Jeremy Corbyn's time is up

[imposs1904]

If i was a caricaturist I'd steer well clear of using certain tropes, however subtle they me be, unless i wanted to allow for certain interpretation. A long nose is one of them.

That's the problem about caricatures, though. It's always about accentuating certain features on people. It's a slippery slope at the best of times.

 

[lazythursday]

I think when talking about the mural now we are doing so after many years of accusations of antisemitism on the left, some justified, many not, and everyone knows all about antisemitic tropes.

But when the mural stuff first erupted, much of it was pretty new to me to be honest. I didn't have much of a grounding in antisemitic imagery, other than some of the very obvious hook nosed Jew caricatures. That stuff just wasn't part of general political discourse for decades. Of course you can make the argument JC should have known better than me, but I'm unsurprised he and others didn't pick up on it in 2012, when anti-banker feeling was at its height. I think those that think it completely obvious are doing so with hindsight really.

 

[klang]

That's the problem about caricatures, though. It's always about accentuating certain features on people. It's a slippery slope at the best of times.

Different though when 'caricaturing' fantasy characters who are supposedly controlling money.

 

[imposs1904]

Different though when 'caricaturing' fantasy characters who are supposedly controlling money.

Wasn't the original mural under discussion all historical figures?

 

[Wilf]

A lot to catch up on in this thread! To start with the most recent, I'm pretty sure Nigel's avatar comes from the cover of a 1983 EP by the band Anthrax - not the yankee metal band, but an anarcho-punk band from Gravesend:

https://www.discogs.com/release/381824-Anthrax-Capitalism-Is-Cannibalism

View attachment 432697
IIRC I tried listening to them once, and they were a bit shit, but I don't think there's anything dodgy about them.

Great spot. That's been nagging away at me!

 

[Silas Loom]

He appears on another Anthrax record, so I take back the suggestion that it’s a collage featuring a mid-century caricature.

 

[The39thStep]

That type of hook-nosed caricature has a long antisemitic history, from Nazi-era cartoons to how Zelensky is drawn by Russian and Trumpist cartoonists. If you know this it’s really quite blatant.

and Germnay

 

[Pickman's model]

Strange how no one takes j.k. rowling to task for the description of the goblins in the bank in harry potter

 

[Cid]

Strange how no one takes j.k. rowling to task for the description of the goblins in the bank in harry potter

There are plenty of decent takes out there. But yeah, weirdly not from the UK centrist media. Almost as if they share certain other views.

 

[mojo pixy]

That type of hook-nosed caricature has a long antisemitic history, from Nazi-era cartoons to how Zelensky is drawn by Russian and Trumpist cartoonists. If you know this it’s really quite blatant.

If it were all the faces at the table, or say if there were stars of david or hebrew script or a rabbi or .. anything, really. But in this mural, two faces /might/ be jewish, so what? I think assuming any cartoon of a face with a certain nose must be antisemitic, is itself a bit fucking dodgy tbh. My uncle Keith has a long curvy nose and people are always asking him if he's Jewish, it's offensive quite frankly. Whether he is or not. My dad too.

Maybe an antisemite painted that mural or maybe they didn't, but this narrative about it is irrelevant except as a way of punishing jeremy corbyn for attitudes he didnt share.

 

[tommers]

Hahahaha.

 

[Dystopiary]

Hahahaha.

The Telegraph - "Corbyn is a SATANIST!"

 

[strung out]

If it were all the faces at the table, or say if there were stars of david or hebrew script or a rabbi or .. anything, really. But in this mural, two faces /might/ be jewish, so what? I think assuming any cartoon of a face with a certain nose must be antisemitic, is itself a bit fucking dodgy tbh. My uncle Keith has a long curvy nose and people are always asking him if he's Jewish, it's offensive quite frankly. Whether he is or not. My dad too.

Maybe an antisemite painted that mural or maybe they didn't, but this narrative about it is irrelevant except as a way of punishing jeremy corbyn for attitudes he didnt share

The artist has gone on record as saying that Rothschild is one of the characters depicted in front of the Free Mason Pyramid. Those two details, coupled with the references to the New World Order should have set massive alarm bells off, especially given Corbyn was specifically responding to a post about the mural’s removal due to its controversial nature. Like I say, blind spots and lack of any desire to ruthlessly crack down on it from mates like Chris Williamson just made it increasingly easy to make the antisemitism claims stick.

 

[hitmouse]

If it were all the faces at the table, or say if there were stars of david or hebrew script or a rabbi or .. anything, really. But in this mural, two faces /might/ be jewish, so what? I think assuming any cartoon of a face with a certain nose must be antisemitic, is itself a bit fucking dodgy tbh. My uncle Keith has a long curvy nose and people are always asking him if he's Jewish, it's offensive quite frankly. Whether he is or not. My dad too.

Maybe an antisemite painted that mural or maybe they didn't, but this narrative about it is irrelevant except as a way of punishing jeremy corbyn for attitudes he didnt share.

I mean, this article someone posted a page or two back is extremely longwinded, but I think it's pretty much right:

Two immediate issues arise. Firstly, are the bankers and business men all or predominately Jewish? Secondly, in the light of the answer to this question is the depiction of the characters anti-semitic?

To quote Ockerman: “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 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.”

We have to take him at his word. The problem is that the iconography draws on a very restricted set of references and these references are, in themselves, problematic. Set aside the passivity and subordination with which the oppressed are depicted. Look instead at the central figures who are depicted as distinctive types, painted with a clear reference, if distorted, to real historical protagonists.

Even if only two of these six bourgeois, Warburg and Rothschild, are Jewish we still need to make a judgement about the character and currency of their depiction. The draughtsmanship clearly exaggerates the distinctive features of all six men. The problem is that exaggerated depictions of Jews are created, disseminated and understood in a historically defined context that includes a powerful, even dominant, discourse that draws upon the long traditions of antisemitism embedded in the dominant ideology and expressed, over the centuries, in the dominant visual culture, including both traditional art forms, religion, politics, popular culture and mass media.

That these traditions are currently more diffused than hitherto and that today, for example, Islamaphobic narratives are more virulent and produce more dramatically dangerous consequences than does contemporary anti semitism is no justification for a lack of vigilance.

In truth, the subterranean narratives around notions of the Illuminati, Freemasonry and bourgeois conspiracies cannot, in much popular imagination, be disentangled from deeply suspect discourses in which alien, Semitic and covert elites are the controlling forces in our lives.

Such notions run exactly counter to the kind of materialist analysis that take the real and existing features of contemporary class society and seek to reveal their workings. State monopoly capitalism operates at vastly more profound levels and bourgeois hegemony is maintained by vastly greater systems of ideological domination than are illuminated by Ockerman's mural or accessible through his restricted political imagination.

Inevitably, this mural was going to understood in the context of existing traditions. If Jeremy Corbyn had not risen to his present stature this mural would have been long forgotten.

The truth is that neither its formal construction nor its artistry, neither its political language nor its iconography is articulated with sufficient levels of complexity and sophistication. It simply collapses, without sufficient theoretical or ideological underpinnings, into an inversion of its creator's avowed purpose.

This is bad art and worse politics.

When, five years later the long-forgotten facts around this painting's destruction are weaponised in a new coup against Labour's popular realignment, we can only marvel that the theoretical poverty of these latter-day art critics is matched by their political hypocrisy.

I think it's fine to say "Corbyn probably didn't examine some pixelated picture of a shit mural that closely before commenting on it", we don't need to go all the way into "I think this mural of Rothschilds in front of the illuminati symbol is fine".

 

[mojo pixy]

The artist has gone on record as saying that Rothschild is one of the characters depicted in front of the Free Mason Pyramid.

If so, fair enough. But I suspect corbyn didn't know that when he was asked about it.

 

[mojo pixy]

Such notions run exactly counter to the kind of materialist analysis that take the real and existing features of contemporary class society and seek to reveal their workings. State monopoly capitalism operates at vastly more profound levels and bourgeois hegemony is maintained by vastly greater systems of ideological domination than are illuminated by Ockerman's mural or accessible through his restricted political imagination.

Inevitably, this mural was going to understood in the context of existing traditions. If Jeremy Corbyn had not risen to his present stature this mural would have been long forgotten.

The truth is that neither its formal construction nor its artistry, neither its political language nor its iconography is articulated with sufficient levels of complexity and sophistication. It simply collapses, without sufficient theoretical or ideological underpinnings, into an inversion of its creator's avowed purpose.

This is bad art and worse politics.

When, five years later the long-forgotten facts around this painting's destruction are weaponised in a new coup against Labour's popular realignment, we can only marvel that the theoretical poverty of these latter-day art critics is matched by their political hypocrisy.

Yeah this expresses a view I more or less share, that yes conspiracism is often antisemitic and that's shit - but more importantly, it's politically stupid and reactionary and counter-productive. I think this is a better argument to make to proponents of this stuff than "it's racist", which tends just to create more toxicity and make people defensive.

 

[Cid]

This was the original post for ref, by which I mean the screenshot Luciana Berger put on twitter (off her feed):

*Diego Rivera Corbyn you spanner.

 

[Wilf]

Can somebody hurry up and post this damming evidence of Corbyn"s antisemitism. I'VE GOT THE FOOTBALL TO WATCH!

 

[Wilf]

Okay its half time, I'll spend a few minutes digging into this damming evidence. Can someone direct me to the right page? Ta.

 

[mojo pixy]

Yeah seeing it again, fuck that stupid mural. If its meant as dystopian sci-fi ok fine, but as a depiction of political reality it might as well be smears of excrement. Read a fucking book**.

Corbyn should have said that.




**NOT DAVID ICKE

 

[belboid]

Greg Philo(Glasgow University Monitoring Group, did the seminal report on Miners Strike, more recently how disabled claimants are reported on)

reposted from FB, no link

sadly, I see Greg Philo passed away a few weeks ago

Greg Philo obituary

Leading light of the Glasgow University Media Group devoted to exposing bias in television news reporting

www.theguardian.com

 

[Leighsw2]

This was the original post for ref, by which I mean the screenshot Luciana Berger put on twitter (off her feed):

*Diego Rivera Corbyn you spanner.

Interesting. First time I've ever seen the original post in it's Facebook setting. I've got a 32" high def PC screen and I can hardly even make out the six figures sitting around the Monopoly board, let alone what race they might be. There is an illuminati symbol (pretty dodgy), but you'd need to be pretty well informed to spot it. Is it true that he posted from his mobile phone? In which case he was reacting to a small blurry picture on a small screen.

And on the basis of this bollocks not only is a fundamentally decent man defamed, but an entire movement apparently discredited and the best chance of a truly transformative government in 40 years defeated. What a fucking country!

 

[Pickman's model]

Interesting. First time I've ever seen the original post in it's Facebook setting. I've got a 32" high def PC screen and I can hardly even make out the six figures sitting around the Monopoly board, let alone what race they might be. There is an illuminati symbol (pretty dodgy), but you'd need to be pretty well informed to spot it. Is it true that he posted from his mobile phone? In which case he was reacting to a small blurry picture on a small screen.

And on the basis of this bollocks not only is a fundamentally decent man defamed, but an entire movement apparently discredited and the best chance of a truly transformative government in 40 years defeated. What a fucking country!

Yeh but shammer

 

[Pickman's model]

The Telegraph - "Corbyn is a SATANIST!"

Any excuse to denigrate people who follow the left hand path

 

[nino_savatte]

Says he was going to sue 4 months ago. Has he followed through with that?

It’s got to be awkward when they end up sat next to each other on the opposition benches, or in the HoC tea rooms.

There's been no update.

 

[nino_savatte]

I can't be arsed to go digging but there have been a few instances discussed on here over the years.

He does seem to have a blindspot when it comes to seeing antisemitism, but he doesn't seem to dig his heels in and defend it once it is raised, which is I think the more important thing.

This is most famous case I think.

This Is The Anti-Semitic Mural That Jeremy Corbyn Commented On

The issue of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party has resurfaced again - and this is the reason.

www.lbc.co.uk

Not a great look for him, but would have been so much worse if he had stuck by his original comment.

Also that is a shit article, just the first I found.

Ah, it's the mural again. A specific example would suffice, fella.

This is from Chris Friel, who's done some sterling work on this and other Israel-Palestine related matters. My bold.

We need to grasp how flimsy the kompromat was, and how badly it needed assistance.xxiv Dysch’s boss Stephen Pollard had actually defended free expression and the mural’s existence four days after Corbyn had done, and when Dysch reviewed the CST report of antisemitic incidents for 2012(which mentions the mural, though not in the executive summary) he quite ignored his own tremendous discovery! And what had Corbyn actually said? Like Pollard he had not actually defended the mural at all, but merely recalled a historical precedent about Rockefeller destroying a mural.xxv This was the nothing that had to get the Jewish establishment on the streets!

MuralGate as a Distraction from Gaza: Smear and Smokescreen (download if links don't function)

"Was the antisemitism crisis in the UK Labour Party designed as a distraction from Gaza? Very early on some complained that Jeremy Corbyn was a victim of a smear campaign, but might it be more accurate to say that UK politics witnessed a

www.academia.edu

The mural that Rockefeller (not Jewish) destroyed wasn't antisemitic; it included an image of Lenin.

More here:

Stories of Iconic Artworks: Diego Rivera's Rockefeller Mural - Artland Magazine

In 1932, Diego Rivera was commissioned to do a mural for the Rockefeller Center in New York. By 1934, the mural had been destroyed. What happened?

magazine.artland.com

Art, eh? Why does it have to be so political?

 

[Cid]

Interesting. First time I've ever seen the original post in it's Facebook setting. I've got a 32" high def PC screen and I can hardly even make out the six figures sitting around the Monopoly board, let alone what race they might be. There is an illuminati symbol (pretty dodgy), but you'd need to be pretty well informed to spot it. Is it true that he posted from his mobile phone? In which case he was reacting to a small blurry picture on a small screen.

And on the basis of this bollocks not only is a fundamentally decent man defamed, but an entire movement apparently discredited and the best chance of a truly transformative government in 40 years defeated. What a fucking country!

I mean I suppose there's no reason Corbs himself would actually remember the precise details of how he viewed a thing 6 years before. Balance of probability he got a link from someone saying 'look this artist is being oppressed' and then remembered he had an appropriate factoid, like ageing non-arty political types everywhere. I doubt the image itself seemed particularly important at the time.

 

[CNT36]

I mean I suppose there's no reason Corbs himself would actually remember the precise details of how he viewed a thing 6 years before. Balance of probability he probably got a link from someone saying 'look this artist is being oppressed' and then remembered he had an appropriate factoid, like ageing non-arty political types everywhere. I doubt the image itself seemed particularly important at the time.

If the image even loaded. I remember arguing with some EDL types about a Koran quote referring to Christians and Jews around that time. I couldn't work out why they were going on about gay people until I realised there was an image in the post that hadn't loaded.
I've also been guilty of looking at an image quickly and just taking the accompanying words at face value.

 

[scalyboy]

Any excuse to denigrate people who follow the left hand path

Quite right, it's blatant discrimination. This country is so bleeding conservative, it's only comparatively recently that Pagan prisoners are permitted visits from an appropriate chaplain. Meanwhile the US army has had Satanist chaplains for some years.

(Slight detour - in my local boneyard where I often take a stroll, I was intrigued to notice a new-looking gravestone with what appeared to be a Heathen / Astatru design engraved on it. Or the deceased may have been one of them Chaos magicians. I'll try and nip out later and grab a photo, but I'm v busy today feeding nuts to the fucking magpies when the nuts are intended for the squirrels and a Jay )

 

[Wilf]

the nuts are intended for the squirrels

At last some bloody common sense on this thread! My partner puts nuts out 'just for the birds".
(((Squirrels)))