Fair warning: this is another political blog. Also, as always, these are merely the opinions of one person.
I like George Monbiot. I follow him on Twitter, often like and retweet his tweets and threads, which are usually eloquent, on point, and passionate. At the same time, I’m aware that other people don’t like him, including some people I also follow, but have never really been sure why. There’d be accusations, but no evidence to back it up, anger without explanation of the source, other than “you said nice things about Lisa Nandy once” and “you called Corbyn an antisemite”. It didn’t add up.
Now, however, things have clicked into place for me, and it has to do with Jeremy Corbyn, and Keir Starmer. Monbiot was, at times, critical of Corbyn, which is fair enough. Corbyn had flaws, made mistakes; for a long time I harboured doubts because of his seeming unwillingness to work with other political parties, which felt needlessly tribal; I honestly still have those doubts. True, not all of Monbiot’s criticism was apparently accurate, if he did use a misquoted and misrepresented speech by Corbyn as part of it, but that still isn’t quite enough to justify the anger. That Monbiot isn’t being critical of Starmer – at least that I’ve seen – on the other hand, just might be.
Where Corbyn had a few flaws, Starmer is all flaws. The evidence is overwhelming that the latter is a dreadful leader, failing in pretty much every way it’s possible for a leader to fail, and yet Monbiot has seemingly said not one word about him, critical or otherwise. Why not? If Corbyn’s missteps warranted a negative reaction, why not Starmer’s lurching from one crisis to another, in a disturbing mirror of Johnson? Monbiot rightfully shouts about the horrific bills the Tories are working through Parliament, one attack on democracy after another, but is ignoring Starmer’s enabling of them through his silence and abstentions.
It’s a stark contradiction, comes across as distinctly hypocritical, and undermines Monbiot more than a little. He surely has to be aware of that, and yet he persists. The same behaviour is true of other media, journalistic figures, such as fellow Guardian writer Jonathan Freedland and LBC presenter James O’Brien, though much more pronounced. They were, to my understanding, far more critical of Corbyn, including labelling him an antisemite, a false accusation, yet remain just as silent on/uncritical of Starmer as Monbiot. Part of a giant establishment conspiracy?
No. I believe this all comes down to basic human nature, the kinds of dynamics we’re introduced to in the playground, and that reverberate throughout our lives and society in general. If most of the kids in your playground insist that the quiet, awkward kid sitting by themselves in a corner is a freak to be ridiculed, a weirdo to be picked on, are you going to argue? Are you going to say otherwise, and risk being attacked like the awkward kid is attacked? Chances are that, no, you won’t disagree, just nod along to save yourself immediate pain, with no thought beyond that moment. The cumulative effect of peer pressure is just that strong.
I believe that dynamic is part of the reason for the double-standards of Monbiot, O’Brien et al. When the billionaire-owned media, the likes of the Sun and the Mail and the Times, starting screaming “antisemite!” at Corbyn, and the media wing of the goverment aka the BBC backed them up, and all of them attacked anyone who disagreed, self-preservation overrode principles and the likes of Freedland joined in. In-the-moment self-interest with zero thought of longer term ramifications.
Those ramifications proved to be grievous indeed. The worst government in living memory, perhaps in the entire political history of the UK, and arguably the worst opposition, at a time of global pandemic and a climate crisis that will literally end human society if not addressed immediately. It’s a nightmare situation that just keeps getting worse, and journalists such as Monbiot have to take a measure of responsibility for it. Corbyn may have been flawed, but he was a genuine chance for change, and genuinely popular, as his huge crowds repeatedly attested, and defintely the best chance in ages to unseat not just the Tories, but break the establishment stranglehold on this country. At the very least, we would not have been in the dire straights we’re in right now, we would not have lost tens of thousands to Covid, not be facing relentless attacks on our fundamental rights, not be making token gestures towards dealing with the greatest threat we’ve ever faced.
The thing is, they’re not going to accept that responsibilty, as borne out by their insistence on moving on. “Let. It. Go.” was Monbiot’s response to a critical comment on a recent thread of his. Ignoring Starmer’s endless list of failures, his own hypocrisy and corruption, is part of that. To criticise Starmer is to tacitly acknowledge that responsibility, that they made a mistake, so they instead offer meaningless puff pieces, or say nothing. It’s still about self-preservation, now mostly driven by another, unfortunate, facet of human nature: it’s hard to admit you’re wrong, let alone accept the consequences of that.
The higher-profile a position you occupy, the harder it becomes, as borne out by BBC executives insisting the broadcaster’s not biased or discriminatory in spite of the reams of evidence to the contrary, by Met Commissioner Cressida Dick insisting the force is impartial even as she resists investigating blatant law-breaking by the government, by Starmer and by Johnson as they persist in blaming their screw-ups on anything and everything else. Responsibility is to be avoided at all costs, even if the cost is increasingly undermining yourself.
That’s the vicious-circle position journalists like Monbiot have put themselves in. Short-term self-preservation has led to lasting, increasing damage, to themselves and their profession. The clearer it becomes they were wrong, the more they’ll dig in and insist they weren’t, or flat-out pretend it doesn’t matter, because they fear ever worse personal consequences. The ultimate irony, of course, is the old saw of meeting your fate on the path you take to avoid it. Trust in them and their profession is dying, they only really have themselves to blame, and the more they deny it, the quicker the trust dies, and the harder it will be to regain it.
There’s another facet to this. Responsibility is about more than admitting mistakes. It’s about acknowledging you can make them in the first place. Admitting you’re fallible. That’s a big part of why I start any opinion blog with a variant on the theme of “this is just the opinion of one person’. It’s stating up front that I am human, I am fallible, I make mistakes, and I cannot be solely relied upon as a source or an argument. It’s reminding people to seek out other opinions, other perspectives, as the wider a view you can get, the better.
Now, ask yourselves how often you’ve seen or heard a mainstream journalist make such a statement. Has O’Brien? Freedland? True, I sincerely doubt any of them would have openly stated “my opinion is fact”, but the language and attitudes they usually use strongly give that impression. It’s a world of absolutes, with little time for grey areas or qualifiers or alternative perspectives. It wasn’t “Corbyn may be an antisemite”, or “this person is saying Corbyn is an antisemite”, it was “Corbyn is an antisemite”. It wasn’t treated as a suspicion or a possibility, but as an already established fact.
True, O’Brien, Freedland and especially Monbiot didn’t go as far as the tabloids or the BBC, but they’re still tainted by that whole debacle. I keep referring to it as there is no clearer example of how broken our media truly is. The only evidence ever presented that Jeremy Corbyn was an antisemite was anecdotal, accusations by a selection of outspoken individuals with little to nothing in the way of counterpoint. As an example of the calibre of those individuals, take Margaret Hodge. When leader of Islington Council, she was embroiled in a paedophile scandal, and signed off on the destruction of a Jewish cemetery, which was stopped by the local MP, none other than Jeremy Corbyn. This surely renders her testimony suspect, yet it was never questioned. In contrast, the evidence that Corbyn was and remains a staunch anti-racist is a matter of public record stretching back decades, but was entirely ignored. “Corbyn is an antisemite” was as naked a lie, as transparent a fraud, as can be imagined, and it only gained the traction it did because no-one, not one person, in the mainstream media, was willing to stand up and challenge it.
They took the easy route, and the entire country has paid, and continues to pay, a terrible price for it. It’s a price so terrible, in fact, it may never be possible to restore trust in the media again. If there is a chance, I believe it lies in someone finding something largely dismissed as a weakness, but that’s actually a strength, humility, and standing up to say…
“I was wrong.”
Foxy Musings 