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jimnotgym

>I think Graeber's point is that occasionally publishing writers like this...

> this is the "cred" they built up by publishing people like me, .@OwenJones84, .@GeorgeMonbiot, .@chakrabortty -

I will challenge on the term 'occasional'.

George Monbiot writes a weekly column

Owen Jones writes a regular column

Aditya Chakrabortti writes a regular column and is their senior economics commentator.

This reduces your opening paragraph to, "By regularly publishing left wingers, by employing them on its staff, by publishing left wing material, the Guardian seeks to pass itself off as a left wing paper. " Well...yes.

I should also say that the idea that the Labour anti-semitism scandal was a plot to smear Corbyn, is not universally acknowledged even amongst left wingers.

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Perhaps "occasional" wasn't the right choice of word. They have regular columns, yes, but when the Guardian goes into attack mode against the left, these writers either don't appear or are drowned out by others in the paper.

I spent some time helping collect examples of the Guardian's output during its obsession with attacking Jeremy Corbyn. Try to find comparable coverage in support of Corbyn in the Guardian to offset these attack pieces published between 2015 and 2017: https://theguardian.fivefilters.org (note that Owen Jones, far from being a dissenting voice, joined in with the attacks here, later apologising).

David Graeber tweeted a link to this at the time - after all the Guardian's doomsayers were proven wrong. https://twitter.com/davidgraeber/status/874853587880423426

After some time the Guardian intensified its attacks, this time focusing on spurious claims of antisemitism. They refused to run Graeber's piece defending Corbyn. Again, see if you can find comparable coverage defending Corbyn in the Guardian compared to ones trying to tar him with the antisemite brush: https://theguardian.fivefilters.org/antisemitism/

And that's of course not mentioning the study that found the Guardian to be one of the most innacurate in reporting claims of antisemitism (more so than even the Sun and the Daily Mail). That little fact is still the pinned tweet on Graeber's Twitter account, which must really annoy the Guardian when his name's trending on Twitter. https://twitter.com/davidgraeber/status/1210322505229094912

Paul Mason also was busy trying to climb over Corbyn's corpse.

He's another of the Look-We-Publish-Left-Wing-Opinion go-tos for the Guardian centrists.

I see the graph in the pinned tweet, but where is the study it is based on?

I doubt it annoys the Guardian at all. I think they are more than used to this kind of criticism.

Here's the link to the study: https://www.mediareform.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/La...

Criticism they can ignore (as they often do) I'm sure doesn't bother them. But the widespread resentment toward the Guardian does bother them. It was apparent from their writers' responses when #BoycottTheGuardian was trending on Twitter for example, or more recently when they announced big job cuts and their writers pleas for support were mostly met with derision.

I think it is easy to feel things are more widespread than they are when guaged from social media.

Eg.I was very critical of Corbyn's stance on Brexit, and having a few followers I captured the attention of the Corbynite WhatsApp group run by Seamus Milne's team, and was heavily trolled...Rachel Swindon et al... and I block trolls, so fell out of the Corbynite bubble. The result of this is I have not seen widespread outrage against the Guardian at all. Perhaps widespread in revolutionary socialist circles is a more correct assertion.

> I captured the attention of the Corbynite WhatsApp group run by Seamus Milne's team, and was heavily trolled...Rachel Swindon et al...

This is a conspiracy theory with no basis in fact.

Except for the direct quotes from her.

"“I do get advice from them,” she said. “But that’s the end of that.”

She eventually explained that there are several private Twitter DM groups where discussion goes on “all day”, with new pro-Corbyn lines posted alongside anti-Tory memes — which are often taken and repurposed from Facebook groups.

Asked whether Labour officials were in the groups speaking to the pro-Corbyn accounts, she said “Maybe”, smiling."

https://www.buzzfeed.com/markdistefano/heres-the-woman-behin...

It was tangential to my point, but Corbynite trolls were just as nasty and just as organized as the right wingers. Everyone not for Corbyn was neoliberal scum, or a 'yellow Tory'. In the end this only serves to shut down real debate and polarise each bubble.

Your implication was that Seamus Milne, or his team, command a sort of "troll army" through WhatsApp. This is substantially different to disseminating talking points to friendly media faces (which is something all parties do, and is normal in political campaigning).

When you got trolled, it wasn't because of a secret WhatsApp group conspiring against you. It was because you said something that a large number of left wing people disagreed with, and Twitter worked the way it usually works and encouraged an organic pile-on. I can assure you that the UK left-wing network on Twitter has no need to get marching orders from a mythical WhatsApp group. If somebody says something that the left disagrees with, pile-ons will happen naturally.

Ironically, by dismissing people who disagree with you as commanded by Seumas Milne, you are shutting down debate yourself.

Disseminating talking points to friendly faces...

Nice euphemism.

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