What “community standards” did this comment breach? #25
The following comment – sent in to us by a reader – was censored by The Guardian. Which of the well-publicised CiF “community standards” did it breach?
Removed comment, posted under the Guardian story on the most recent by Andy Beckett, on January 11th 2020:
Since the comment is quite long, and the image possible difficult to make out, here is a transcript:
There is nothing more ludicrous than the spectacle of Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour left being lectured by the same so-called moderates who enabled Johnson’s victory and whose empty rhetoric is not supported by the cold hard facts.
In 2017, on a pro-Leave manifesto, Corbyn raised the Labour Party’s share of the national vote by 10 percentage points, the party’s biggest increase since the 1945 General Election.
In April 2019, a poll of polls in the Daily Telegraph predicted that the Tories would lose 59 seats in the event of a General Election, making Labour the largest party in the Commons. 5 months later, Labour centrists forced the party leadership to promise another referendum – only this time one which excluded the option of a no-deal Brexit.
In the election which followed, Labour lost 59 seats, of which 55 had voted Leave in the 2015 referendum. Of the remaining four, three had been safe Tory seats before the previous election.
Yet despite the Labour’s Brexit policy reversal and the most relentless campaign of character assassination ever directed against a Labour leader by the corporate media – reinforced by the antics of the supposed moderates in his own party – Corbyn still won more than 10 million votes.
This was 600,000 more than Blair got in 2005 and was a bigger share of the vote (32%) than that achieved by Brown in 2010 (29%), Miliband in 2015 (30%), Kinnock in 1987 (31%) and Foot in 1983 (28%). Apart from Foot, these were all centrist Labour leaders who faced far less hostility from the media and their own parliamentary party than Corbyn did. And 3 of them (Brown, Blair and Miliband) were up against weaker Tory leaders than Johnson.
The notion that moving to the centre will guarantee electoral success is further discredited by the dismal performance of the LibDems and the 18 self-styled moderates who, prior to the election, defected from their parties and subsequently lost their seats. No wonder the corporate media are peddling this idea so enthusiastically.
As for the suggestion that Labour’s election defeat was a rejection of hard-left policies, this is yet another centrist fiction. For example, the party’s manifesto proposed increasing public spending as a proportion of GDP to 43%, compared to 45% in Germany, 48% in Sweden and 56% in France.
Apropos projected tax increases, Labour would have raised the top rate of corporation tax to 26% compared to 27% in Italy, 29% in Germany and 34% in France. And polls such as the Opinium poll (September 2019) – which found that only 12% of voters and 6% of Labour defectors rejected its economic policies – consistently showed that Labour’s policies were popular.
Apart from Labour’s disastrous promise to hold another referendum, the one other factor which decided the outcome of the election was the voting behaviour of the elderly. According to a YouGov poll of 42,000 adults who voted in the 2019 General Election, Labour won 44% of the vote and the Tories 33% in the 18-59 age group. Even in the 18-69 age group Labour maintained a lead over the Tories (40% to 37%) and, by 43% to 29%, did much better than the Conservatives among those educated to degree level or beyond.
However, it was the Tories’ massive lead over Labour amongst the over 70s (64% to 17%) that won them the election. These are voters whose political views are, more than any other generation, shaped by the lies and distortions of the anti-left mainstream news outlets.
An analysis published by the journal Science in January 2019 showed that they are four times more likely to share fake news on Facebook than younger age groups and suggested that the effect of ageing on cognitive function means that there is a large demographic of voters in their 60s and beyond who are unable to determine the trustworthiness of news sources.
In short, the deterioration of the pre-frontal cortex with age makes the elderly just as susceptible to fake news as they are to financial scams, a vulnerability which is ruthlessly exploited by the hard-right propagandists of the corporate media.
…and here, is the gap where it used to be:
So: Which of the Guardian’s “community standards” did this comment break?
- Did it? “misrepresent the Guardian and its journalists”?
- Is it “persistent trolling or mindless abuse”?
- Is it “spam-like”? Or “obviously commercial”?
- Is it “racism, sexism, homophobia or hate-speech”?
- Is it “extremely offensive or threatening?”?
- Is it “flame-wars based on ingrained partisanship or generalisations”?
- Is it not “relevant”?
If none of the above – why was it taken down?
See our archive of censored comments. And if you see any egregious examples of the Guardian censoring its “free” comment sections – email us at [email protected], and send us screen caps if possible
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.
The Guardian has stopped pretending ‘comment is free’. I occasionally comment there, but I am on approximately my twentieth user name, and so self censor. There are certain ‘hot button’ topics you aren’t allowed to contradict the editorial line…Radical feminism, climate change, race….I do think if climate skepticism, however well expressed is verboten, then is should be explicitly stated in the standards. I once got moderated on a climate piece for enquiring how Monbiot’s community service was going…. (He was sued for libelling Leon Britton, as I remember). I thought it germane as it went to the judgement of the author. You’ll look long and hard for it on the internet, as GM has clearly exercised his right to be forgotten, just like Mr Mosley, of Formula One fame. Guardian comments are so heavily moderated that the only real interest is when author gets it wrong, and the direction of… Read more »
Been there, done that, years ago. Welcome to the party here.
Only to know the Establishment line read the Guardian, WaPo, NYT, Le Monde or Die Zeit.
The best part of the Guardian used to be BTL; now anyone with a human brain, consciousness or non Mi6 troll contract has left there.
I lament the fact that here, where I live in France, most left-wing activists are over 60 and young people mostly don’t give a fuck. Some of them are wishy-washy green but’s it hard to identify the future generations of reds.
I came on here really because I’ve just read a Guardian link from this story:
https://www.dumptheguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/16/is-it-racism-musician-soweto-kinch-refused-entry-to-first-class-carriage
where it says in its midst: “Jackie Walker, who was expelled from the Labour party for antisemitism.”
The phrase “who was expelled from the Labour party for antisemitism,” is hyper linked to another Guardian article, which says she was expelled for:
“prejudicial and grossly detrimental behaviour against the party”.
They’re not the same thing, but I’m pleased that nobody wants to confuse me with the facts, for I have already made up my mind.
Dear
@guardian
could you clarify what I was expelled for? Today’s report by
@sloumarsh
claims it was for antisemitism
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EOcNadoXkAAunYW?format=jpg&name=small
I posted a perfectly reasonable comment which I ensured did not breach your guidelines in any way. It has been removed. Can you explain please?
Dear Pam, did you, perchance, pee before your water came?
It is offensive to those of us over 60 yrs age. The suggestion that once you turn that, relatively, in todays terms young, age you are unable to think straight and therefor should not be able to vote, is based on highly flawed premises, is easily refuted by evidence of the many many “older” people undertaking substantial responsible positions [or would the writer have had President Putin banned from his position as he is 68 yr old?] and is evidence of extremely “limited” and linear thinking. The worship of youth which the Anglo Sphere has indulged in for the past few decades is certainly no advert for the under 60’s given the increasing mess the West is in. In fact, there are a multitude of factors involved in any decision making process. We are a product of our environment from all of our lives, so the longer lived have had… Read more »
Sounds to me like you take everything personally. No one gives a toss what you were, it’s what you say that counts. And you sound like radio 4.
Honestly, Pam, while you may not be senile and embittered by life, and viciously antipathetic towards the young, you CANNOT extrapolate from your experience to the whole of your age cohort. All studies, all opinion polls, voting results etc, show an undeniable Rightwing bias in the elderly, one that grows with age.
Just saying.
Postal vote fraud, and IDOX.
https://bylinetimes.com/2020/01/07/why-did-cabinet-office-rush-through-procurement-of-controversial-electoral-services-company-idox-just-before-the-general-election/
The Conspiracy of Our Time.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gBiRVoAXHPh5lXsAHYrb9xn0AanfBApV1oJZYQEBV4M/edit
Yup. I agrees with those that says it as it is, whom wants stinking, &¤%#%& facts, and oh…. horror truths, and shit like that, and British MSM is widely known as the bottom of the barrel, where the level of shere idiot propaganda is beyond riddicilous, and this case shows us/me one thing, the clevage of thos that belive what they read and those that dont belive, eh…. everything they read. But the level of petty lies, exsagerations, flatout scare porn about economy, etc, was amazing, and nothing, not linking to people whom is in the center of lets say Banking, even they, where just ignored, or riddiculed, etc. But this election was won by the MSM and neo-CONs etc, witch is an more loose term where as I really dont know whats the real difference as in Norway, we elect, nothing happens, and above all, you cant get ridd… Read more »
It’s going to take me some time to fully assimilate the significance of the Corbyn episode. Here we had a brief and totally unforeseen resurgence of the old “social compact” model of politics i.e. the recognition of such a thing as the working class and the admission that there is a tension between this class and the rulers. This is a vision that has been banished from neoliberal theology in which there is either no class issue at all or the very concept of working class has become so maniacally “spun” that it is practically a joke and a Blairite sycophant like Jess Philips can write a book called “Truth To Power” without the slightest trace of (intentional) irony. Corbyn momentarily disrupted the pantomime by breaking out of the rear of the horse costume. But he has been dealt with. And the show must go on.
The Corbyn episode illustrates a few things nicely. That ‘democracy’ is a dirty lie when all real power belongs to the rich, when the rich own all the brainwashing apparatus and it is a machine of truly diabolical mendacity, hypocrisy and class viciousness, manned by creatures among the worst that humanity has ever spawned. When one tiny group, the Jewish elite, can destroy a political party with a campaign of the filthiest and most villainous lies, when probably half the Jewish community refuted the whole episode. When half the population is of below median intelligence, many far below, when the senile vote out of stupidity, dementia, hatred of the young and greed for the Tory ‘austerity’ killers, and when FPTP ensures a landslide for tiny pluralities of the vote. Oh, and when the whole sham is so easily rigged through groups like Cambridge Analytica, the Israel ‘Artemis’ operation and God… Read more »
The fact my friends is we have been subjected to a December Coup.
Any allusion to how that was carried in the public arena is struck down on hard and fast as part of the brainwashing and maintenance of the illusion that we have a fair and honest democracy.
From the example of what is happening in France – our junta will move to strike down grassroots activists and suspend judicial oversight over such ‘political decisions’.
That means a fight to the death, again, after less then a hundred years. We have pissed up hard won freedoms in a couple of generations of Thatcherite excess and fragmentation of society.
t was strange to censor the above comment, inasmuch, as the only offensive part of the post is its ageist analysis. The ageist comments were a bit simplistic especially when describing older voters brains as being physiologically more susceptible to propaganda. More than likely older voters were especially affected by neoliberal policies wrecking their lives over the last three decades. Older voters were voting for BREXIT more than Bojo. It was a mistake for Corbyn and the Labor Party to align with the “centrist Remain.” Labor should’ve developed a “Left Brexit” to counter Bojo. If they had done that, the other propaganda would have been less effective. In other words, the election was a relitigation of the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum.
If the UK is like France the elderly are more racist and therefore more likely to vote Brexit to keep out Johnny Foreigner.
Why would they not vote Remain on the basis that they are Europeans?
The idea that people voted Brexit “to ‘keep out Johnny Foreigner” is a Blairite talking point.
Interesting, how austerity is the result of Western imperialist wars in the Middle East and Africa creating a greater refugee crisis that the one which occurred during WWII. And this is all compounded by neoliberal economic policies. These sames factors are simultaneously economically devastating all of Western Europe.
The small print version and the large print version don’t quite tally in paragraph 1. By the way: -https://prnt.sc/qo67ft
https://prnt.sc/qo680w
In my experience of working within the MSM (just holding on to work as I push 60), people tend to be more left-wing with age. By accident of multiply-divorcing parents, I also have siblings who are under 30. Most of them are small-c conservative of the “Political Correctness is just politeness” variety. Two are postmodern feminists and one claims to venerate Stalin. But I find them to be quite inflexible intellectually… unable to lay out their stall, let alone sell it. Strident, yes. Persuasive, no. In fact they yield ground quite quickly, and that is worrying. It suggests they wear their politics rather than believe it. Add the fact that they are ill-informed by Facebook — the one with a German boyfriend behaves as if Brexit could part her from her fiance forever, and blankly resists any reassurance that people lived abroad before the EU and have married partners of… Read more »
As someone who grew up in the 70s, I find it difficult to imagine what the political landscape looks like to the young now. Consider how relentlessly everything has swung over to the right e.g. of how “Labour” means Blairite “Labour”, “communism” is a noise signifying something that was “very bad” way back in the past, unions are, possibly quite rightly, viewed with extreme suspicion, and the entire notion of going on strike would seem unthinkable in the deepest sense i.e. it wouldn’t even occur to anyone. Also consider how atomised our society is now i.e. how isolated people nowadays tend to feel, how helpless in the face of those increasingly numerous and increasingly mysterious organisations – third sector and NGOs and non-profit this and that etc. Not to mention the deluge of fake news, fake fake news, double bluff fake news, real news dressed up as fake news etc.… Read more »
The atomisation is the key. The Rightwing worldview that other people are the enemy has been normalised as the basis for all inter-personal actions. If you don’t trample over them to reach the crumbs that fall from the Masters’ High Table, they’ll trample over you, you loser.
The results of your recent election farce was plain-the young voted heavily for Corbyn, the senile very heavily for the Tory class haters. All opinion polls show the same result. Your personal experience is yours alone, and cannot be extrapolated in the face of reality.
Good comment. A lot jumped on the XR bandwagon but never examined it in any depth. I don’t know any young people who express an interest in political history, ideology or economics. I’ve met quite a few who identify as “left-wing”, yet saw Corbyn as a step too far in this election while they were prepared to vote for him in the preceding one. It doesn’t bode well for the future.
It was taken down because the electorate decided what government they wanted when the vote was held. Autopsy of the election is now finished and all the electoral pathologists have submitted their reports.
Kicking dead horses beyond death is not the mandate of The Guardian or their shareholders.
MOU
Downvoters erroneously think that The Guardian is governed via democracy. It is owned by elite Media Empire oligopoly and private shareholders. The people of the UK are merely duped into believing that The Guardian is somehow benevolent & above feeding you propaganda.
It isn’t.
MOU
No, this had to be removed. It contained documented and well researched facts, and as we all know, facts are anti semitic and have to be censored and removed with the help of all those splendid chaps at Newsguard, Integrity Initiative, Bellingcat and Propornot.
Facts? We don’t need no stinkin facts! We’re the Grauniad!!
“Is it “extremely offensive or threatening?” – well it certainly threatens the alternative reality nurtured by the Guardian about Corbyn’s suitability as leader. The vituperative smear campaign aimed at Julian Assange is just as bad, worse maybe, employing similar tactics such as the kind of lies, distortions, and controversial associations used to nobble Corbyn . It has become increasingly obvious that the Guardian is now little more than a cesspit of sanctomonious identity politics and right wing apologia, yet for all that there are still a few posters BTL who refuse to let them have it all their own way. All Mr White does, albeit in a focussed, forensic fashion, is to take Guardian journalists by the hand, then walk them through important facts they have studiously ignored, and which go some way to explain why the election result turned out the way it did. The irony, of course is… Read more »
The Guardian’s treachery towards Assange after co-operating with him on the leaks, particularly the filthy venomousness of the feminazi Maenads, was utterly despicable. One of them, probably that (expletive deleted) Hyde, even took the ‘faeces smearing’ lies seriously.
I’ve been told that Tory party members go around care and nursing homes to check all the occupants have registered for a postal vote and then before elections go and help them fill in their postal vote.
I commented on the day of the election, my polling station, normally empty had cars queueing around the corner this time. Each one dispatched well-heeled geriatrics who shuffled into the polling booths. I am over 60 myself but I have genuinely never seen anything like it. I never even knew there were so many well off pensioners in my ward and it was pouring with rain that day.
I made a similar observation years ago when perusing the electoral roll and noted some households had 20+ postal votes. The agent said these were care homes. Asked if we knew if they actually voted, and did they include dementia and Alzheimer’s sufferers, he said there was no way of knowing and anyway the marked register wouldn’t be available for months and we couldn’t afford to buy it.
A marvellous comment and a very clear explanation of the election result. It shows that the correct answer to the current ‘leadership’ race is “None of them.” There is one problem, however: “…In short, the deterioration of the pre-frontal cortex with age makes the elderly just as susceptible to fake news as they are to financial scams, a vulnerability which is ruthlessly exploited by the hard-right propagandists of the corporate media.” This is nonsense. The problem is not “the deterioration of the pre-frontal cortex with age.” but the susceptibility of the Cold War generation to government propaganda. In particular their reliance on radio, TV and newsprint. The problem is not physical but related to communications. This seemed so obvious to me that I have always been amazed by the failure of the Corbynites to establish a newspaper-a weekly on Sunday would do the trick- based on the membership’s support. Incidentally… Read more »
I disagree. They/we had generous pensions and if like me you are working class, we had a once in a milleniem gift of our council home for next to nothing along with a policy of no more building of social housing, this made some Londoners property millionaires. The first thing the bastards did was pull up the ladder behind them by embracing neoliberal values, they fell in love with Thatcher and Blair, Cameron, May and Johnson.
And you could swap almost the entire population of Essex with that of Texas and you wouldn’t know the difference.
…except perhaps a slight increase in intelligence?
In both regions?
Maybe the key is ” this made some Londoners property millionaires”. As to that you are undoubtedly right but, unless I missed something, the collapse in PLP support came not in London and environs so much as in the north where properties are not, I gather, as bankable as in the south.
In either case the deterioration of the whatever cortex is irrelevant.
On the whole I think the banned comment itself is so valuable, as a provocation to discussion and as a source of information, that OG should detach it, get the author to put a byline on it and welcome a new and regular contributor to the site.
So, what is your explanation for the plain age distribution of voting intentions, with the young voting for hope and an end to neo-liberal savagery, and the senile voting for austerity, the end of the NHS, class hatred and another 200,000 or more deaths from austerity’s malign effects?
Thank you for asking, it makes one think to have to articulate the logic behind one’s opinions. Two quick points. First, a minor thing but not insignificant: “the good die young.” And so do the working class. Most of those who in the early 1980s bought their council houses are long dead. Income is a big determinant in longevity- a disproportionate number of the over 70 cohort never did consider voting Labour. After fifty years of neo-liberal policies designed to lower living standards and elevate levels of insecurity and stress the disproportionately low proportion of the radicals who survived to live three score and ten includes many who have lost their independence and morale. The second point has to do with the heritage media the MSM. Again this is disproportionately important for the elderly most of whom find the internet and its possibilities difficult to navigate or understand. They tend… Read more »
Corbyn – as a human being who refused to sell out even though compromised by his party and certain internationally active lobbies, is damaging to the reality control until ‘reality’ (sic) is restored. This shows up an MSM sock puppet for the controllers and reveals the bought, bound and gagged nature of the political class. The MSM are ‘mouths’ of compliance and so they all become an echo chamber of ‘virtue signalling’ to their controllers in willingness to pre-emptively strike out anything incorrect – even if there is no crime or breach of plausibly assertable rules. This kind of ‘control’ is by fear and deceit – or ‘incentivised’ mafia under technocratic ‘globalised’ stratagems – rolled out inexorably as idea, then guidance, then regulatory inclusion, then mandate of law or regulatory requirement. Its a state of paralysis – and a fundamental driver of its operation is the abandonment of humanity for… Read more »
I think it was/is Binra who coined the word/verb de-nature. I think the original sentence was: Their aim is to de-nature us; I feel this happening to us everyday!. A truly one word that speaks volume. ‘de-naturing’ -somehow- should be made a crime.
“a hidden enslavement under the belief you are operating freely”. Indeed, we hear this often nowadays:
I can talk without words / I can eat without food / I can think wihout having any idea / I can laugh or cry without a sound / I can dance without music (and without floor?) / I can see nothing / I. Am. Firecely. Independent
I’m sure ‘denatured’ not uncommon currency. The denaturing of the true of you is your engagement with a loveless world. You have survived and adapted a particular way of seeing your world. Lawlessness is already criminal. Because you do not see justice in your own terms and timing doesn’t mean there isn’t a consequence. There is always consequence – but the world of ‘sin’ is the belief that your illusions prevail over others and Life and that you have gotten power from their powerlessness. Until of course the roles reverse. To be forcefully clear is not a bad thing in regard to meeting disintegrity in others who need to understand that your ‘No’ means ‘No!’. But when you say ‘should be made a crime’ you are effecting the mindset that so readily gives up its freedom to an external power by which to make the world fit our demand or… Read more »
Of course empowering the individual is very much welcome and appreciated, but let’s not go into balme-the-victim mode while letting the criminal perpetrators off the hook.
Corbyn did sell out by surrendering, totally and immediately, to the filthy campaign of lies that was mobilised by the Jewish elite,, the Tory MSM and sundry other scum. He could have gathered his supporters in the Jewish community to attest to his unsullied record, declared himself opposed to ALL racist and other group hatreds, defended Livingstone for simply garbling the truth, Wadsworth for doing NOTHING and Williamson for telling the truth, declared a position that all human beings, including Jews and Palestinians were of equal human value (the Zionists would HATE that)and told them all to go to Hell. Instead he ensured five more years of austerity Hell, the end of the NHS, the return of the Blairite vermin, and, inevitably, mounting hatred for Jews among those whose years of effort and hope were dashed by an unprecedentedly vicious hate campaign. One that is already being emulated, as false… Read more »
You have a rabidly hateful way of asserting your views richard le sarc. I felt Corby became compromised by trying to keep a Party together that was split with many of his own MPs set against him. The means by which this was done indeed included penalty for criticising Israel’s policies and refusing to bend the knee. Your view of this is clearly one of his immediate grovelling confession and recant. I have seen others do this but I haven’t seen Jeremy do this. He was in an impossible position. I read of a number of Jewish Corbyn supporters. It isn’t about Jewishness, but about power to set what can and cant be said – or else there is penalty – and by aligning in its power (left and right) there is favour. “Hatred being the essence of their natural habitat”. Do you regard being ‘right’ as an exceptional state… Read more »
Yes, Binra, I do harbour some very hateful feelings. I hate lies in the service of vicious, misanthropic, power. I hate cowardice in the face of that power. I hate the Rightists who, since time immemorial, have persecuted and terrorised the rest of humanity. I hate the fact that the very worst of the Jews have acted so damnedly and thus brought hatred and resentment down on all their fellows, at least in some minds. I most assuredly hate how hateful thugs run this world, and are driving us to a catastrophe from which there will be no return. You might even say that hatred possesses my soul, but to not be driven to hatred by Evil seems to me to be an even worse state of being. So there-you are correct.
(Written earlier today but failed to send) This is the first response – of many – I have from you that holds a sense of communication. Thank you for sharing. Harbouring is nurturing and protecting. I don’t have issue with the broad points of critical information that you package – but I don’t share or support the framing. Grievance begets attack begets grievance begets attack begets grievance begets attack begets … and all the while ‘possessing ‘ the mind. The idea of aligning in wholeness of heart and mind is inconceivable to the need for Enemy. And I capitalised it because you (but not only you) CAPITALISE for leverage or Significance and hence priority in your mind. Bush reiterated the binary mind when he laid down the threat; “Either you are with us in the War on Terror or you are against us” – by implication harbouring and supporting terrorism.… Read more »
There is nothing wrong in hating evil, arrogance, lies and hypocrisy. Quite commendable in my view.
Are you talking about the ideas and beliefs that result in evils or are you talking about hating the living ones who may be deceived – or indeed reacting against your hate if they don’t support your narrative identity? You are writing so vaguely in your seeming truisms as to be saying anything anyone wants to read into it. Self-specialness doesn’t believe it is arrogant but right – and justifies or overlooks its ‘lesser evils’ by contrasting itself with a ‘greater evil’. So it may be that you can easily virtue signal yourself to sleep, by commending the acts of those hating ‘evil’ or by outwardly conforming to such behaviour so to feel you are ‘on the right side’. And it is this sort of mindset that allows deceit to operate in the open – unseen – by nature of ‘flagging it’ to symptoms or diversionary cover stories or distractions.… Read more »
redrafted opening
Are you talking about the ideas and beliefs that if acted from as if true result in evils? Or are you talking about hating other living ones who may be deceived, and also reacting against your hating them as an attack on their narrative identity?
I spent years hopefully awaiting an awakening of consciousness among the Evil imbeciles in my country and abroad, and they have just grown ever worse. I don’t think that Evil imbecility is necessarily innate in people, but it is vigorously inculcated by an Evil system, and vicious social arrangements. Every step towards a more humane society, say queer matrimony, has been opposed by undying hatred, from bigots who imagine that God, a Judaic God in fact from Leviticus or some other ancient hate-crazed tract, tells them to hate their fellows for being gay. So, yes, unfortunately, I do hate many people, because I believe they are Evil, omnicidal and insatiably greedy, or, at the very least behave that way for some reason or other. I await their spiritual enlightenment with NO optimism whatsoever.
One of the characteristic signatures of a split mind is that of excepting oneself from our own thought system. So I started out reading you had some vision for awakened life and then found you were only expecting or waiting for everyone ELSE! By self exclusion you no longer recognise a common Good and find all the ways to feel deprived and denied your Good. Any thought system that is loveless will become some sort of structure of stricture in which to die in whatever way is your style. A system – any system – is only as good or workable as the quality of the presence that embodies through it. The replacement of relational trust, honesty and frankly the ability to dance through the chaos of life – is a current human development of inhuman or robotic replacement of everything living by state control – humane or otherwise. The… Read more »
Blah, b;ah, b;ah-paid by the word and the cliche’, are you?
There’s a troll on your shoulder – using self Hate to take over your mind. It has all the power you give it by all of the Grievance and Attack your cherish. And it turns your world and fellow man to Shit.
I Live the posts I write. They are written in freedom to the free alighting in of any who find resonance. They are not teaching hate, attack, and identity in grievance. But are illumination of an alternative source of shared identity.
The attack on Life is blind hate.
It ‘sees’ itself in everything, and attacks itself in everything its sees. It’s wages are death.
Very illuminating – thanks
The Groaniad is just performing it’s Statist function as an Integrity Iniative / 77th Brigade puppet that is maintaining the Deep State Narrative. The deletion of such comments is aimed at the web based users obviously – who still revere the reputation of the old anti-Thatcherite , non-Murdoch or Mail sinecure it provided for decades as it allowed a focal point for protest while allowing the neo-lib privatisations and neo-con wars and ‘rightward’ movement of the Overton Window and their readers to Blairism. Any challenge to that narrative is struck down without reason. The identification of the distorted voting statistics of the elderly by the commentator is the main reason that comment is incendiary- it very clearly points to voter fraud – when 40% of voting was by POST in this election and ‘only’ 18% in 2017- it does not take a rocket scientist to know that something very nasty… Read more »
Short and sweet… Screw the pond dwelling corporate media, and screw the identity politics zombies at The Guardian.
As numerous commenters here, and other independent sites keep saying:
It’s all brainrot propaganda. Just boycott the MSM.
And for gods sakes, don’t actually give them any money. They deserve our full contempt, not money.
Treat them like you’d treat a troll.
The idea that Corbyn was and is popular is a frightening concept for the mainstream media, for it casts doubt on the election result itself, as well as the efficacy of the long-running smear campaign they have been conducting for Tory donors and ‘deep state” backers. I haven’t read the Guardian since their awful election coverage but I do remember being slapped down very quickly by one of their trolls when I commented, quite innocuously, I thought at the time, there on the huge numbers at one of Corbyn’s election rallies in the North – “That”s a safe seat – it’s not surprising”, I was told. There seems to be enormous sensitivity about Corbyn’s popularity that goes beyond Brexit and to me raises suspicions that the ‘deep state’ are trying to justify a stolen election.
Yes. I have little doubt the election was rigged through the postal vote.
I haven’t read the Guardian since they made it impossible for me to do so without signing up to them – which I have no intention of doing. It could be the best thing they ever did. Like a disease that cancels itself out.
It wasn’t just the shift to having a second Referundum that did for Labour but the decision to support a GE before Brexit which had been already predicted to be a disaster waiting to happen. It seems it was the LD decision to opt for the GE that found Labour going with it? A vote this Spring, once Brexit is done might have turned up a different result – as was again predicted. (As somebody well into their 70’s I trust my comment won’t be censored on the grounds of cognitive degeneration?). Corbyn was by far the most exciting Labour Leader of my life time. What he had to say won’t just disappear – on the contrary.
He may have been the ONLY Labour leader of your lifetime!
??
…as opposed to Red Tories like Blair etc
It’s not quite so easy as dismissing every Labour leader. Sure nobody is perfect but Lansbury trued, decades before his time; Bevan fought hard and honestly; Harold Wilson was subject to a degree of vilification that Corbyn would recognise. He was ‘of course’ a Soviet Agent and many people believed it. The surveillance and burglaries by MI5 when he was PM in 1974-6 drove the guy half crazy. He refused to kowtow to President Johnson and join the Vietnam War despite intense pressure: will PM Johnstone be as strong? So Wilson was a quirky egghead and was as much a target of the ‘Left’ and the fake opposition from media like Private Eye who right from the start called him Wislon for ‘whistle on while the left protests’. Very much in the Corbyn mode the media made endless fun of his supposed liking for Brown Sauce (a class ‘slur’ his… Read more »
I thought we were discussing Labour leaders of YOUR lifetime. Lansbury? Bevan? Harold Wilson? How old are you?
I was born just after WW2. First canvassed in the 1959 Election so recall ‘SuperMac’ a slick PR job if ever there was one, turning an Aristocratic into a modern dynamo! I was first able to vote in 1970 as you had to be 21. From a high point of tension in 1968 things generated into the incompetence of Heath and the outbreak of Civil War in Northern Ireland that lasted 30 years! In every election I voted Labour except 2019 as it happens because of a strong dislike of the Labour candidate who had only escaped de-selection by the calling of the election. He was going to win whatever happened, he is one of the arrogant sort sitting on a guaranteed majority. (He won). To change Britain requires a pretty radical sort out, nonsense like that would have to go.
Sorry, I wasn’t saying I remembered the 1924 election. But my Granny did!! A favourite story of hers was that when the a First Labour Government met at Downing Street in 1923 the servants removed all the easily portable silver ware for safe keeping. As an avid Mail reader she thought that very sensible.
I agree, and possibly Wilson was the last socialist Prime Minister we had, and perhaps will ever have. Some might query whether he was truly a socialist or not, but, granted that he had to make pragmatic adjustments, I think he tried to remain true to his ideals. I suspect he never quite got over losing to Ted Heath in 1970. The polls were predicting a Labour win, but were wrong in that case. By the time he got back into power in 1974, with a minority government, he had the inflation stoked up by “The Barber Boom” to deal with, as well as many other problems. As history recounts, he only remained in government for another two years, before resigning, for probably a variety of reasons. Apart from the campaign against him by the spooks (cf. “The Pencourt File”), he apparently told friends that he was “bored” with being… Read more »
Thatcher (in)famously said that her greatest achievement was Tony Blair i.e. her greatest achievement was ensuring that the Labour Party became the Tory Party. Thus there have been effectively no actual Labour leaders since Blair – until we get to Corbyn. Corbyn was the first non-Tory Labour leader in four decades. Thus I am saying that, if you were born after 1979, you have never seen a Labour leader until we get to Corbyn. Take a good look. You’ll never see another one.
Twitter does the same thing. You know the quote free speech wing of the free speech party unquote. Big G used to be a relatively decent rag at one time like WaPo until they stopped doing journalism and became the courtesan scribes of the Deep State. Now all they do is post “press releases” for the quote Intelligence unquote Community. The Guardian more so since it actually ruined the nice little fairy tale and bedtime story that the 9/11 Commission was going to write and also release in graphic novel AKA Comic Book format by pointing out that many of the hijackers that supposedly “died” weren’t dead yet. It was like that Mounty Python skit in reverse. Then they compounded the “Felony” by publishing many of Ed Snowden’s revelations about PRISM. True it was a limited hangout but it did reveal the fact that the Friendly Five Eyes was running… Read more »
I stopped commenting on that despicable rag many years ago. In 2014 the fascistic IDF virtually continued its devastating inhumane militaristic onslaught against the Palestinians in Gaza . If one recalls this is when the takfiri group known as Daesh or Israeli Secret Intelligence Service (Isis) was getting all the western legacy media headlines with their beheadings of Syrian Arab Republican soldiers and the occasional western hostage. I made a comment on stating the obvious like Gaza being the largest open air prison on the face of this planet and it was deemed that it did not abide by their ORWELLIAN DYSTOPIAN COMMUNITY STANDARDS.
Post Scriptum: The legacy media mainstream and the likes are slowly dying just like pax-americana and Dollar hegemony one day at a time.
Docius in Fondem: You still think we defeated fascism in ww2???????????
Maybe the word ‘moderates’ is now considered a dog whistle?
(Next will be the word ‘Labour’…..)
It really is time that some Body took the Guardian to court under the trade descriptions act …
Except The Guardian is clearly the guardian of the establishment. How is that a breach of the trade descriptions act?
The comment is excellent and was probably deleted under the all-covering “flame-wars based on ingrained partisanship or generalisations”. In so much as it might have started partisan arguments (see the cringeworthy comment directly underneath), or possibly because it didn’t contain links to claims made.
However, the comment raises, for me, an interesting point. I think that if you give people facts in plain language, using as few words as possible, they are well able to comprehend and make judgements. Whereas politicians only use stock phrases and buzzwords in election campaigns.For instance,
Making comparisons such as this would have removed some weapons from the MSMs toolbox, and it would have looked good on a billboard.
It appears that journalists are not trained or inclined to give comparative information, even if it was prepared, typed and distributed by an independent review body. They might lose their divine right to unfairly influence people.
I’d say it was the bit at the end about senile dementia that did it. The moderators must’ve been relieved to see it, as otherwise they would’ve had no pretext for censoring such an excellent comment.
When has lack of pretext ever stopped them from disappearing comments they don’t like?
And here is the new shape of the Labout Party:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/01/15/boar-j15.html
Corbyn has been soundly thrashed, dealt with, trampled into the dust, never to rise again. And the Zionist/Blairite faction have now worked to ensure a watertight cage that will never permit anything even vaguely threatening to the neoliberal order.
Oh dear God!
Yes it’s infinitely depressing – but also infinitely predictable. One thing you can always rely on is the shameless – and indeed downright BORING – cliched manoeuvres of the cancerous ruling faction. It all makes sense, once again in an infinitely depressing and boring way, because the reasoning goes like this: the vast majority of the British public haven’t a fucking clue about politics or economics. But they do know, because we endlessly tell them, about that funny little guy with the moustache and the ovens – so we’ll just keep dragging him out. Consequently we can expect the “anti-Semitic” card to be continually played whenever any vaguely leftward movement threatens to gather momentum.
And to project a little further, as various protest movements inevitably rise, claims of a spreading anti-Semitism will be hurled at them, the house pet intellectuals of the ruling order will be wheeled out to fret over the rise of a new Nazism and the threat of another Holocaust etc. At which point it probably will gall them that one of their most faithful lapdogs Sir Roger Scruton has kicked the bucket. (This covert advertiser for the fag industry died of cancer – so at least there’s still room for a little ironic chuckle.)
Another holocaust?
‘Holocaust’ (true Sabbat Goyim like Phillip Adams drop the definite article for added servility)never ended and will never end. Of all the tragedies of human history, when the brainwashing apparatus wants a ‘human interest’ story about suffering, they invariably reach for the ‘Holocaust’. Children of the ‘Holocaust’, grandchildren, sufferers from the epigenetic effects of the traumas inflicted on their forebears, ‘New’ ‘Holocausts’ always of ‘worthy victims’ like the entirely fictitious ‘concentration camps in Xinjiang’ or the poor long suffering takfiri butchers in Idlib, or the Darfur propaganda sewer run out of the US ‘Holocaust’ Museum. And other victims, like the Roma, Sinti, Jehovahs Witnesses, Soviet civilians and POWs, those still victimised like native populations in Australia, the USA, Canada etc, are basically ignored, if not abused, and their suffering is certainly not universalised or turned into a quasi-religion.
have you watched the holocaust by David Cole ? himself a jew , very interesting, how many Russians died in the last war 27,000,000? even the International Red Cross has got the figures down to 1.2 million people have thought to have perished at this site ( auschwitz ) they’ve altered it over the years about four times
The four to six million Jews deliberately exterminated by the Nazis and their fascistic allies, is a great human tragedy. So too the four million plus Poles slaughtered, the similar number of Southern Slavs, and the twenty-seven million Soviets and thirty million Chinese. Not to forget the four to six million Bengalis during the Churchill inflicted Great Famine in Bengal during WW2. Yet ONLY the murder of Jews counts. It is UNIQUE, true in itself, but asserted to be unlike any other such atrocity in history, for various spurious reasons proposed over the decades. The absolute centrality, the total dominance in the West, to the extent of excluding all other such Holocausts from memory, of the Nazi Judeocide, tells you powerfully just who controls the politics and brainwashing apparatuses of the West. And, believe me, to point out this disproportionality, immediately brings irrefutable denunciation as a ‘Holocaust denier’.
Well I’m afraid I might just join that group, there is another clip on youtube with a Jewess stating clearly the holocaust is something they use to gain sympathy etc, and to see what they are now demanding from the Labour leadership hopefully, and they are all signed up to it , is an absolut disgrace : The five candidates who have made it to the second round of the contest to replace Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Party leader have all signed the Board of Deputies of British Jews (BoD) “10 Pledges to end the anti-Semitism crisis.” The most enthusiastic signatory to a document which means a stepped up witch-hunt of anti-Zionist party members, putting right-wing scoundrels Sir Keir Starmer, Emily Thornberry, Lisa Nandy and Jess Phillips to shame, is Rebecca Long-Bailey, the supposed “continuity” candidate favoured by the Corbyn “left.” In an unprecedented intervention by an unelected and unrepresentative… Read more »
Yes, it’s a trick, but for Gawd’s sake don’t call anyone a ‘Jewess’. It just feeds their hatred, and does not impress neutral observers.
Oh, OK I’ll retract it, but I didn’t think it was derogatory, it wasn’t meant to be, but I’ll be guided by you.
Even Bernie Sanders has been accused of ‘antisemitism’. Here, our Pentecostal thug Fuhrer, ‘Smoko’ Morrison, declared that the referral of two Liberal MPs to the Electoral Commission for corrupt practises during the 2019 election, was ‘antisemitic’ in the case of Frydenberg, the Treasurer, but said NOTHING about the referral of Liu, a Chinese Australian. Just a test run, with more to follow, as night does the day.
Here are the thoughts of Jewish Voice for Labour, soon to be a proscribed terror group if the BODs and JLM get their way.
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/leadership-contenders-cave-in-to-the-board-of-deputies/
The Jewish Board of Deputies is the new, supreme, Third Chamber of UK politics. As it should be and ever will be.
Imagine the BOD being given access to information about members when they might we’ll be infiltrated themselves by this lot of hateful fanatics.
https://www.redressonline.com/2019/11/uks-zionist-terror-networks-gnasherjew-labour-against-anti-semitism-sussex-friends-of-israel-and-their-latest-terror-tool-labour-anti-semitism-map/
Well, that’s my lot with the Labour party, finished.
People need to just dump Labour like they have the Guardian. No matter what they once were, or what other people would have you believe they were, or could have been, or should have been, they are both now a waste of space, a dead end, a lost cause, and a waste of time, effort and energy. Let Phillips take it over and ride her identity politics hobby horse to her heart’s content. It just doesn’t matter.
Yes, at the cost of their own relevance and survival. I remember when Labour had millions of members if you include affiliated ones. Most of its current half million will promptly disappear when Phillips or some other Blairite clone dive down their identity politics rabbit hole. The Tories once had a membership of 2.8 million, not 100,000 OAPs with an average age of about 95.
The deleted post is a brilliant one that explodes the farrago of lazy generalisations, half truths, lies and lying-by-omission that characterises ‘mainstream’ media coverage of the UK Labour Party, in Australia as well as the UK. That’s why it couldn’t be allowed to remain in the Guardian or (probably) elsewhere on the MSM.
A few days after the GE, the ABC’s Corbyn-hating national radio channel handed a microphone to one of its favourites, former Blair employee John McTernan. McTernan claimed that Corbyn had chosen all the parliamentary candidates and ranted that Corbyn was responsible for Labour’s election loss. When the (up until then) friendly interviewer mentioned Brexit, McTernan suddenly became coy. Didn’t want to discuss whether the U-turn on Brexit had anything to do with the loss. No wonder. The ‘second referendum’ would have delayed Brexit, maybe stopped it entirely – a key Blair objective.
The Labour party often describes itself a being a ‘broad church’ which presumably means it caters to all sorts of political factions. But this pantomime horse is never going to work. In the main it is led by people who have absolutely no truck with socialism or any other mildly progressive political ideas and policies. The PLP is Blairite to its core. It is also home to the ‘Labour Friends of Israel’ a right-wing Zionist front organization, adept at spreading anti-semitic smears, as we saw during the election which was pursuing an agenda of another state totally hostile to Labour’s progressive wing. Anyone who is anyone in the PLP is a member, including Gordon Brown, who was instrumental in pushing Labour to accept the IHRA definition of anti-semitism. Given the dual control of the Conservative Friends of Israel it seems legitimate to conclude that the political class in the UK… Read more »
And Brown is also responsible for decimating my pension pot and leaving me much poorer now. This was unforgivable IMO and I am still fuming 25 years later
Don’t worry, A, Mark Carney and little Greta will be taking what’s left of your pension to fund all their green boondoggles.
Fossil fuel shares, or stipends, are much better, eh Paul? Invest in fire-bombing aircraft, I say, and burns units.
I like the description of Labour being a pantomime horse. Very apt and descriptive. I have been saying for many years now that the Labour Party cannot be all things to all people and is too broad a church. This started because the PLP would not accept the Leader the membership elected. I suggested an amicable divorce so that ‘the right’s and I hate that term since in no way are they a traditional element of the Labour Party. They are in fact a party within a party could start their own party of ‘moderation ‘ and test the popularity of such moderation. Then the rest of us that joined or rejoined the Labour Party could support Jeremy Corbyn the NEC and party programme and be proved wrong. Actually as the writer comments those that styled themselves as moderates all lost their seats. The most pro EU party the Liberal… Read more »
The Liberal Democrats stood on an authoritarian platform. They and some Labour MPs held the electorate in total contempt. The very idea of ignoring the referendum result and cancelling article 50 is a perfect illustration of how “liberal values” have been totally corrupted….Scratch a Liberal and there’s an authoritarian underneath. Exactly the same as the Labour Trots who all became neocons.
F – Brown’s gold sales are often taken as evidence of his incompetence, but this is wrong. In 1999/ 2000 he sold off 400 of Britain’s 750 tons at the bottom of the market, around $250/ ounce. People have understandably drawn this wrong conclusion after calculating how many billions more it would have realised at $1,900 in 2011, or even its current $1,500. But this was all done quite deliberately to depress the gold price. Similar dumping took place in 2001, when 1,300 of Switzerland’s 2,500 tons was sold at the bottom of the market to depress the price further. All markets are rigged (in the interests of the 0.01%) – gold, oil, commodities, equities, bonds, forex, interest rates. There is no such thing as genuine price discovery in free markets. Before Roosevelt confiscated privately held gold in the 1930s, gold was $20.86c an ounce. It is now 75x that… Read more »
The political class in ALL Western States is controlled by the Zionists, through straight monetary corruption. It is getting hard to hide, but they will do it, and the dullards will dare not notice.
It was a stupid policy, and mostly symbolic, IMO. The independence is fairly nominal.
But I don’t think it was that which led to austerity. After all, since the GFC of 2007-2008, interest rates have hovered around zero, or not much above zero.
What caused austerity was too tight fiscal policy, i.e. cuts in government spending.
Gordon Brown’s real crimes were “light touch regulation” of the financial sector, and a mythical believe that the financial “industry” would replace proper industry as a source of employment and (real) wealth.
The voting patterns of the senile delinquents illustrate the ongoing neurological deterioration of age, and the nassty habit that many older people display of voting to harm the young, who have the audacity to being about to live on, when the greedy, demented, old are dead and buried. The vote should be removed at sixty, and extended down to fourteen.
I am 75 and not too long for this world although my doc says I could live another 20 years if my prostate holds out.
I argued at the time that there should be an age limit for issues which have long term impacts and clearly affect the younger generations who have a more contemporary vision of their future. I would be happy to see a limit, especially for a referendum which will have implications over a very long term.
You often post something worth reading, richard, but this time you have left the real world.
I’m over sixty and don’t conform to your stereotyping. My politics have got more progressive/left as time has gone on. Same goes for others I know.
Seeking to turn the old and the young against each other, or straights versus gays, whites versus blacks, etc., is a classic ruling class, divide and rule tactic. Surely you realise that?
I also am over 60 but as I commented here on election Day, at my ward polling station I’d never seen so many well-heeled geriatrics dispatched from cars that queued around the corner waiting in turn. The care-homes must have emptied that day, I’m honestly not overstating what happened. It was a once in a lifetime experience….and it was raining.
Goes for me too. I’m 70. Much more left wing now than I was in my 20s.
Just sad that what calls itself the Left has very often fallen for neoliberal values of one sort or another.
Capri, I know its Divide and Rule, but that is PRECISELY what ‘democracy’ under capitalism amounts to. I stand by my observations garnered from years of watching people descend into malicious misanthropy as they near the grave, and from numerous studies of voting patterns. If we cut off the vote at sixty (a ludicrous proposition, but one intended to illustrate my point) you’d lose a few decent old people like yourself, and hordes of nasty old geezers, many in varying states of neurological and spiritual decay. As someone has already observed, ‘Only the good die young’.
Whoah, somebody got out of the wrong side of the bed and landed on their head, early this morning. Or were you partying all night long and haven’t slept yet, after 2 bottles of Vodka ?
Fortunately for you, by your scheme of ‘things’ & societal vision, I’m still just young enough to vote against those who choose to shoot themselves in the foot and expect others to finance their subsequent medical care & time off >>> time out!
Or were you just being sarcastic ?
Tom Lehrer observed that satire was dead when Kissinger got the Peace Prize, and so too is sarcasm now irrelevant. You can never be too thin, rich or cynical. As someone observed of a Nazi rally, I could not eat enough to vomit as much as I feel inclined to do at this moment (it sounds better in German). Irony is also on life-support.
Also gut, sag es I’m Deutsch, bitte … coz’ you still shot shot yourself in the foot, imho,
und ‘isch mir’ Scheiss egal welche Sprache du verwendest: im Fall, ich arbeite am liebsten im Deutsch, so spit it out and make me puke even more . . .
How unkind and ‘ablist’! How did you know that I’m a double amputee?
The posted comment violated the unwritten Guardian guideline that states truth must not be spoken about politicians the Guardian likes.
It tells the truth- that’s why it was removed.
I joined the Labour Party in 2015 when Corbyn won- (Always a Labour voter, never a member).
I left last year when Corbyn was painted into a corner by the Blairites to have another peoples’ vote.
I and many knew Labour would be trounced in the election, and that’s what the ‘centrists’ wanted.
An interesting point made on RT, was centrists do not want to change anything, rightists and leftists do. Whatever side you are on, at least people can see changes, good or bad.
As in USA now, it’s effectively a one-party state, and Max Keiser makes a great point, that Russia and the USA are like ships passing in the night, USA sailing towards Sovietism, Russia sailing towards capitalism, for better or worse!
OffG, keep up the great work.
That is the truth of the blind Left; it is also why Labour lost.
The Guardian used to be part of that “elite” club, but they maintained their Stalinist censoring style and technique after their financial and moral take over by Establishment, the real Right wing. Stalinists and the House of Saud have a lot in common.
Do yourself a favour-sublimate. The Guardian sewer is run by Zionists, not the Sauds. But keep telling them Big Lies. It suits you.
Democracy under neo-liberal capitalism is a sordid farce and outright lie. We await our fate, which is waiting in the ante-chamber.