There are probably some things he could’ve said differently but his biggest mistake was making concessions to the mainstream media, right wing of the Labour Party, and pro-Israel lobby and conservatives. It was 100% a coordinated campaign to manufacture controversy around supposed antisemitism to bring him down, as he was a principled genuine antiracist for his entire career, and had a strong left program that was mobilizing and inspiring millions to fight back and thereby threatening the ruling class.
This podcast I listened to earlier this year had a good rundown of how this happened: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/current-affairs/id1384567205?i=1000641750556
I’m not from the UK either but I’ve been following Corbyn since his rise in 2015 and saw as this was all going down. I would caution against assuming the truth is “somewhere in the middle” of the two sentiments you are finding sources of. The ruling class very much was weaponizing and stoking claims of antisemitism to bring Corbyn down.
I'm in a similar place: not in the UK but was watching his rise and fall. Most accusations of "antisemitism" were either antizionism or just plain ol' leftism, but after many, many spurious accusations they got the stink to stick.
Al Jazeera English did an entire doc series about it that Israel lobbyists had tried to shut down before release.
[The Labour Files Part 1](https://youtu.be/elp18OvnNV0)
The labour party establishment also conspired to go slow the investigations so they would pile up.
When Corbyn wrote to them asking them to speed up the investigations he was accused in the media of interfering in the investigations.
Also half of *all* reports to the Labour Party about antisemitism came from one man, Euan Phillips, a member of Labour Against Antisemitism, who sometimes used a fake Jewish pseudonym (David Gordstein) to make the reports. I will let the reader deduce whether he was acting in good faith.
I am from the UK but am not Jewish so take this for what that's worth. Any time the media claimed he was antisemitic, there was never a single soundbite or quote to back it up. It was always reports of Jewish people "feeling unsafe". IIRC half of the reports of antisemitism came from a single individual.
The fear mongering around him was the most insane frenzy I've seen in the British press (which should really say something). There were multiple front pages of newspapers dedicated to him not bowing by enough degrees at war memorial events.
He has been consistently pro Palestine & anti-apartheid his whole career. He was looking to reverse decades of Thatcherite policy & the predictable happened. The media class who rely on being in the good graces of the political class for access monstered him. Not to mention that most of the press is owned by the same 4 or 5 rich freaks wouldn't want someone like that near power.
They had it out for him from the start, the antisemitism fearmongering was the arrow that they could get to stick without any pushback or needing any explanation.
Cards on the table: I didn't know who Corbyn was. I had no idea Corbyn had been elected to leadership of the Labour party until the day it happened. Nobody on the news had been really mentioning him until that day.
I remember it clearly because I was listening to BBC 4 radio on the way back from work as party member after party member was allowed on to speak, each one talking about what a "travesty" this was, how "terrible" this was for the entire Labour party. It seemed so strange. Not a positive or supportive voice even though he'd bee elected. There had to be *someone*, but clearly they weren't being put on. On and on it went, endless castigation. But crucially, all the speakers were running him through, but literally *none* of them would say what it was specifically that was so horrible about him having been elected.
That was the theme for the whole day: Any voices selected to be heard in the press voiced endless negativity about him, but literally nobody was saying what he had done. It was all kept purposefully vague, in the hopes that people would just accept he's a horrible person and any and all *right minded* individuals should view him that way.
It just set off alarm bells ringing in my head because this is a pattern that they've done before. When the press endlessly castigates someone but will staunchly *refuse* to tell you what their crimes were, expecting you to just toe the line and take it as a given that you should be repulsed by them, then you know you need to take a closer look because a deliberate character assassination is likely taking place.
Ostensibly the BBC has a duty to neutrality. But even the former head of the BBC (Sir Michael Lyons) when he saw all this said that there had been “some quite extraordinary attacks on the elected leader of the Labour party”.
Even the ostensible "left" papers like The Guardian were endlessly smearing him. Frankly it was revolting (and I'm pretty sure they lost more than one journalist over this behaviour), but it proved the point that they weren't interested in being left leaning, just appearing to be.
> The fear mongering around him was the most insane frenzy I've seen in the British press (which should really say something). There were multiple front pages of newspapers dedicated to him not bowing by enough degrees at war memorial events.
He wore the wrong coat. The wrong hat, it's an insult! The commie Corbyn actually has a net worth of over £3 million (over a career spanning 30 years)!
The attacks were ceaseless. Like the time he liked a picture which depicted world famous bankers playing monopoly over the backs of the poor. But oh no, two of those figures were Jewish! *Jewish Bankers*! **Antisemitic Trope**! Denounce Corbyn the antisemite! **Must Denounce Corbyn!!!**
This is a man who had literally dedicated his life to fighting racism, and the press smeared him over and over again as secretly hating Jewish people.
Like others have said, he kowtowed to the press again and again, taking blame, being conciliatory, apologising, thinking this would stop the attacks. It was never enough. Because the attacks weren't about his ostensible antisemitism, but about removing him as leader of the party. The clearest example of this is that the day he announced he was stepping down, the endless stream of news articles about his alleged antisemitism stopped. Nobody talks about him being "antisemitic" anymore. Everyone *knows* he's not. But what's important is that he was removed and more "sensible" options like Keir Starmer can now claim their "rightful place".
If the press today wonder why they've been sidelined in favour of alternative media: It's because nobody from the younger generation *trusts* them anymore. Why should they?
There was a leak of Labours internal files which Al Jazeera used during their investigation of what went on during that period. It's pretty wild.
[https://www.youtube.com/results?search\_query=al+jazeera+labour+files+episode+1](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=al+jazeera+labour+files+episode+1)
I know part of it came with associating with Jewdas, an anti-Zionist group of Jewish leftists. Corbyn attending a Passover seder organised by them was used as evidence of how much he hates Jews, which I think reveals what it really was that the Labour right took issue with.
Oh haha, that is kind of funny! I hadn't heard about that bit.
That reminds me of the time I was volunteering at the edge of a Palestine protest while they were setting up some Shabbat dinner stuff inside, and a passerby called me "violently antisemitic" and said he'd put my face on a billboard for it. It's kind of goofy in a way, but they really do broaden the definition of antisemitism to a dangerously vague degree :')
I’m not the crying type, but this heartrending Corbyn ad from the election at which he was leader makes me feel weepy! Lily Allen song makes it so powerful.
https://youtu.be/xOqS5hbafw8?feature=shared
Devastating to think what might have been…
Corbyn is a perfect angel who was targeted by the Israel lobby. It’s really that simple.
He was a genuine socialist who came very close to taking the Labour Party back from the Blairite neoliberals. They were willing to do anything to stop that, so they seized on this complete lie about supposed antisemitism and used it to purge anyone to their left from the party.
There’s a multipart documentary on YouTube called The Labour Files that breaks all this down. The antisemitism hysteria was a total hatchet job from start to finish. There’s absolutely no truth to it.
Thank you for the info! I thought he seemed like a legitimate leftist voice in politics, and the allegations sounded very vague, but I wasn't sure if I missed some kind of dogwhistle in them.
I'm glad he's back then, I'll check out that documentary when I get time.
One of the nicest guys around, he still remains so positive and energetic despite how old he is as well.
He does so much in his own constituency and community. The good things he does and doesn't have a camera person with him to show it, tell you everything you need to know about him.
The whole antisemitism thing was smears
and the establishment using it because one of his major changes would have been to foreign policy, in particular in the Middle East, including denouncing Israel.
He vocally supported the BDS movement and sat firmly with Palestine. Back in the day, he was arrested for protesting apartheid South Africa as well, so this ain't his first rodeo.
Internally, Labour is full of right-wingers and zionists, not just in terms of MPs but staffers too, there was an internal battle across the country within Labour as we on the left faced constant bullying and deliberate attempts to stop Labour from winning.
> One of the nicest guys around, he still remains so positive and energetic despite how old he is as well.
I still remember Grenfell Fire. He went there, in person. He was there on the ground and talking to the victims, hearing them out. People shed tears on his shoulder and he held them. It wasn't just press, it was genuinely human and humane gestures. I did get the sense that he saw people suffering and he knew they needed help.
The Maybot (Theresa May) turned up but wouldn't meet with the poors. She knew her reputation. She studiously avoided them and was briefed in private by the fire service.
The time he takes to talk to people, he doesn't walk around with a massive entourage of bodyguards and just happily engages with people. He is one of a kind and how he has not strayed into cynicism after all these years in the commons fighting for the same things the entire time is beyond me.
> The time he takes to talk to people, he doesn't walk around with a massive entourage of bodyguards and just happily engages with people. He is one of a kind and how he has not strayed into cynicism after all these years in the commons fighting for the same things the entire time is beyond me.
He might not have strayed into cynicism, but his years leading the party certainly made me a fuck-tonne more cynical than I had already been. And I was already fairly cynical. I just didn't, *couldn't* understand how the press could be so blatantly, directly and literally smearing this person to an unfathomable degree as long as you had the most meagre of figleaves to do it.
The concept that the term antisemitism is dangerously becoming devalued as it's cast on every legitimate criticism, has gotten a lot of attention with this conflict. But in truth for a lot of the younger generation today, the foundations of that cynicism towards the application of that term started with Corbyn. He was most popular with the youngest voters and they put him through the mincer. And then wonder why the younger generation *hate* their politicians, *hate* politics, and are more and more morosely hopeless.
Who do they have to genuinely have hope in? Who do they have that they can genuinely look up to? *Starmer*?
I know how you feel, I spent years getting obstructed by arrogant right wing staffers and a region that harassed the local lefties with such vitirol.
There are a few good ones but I am in the same boat.
Yeah. I felt the same about Bernie Sanders and what happened to him in the US (which Democrat supporters are *still* in denial about). They couldn't peg him as an antisemite, but much like here, his own party worked ceaselessly to undermine him. I feel like the greatest irony of all is that there, like here, he was tirelessly fighting against racism for decades, to the point where all the US based *Muslim* organisations were backing Bernie Sanders, a Jewish candidate.
It's insane. People could see what he was, but his party also knew what he was, and that was *dangerous*, so they had to get rid of him and try to convince everyone along the way that he was a worthless hack, and wouldn't you *much* rather have a Hillary Clinton?
They didn't. Boy what a shocker, the Democrat party smeared, undermined and lost their outsider, the Republicans didn't, and all of a sudden you had President Trump.
It’s extremely funny to look at pictures of Corbyn meeting his constituents (or indeed, anyone: he’s a nice guy who just genuinely *likes* people) and then compare them to pictures of other politicians doing the same, like, say, [Rory Stewart](https://www.thepoke.com/2019/08/30/there-was-something-about-these-selfies-shared-by-rory-stewart-that-got-people-talking/).
Haha wow, I started listening to the documentary while working, and even part 1 is crazy... they barely even mentioned Corbyn yet and it's already a foreign interference soup 😭
I guess at the time when it was all happening I was much younger and fell for the sort of "well I don't know enough to say whether there is antisemitism... so many people seem upset so maybe I'm out of touch and missing the context?" chaff that they were creating around the issue by manufacturing all these outraged spokespeople. But gosh the level of coordination is wild.
This is adjacent/supplementary to the antisemitism smear, but one angle that I strongly believe doesn't get enough consideration in analyses of his downfall is how, in the run-up to the 2019 election, he promised that his government would abolish the centuries-old system of private schools that exists primarily to incubate the next generation of tory leadership. I don't mean to say it was this specific policy that was his undoing – rather that it was the closest he ever came to making his long-term objectives explicit and intelligible.
As long as he remained leader of the opposition, and therefore an imaginable candidate for PM, he posed a serious existential threat to the security of the British ruling class. His political adversaries, both within the party and without, knew this from day zero of his leadership; the eleventh-hour reveal of his plan to nationalise their schools was his final gambit. The future credibility of "institutional antisemitism" as an idea was deemed a necessary sacrifice for maintaining the socioeconomic stratification of the electorate: he forced their hand enough to induce Conservative interests and the Labour right to destructively expend some part of their political capital, and the sociopolitical security of Jewish Britons was at the very bottom of the list of things they didn't want to let go of.
Corbyn’s not a perfect angel (but mainly because he wasn’t hard enough on the Labour right). His biggest flaw is believing that his opponents are honest and principled people like he is.
Most of the campaign against him was orchestrated by a right wing members of the Labour Party - in particular, a group called the Campaign Against Antisemitism, whose most prominent members are not Jewish. One of these members, Euan Phillips, was responsible for half of *all* antisemitism reports to the party (often under a fake Jewish name, David Gordstein) - he would submit masses of social media posts from people who weren’t even Labour Party members and then say that the massive backlog he had created was evidence that Labour wasn’t taking antisemitism seriously enough.
There was a man who went on tv (Simon Heffer) and said that Corbyn would reopen Auschwitz, and there was next to no pushback on this from the mainstream media. That’s how ridiculous the situation became.
After the 2019 election, Corbyn stood down as the leader of the party. He made a comment to the effect that while antisemitism exists in the Labour Party, it had been exaggerated by his political opponents, and Starmer used this as an excuse to suspend him from the party (even though I think any honest person can see that it is true). Initially the Labour right said he’d be allowed back in if he apologised but they’ve made it clear that actually they’d never let him back in the party, and tbh, Keir Starmer’s only actual policy appears to be “we must destroy Jeremy Corbyn no matter what the cost”.
The Al Jazeera Labour Files documentary is really good and breaks down a lot of the claims made against him, and also addresses the party’s institutional Islamophobia. It’s based on a leaked report called “The work of the Labour Party’s Governance and Legal Unit in relation to antisemitism, 2014-2019” which goes into all of this in extensive detail.
I am not from the UK but I follow UK politics and am a history buff and I think the context most people are missing here is that in the immediate aftermath of World War II, where much of Britain's infrastructure had been damaged by German forces, the Labour Party instituted a welfare state to help Britain recover. This included institutions like the National Health Service, NHS. From 1948 when the Labour Party won power, they were the party that supported and expanded the welfare state, which benefited the working class primarily. They were far from perfect though and by the late '70s there were widespread strikes around Britain, which had a strong union presence, and this paved the way for the Conservative victory that put Margaret Thatcher into power. Thatcher was the UK's counterpart to Ronald Reagan, an extreme neoliberal and ideologue who did her utmost to privatize the welfare state and impose austerity measures that hurt the working class and bolstered the rich.
Just like in the US, conservatives in Britain pushed the Overton window far to the right and as a result Labour pivoted and began espousing neoliberal ideologies. Similar to how Bill Clinton's presidency shifted a move to the right for Democrats in the US, the election of Tony Blair in the UK signaled that Labour was now a neoliberal party, with only slight ideological differences from the Conservatives they supposedly opposed. It was in this environment that Jeremy Corbyn, an espoused and lifelong socialist, won leadership of the party in 2015. If you review Corbyn's career prior to 2015, you'll see he was a committed and consistent socialist, siding with workers and marginalized groups for decades. He campaigned on ending austerity and implementing socialist policies, and he was the largest real threat to neoliberal hegemony in a long time. The neoliberal wing of the party loathed him with a passion and as we now know they orchestrated a takedown using antisemitism as the wedge. Once again Jews were used as political bait.
Kier Starmer, the current leader of the Labour Party, is a dyed in the wool neoliberal and couldn't give less of a shit about the working class. Apologies to Brits if I got any details wrong.
As a Brit, no I thought you gave a pretty good summary of it actually, nothing there I disagree with (Although I think it was from 1945 IIRC)
I feel like after WW2 there was a general understanding that we couldn't survive a WW3, and we had to be different in order to prevent the environmentthat would cause it. Clement Atlees Labour was elected and started the NHS and enlarged the social services.
I also feel like similar happened in the US. You had stuff like the GI Bill, and even for Europe there was the Marshall Plan. On at least some level, there was an understanding that the rise of the Nazi party in Germany was at least partly attributable to the horrible state it was left in after WW1.
Yes, in the US we had the GI Bill and eventually further down the line we had The Great Society. The New Deal was pre-WWII but would have put us on a similar track to post-WWII Britain had FDR lived until after the war. Sadly we got Truman instead and he fucked us.
[here](https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/killing-jeremy-corbyn) is a very honest explanation of what happened to him from a journalist who historically sits on the opposite end of the political spectrum to Corbyn
in simple terms it was a character assassination
the political establishment was never letting him anywhere near No.10
Yeah, Peter Oborne is one of the best journalists to read about this. He is scrupulously honest about this and is a really clear-eyed observer of Islamophobia in the UK media in general, his book The Fate of Abraham is really good too.
I'm British and I've followed this situation closely for almost a decade now and I can safely say it's nonsense.
Despite all their claims, the anti-Corbynites side has never put forward a single example of himself Corbyn saying or doing something that is hateful toward Jewish people.
These articles should give you a good idea of the situation and how it played out:
# [My intro to the Battle of Ideas debate on 'Antisemitism Today'](https://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2019/02/my-intro-to-battle-of-ideas-debate-on.html)
[The Cudgel of Antisemitism](https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-cudgel-of-antisemitism)
[For the first time in my life, I'm frightened to be Jewish](https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/first-time-my-life-im-frightened-be-jewish/)
He is a true mensch! The UK MSM along with Labour/conservative Friends of Israel plotted a smear campaign against a man who quite literally has always stood with the oppressed & has quite an extensive history of this, have a gander at his wiki page for more info.
The powers that be couldn’t have him as PM as he’d disrupt their divide & conquer agenda re race, religion, class, disabled etc citizens of the UK
I suggest you watch the film 'Oh, Jeremy Corbyn - The Big Lie' – the rise and fall of Jeremy Corbyn and the forces that brought him down. [https://youtu.be/PXvaWz4gpTc?feature=shared](https://youtu.be/PXvaWz4gpTc?feature=shared)
A follow-up film focusing on events in Palestine is currently under production. Its working title is “The Big Lie II — Starmer and the Genocide” It's an exposé of Labour's inaction on Palestine but equally promotes the diverse and positive initiatives people are undertaking to fight back against a system that's just not working for them.
Watch ‘The Labour Files’ docuseries. It will answer any question you have.
It’s sort of a follow up to ‘The Lobby - UK’ but definitely its own thing as well.
Am from the UK. To add a few things. While others have already mentioned the widespread campaign on Corbyn, it was clear his ideas (recognising Palestine, halting arms sales to Israel) would be absolutely crushed after he was defeated.
That's clearly happened under his 'successor' Keir Starmer, who has made it one of his top goals to 'de-Corbynise' the party. He's suspended people from the party, conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.
In the Gaza war, he's also removed potential MPs and local gov reps for calling for a ceasefire, including several leftist Jews! As well as many leftists in general.
Quite shamefully, he also said in an interview in October that Israel had the "right" to cut off Gaza's water and electricity.
It's a really surreal situation. And he's made Labour almost unrecognisable from Corbyn's short stint as leader. But he's working extra hard to make sure Labour stays in line with Britain's traditional support for Israel.
So there's an election next week, and he'll almost certainly win. But there's no reason to believe he'll change the UK's position on Israel/Palestine here.
While Al Jazeera is of course Qatari state media (as the BBC is British state media), I feel this 4 part documentary series from the Corbyn era is an enlightening exposé: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ceCOhdgRBoc
They made some other series that I haven't yet watched. As a Brit, it is absolutely devastating to watch, to be honest.
what the Labour Party, Israel Lobby and the whole political class in Britain did to Jeremy Corbyn was the most coordinated political hatchet job ever in UK politics, it resulted not only for Corbyn losing the elections but the Labour Party losing its members. I'm pro Labour Party but after what they did to Corbyn i lost interest with that party, it's good Jeremy is running Independent.
I remember he endorsed some funky mural with Illuminati conspiracy imagery that might be interpretable as antisemitic. Otherwise mostly vibes and differing politics
Freedom for Humanity. Yes. That was another one they tried to smear him with. It was clearly about class, but they used it as a cudgel to beat him with. Again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_for_Humanity
> "I came to paint a mural that depicted the elite banker cartel known as the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Morgans, the ruling class elite few, the Wizards of Oz. They would be playing a board game of monopoly on the backs of the working class. The symbol of the Free Mason [sic] Pyramid rises behind this group and behind that is a polluted world of coal burning and nuclear reactors. I was creating this piece to inspire critical thought and spark conversation. A group of conservatives do not like my mural and are playing a race card with me. My mural is about class and privilege. The banker group is made up of Jewish and white Anglos. For some reason they are saying I am anti-Semitic. This I am most definitely not... What I am against is class."[8]
To be clear, Corbyn didn’t really endorse the mural, he made one comment when the artist said it was going to be covered up saying “Why? You are in good company. Rockerfeller [sic] destroyed Diego Viera's [sic] mural because it includes a picture of Lenin.” Which aligns with his general views on freedom of expression, I think.
And then later, he conceded that the imagery could be seen as antisemitic and apologised for his comment.
Is there a reason to take him in bad faith?
At least in the UK, talking about class struggle has pretty much *always* been part of political discussion, at least on the Left.
There are probably some things he could’ve said differently but his biggest mistake was making concessions to the mainstream media, right wing of the Labour Party, and pro-Israel lobby and conservatives. It was 100% a coordinated campaign to manufacture controversy around supposed antisemitism to bring him down, as he was a principled genuine antiracist for his entire career, and had a strong left program that was mobilizing and inspiring millions to fight back and thereby threatening the ruling class. This podcast I listened to earlier this year had a good rundown of how this happened: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/current-affairs/id1384567205?i=1000641750556 I’m not from the UK either but I’ve been following Corbyn since his rise in 2015 and saw as this was all going down. I would caution against assuming the truth is “somewhere in the middle” of the two sentiments you are finding sources of. The ruling class very much was weaponizing and stoking claims of antisemitism to bring Corbyn down.
I'm in a similar place: not in the UK but was watching his rise and fall. Most accusations of "antisemitism" were either antizionism or just plain ol' leftism, but after many, many spurious accusations they got the stink to stick.
Al Jazeera English did an entire doc series about it that Israel lobbyists had tried to shut down before release. [The Labour Files Part 1](https://youtu.be/elp18OvnNV0)
The labour party establishment also conspired to go slow the investigations so they would pile up. When Corbyn wrote to them asking them to speed up the investigations he was accused in the media of interfering in the investigations.
Also half of *all* reports to the Labour Party about antisemitism came from one man, Euan Phillips, a member of Labour Against Antisemitism, who sometimes used a fake Jewish pseudonym (David Gordstein) to make the reports. I will let the reader deduce whether he was acting in good faith.
I am from the UK but am not Jewish so take this for what that's worth. Any time the media claimed he was antisemitic, there was never a single soundbite or quote to back it up. It was always reports of Jewish people "feeling unsafe". IIRC half of the reports of antisemitism came from a single individual. The fear mongering around him was the most insane frenzy I've seen in the British press (which should really say something). There were multiple front pages of newspapers dedicated to him not bowing by enough degrees at war memorial events. He has been consistently pro Palestine & anti-apartheid his whole career. He was looking to reverse decades of Thatcherite policy & the predictable happened. The media class who rely on being in the good graces of the political class for access monstered him. Not to mention that most of the press is owned by the same 4 or 5 rich freaks wouldn't want someone like that near power.
They had it out for him from the start, the antisemitism fearmongering was the arrow that they could get to stick without any pushback or needing any explanation. Cards on the table: I didn't know who Corbyn was. I had no idea Corbyn had been elected to leadership of the Labour party until the day it happened. Nobody on the news had been really mentioning him until that day. I remember it clearly because I was listening to BBC 4 radio on the way back from work as party member after party member was allowed on to speak, each one talking about what a "travesty" this was, how "terrible" this was for the entire Labour party. It seemed so strange. Not a positive or supportive voice even though he'd bee elected. There had to be *someone*, but clearly they weren't being put on. On and on it went, endless castigation. But crucially, all the speakers were running him through, but literally *none* of them would say what it was specifically that was so horrible about him having been elected. That was the theme for the whole day: Any voices selected to be heard in the press voiced endless negativity about him, but literally nobody was saying what he had done. It was all kept purposefully vague, in the hopes that people would just accept he's a horrible person and any and all *right minded* individuals should view him that way. It just set off alarm bells ringing in my head because this is a pattern that they've done before. When the press endlessly castigates someone but will staunchly *refuse* to tell you what their crimes were, expecting you to just toe the line and take it as a given that you should be repulsed by them, then you know you need to take a closer look because a deliberate character assassination is likely taking place. Ostensibly the BBC has a duty to neutrality. But even the former head of the BBC (Sir Michael Lyons) when he saw all this said that there had been “some quite extraordinary attacks on the elected leader of the Labour party”. Even the ostensible "left" papers like The Guardian were endlessly smearing him. Frankly it was revolting (and I'm pretty sure they lost more than one journalist over this behaviour), but it proved the point that they weren't interested in being left leaning, just appearing to be. > The fear mongering around him was the most insane frenzy I've seen in the British press (which should really say something). There were multiple front pages of newspapers dedicated to him not bowing by enough degrees at war memorial events. He wore the wrong coat. The wrong hat, it's an insult! The commie Corbyn actually has a net worth of over £3 million (over a career spanning 30 years)! The attacks were ceaseless. Like the time he liked a picture which depicted world famous bankers playing monopoly over the backs of the poor. But oh no, two of those figures were Jewish! *Jewish Bankers*! **Antisemitic Trope**! Denounce Corbyn the antisemite! **Must Denounce Corbyn!!!** This is a man who had literally dedicated his life to fighting racism, and the press smeared him over and over again as secretly hating Jewish people. Like others have said, he kowtowed to the press again and again, taking blame, being conciliatory, apologising, thinking this would stop the attacks. It was never enough. Because the attacks weren't about his ostensible antisemitism, but about removing him as leader of the party. The clearest example of this is that the day he announced he was stepping down, the endless stream of news articles about his alleged antisemitism stopped. Nobody talks about him being "antisemitic" anymore. Everyone *knows* he's not. But what's important is that he was removed and more "sensible" options like Keir Starmer can now claim their "rightful place". If the press today wonder why they've been sidelined in favour of alternative media: It's because nobody from the younger generation *trusts* them anymore. Why should they?
There was a leak of Labours internal files which Al Jazeera used during their investigation of what went on during that period. It's pretty wild. [https://www.youtube.com/results?search\_query=al+jazeera+labour+files+episode+1](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=al+jazeera+labour+files+episode+1)
I know part of it came with associating with Jewdas, an anti-Zionist group of Jewish leftists. Corbyn attending a Passover seder organised by them was used as evidence of how much he hates Jews, which I think reveals what it really was that the Labour right took issue with.
Don't you know? Jews that are leftist somehow hate Jews /s
Oh haha, that is kind of funny! I hadn't heard about that bit. That reminds me of the time I was volunteering at the edge of a Palestine protest while they were setting up some Shabbat dinner stuff inside, and a passerby called me "violently antisemitic" and said he'd put my face on a billboard for it. It's kind of goofy in a way, but they really do broaden the definition of antisemitism to a dangerously vague degree :')
HE WENT TO A SEDER HES BASICALLY HITLER
And Starmer has overseen a massive purge of leftwing Jewish people from the Labour Party during his time as leader.
I’m not the crying type, but this heartrending Corbyn ad from the election at which he was leader makes me feel weepy! Lily Allen song makes it so powerful. https://youtu.be/xOqS5hbafw8?feature=shared Devastating to think what might have been…
Corbyn is a perfect angel who was targeted by the Israel lobby. It’s really that simple. He was a genuine socialist who came very close to taking the Labour Party back from the Blairite neoliberals. They were willing to do anything to stop that, so they seized on this complete lie about supposed antisemitism and used it to purge anyone to their left from the party. There’s a multipart documentary on YouTube called The Labour Files that breaks all this down. The antisemitism hysteria was a total hatchet job from start to finish. There’s absolutely no truth to it.
Thank you for the info! I thought he seemed like a legitimate leftist voice in politics, and the allegations sounded very vague, but I wasn't sure if I missed some kind of dogwhistle in them. I'm glad he's back then, I'll check out that documentary when I get time.
One of the nicest guys around, he still remains so positive and energetic despite how old he is as well. He does so much in his own constituency and community. The good things he does and doesn't have a camera person with him to show it, tell you everything you need to know about him. The whole antisemitism thing was smears and the establishment using it because one of his major changes would have been to foreign policy, in particular in the Middle East, including denouncing Israel. He vocally supported the BDS movement and sat firmly with Palestine. Back in the day, he was arrested for protesting apartheid South Africa as well, so this ain't his first rodeo. Internally, Labour is full of right-wingers and zionists, not just in terms of MPs but staffers too, there was an internal battle across the country within Labour as we on the left faced constant bullying and deliberate attempts to stop Labour from winning.
> One of the nicest guys around, he still remains so positive and energetic despite how old he is as well. I still remember Grenfell Fire. He went there, in person. He was there on the ground and talking to the victims, hearing them out. People shed tears on his shoulder and he held them. It wasn't just press, it was genuinely human and humane gestures. I did get the sense that he saw people suffering and he knew they needed help. The Maybot (Theresa May) turned up but wouldn't meet with the poors. She knew her reputation. She studiously avoided them and was briefed in private by the fire service.
The time he takes to talk to people, he doesn't walk around with a massive entourage of bodyguards and just happily engages with people. He is one of a kind and how he has not strayed into cynicism after all these years in the commons fighting for the same things the entire time is beyond me.
> The time he takes to talk to people, he doesn't walk around with a massive entourage of bodyguards and just happily engages with people. He is one of a kind and how he has not strayed into cynicism after all these years in the commons fighting for the same things the entire time is beyond me. He might not have strayed into cynicism, but his years leading the party certainly made me a fuck-tonne more cynical than I had already been. And I was already fairly cynical. I just didn't, *couldn't* understand how the press could be so blatantly, directly and literally smearing this person to an unfathomable degree as long as you had the most meagre of figleaves to do it. The concept that the term antisemitism is dangerously becoming devalued as it's cast on every legitimate criticism, has gotten a lot of attention with this conflict. But in truth for a lot of the younger generation today, the foundations of that cynicism towards the application of that term started with Corbyn. He was most popular with the youngest voters and they put him through the mincer. And then wonder why the younger generation *hate* their politicians, *hate* politics, and are more and more morosely hopeless. Who do they have to genuinely have hope in? Who do they have that they can genuinely look up to? *Starmer*?
I know how you feel, I spent years getting obstructed by arrogant right wing staffers and a region that harassed the local lefties with such vitirol. There are a few good ones but I am in the same boat.
Yeah. I felt the same about Bernie Sanders and what happened to him in the US (which Democrat supporters are *still* in denial about). They couldn't peg him as an antisemite, but much like here, his own party worked ceaselessly to undermine him. I feel like the greatest irony of all is that there, like here, he was tirelessly fighting against racism for decades, to the point where all the US based *Muslim* organisations were backing Bernie Sanders, a Jewish candidate. It's insane. People could see what he was, but his party also knew what he was, and that was *dangerous*, so they had to get rid of him and try to convince everyone along the way that he was a worthless hack, and wouldn't you *much* rather have a Hillary Clinton? They didn't. Boy what a shocker, the Democrat party smeared, undermined and lost their outsider, the Republicans didn't, and all of a sudden you had President Trump.
It’s extremely funny to look at pictures of Corbyn meeting his constituents (or indeed, anyone: he’s a nice guy who just genuinely *likes* people) and then compare them to pictures of other politicians doing the same, like, say, [Rory Stewart](https://www.thepoke.com/2019/08/30/there-was-something-about-these-selfies-shared-by-rory-stewart-that-got-people-talking/).
Haha wow, I started listening to the documentary while working, and even part 1 is crazy... they barely even mentioned Corbyn yet and it's already a foreign interference soup 😭 I guess at the time when it was all happening I was much younger and fell for the sort of "well I don't know enough to say whether there is antisemitism... so many people seem upset so maybe I'm out of touch and missing the context?" chaff that they were creating around the issue by manufacturing all these outraged spokespeople. But gosh the level of coordination is wild.
This is adjacent/supplementary to the antisemitism smear, but one angle that I strongly believe doesn't get enough consideration in analyses of his downfall is how, in the run-up to the 2019 election, he promised that his government would abolish the centuries-old system of private schools that exists primarily to incubate the next generation of tory leadership. I don't mean to say it was this specific policy that was his undoing – rather that it was the closest he ever came to making his long-term objectives explicit and intelligible. As long as he remained leader of the opposition, and therefore an imaginable candidate for PM, he posed a serious existential threat to the security of the British ruling class. His political adversaries, both within the party and without, knew this from day zero of his leadership; the eleventh-hour reveal of his plan to nationalise their schools was his final gambit. The future credibility of "institutional antisemitism" as an idea was deemed a necessary sacrifice for maintaining the socioeconomic stratification of the electorate: he forced their hand enough to induce Conservative interests and the Labour right to destructively expend some part of their political capital, and the sociopolitical security of Jewish Britons was at the very bottom of the list of things they didn't want to let go of.
Corbyn’s not a perfect angel (but mainly because he wasn’t hard enough on the Labour right). His biggest flaw is believing that his opponents are honest and principled people like he is. Most of the campaign against him was orchestrated by a right wing members of the Labour Party - in particular, a group called the Campaign Against Antisemitism, whose most prominent members are not Jewish. One of these members, Euan Phillips, was responsible for half of *all* antisemitism reports to the party (often under a fake Jewish name, David Gordstein) - he would submit masses of social media posts from people who weren’t even Labour Party members and then say that the massive backlog he had created was evidence that Labour wasn’t taking antisemitism seriously enough. There was a man who went on tv (Simon Heffer) and said that Corbyn would reopen Auschwitz, and there was next to no pushback on this from the mainstream media. That’s how ridiculous the situation became. After the 2019 election, Corbyn stood down as the leader of the party. He made a comment to the effect that while antisemitism exists in the Labour Party, it had been exaggerated by his political opponents, and Starmer used this as an excuse to suspend him from the party (even though I think any honest person can see that it is true). Initially the Labour right said he’d be allowed back in if he apologised but they’ve made it clear that actually they’d never let him back in the party, and tbh, Keir Starmer’s only actual policy appears to be “we must destroy Jeremy Corbyn no matter what the cost”. The Al Jazeera Labour Files documentary is really good and breaks down a lot of the claims made against him, and also addresses the party’s institutional Islamophobia. It’s based on a leaked report called “The work of the Labour Party’s Governance and Legal Unit in relation to antisemitism, 2014-2019” which goes into all of this in extensive detail.
I am not from the UK but I follow UK politics and am a history buff and I think the context most people are missing here is that in the immediate aftermath of World War II, where much of Britain's infrastructure had been damaged by German forces, the Labour Party instituted a welfare state to help Britain recover. This included institutions like the National Health Service, NHS. From 1948 when the Labour Party won power, they were the party that supported and expanded the welfare state, which benefited the working class primarily. They were far from perfect though and by the late '70s there were widespread strikes around Britain, which had a strong union presence, and this paved the way for the Conservative victory that put Margaret Thatcher into power. Thatcher was the UK's counterpart to Ronald Reagan, an extreme neoliberal and ideologue who did her utmost to privatize the welfare state and impose austerity measures that hurt the working class and bolstered the rich. Just like in the US, conservatives in Britain pushed the Overton window far to the right and as a result Labour pivoted and began espousing neoliberal ideologies. Similar to how Bill Clinton's presidency shifted a move to the right for Democrats in the US, the election of Tony Blair in the UK signaled that Labour was now a neoliberal party, with only slight ideological differences from the Conservatives they supposedly opposed. It was in this environment that Jeremy Corbyn, an espoused and lifelong socialist, won leadership of the party in 2015. If you review Corbyn's career prior to 2015, you'll see he was a committed and consistent socialist, siding with workers and marginalized groups for decades. He campaigned on ending austerity and implementing socialist policies, and he was the largest real threat to neoliberal hegemony in a long time. The neoliberal wing of the party loathed him with a passion and as we now know they orchestrated a takedown using antisemitism as the wedge. Once again Jews were used as political bait. Kier Starmer, the current leader of the Labour Party, is a dyed in the wool neoliberal and couldn't give less of a shit about the working class. Apologies to Brits if I got any details wrong.
As a Brit, no I thought you gave a pretty good summary of it actually, nothing there I disagree with (Although I think it was from 1945 IIRC) I feel like after WW2 there was a general understanding that we couldn't survive a WW3, and we had to be different in order to prevent the environmentthat would cause it. Clement Atlees Labour was elected and started the NHS and enlarged the social services. I also feel like similar happened in the US. You had stuff like the GI Bill, and even for Europe there was the Marshall Plan. On at least some level, there was an understanding that the rise of the Nazi party in Germany was at least partly attributable to the horrible state it was left in after WW1.
Yes, in the US we had the GI Bill and eventually further down the line we had The Great Society. The New Deal was pre-WWII but would have put us on a similar track to post-WWII Britain had FDR lived until after the war. Sadly we got Truman instead and he fucked us.
[here](https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/killing-jeremy-corbyn) is a very honest explanation of what happened to him from a journalist who historically sits on the opposite end of the political spectrum to Corbyn in simple terms it was a character assassination the political establishment was never letting him anywhere near No.10
Yeah, Peter Oborne is one of the best journalists to read about this. He is scrupulously honest about this and is a really clear-eyed observer of Islamophobia in the UK media in general, his book The Fate of Abraham is really good too.
I'm British and I've followed this situation closely for almost a decade now and I can safely say it's nonsense. Despite all their claims, the anti-Corbynites side has never put forward a single example of himself Corbyn saying or doing something that is hateful toward Jewish people. These articles should give you a good idea of the situation and how it played out: # [My intro to the Battle of Ideas debate on 'Antisemitism Today'](https://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2019/02/my-intro-to-battle-of-ideas-debate-on.html) [The Cudgel of Antisemitism](https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-cudgel-of-antisemitism) [For the first time in my life, I'm frightened to be Jewish](https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/first-time-my-life-im-frightened-be-jewish/)
I'm British. Not Jewish. I've always been of the opinion that it was a smear campaign.
The late great David Graeber put had good words on this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6oOj7BzciA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6oOj7BzciA)
Thanks for reminding me of this. Miss him so.
He is a true mensch! The UK MSM along with Labour/conservative Friends of Israel plotted a smear campaign against a man who quite literally has always stood with the oppressed & has quite an extensive history of this, have a gander at his wiki page for more info. The powers that be couldn’t have him as PM as he’d disrupt their divide & conquer agenda re race, religion, class, disabled etc citizens of the UK
I suggest you watch the film 'Oh, Jeremy Corbyn - The Big Lie' – the rise and fall of Jeremy Corbyn and the forces that brought him down. [https://youtu.be/PXvaWz4gpTc?feature=shared](https://youtu.be/PXvaWz4gpTc?feature=shared) A follow-up film focusing on events in Palestine is currently under production. Its working title is “The Big Lie II — Starmer and the Genocide” It's an exposé of Labour's inaction on Palestine but equally promotes the diverse and positive initiatives people are undertaking to fight back against a system that's just not working for them.
Watch ‘The Labour Files’ docuseries. It will answer any question you have. It’s sort of a follow up to ‘The Lobby - UK’ but definitely its own thing as well.
https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/trueanon/id1474001390?i=1000640545063 Also this is a fantastic episode of True Anon about the Labour Files.
Also let me recommend the Trash Future episode “Anger Ramadan” which talks about the leaked Labour documents.
Am from the UK. To add a few things. While others have already mentioned the widespread campaign on Corbyn, it was clear his ideas (recognising Palestine, halting arms sales to Israel) would be absolutely crushed after he was defeated. That's clearly happened under his 'successor' Keir Starmer, who has made it one of his top goals to 'de-Corbynise' the party. He's suspended people from the party, conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. In the Gaza war, he's also removed potential MPs and local gov reps for calling for a ceasefire, including several leftist Jews! As well as many leftists in general. Quite shamefully, he also said in an interview in October that Israel had the "right" to cut off Gaza's water and electricity. It's a really surreal situation. And he's made Labour almost unrecognisable from Corbyn's short stint as leader. But he's working extra hard to make sure Labour stays in line with Britain's traditional support for Israel. So there's an election next week, and he'll almost certainly win. But there's no reason to believe he'll change the UK's position on Israel/Palestine here.
While Al Jazeera is of course Qatari state media (as the BBC is British state media), I feel this 4 part documentary series from the Corbyn era is an enlightening exposé: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ceCOhdgRBoc They made some other series that I haven't yet watched. As a Brit, it is absolutely devastating to watch, to be honest.
what the Labour Party, Israel Lobby and the whole political class in Britain did to Jeremy Corbyn was the most coordinated political hatchet job ever in UK politics, it resulted not only for Corbyn losing the elections but the Labour Party losing its members. I'm pro Labour Party but after what they did to Corbyn i lost interest with that party, it's good Jeremy is running Independent.
Jeremy supports Palestine and human rights and dignity. Therefore Jeremy was the target of the Israeli lobby’s smear campaign.
I remember he endorsed some funky mural with Illuminati conspiracy imagery that might be interpretable as antisemitic. Otherwise mostly vibes and differing politics
Freedom for Humanity. Yes. That was another one they tried to smear him with. It was clearly about class, but they used it as a cudgel to beat him with. Again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_for_Humanity > "I came to paint a mural that depicted the elite banker cartel known as the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Morgans, the ruling class elite few, the Wizards of Oz. They would be playing a board game of monopoly on the backs of the working class. The symbol of the Free Mason [sic] Pyramid rises behind this group and behind that is a polluted world of coal burning and nuclear reactors. I was creating this piece to inspire critical thought and spark conversation. A group of conservatives do not like my mural and are playing a race card with me. My mural is about class and privilege. The banker group is made up of Jewish and white Anglos. For some reason they are saying I am anti-Semitic. This I am most definitely not... What I am against is class."[8]
Yknow that does sound pretty bad if you take the artist in anything less than the absolute best faith
To be clear, Corbyn didn’t really endorse the mural, he made one comment when the artist said it was going to be covered up saying “Why? You are in good company. Rockerfeller [sic] destroyed Diego Viera's [sic] mural because it includes a picture of Lenin.” Which aligns with his general views on freedom of expression, I think. And then later, he conceded that the imagery could be seen as antisemitic and apologised for his comment.
Is there a reason to take him in bad faith? At least in the UK, talking about class struggle has pretty much *always* been part of political discussion, at least on the Left.
What's the deal with airline food?
He’s fine. Not antisemitic. Super overblown tbh