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Corbyn & Cabinet in the Media

From the increasingly ridiculous New Statesman George Eaton finds more reds under McDonnell's bed. Complete with a Wikipedia guide to Gramsci and entryism
Exclusive: John McDonnell named Lenin and Trotsky as his biggest influences in 2006
On 3 September 2015, for the first time in British history, a Marxist entered the office of shadow chancellor. Unlike Jeremy Corbyn, who recently confessed that he had not “read as much of Marx as I should have done”, John McDonnell is described by friends as a “true follower” of the philosopher.

Labour MPs have long suspected that his admiration extends to Lenin and Trotsky, the leaders of the 1917 Soviet revolution. Alengthy 2006 interview with the Trotskyist Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, unearthed by the New Statesman, confirmed their belief. Asked to name the “most significant” influences on his thought, McDonnell (who was then standing for the Labour leadership) replied: “The fundamental Marxist writers of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, basically.”

Though the shadow chancellor has praised Marx since his appointment (“You can’t understand the capitalist system without reading Das Kapital”), he has unsurprisingly avoided any reference to Lenin or Trotsky. Unlike Marx, the Soviet duo were responsible for the mass murder of political opponents and inaugurated many of the communist state’s dictatorial methods. In Labour circles, they are reviled as the intellectual inspiration for the entryist Militant Tendency (expelled from the party under Neil Kinnock). But as recently as 2006, the shadow chancellor cited them as definitive influences on him.
Exclusive: John McDonnell named Lenin and Trotsky as his biggest influences in 2006
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youngian said:
From the increasingly ridiculous New Statesman George Eaton finds more reds under McDonnell's bed. Complete with a Wikipedia guide to Gramsci and entryism
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For 'unearthed' read googled (strangely it doesn't sound so arduous); whatever happened to thoughtful research and good journalism?

Cheers - Louis MacNeice
 
ViolentPanda said:
For someone who's ranted about the stereotyping of black people, you're awfully free with posting a link that stereotypes Jewish people.

The article you link to is an emotionalist piece of shit, by the way. The opening paragraph 2 paragraphs - a full third of the entire article- are about Yad Vashem, effectively appealing to the holocaust as a marker for letting the state of Israel get on with what it does best. The author claims that anti-Semitism didn't exist in the Labour Party until Corbyn and "the left" took over. It's interesting that you blame "the left", too, just like the author.
It's interesting because Kirby had already been disciplined for this sort of behaviour under Miliband. So much for anti-Semitism not existing in the Labour Party until Corbyn, eh?
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You defend anything. Even admitting Kirby back into the Labour Party.
Thank God officials have seen right given the furore (we've lost one good member who actually campaigns door to door over this, but those of you who don't bother actually campaigning for us don't care about that) and suspended her again.
I guess you'll now think it's right to suspend her again, given you just blindly defend anything Corbyn's Labour does.
 
MarkyMarrk said:
You defend anything. Even admitting Kirby back into the Labour Party.
Thank God officials have seen right given the furore (we've lost one good member who actually campaigns door to door over this, but those of you who don't bother actually campaigning for us don't care about that) and suspended her again.
I guess you'll now think it's right to suspend her again, given you just blindly defend anything Corbyn's Labour does.
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It was Ed Miliband's labour that readmitted her.
 
I wonder how much oversight the leadership has over individual discipline of local activists. Very little I'd imagine - as we know, local parties of all stripe are teeming with nutters, and there's likely to be tens, if not hundreds, of disciplinary processes ongoing at any one time. To expect the leader to even have a handle on the ongoing disciplinaries - let alone one that was concluded two years before he became leader - stretched credulity.

Corbyn's enemies have simply chosen a route of attack, and are now digging as hard as possible to find any mud to throw, even if it's nothing to do with him.
 
MarkyMarrk said:
The left is failing the Jewish people again: A Place and Name: the Left is Failing the Jewish People Again
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I see all this crap regularly, but through the medium of anti-“Zionism” rather than “Judaism”. But I don’t just see it on the far right. It is as much a leftist disease. For the last ten years it has crept, slowly, into acceptable discourse, into our universities. But the Labour Party remained immune until Corbyn won. And now we have daily reports of anti-Semitism in a party which has always fought for universal human rights. The new anti-Semitism is becoming monopolised by the discourses of the left. It is a vicious disease and one that my party is taking too lightly.
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I'm not saying they don't exist but I've never met anyone on the left who could be described as anti-semitic including someone like Galloway who even at his most inflammatory about Israel has never said anything remotely anti-semitic. I understand this Kirby woman who sparked this debate was readmitted to Labour under Ed Miliband. And I didn't hear any of these people now bashing Labour laying into the snide anti-semitic articles about the Miliband family. Or 'North London Continental Marxist intellectuals' as the Daily Mail called them. I believe Ralph Miliband is what Nixon called 'the wrong sort of Jew.' Israel is as adept at selectively playing the kith and kin card as Ian Smith in Rhodesia was with the Tories when even they were getting tired of his moribund regime. But whoever Netyanhu wants in the Whitehouse (Ted Cruz?) it is not Bernie Sanders. And what is "legitimate criticism of Israel?" Advocating a single secular state for the region where everyone can sort out their future together is not apparently as you are calling for 'the destruction of Israel.'
 
MarkyMarrk said:
You defend anything. Even admitting Kirby back into the Labour Party.
Thank God officials have seen right given the furore (we've lost one good member who actually campaigns door to door over this, but those of you who don't bother actually campaigning for us don't care about that) and suspended her again.
I guess you'll now think it's right to suspend her again, given you just blindly defend anything Corbyn's Labour does.
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Desperate.
 
MarkyMarrk said:
You defend anything. Even admitting Kirby back into the Labour Party.
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Show me where I've done that.
Then when you can't show that I've defended Kirby's reinstatement prior to Corbyn's win or now, you can either apologise, or make yourself look even more of a twat by not apologising. I don't mind which.

Thank God officials have seen right given the furore (we've lost one good member who actually campaigns door to door over this, but those of you who don't bother actually campaigning for us don't care about that) and suspended her again.
I guess you'll now think it's right to suspend her again, given you just blindly defend anything Corbyn's Labour does.
Click to expand...

I believe that if she's judged by her constituency party to have voiced anti-Semitic comments, she should be expelled, and that any member of any mainstream political party that doesn't have anti-Semitism as a policy should do likewise.

It's signally interesting that you project these supposedly-stereotypical behaviour patterns onto people not based on fact, but on your own prejudices over their position on the current Labour leadership. As I've said before, you lack the ability to think critically.
 
youngian said:
I didn't hear any of these people now bashing Labour laying into the snide anti-semitic articles about the Miliband family. Or 'North London Continental Marxist intellectuals' as the Daily Mail called them.
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North London Marxist Intellectuals is the charged levelled at Corbyn & McDonnell by the likes of the very people moaning about anti-semitic activists in the provinces. Curious.
 
killer b said:
I wonder how much oversight the leadership has over individual discipline of local activists. Very little I'd imagine - as we know, local parties of all stripe are teeming with nutters, and there's likely to be tens, if not hundreds, of disciplinary processes ongoing at any one time. To expect the leader to even have a handle on the ongoing disciplinaries - let alone one that was concluded two years before he became leader - stretched credulity.

Corbyn's enemies have simply chosen a route of attack, and are now digging as hard as possible to find any mud to throw, even if it's nothing to do with him.
Click to expand...

Local branches have historically always been a bearpit, with certain people - if they were the type who wanted to "get on" in the party, but had little actual political talent - stabbing others in the back. Discipline got stronger during the Blair years, but only really got exercised on matters of staying "on message". Kirby's utterances are utterly distasteful - and if the context they've been reported in is correct, her party should expel her - but one wonders whythey were reported, and how this originally got to the media. Possibly another minimally-talented member putting the boot in.
 
MarkyMarrk said:
You defend anything. Even admitting Kirby back into the Labour Party.
Thank God officials have seen right given the furore (we've lost one good member who actually campaigns door to door over this, but those of you who don't bother actually campaigning for us don't care about that) and suspended her again.
I guess you'll now think it's right to suspend her again, given you just blindly defend anything Corbyn's Labour does.
Click to expand...
tbh i think it would be right to suspend the lot of you

callot-hanging.jpg
 
Anyone else see Cathy Newman on C4 news tonight, almost failing to let Seema Malhotra get a word in edgeways between aggressive questioning?
 
At this point under Miliband we were leading by 11 points - and even then we were in despair because he was so ineffective. Some of the old-timers in my CLP have a group email but it just consists of people taking the piss now. It seems that we've accepted we're either going to have the PLP do something or we're going to accept that we've lost.

The old-timers will still be the only ones knocking on doors - the new 'members' don't bother doing anything, even in the recent local elections. They just like turning up to meetings to try to change our policy or kick old-timers off committees. It's all a bit sad, but at least we're laughing. Apparently we're not unusual in this area. Thousands more members, not interested in doing things for the party.
 
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