Why the lesson of Corbyn’s Cap scares me to death
Every age has its defining political image — from Harold Wilson’s pipe to Margaret Thatcher’s handbag. Today, we have Corbyn’s Cap: a snugly-fitting metaphor for so much that is wrong with 21stcentury Britain.
It began last Thursday when the BBC’s Newsnight broadcast a picture of Jeremy Corbyn wearing a Bolshevik-style cap against a red-tinted backdrop of St Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow in a report on the Salisbury spy poisonings.
The following day, Guardian journalist and Labour Party activist Owen Jones went on the show and accused the BBC of digitally altering the picture to make Corbyn look like a ‘Soviet stooge’.
Jones’s accusation was shared enthusiastically by fellow Corbynistas on Twitter and, before long, it had racked up two million views.
The BBC was swift to counter the claim, publishing a copy of the original photo clearly proving that the hat had not been altered, just the background changed — a common practice in broadcasting.
But the Corporation’s response only managed a paltry 2,400 retweets — giving it a tiny audience compared to the original lie.
The result: countless people now believe Owen Jones’s fictional version of events.
In other words, an openly partisan and wholly unaccountable acolyte of the far-Left now exercises more influence on the minds of the public than the taxpayer-funded BBC, which is committed to impartiality by its charter.
And this, in a nutshell, is why this county currently feels as though the lunatics have finally taken over the asylum. And why British politicians (and, by extension, democracy itself) face such huge challenges.
It’s no longer about true or false, right or wrong. It’s about who can disseminate their version of events fastest to the largest number of people and most skilfully feed the paranoia and prejudices of the Twitter mob.
Labour’s hard-Left campaign group Momentum understands this strategy keenly, which is why it had such a devastating impact on the last General election.
Its skill at harnessing the viral power of pitchfork politics eclipsed the Tories’ clumsy and costly attempts to buy influence via more official channels. Crucially, Momentum embraced the first rule of so-called clickbait campaigning: throw as much dirt as you can and go with what sticks.
Of course, spreading malicious rumours about an enemy is nothing new: the Nazis used negative propaganda against the Jews to devastating effect during the Thirties. But what is new is the delivery system. Whereas the Nazis had only ink and grainy newsreel at their disposal, today’s propagandists have the internet.
In such a climate, it is almost impossible to have a sensible national conversation. The truth simply gets drowned out by the viciousness of the lies.
ANd the worst part is this: the mainstream media is almost powerless to set the record straight. It’s not just because they no longer have the reach they once had; it’s also because they are fighting with one hand tied behind their backs.
Newspapers and broadcasters are, rightly, bound by strict codes of conduct. But no such restraints apply to the internet. Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are subject to no external regulator whatsoever — thanks to a technical loophole which they ruthlessly exploit: they are platforms, not publishers.
The distinction is subtle, but vital. Social media sites see themselves as simply providing a space — a ‘platform’ — for users to express themselves. What happens after that is none of their concern.
This exonerates them from any responsibility and means they can wash their hands of any view, however erroneous or malicious.
That’s why they can be used to turn a clever lie into an incontestable truth at a speed that is both astonishing and frightening. That is the ultimate lesson of Corbyn’s Cap. And it scares me to death.