Comment by nailer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nailer | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

The article addresses the 'smear campaign' theories - that:

- the Labour front bench

- the Labour electorate

- the Guardian,

- Jewish groups

- Caitlin Moran

and anyone else opposed to this madness are all involved in some kind of organised conspiracy against Corbyn, quite well:

> Labour’s communications team lies about “the IRA thing”, claiming that Corbyn’s glorification of butchery should be seen as “helping the peace process”, as though the man who voted against the Anglo-Irish Agreement was secretly urging Gerry Adams to compromise.

Corbyn fighting against the trial of the Brighton bomber and voting against the Anglo-Irish Agreement are matters of record. As are his statements of support for:

- Hamas

- Hezbollah

- Fidel Castro

- Hugo Chavez

and other hard left groups who've attacked innocent people.

They're laughable, but more in a: "this man thinks he has a shot of running the UK". Thankfully we reject this kind of populism more than the US does and a large chunk of the left isn't participating in or voting for Labour until/unless he's gone.

Indeed the neoliberal consensus is that he and anyone who rejects it should not have any say in the government and extremist neoliberal ideology has taken over much of the elite power structures in the UK (as well as the US!)

If saying nice things about bad people were actually a problem, no politician in history in any western society would ever be allowed to rule. Pick any politician and you will find them endorsing, funding, supporting or any combination brutal dictators, apartheid regimes, terrorists like Al Qaeda (years ago), slave states, various factions fighting in Syria, Iraq (pre Iraq war), Qatar, Turkey, Dubai, Iran (pre islamic revolution or post), Israel, death squads in South America, Pinochet, on and on and on. To have any "serious" position in modern foreign policy is to support evil.

These "statements of support" are of course ridiculous 'gotcha' red herrings that actually mean nothing that neoliberal ideologues use to smear his personality and avoid talking about actual policy that could seriously effect the lives of ordinary UK citizens which they desperately do not want to improve, policy like for example the devastating and horrific one that is supposed to be the subject of this discussion thread.

> To have any "serious" position in modern foreign policy is to support evil.

Saying the trial of the Brighton bomber is a "show trial" and protesting it has very little to do with foreign policy. The IRA did not represent a foreign government and the five people killed were neither military nor government ministers.

Neither does mourning Fidel Castro, after he's dead.

Also:

- The mainstream left people you'll find not voting for Corbyn are normally referred to as 'classical liberal' - liberals have always been against people inflicting violence upon others. The people handing out copies of 'Socialist Worker' outside the tube, Corbyn and you are 'extreme left'.

- Acting as if supporting Momentum is the only way to challenge the conservatives on privacy is insincere.

I can believe some people (perhaps you!) genuinely object primarily to Corbyn's viewpoints on foreign policy, Northern Ireland, etc., but much of the media commentary seems disingenuous to me. Do people really think if Jeremy Corbyn took over from Theresa May, it would lead to him instituting gulags in the UK or something? This feels like trying to stretch disagreeing with something he said about the Cold War into some kind of actual worry about 21st-century policy he is likely to enact, for mostly election-campaign point-scoring reasons.

My usual assumption is that people focusing on those issues among the large media companies and especially the Blairite Labour-right, are mostly people who actually object to other parts of Corbyn's views. Namely the ones that are in the Labour manifesto and most likely to be enacted if he's elected. But such opponents don't want to attack those openly stated policy positions head-on, so they try to change the subject to Fidel Castro, as if talking about Fidel Castro in 2017 is relevant. For example, some people think re-nationalising significant parts of UK infrastructure is extremist, a return back to the bad old days of sclerotic state-owned companies. And if you did think that, it is completely fair to attack Corbyn on it, because that's something he supports, is in the manifesto, and would have at least some likelihood of enacting if in office. But many of Corbyn's opponents, even among people who call themselves Labour, seem allergic to debating his proposals to nationalise the rail system, i.e. to debating the actual policy direction the UK should or should not take. They don't like those proposals, but they would rather attack them indirectly, by debating something else.

I think most people be the primarily to Corbyn's viewpoints on terror (not foreign policy, as we have discussed, most of these groups are not governments), and polling bears this out.

This speaks volumes about his character, and I think to the extent his party would allow him he'd wreck incentive to work, yes. Obviously Corbyn's opponents do note this policies, which are based us an unfounded utopia where everyone can work for the NHS, nationalising rail won't make it as shit as the last the it was nationalised, and police officers cost GBP 7.50 a year.

> and I think to the extent his party would allow him he'd wreck incentive to work, yes.

Please be aware that all the research we have shows the current DWP system implemented by the Conservatives makes it harder to return to work; cause harm; are more expensive than other systems; and are causing death.

We do need to protect public money. The benefit system should help people back to work. The current system does not do that. I don't think any party has properly addressed this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com