro-privatisation, anti-worker, orthodox neoliberal bias that has infested Westminster and the mainstream media for the last four decades.

Independent left-wing media is brilliant at producing viral content, but in terms of budget and overall reach we're absolutely dwarfed by the mainstream media outlets that endlessly push the right-wing neoliberal orthodoxy.

One of the best ways you can help us to increase our influence is to set up small monthly subscriptions. Maybe imagine how much you might have spent on newspapers and political magazines in the past (perhaps £10-£15 per month?) and divide that sum into small subscriptions to some of the independent left-wing sites you value the most?

If you can't afford to donate money to keep us going you can still help by sharing our content as widely as you can; by sharing on social media, by linking to our work, by email, and even by printing off our articles and sharing them with people who don't actually use social media.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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#DeleteFacebook is a monumentally stupid campaign for the political left to be pushing

We all know the left has a spectacular propensity for self-harm, from factionalism and splits, through to the alienating language that so many on the left tend to use, but the Cambridge Analytica Facebook data scandal has unleashed a truly spectacular self-harming campaign on the left.

Left-wing people are taking to Twitter to call for others to #DeleteFacebook.

Of course Facebook has some very serious problems, including the alleged misuse of Facebook data to create psychological warfare tools to rig elections, their hosting of disgusting terrorism-inspiring extreme-right hate chambers like Britain First for years, their continued promotion of fake news, and their willingness to allow political parties and campaigns to spread outright lies through targeted dark ads.

I'm clearly not denying Facebook has serious problems, but to focus on all of the problems and refuse to recognise that Facebook was the scene of a massive left-wing victory during the 2017 General Election is wilful myopia.

After decades of hard-right neoliberalism completely dominating the means of communication, suddenly Facebook provided a voice to people to express an alternative.

Analysis by The Guardian found that every single one of the 30 most viral political stories on Facebook during GE2017 was pro-Corbyn, anti-Tory, or both.

My own analysis demonstrated that a small rag-tag bunch of left-wing political bloggers completely annihilated the Tories and the mainstream press for Facebook virality during the final week of the GE2017 campaign.

The 2017 General Election proved that there was an enormous public appetite for left-wing news that dared to step outside the parameters of the narrow spectrum of permissable mainstream media debate.

People wanted to read analysis that offered an alternative to the ridiculous caricature of Jeremy Corbyn as an irredeemable and incompetent terrorist-sympathising communist, and they wanted to read analysis that actually held the Tories to account for the seven years of ruinous austerity dogma, wage repression, local government cuts, privatisation scams, and impoverishment schemes they'd overseen.

2017 was the moment that the left finally fought back against the mainstream media cheerleaders of neoliberalism, and Facebook was the battlefield on which this all-too-rare left-wing victory was won.

So the idea that left-wing people should suddenly up sticks and abandon the vital media territory they've only just won, without even putting up a fight, is quite extraordinary.

Some might argue that Twitter is a better platform for political debate, but anyone who thinks winning on Twitter would be enough on its own is completely delusional.

Only 7% of British people have a Twitter account, significantly fewer are regular Twitter users, and even fewer still are deep into 'politics Twitter'.

On the other hand almost half of British people have a Facebook account. 

If you concede defeat on Facebook then you haven't got a chance of winning the social media battle. It's that simple.

Nobody who is on Facebook to keep in touch with their friends and family is going to delete it over a load of Cambridge Analytica scandals they probably don't even understand that well.
The right obviously won't care a jot that a dodgy company allegedly misused Facebook data to deliver Britain to a the Brextremists and the White House to Trump, so it's going to be predominantly lefties and liberals who go along with this #DeleteFacebook campaign.

So the only people who are going to strop off Facebook are politically active people on the left.

What could actually be a worse idea than left-wing people abandoning the largest and most effective social media platform of all, and leaving it to the Tories and the extreme-right?

Facebook is a fantastic means by which politically engaged people like me can reach out to less politically engaged people to present alternatives to the right-wing tropes that remain almost ubiquitous in the mainstream media.

And what's more is that the evidence shows that people are vastly more likely to share a political story if it's come to them via a friend, family neighbour, or work colleague than they are to share content that's been targeted at them in sponsored Facebook ads.

Yet the #DeleteFacebook crowd are pushing for people on the left to just throw this fantastic means of reaching out to ordinary people away, and abandon it to the Tories and the extreme-right!

Of course Facebook needs to be held to account for their actions. Of course Facebook has a responsibility to introduce new measures to combat stuff like dodgy data-mining, fake news spreaders, extreme-right hate chambers, and dishonest political dark ads.

But you'd have to be completely and utterly delusional to imagine that a whole bunch of left-wing people deleting their Facebook accounts and conceding the biggest social media platform of all to the Tories and the extreme-right is a great idea.

We only just cracked a way to counteract the nefarious influence of the billionaire hard-right press barons who have ruled the parameters of UK public discourse for decades, and these #DeleteFacebook melts want us to just throw it away!

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