Guardian Hack Trolls His Own Readers
by Bryan Hemming, December 18, 2015
Not content with the mobs of vacuous trolls funded by various British intelligence agencies constantly at each other’s throats in its comments sections, it appears the Guardian is now employing an in-house troll to sneer at its own rapidly declining readership. In an apparent attempt to stretch its withering credibility to breaking, Britain’s leading liberal media foghorn has taken to treating readers as though they are politically and intellectually impaired. You lot don’t know what’s good for you.
On reading the latest torrent of anti-Corbyn bile to flood from the keyboard of Jonathan ‘Smugsy’ Jones you could be forgiven for thinking the ‘art critic’ is mocking his own readers. If it isn’t the case, and even he can’t tell the difference between serious journalism, and trolling for comments, what chance do the rest of us stand?
If it turns out he isn’t attempting to siphon the fluid from our bladders, it must mean the favourite rag of the lemming faction of the Labour Party has taken to paying for the type of schizoid claptrap Smugsy and his pals must dream up over a few too many pints down at the pub. Sounds far-fetched? I haven’t finished yet.
Like many, I started off thinking Smugsy had to be winding us all up by suggesting a Christmas card could pose a threat to national security in a chuckle-packed piece imaginatively headlined ‘Corbyn’s Christmas card? Now there’s a threat to national security’. I mean, what other conclusion are the sane supposed to draw? It seems he wasn’t. Or maybe he was. Anyway, no prizes for guessing who was sending the offending material through the post. The clue is in the headline.
At one moment it seems Jones actually believes a Christmas card can be employed to transmit subliminal messages on behalf of the Kremlin, the next moment he’s not quite so sure. Take a gander at this:
“Perhaps the reason Corbyn loves Christmas is that The Red Flag, which he sings much more keenly than the National Anthem, has the same tune as the German carol O Tannenbaum.”
As a joke it simply isn’t funny; as a serious suggestion it’s hilarious. The idea that, far from wanting just to wish recipients a “Merry Christmas” (like it claims on the front) Corbyn’s Christmas card contains a sinister message, is more than surreal. But Smugsy isn’t one to admit defeat when he’s on a roll. He warns us the real purpose behind Corbyn’s so-called goodwill gesture is to invite Russian ‘soldiers with snow on their boots’ to trample all over British Christmases in order to make them ‘cold and monotonous’. Hang on a minute, Smugs, you’ve lost me there, isn’t cold monotony what British Christmases are all about? Or maybe I’m thinking of cold turkey. Same thing. Anyhow, I fully expect the invading Russkies will spoil UK toddlers’ Yuletide by telling them the whole thing’s been cancelled because Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer got mangled by a double-decker bus and Santa Claus got burnt to a crisp in the chimney.
Smugsy would have us believe Corbyn’s seasonal greeting is nothing more than a treacherous affront to our nation and all it stands for. So let’s take a peek at the offensive material in question.
Jeremy Corbyn’s Christmas card consists of a few bikes cloaked in snow parked outside a snow-capped phone box. And he thinks he’s fit to be Prime Minister of the UK with that! Outrageous!
If you think there’s nothing wrong with that Smugsy soon puts you right with his exposé of the wicked conspiracy behind the innocent scene. Don’t laugh. I did, and Smugsy went on to make me feel real guilty for it.
“It is a nice piece of faux modesty, this picture of a bicycle in the snow. It is humble, ordinary and unassuming. The snow is all around, deep and crisp and even, and there in the middle of it is a bike. Whose bike? Do you need to ask?”
The postman’s? King Wenceslas’s? Honest, Smugsy, I have no idea whose bike it is.
Wipe that smile off your face. He’s not winding us up, after all. It’s no laughing matter, he’s deadly serious. Stop tittering; it’s not fair; the man obviously needs help. On my life, I’m telling you it’s no joke. Play along for a while.
Bikes, bikes, real bikes. Think about it for a minute or two. What kind of crazy nut job would think of parking a bike outside a phone box? There has to be a reason. Then it clicked. Communists, of course, they have to be communists. What could be more Marxist than parking your bike outside a phone box? Does it belong to a Marxist, Smugs?
For those who still don’t know the answer, Smugsy gives a little hint as to whose the bike is. It belongs to either Charles Dickens, or the Victorian artist Sir Samuel Luke Fildes, I think. Anyway, this isn’t any ordinary phone box; it’s a red phone box. Yeah, I know a lot of phone boxes are red, but this one’s got snow on it. White snow. We all know what all that adds up to, don’t we? Well, for those who don’t, Smugsy spends almost a thousand words telling us.
And somehow, after a few scotches and a handful of tranquilisers, it all starts to make sense. It’s the very devil hisself, I tell you. If my postie turns up with a Christmas card from Jez, I’ll tell him to stuff it up his jacksie. Don’t you fret, Smugs.
And then I remembered. In years gone by, my brother-in-law used to get a greeting card from a Conservative MP each Christmas. They usually pictured nervous pheasants in frosty rural settings, glancing anxiously about for whisky-soaked Tories armed with shotguns out on the prowl. Or were they peasants? Sometimes, there’d be a frozen robin on a sprig of holly in one corner. I don’t remember any featuring Baby Jesus, or jolly Santas, for that matter. The fact my brother-in-law is a Muslim didn’t come into the equation. Understandable, when you take into consideration all the other stuff MPs have to think about; like voting to bomb Muslims out of their homes in the Holy Land in time for the festive season. So, whereas Tories put no thought into Christmas cards, Labour leaders spend an inordinate amount of time filling them with hidden messages.
Politicians can have a bit of a problem with Christmas cards. The further up the fir tree they climb the more constituents they have to try not to offend. If David Cameron sends King Salman of Saudi Arabia a Christmas card it probably avoids mentioning Christmas altogether. And heaven forbid it would have more than one king on a camel.
To get back to Smugsy. Taking comedy to another level, he neatly gift wraps Charles Dickens up with Karl Marx. In what future students of the corporate media will probably label the Broadmoor school of journalism, he writes:
“Or is it that Christmas is a secret socialist festival? Charles Dickens thought it was a time to care for your fellow humans. Scrooge starts as a capitalist and becomes a socialist.”
Deep, very deep. Another level indeed. Such depths have never been plumbed before, even in the ‘New’ Guardian.
Lest we forget, in another recent article Smugsy’s confessed his idea of a jolly good prank – and inspirational work of art at the same time – was setting fire to doors to buildings with people inside. Though you and I might consider it a life-threatening act of criminal vandalism, and Special Branch might regard it as an act of terrorism – especially were someone to torch the portals of MI5 – when Russian artist Pyotr Pavlensky set fire to the doors Federal Security Service Building on Lubyanka Square in Moscow it became “a superbly well-aimed piece of political art” according to Smugsy. I expect not seeing the funny side would make you akin to a party-pooper at an arsonist’s house-warming barbecue.
Though certainly not very Christmassy to criticise someone just because you don’t like his Christmas card, obviously Archangel Gabriel didn’t mean us to include Jeremy Corbyn and Russians in celebrating the birth of Baby Jesus with peace and goodwill to men.
Jonathan Jones comes over as the sort of bloke who has to tell everyone before he tells a joke so they can pretend they think it’s funny. If you don’t laugh he’ll bash you up. We all know sad bastards like that. They possess about as much joy and humour as a wet weekend stuck in a Llandudno bed and breakfast with Theresa May for company might.
It’s just a bloody Christmas card, you blithering idiot!
SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN
If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.
For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.
I was reading the Guardian today and noticed the ability to up-vote was selectively inhibited. Is this new? Reminds me of the moral defense the CIA used to justify torture and human experimentation during the Cold War.
It certainly seems odd, but if you click the number rather than the up arrow, it should work.
I suspect a similar banal explanation – they want to keep their jobs, to do so they need to curry favour with the people who set editorial policy, the rest is self-censorship in the name of a nice cheque at the end of every month and continued access to their “sources” of “news”. It is a selfish belief that what they do is somehow important, else why would they get paid for it? And no doubt their bosses laud them with praise for such fine work. Simple egoism and self-interest. The pieces they write serve as a kind of journalistic “window”, (in the wartime sense of small strips of aluminium foil dropped by allied bombers to confuse German radar), something designed to occupy intellectual space and obscure the more important process of money accumulation behind the scenes, confusing any attempt to see beyond the daily infotainment of advertorials that passes for journalism in most msm outlets.
Ze Guardian must not want people to read it any longer.
Interesting article by Nafeez Ahmad:
Death, Drugs and HSBC
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/death-drugs-and-hsbc-355ed9ef5316#.qet1itucp
Re Guardian:
“The Guardian is not owned by a trust at all. In 2008, “the trust was replaced with a limited company” that was accordingly re-named “The Scott Trust Limited.” Though not a trust at all, but simply a profit-making company, it is still referred to frequently as ‘The Scott Trust,’ promulgating the widely-held but mistaken belief in the Guardian’s inherently benign ownership structure.
[…]
… Scott Trust Ltd.’s board consists of ex-journalists and financiers, all of whom are shareholders in the Trust, which in turn is the sole shareholder of Guardian Media Group, and which is thus responsible for overseeing how the Group manages and re-invests Guardian profits. They must juggle the task of operating the Guardian “as a profit-seeking enterprise,” while securing its “financial and editorial independence” — goals that as the HSBC case illustrates, are ultimately mutually incompatible.
Alongside Forgan is Anthony Salz, a senior investment banker and executive vice chairman of Rothschild, and a director at NM Rothschild and Sons. He was a key legal adviser to Guinness during the notorious share-rigging scandal, helped Rupert Murdoch form BSkyB, and was vice chair of the BBC’s Board of Governors before it was replaced by the BBC Trust. He was also lead non-executive director of the board at the Department for Education under arch-neoconservative Michael Gove. Until 2006, Salz led a highly successful 30 year career as a corporate lawyer at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, where he was head and senior managing partner since 1996.”
Yes, the truth is finally getting out although no one would believe me in 2008 when I was saying “what the he’ll are the guardian thinking” but it was economic war fair they had ridiculous tax bill foisted upon them and told to take advice from Price Waterhouse Cooper.
I see it now as an aggressive take over by establishment stooges.
An excellent article by Nafeez Ahmed, though I question what it has to do with my article on Jonathan Jones. I also question Ahmed’s wisdom posting articles on a site where comments are controlled by something belonging to an organisation calling itself The Medium Corporation (US), which seems to be more about fishing for info to sell on than much else. Apparently, I now belong to it merely for having commented.
I first published an article on the illegal drugs trade’s links with HSBC in 2011. The connection with the banking industry is just one aspect. The article can be accessed here:
https://bryanhemming.wordpress.com/the-myth-peddlars-the-war-on-drugs-has-failed-4/
Reblogged this on Siem Reap Mirror.
He’s probably one of those bar proppers who gets pissed on a Friday night with a bunch of strangers whose names he vaguely knows though can’t fathom why and tells everyone he went out for a really good night with his mates down the pub or club, even though he can’t remember any of it. The word for it is… SAD.
It is my opinion that Johnathan Jones has done something very very bad which is known to the secret services and they are blackmailing him, this will have the dual effect of running their any left nonsense and discrediting permanently a much hated petty bourgeoisie journalist.
I’m not sure what he’s done but I can’t rule out something Savilesque
I could certainly believe some form of blackmail is behind some of the frankly bizarre editorial decisions at the Graun in recent times. However I would suspect this latest nonsense from J Jones is an attempt at garnering favorable attention from the new management . Maybe someone finally twigged he isn’t actually an art `expert’ and he’s attempting to prove his worth as a little in-house propaganda troll as the article suggests.
Bryan’s article was a joyful, well-observed dissection of the ludicrous. All Jones exposes is a surreal paranoia, echoed by increasingly hysterical CiF sock-puppets!