tweets – Observations and Misunderstandings

There is a civil war at present in the Labour Party. If we’re honest there has been one ever since Corbyn tried to reclaim control from the right-wing elements of the party. Tony Blairs New Labour strikes back then. What comes next? Certainly the strengthening of the Tory Parties position when half of Labours voters go and support whatever new party is born out of this. even if it’s a third it’ll still destroy Labour. I get the feeling though that Corbyn wouldn’t want to create a new party as he knows the repercussions of splitting the vote. I wonder whether Starmer and his allies would do the same. Regardless of all that Corbyn has been suspended, likely expelled at one point and yes the whole thing is entirely political, it has little to do with actual anti-semitism.

The EHRC said in the report Labour members would be allowed to criticise the extremity of the findings. Corbyn said the accusations were overstated for political purposes. He did what was allowed of him yet he was suspended anyway. Starmer is picking and choosing what he wants to take out of the report. There are fair criticism but it’s not all as bad as it is being portrayed. This reaction will simply entrench the divisions further. Yet again nobody wins, well not anyone who should.

As I mentioned yesterday it’s the blatant manner in which all of this is unfolding. Or is being perpetrated more like. It all just seems so obvious yet it’s happening and seems unstoppable. Just like America, when did politics in the UK become a soap opera. It’s worrying. It’s also a sign of modern times with twenty-four hour news coverage and politicians using social media for their own personal agendas. While knives were once thrust in backs in dark little corners in Whitehall now it’s done with a tweet. Micheal Gove tweeting today and referencing how little Starmer seemed to give a shit when he was on Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet. That’s a fair point actually. The obvious one is Trump and the reality television show he has created, he’s completely normalised politicians interacting and attacking each other on Twitter. The world has gone mad. And while this seems extreme it isn’t showing any signs of abating yet.

In the meantime the anti-Corbyn narrative is going strong. Even once he’s resigned they’re still not content. It’s like Assange, don’t just beat him, destroy him so he never even thinks about getting back up again. It does show the danger of him, them. That’s when you know people are really challenging power, or at least a part of power. It’s worth remember that when you see people who talk of making change yet don’t get destroyed by a powerful media narrative. Shall we learn from the past, well we haven’t yet, at least not in the good ways.

It is very hard in this day and age to know what is true and what isn’t. The internet is arguably the fount of all knowledge, and when we’re not looking at pictures of cats and stalking ex-partners we are quite simply blessed with the opportunity to discover – or to google which is a disturbing example of the evolution of language – the answer to any question we may want to ask. The problem here is that it seems very easy to get a variety of answers to one question. On the one hand that is great, difference of opinion will further debate and understanding within and of society. On the other though you have powerful financial interests manipulating which arguments are most easily accessible, the only inevitability is that debate becomes inaccurate and corrupted. There are few long term positives of such things unless you are the one doing the corrupting.

While this is all seemingly quite obvious, what appears to be the outcome are articles using public opinion to validate the argument, angle or narrative they are attempting to push. For example if you want to push a news story about public perception of an issue, it is very simple to go on the idiots validator – Twitter – select a few tweets – cringe – and post them within your article as proof of your argument. While it may seem obvious that people will dismiss the arguments of morons or people who are clearly not experts in the field – a corruptible concept too – people for one psychological reason or another seem unconsciously more likely to agree with the article if they believe it to be the majority opinion.

I saw an article recently describing how the left have disowned George Orwell because it had come out that he gave the names of suspected communists to the British government in 1949. The article was backed up by a few angry tweets criticising and disavowing him from people who clearly missed the point and didn’t understand the background to why he may have done that. This was in The Independent too which is a left wing British newspaper but it was total bullshit being validated by total bullshit.

The same could be done on the news. When a segment presents interviews with three people in the street for example, we often see two or three with one opinion that supports the overall message and one who doesn’t, how do we know that they only ever interviewed them and not ten others. The point is the media is as corrupt and untrustworthy as the politicians have always been yet we take what they say at face value. With eighty-three percent of mainstream media in the UK owned by three corporations, they can pretty much convince anybody of anything with enough coverage. They can be corrupt and it doesn’t matter. We have vaults of information online but who really looks beyond supposedly trustworthy news sources such as the BBC, or their equivalent in other countries and cultures.

Ultimately we’re as much a pack animal as dogs and if we believe the majority think something we’re more likely to go with it to remain part of the group. If you have such an array of opinions all appearing to validate something it has never been so easy to convince people even when it is in your interests and actively against theirs. The internet is arguable the greatest invention since the printing press, and with such knowledge comes the opportunity for rebellion and sedition live never before. Unfortunately it also seems to bring rise to the polarising and manipulating of peoples the world over. It is though early days, the internet is but a baby in the long history of information. There is still time yet.

Tag: tweets

The People Destroyer

A Manipulated Mass