Tag: Dead cat strategy

A Conservative MP defends Jeremy Corbyn as he responds to Conservative’s dead cat strategy – allegations of ‘sexism’

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Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was accused of calling Prime Minister Theresa May a “stupid woman” in parliament today. 

Corbyn was seen after the alleged event on parliamentary footage muttering after he sat down following an exchange with a particularly vindictive May at the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions session during which she peevishly mocked him for not calling a vote of confidence in the government, turning the debate quite literally into utterly disrespectful pantomime.

A number of Conservative MPs demanded that Speaker of the House John Bercow  intervened but he refused, stating that he hadn’t heard Corbyn utter the alleged phrase. That resulted in Conservative MP and Leader of the House Andrea Leadsom aggressively critcising Bercow, saying the speaker had not apologised for calling her a “stupid woman” earlier in the year. 

Some of the media claimed that ‘lip speakers’ said Corbyn had said “stupid woman”. The BBC said that this was unanimously agreed among lip readers. However it isn’t:

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Corbyn stated: “I referred to those who I believe were seeking to turn a debate about the national crisis facing our country into a pantomime as ‘stupid people’,’ he said. ‘I did not use the words ‘stupid woman’ about the Prime Minister or anyone else, and am completely opposed to the use of sexist or misogynist language in absolutely any form at all.”

It’s very true that the Conservatives, taking their cue from the prime minister, turned PMQs into an utterly disrespectful, diversionary and vindictive pantomime, complete with the usual spiteful smirks, and barn yard braying that the Conservatives have normalised in the Commons . You can see the clip of the pantomime here 

Professional lip readers have been divided on what they think he said.

Desmond Swayne MP

One Conservative MP, Desmond Swayne, has actually defended Corbyn, saying that condemning what an MP might have said under their breath is entering the “realms of thought crime”.

He said: “What unnerved me was the enthusiasm with which colleagues preyed-in-aid the skills of lip-readers to work out exactly what he said.

“I sometimes whisper things under my breath: They are my private thoughts, perhaps to be shared with a close neighbour only, that’s why I whisper them rather than stating them out loud for the record.

“The notion that we should be watched by lip-readers to see what we are whispering, so that we can be hauled before the authorities (in this case Mr Speaker), is deeply worrying.

“This is dangerous territory: we are on a slippery slope to the ‘thought crime’ of which George Orwell so eloquently warned in his novel 1984. We should make it compulsory New Year reading for all MPs.”

I thought the Conservatives were actually using 1984 as a manual.

Swayne is right. No-one in the media seems worried that a man mumbling something  to himself that no-one actually heard warrants the authoritarian response of employing lip readers to police the thoughts and quiet mutterings of the leader of the opposition. The abuse and rudeness he has to confront day after day in the Commons is conveniently ignored, of course. Shame on the majority of mainstream media outlets for printing from the Tory PR crib sheet without question.

Around 200 Tory MPs clamoured to make a point of order, amid howls of outrage and shrieked demands for an apology.

It’s extraordinary that the government have become the first in the UK to be found in contempt of parliament, they have systematically avoided accountability, they have conducted Commons debates behaving disruptively, maliciously, without decorum, showing the utmost disrespect towards opposition parties and the general public. 

The Labour leader’s spokesman had said afterwards that Corbyn had said ‘stupid people’, referring generally to Conservative MPs who were not taking the issues being debated seriously. That’s an understatement, the Conservatives were behaving as they usually do, as vindictive, baying barn yard bullies.

He said he had confirmed the word spoken with the Labour leader personally, adding: “He did not call her a stupid woman and so I don’t think there’s any basis for an apology.” before adding the following insightful words: “Anyone interested in the crisis facing the country?”

It’s a dead cat

Dead cat strategy refers to the introduction of a dramatic, shocking, or sensationalist topic to divert discourse away from a more damaging topic. Not to be confused with Wag the Dog, which is a 1997 black comedy film where a spin doctor and a Hollywood producer fabricate a war to distract voters from a presidential sex scandal. It was produced and directed by Barry Levinson. Wag the Dog was released one month before the outbreak of the Lewinsky scandal and the subsequent bombing of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan by the Clinton administration in August 1998, which prompted the media to draw comparisons between the film and reality. The comparison was made again in December 1998 when the administration initiated a bombing campaign of Iraq just prior to Clinton’s impeachment over the Lewinsky scandal.

Diversionary strategies are just what the term implies: tactics used to try to derail and silence an argument rather than address it. It’s a somewhat overused strategy by the Tories, it typically involves diverting the discussion by attempting to aggressively shame an opponent or critic complete with complicit crib sheeted multiple media echoes and variations of “Shame on you”. 

Raise the issue of racism, and the Conservatives will call you racist. Highlight some example of bullying and you are ‘the real bully’. Express concern about low wages for the working majority and you are accused of waging ‘class warfare’. Black is white, up is down, and nowhere does this actually make sense.

The Conservatives have become masters of public spin campaigns to distract or neutralise legitimate debate about issues.

Tories reinstate MPs suspended over sex allegations for confidence vote: Labour calls restoration of Andrew Griffiths and Charlie Elphicke ‘betrayal of women’

 

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The Electoral Commission has opened yet another inquiry into Momentum’s election spending

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The Electoral Commission has launched another investigation into whether campaign group Momentum breached rules on spending at the last General Election.


The Commission issued a statement, which says:

“The rules governing spending at UK Parliamentary general elections by permitted participants, including non-party campaigners, are set out in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (PPERA).

The investigation will look at:

  • whether or not Momentum spent in excess of the spending limits for an unauthorised non-party campaigner in the UK Parliamentary general election;
  • whether or not Momentum submitted a return that did not include accurate donation information and/or the required declaration stating that the donation return was complete and accurate;
  • whether or not Momentum submitted a return that was not a complete statement of payments made in respect of controlled expenditure;
  • whether or not Momentum submitted a return that did not include all invoices for payments of more than £200.

It is possible that during the course of the investigation, the Commission will identify potential contraventions and/or offences under PPERA other than those set out above.

All the Commission’s investigations are conducted in accordance with our Enforcement Policy.”

Bob Posner, the Electoral Commission’s Director of Political Finance and Regulation and Legal Counsel, said:

“Momentum are a high profile active campaigning body. Questions over their compliance with the campaign finance rules at June’s general election risks causing harm to voters’ confidence in elections. There is significant public interest in us investigating Momentum to establish the facts in this matter and whether there have been any offences.

“Once complete, the Commission will decide whether any breaches have occurred and, if so, what further action may be appropriate, in line with its enforcement policy.”

Rules for non-party campaigners

Rules have been in place since 2000 for all campaigners that spend money on regulated campaigning activities. These rules include campaigners and campaigning organisations which are not political parties but whose activities can be reasonably regarded as intending to influence voters in the run-up to an election.

The law enables non-party campaigners which wish to undertake ‘targeted spending’ – intended to influence people to vote for one particular registered political party or any of its candidates – to do so within prescribed spending limits. These are £31,980 in England; £3,540 in Scotland; £2,400 in Wales; and £1,080 in Northern Ireland. These limits apply during the regulated period which is 9 June 2016 to 8 June 2017.

Registered non-party campaigners are only entitled to spend above these limits if they have the authorisation of the political party that they are promoting. If that party provides authorisation, the registered non-party campaigner can spend up to the limit authorised by the political party. It is an offence to spend above the statutory limits without the party’s authorisation. Should the party provide authorisation for a higher spending limit, any spending by that non-party campaigner up to that limit would count towards the party’s national spending limit.

A spokesperson for Momentum said: “Momentum put a lot of effort and resources into detailed budgeting and financial procedures during the election to ensure full compliance.

“Our election campaign was delivered on a low budget because it tapped into the energy and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of volunteers across the country.

“Much of the Electoral Commission investigation refers to administrative errors that can be easily rectified. We have a good working relationship with the Electoral Commission, and will fully comply with the investigation going forward.”

Momentum have been under almost continuous investigation since 2015, following various complaints ranging from data mining to sending unsolicited emails. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), however, found no evidence to substantiate what was a handful of complaints. A disclosure from the ICO states: 

The ICO made enquiríes around Momentum using personal data to contact Labour part members following a small number of complaints December 2O15.

We did not find any breach of the Data Protection Act. 

Consequently there is no strong evidence in this case to indicate that Momentum has breached the DPA. We do not, therefore, intend to look further into this concern unless you can provide some evidence to indicate that Momentum did in fact obtain your personal data from the Labour Party. 

We are aware of media reports about this matter but the ICO works on the basis of evidence and to date we have not been provided with any such evidence. I should also explain that we do not have any wider concerns about Momentum’s information rights practice at this point. Therefore we have not raised your concern with Momentum on this occasion and are not taking any further action in relation to your concern.

However, your concern will be kept on file and this will help us over time to build a picture of Momentum’s information rights practices.

Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention.
Yours sincerely
Joy Corne
Lead Case Officer
Information Commissioner’s Office.

Following the General Election in July, the Electoral Commission highlighted “troubling” reports that a number of people (students) had voted twice in the election, saying evidence had emerged of people admitting to the offence online. 

An election analyst had cast doubt over claims that some Conservatives could have lost their seats in the General Election due to double-voting by students. 

More than 1,000 emails were sent to the watchdog by members of the public over the issue, while 38 Conservative MPs also complained about the alleged crimes. Of course the Commission found no evidence of double-voting.

It’s as if the Conservatives deliberately refuse to understand that some people don’t want to vote for them, especially groups that have been targeted for draconian Conservative policies. The Tories have not been kind to young people.

The Conservatives also have longstanding form in smearing and discrediting their opponents in the most outrageous manner. Disabled people can testify to that. As can jeremy Corbyn. Just a glance at the right-wing press tells you all you need to know about Conservative rumour-mongering, lies and utterly psychopathic ruthlessness.

Here is the outcome of a previous ECO inquiry:


Most media outlets have reported this second inquiry. The timing certainly draws a little fire away from the current catastrophic punch-drunk and incoherent stumblings of the Government. I predict that once the media have finished beating their drums, the matter will simply vanish from the public news radar, finally coming to rest in that graveyard where all dead cat strategies end up bouncing to. 

It’s in a tiny village in a City called ‘distraction’, a called ‘no evidence’ , where people speak the language misdirection.

Related

More allegations of Tory election fraud, now we need to talk about democracy

 

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Dead cat conditioning, attention deficit and the social order

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blog56_johnnicola_sadface

 

Last week I wrote about hundreds of people dying of malnutrition in the UK over this past twelve months alone, as a consequence of government policies. I wrote about how our universities are no longer permitting free speech and critical thinking, and how dissenting academics have taken to blogging, using pseudonyms and writing anonymous letters because of the repressive political developments in the UK.  I am now about to write another piece on how our Human Rights Act is to be scrapped and replaced by a Conservative Bill of Frights.

The Labour party needs to be collectively opposing the government and addressing these pressing, socially calamitous issues, raising public awareness regarding the profound damage that this authoritarian government are inflicting on our society and drafting remedial policy outlines which extend social justice and equality. 

In the Labour Party Forum – a Facebook group for party members – I was told that my post about the implications of the Government Higher Education white paper, along with an analysis of the illogic of neoliberalism and its consequences is “irrelevant” to the Labour party.

There is a problem with that. 

If the Labour party is to reach out and persuade the electorate that they have an alternative which is better than the current government, they will need to recognise and to fully understand issues that are affecting the wider public. In the Labour Party forum, every single post (except mine) is about about the leadership debate. But being engaged with what is culturally popular isn’t always in our best interests.

The comments from members are dripping with bad feeling, oozing impotent anger and bleeding bitterness. The party infighting is clearly visible on every thread, the hostility is palpable, and all of this in a group that was once united in fighting the real enemy of ordinary people: the Tories. The old, easy camaraderie among members has seeped away.  Cooperation has plummeted sickeningly down the chasms of division. Fallen socialist values, lying broken. Many who claim they are fighting for a “socialist party” seem to have forgotten to practice what they preach. 

I do understand the anger that many feel in the face of a neoliberal, right wing establishment openly demonstrating a hegemonic stranglehold via the media, with endless streams of poisonous propaganda. We witness overt claims, subtexts and a level of perpetual subliminal messaging about who is fit to lead our country and who isn’t. The attacks on Corbyn in particular highlight just how the powers that be in the UK  have ensured that alternatives to the status quo never become established as a part of our mainstream conceptual and linguistic universe. The media write them out. There is a war going on, for sure. But this is nothing new.

The roots of our current crisis of democracy and class warfare go back a long way, and many of these have been embedded deeply in the changes to Britain’s sociopolitical economy since the Thatcher era. Neoliberalism is a doxa, it didn’t come into being as a means of social and economic organisation because it works: it became mainstreamed “common sense” because the establishment won. 

I gave an interview last year to Phil, who is a very public sociologist on the All That Is Solid site, outlining my own position on developments within the Labour party. Since then, I have written just two articles about party ideology, values and the leadership issues. I do write regularly about ideology, propaganda and the techniques of persuasion that are used by the establishment and media to maintain the status quo. This is an issue that extends well beyond the arising claustrophobic parochialism of Labour party disunity, leadership battles and current disarray. 

The media is the message

Social control is maintained in part by the use of a strategy of distraction, which is designed to divert public attention from important issues and changes determined by the political and economic elites, using a technique of flooding continuous diversions and insignificant information. Distraction strategy is also used to prevent public interest in essential knowledge that is then used to exercise control, whilst ensuring those being controlled are also completely disarmed.  The media maintain public attention, and divert it away from real social and economic problems. The public become an audience captivated by matters of no real importance. I’m probably loosely paraphrasing Noam Chomsky, here. 

From within the Westminster playpen, originating from the likes of Conservative babysitter, Lynton Crosby, the dead cat strategy is basically deployed as a major distraction tactic, usually entailing insulting diversion from a government’s political controversies and failings. So when, for example, the government are investigated by the United Nations for contravening basic human rights, they will scream that the opposition leader is somehow a threat to our national security. 

Everyone will gasp, clutch their brand of indignation and moral panic, and bang on about that for the rest of the week. The fact that democracy is gone for a burton, or human rights are being sidestepped and people are dying because of austerity policies is buried under a pile of furry corpses piling up on the allegoric political table, whilst commentators across the land discuss Jeremy Corbyn’s tweed jacket and beard. 

Then there is the age-old strategy of dīvide et īmpera. Every person on the left of the political spectrum knows what “divide and rule” means. It refers to a strategy that breaks up existing power structures, undermines democracy, and especially prevents smaller power groups from organising, collaborating, cooperating and forming alliances, by creating rivalries, fostering discord, distrust and enmity among the groups. Hello.

Thing is, despite these strategies being common knowledge, this hasn’t stopped many Labour party supporters using the disgracefully unreliable and establishment-collaborative media to present their own personal preferences. The Labour Pary Forum is filled with trivial articles about Owen Smith, this, Jeremy Corbyn, that and Tom Watson, the other, the comment threads full of screaming  indignation and neatly blinkered participants.

Socialist politics is supposed to be conscientious, and rather more about the social, not the personal.

This week, we see  the Independent, the Spectator, the Mirror, the Huffington Post, Politics Home, the London Economic, Channel four, amongst many others, report an audience booing the mention of a perceived political rival at a rally comprised of his opponent’s supporters. I’m all for freedom of speech, but for crying out loud, why and how is this by now mind-numbing tittle tattle considered to be NEWS? And even more importantly, why do social media campaigners think it is?

Don’t look away now

banksy-elephant-in-room1


Only a matter of weeks ago, a Labour MP was murdered by a far right fanatic, because of her political work, and because we are a distracted society that permits a right wing authoritarian othering and outgrouping demagoguery.

But now there are no ripples on the pond.

How can so many people seemingly forget such a horror? It’s almost as if this outrageous, politically motivated murder was a normal event, expected and accepted. Why are we allowing an ideology-driven and opportunistic establishment to divide our society into hierarchies of human worth and value? There’s an underpinning message in policies and political rhetoric that some lives are worth more than others; it’s has crept in unchecked, almost unnoticed, and we have allowed that to happen because we look the other way. In fact many of us seem quite determined to look the other way.

It’s not only migrants that are being politically and socially outgrouped. Disabled people are experiencing an unprecedented increase in hate crime and people are dying of malnutrition in the 5th wealthiest nation of the world. People are dying because of a government’s policies here in the UK. Prejudices are flourishing, violence growing. This is the kind of society we have become. Yet many people are still not paying attention. We are being conditioned not to look and not to see.

Whilst so many people are so happily distracted and so easily diverted by the most trivial details, our democracy is being quietly dismantled, the social gains of our post-war settlement have been almost erased from history, our human rights are being sidelined and re-written to shift the balance of obligation and responsibility from the state to the individual. Such profoundly damaging developments with such dire and toxic implications for our country ought to be recognised and challenged. Citizens are dying prematurely because of class contingent Conservative policies in a post-welfare, low waged Britain.

Those of us who reject austerity and neoliberalism are not “Trot entryists” , “revolutionaries” , “militants” or “extremists”. We are simply people who see beyond prejudiced ideologies and doxas. We recognise neoliberalism only works for 1% of the population. Furthermore, I am certain that in a world where people paid attention, instead of being distracted by mainstreamed, dominant narratives and  the mind-numbingly mediocre, homogenenised X factor culture, almost everyone else would recognise this, too.

I support Corbyn. Not because I invest in a superficial cult of personality type of politics. Not because I see a Corbyn-led Labour party as an end in itself. I have always maintained that a Labour government would simply mark a viable starting point  – the means – for a concerted campaign for social justice and equality.

I support Corbyn because I object to the destruction of people’s lives and the dismantling of protective civilised and civilising social structures because of a neoliberal and social Darwinist politics that invariably creates, through class contingent policies, inequality and social injustice – a few winners and many losers, the latter are then blamed by the state for the faults that are actually intrinsic to the system and extended by the state. I believe that in democracies, governments are elected to meet public needs, we don’t elect them to manipulate public perceptions and nudge us into meeting political and narrow, economic needs. I also believe that progress won’t happen unless we actively participate in democratic processes and work to extend them. Democracy (rather like intelligence) isn’t something we have: it’s something we must DO.

 The current infighting will kill the Labour movement. Vote for Corbyn, (or don’t), but there’s no need for the endless and insular justifications of your voting choice. Let’s keep some perspective and deal with what we NEED to – the  much bigger picture –  instead of impotently bickering among ourselves about a single issue. Socialism is surely all about a vision of the kind of society that is just and fair for the majority; it’s not about personal preferences and narrowly individualist perspectives.

Right now, the establishment have got us exactly where they want us. Their corporate media mouthpieces have made sure of that. The infighting, meanwhile, is destroying the Labour movement from within. 

But we can resist dead cats, Conservative bouncing bomb propaganda and such blatant techniques of persuasion… really, we can do so much better than this.

We won’t do so if we ignore the wider social realities and policy impacts being shaped by an authoritarian government.

sociologyexchangecouk-shared-resource-5-728It’s time to fight back

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