The Big Lie: the conspiracies that infect the left

The organisers of the Glastonbury festival join a lengthening list of conspirators, including the CIA, World Bank, Bilderberg Group, MI5, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Parliamentary Labour Party, and Paul Mason, in preventing the British people from hearing the TRUTH.

The ‘truth’ is that Jeremy Corbyn was blocked from becoming Prime Minister by a shadowy nexus of Jews who somehow manipulated the votes of millions of people. The full story is told in a video the Corbynites have made * bless * which makes it clear that it was the Jews wot done it, and not only that, but also Sir Keir Starmer is an agent of the security services, planted by the Deep State to subvert Jeremy Corbyn, and not really a lawyer from Surrey as he claims.

By preventing the film being shown on the fringes of the Glastonbury festival, the organisers have done nothing especially noble. The Eavises should no more be screening Oh Jeremy Corbyn: the Big Lie than the collected works of David Icke or Alex Jones. The film is a piece of filth, promoted by antisemites, peddling the Big Lie that Corbyn was subverted by an orchestrated campaign, not the votes of millions of people who disliked and distrusted him, his values, and his politics. The not-very-subtle blaming of the Jews for Corbyn’s defeat is ably exposed in Paul Mason’s review.  

The Glastonbury ban won’t stop them, of course. If anything, it adds weight to their conspiracy theory. Never trusted those establishment stooges the Eavises anyway. The Corbynites, including Laura Alvarez, are organising a campaign to unseat Agent Starmer in Holborn & St Pancras. The Organise Corbyn Inspired Socialist Alliance (OCISA) is standing a candidate against Labour, who will no doubt do as well as previous Corbynite candidates such as Chris Williamson who stood in Derby and secured 635 votes, lost his deposit, and came last.  

But the big one is Corbyn’s bid to stand as the new leader of the Corbyn Party in Islington North. I hear local Labour party members are getting calls from ‘opinion pollsters’ asking if they would support Corbyn if he stood against the Labour candidate. Perhaps the lucky folk of Islington North will once again get the chance to vote for the least-talented and least-interesting member of the Socialist Campaign Group? The man who once made the tea for Tony Benn? The man whose accomplishments as an MP for 40 years are so legion – books written, great speeches, front-bench roles, laws introduced, social change – that you can’t name any.

Frankly who cares? As Tony Benn was always reminding us, it is issues that matter, not personalities. What matters is not the cult of personality being promoted around Jeremy Corbyn by his superfans, or the size of butterfly net that might be needed to deal with some of them.

The issue is the presence of antisemitic conspiracy theory inside the Labour Party. Given the vast resources of the Zionist plotters, you’d think they’d do a better job of eradicating antisemitism. Instead, the lazy, casual left-wing antisemitism so ably demolished by David Rich in Everyday Hate, and David Baddiel in his bestselling Jews Don’t Count and a host of other writers and academics, can be still heard inside Labour Party gatherings and online.

As the Guardian columnist John Harris writes ‘a section of the enduring cult focussed on Jeremy Corbyn claims that his defeat was not the result of millions of former Labour voters walking away, but a conspiracy authored by the ‘Israel Lobby’ – the kind of antisemitic cliché that finds an echo at the other end of the political spectrum’. Harris places this strand of Corbynite racism within a broader context of ‘wild cultures of prejudice and paranoia’ which threaten democratic norms and assumptions.

These are the folks who think 9/11 was an inside job, 5G phone masts must be destroyed, vaccines contain microchips, and people like Piers Corbyn who believe climate change, and Covid-19, are a hoax. In July 2021, Piers Corbyn – quelle surprise – spoke at a demo outside Labour Party HQ supporting those individuals expelled for their antisemitism, before comparing the pandemic lockdown with Hitler’s Germany.    

Keir Starmer has promised ‘zero tolerance’ of antisemitism and to some people’s surprise he has shown he has meant it. The failure of Jamie Driscoll, who shared a platform with Ken Loach, to be considered by the NEC as a Labour candidate for the new post of North East Mayor was met with a welter of entitlement and outrage. Personally, I would no more take to a stage to discuss movies with Ken Loach as I would with Roman Polanski or Leni Riefenstahl, and certainly without any challenge to Loach’s political views. Yet Mr Driscoll felt this was fine and dandy, and showed zero understanding, self-awareness, or contrition afterwards.  

Antisemitism is one of the morbid symptoms of the modern age – the oldest hatred tooled up with a Twitter handle and YouTube channel. Antisemitism on the left, described in the famous phrase attributed to August Babel, as ‘the socialism of fools’ is especially pernicious. It flies so plainly in the face of our values of equality and freedom. It is peddled by people who genuinely believe themselves to be virtuous, progressive, and ‘anti-racist’. But they’re not. 

If you enjoyed this Paul on Politics, why not read the previous instalment: The Tory Myth of 1000 Seats.