An interesting comment. Many people in the England, the US or other nations might well share the sentiment. In this instance, it came from Spain.
It could also have come from the left as plausibly as the right. The BBC has been upset by the attacks on it from the left, just when its very existence is coming under threat from a right-wing government. We might soon see a great public broadcaster muzzled by the right while the left does nothing to defend it.
In this case, the speaker was from the right. He was a supporter of the far-right Spanish party, Vox. The left-leaning paper El País was interviewing him for a study of where Vox gets its support.
He prefers to get his news from Facebook, his friends and social networks. Which is another way of saying that what he wants isn’t information, it’s confirmation. He will find those groups and posts, or friends, who believe what he believes, and always strengthen rather than challenge his views.
That’s much more comfortable. It’s also how fake news spreads. That’s true whether the fake news is generated by a propaganda mouthpiece of the right, such as Guido Fawkes in the UK or the White House in the US, or the left, such as England’s Skwawkbox.
 |
| Purveyors of fake news A rare photo of publicity-shy Skwawkbox founder Steve Walker (l) Paul Staines of Guidow Fawkes (c) and the White House ranter |
EXCL: NCC FORCED TO REJECT UP TO 90% OF ANTISEMITISM EVIDENCE AS UNFIT – MULTIPLE DEATHS FOLLOW EXPULSIONS
The claim, right at the start of the headline, to exclusivity is clearly a source of pride to the writer. To me, it just says, ‘no reputable journalist has picked up this story’. Clearly, the poster of the link was, however, entirely disinclined to wonder about the item’s reliability.
The story itself opens with:
A Manchester woman has died within days of her expulsion from the Labour Party under a new disciplinary system.
The woman, whose identity has been confirmed to the SKWAWKBOX, is understood to have died on Tuesday as a result of a brain haemorrhage that locals are linking to stress brought on by her summary expulsion under a new ‘fast track’ process in which the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) is expelling members against whom antisemitism complaints have been made.
It seems the person who pointed me to this piece had confidence in it. But all it’s saying is that someone, unnamed to us though the Skwawkbox claims to know who she is, is said by some anonymous source and their equally unnamed friends, to have died within days of being expelled from the Labour Party.
Given the headline with its reference of the lack of validity of ‘90% of Antisemitism evidence’, the implication is that the evidence against this woman was weak.
However, we can check none of this. We don’t know the name of the woman. We don’t know the names of the people living locally who commented on her death. We don’t know what evidence was brought against her, let alone whether any proportion of it, or none at all, was deemed invalid.
In fact, we don’t know whether the 90% figure is accurate. Any more than we know whether evidence rejected by the disciplinary bodies of the Labour Party ought in fact to have been admitted.
The piece is written in such a way that it’s impossible to verify any of its allegations. It may be that I’m too cynical, but I believe that anyone who makes claims that can’t be verified, is afraid of any kind of questioning. That’s likely to be because they’re afraid the case will fall apart if it’s examined too closely.
The naivety of certain commentators, such as my critic, lies in the refusal to see this obvious truth.
As a result, I thought the best response was to write a piece of my own, applying exactly the same journalistic standards as the Skwawkbox.
A reliable source leads me to understand that the woman who died in Manchester soon after being expelled from the Labour Party, had faced multiple charges of antisemitism backed by overwhelming evidence.
While a proportion of the evidence submitted was found to be too circumstantial or too weak, more than enough was both conclusive and believable, in many cases confirmed by multiple, independent sources.
Her death soon after the expulsion was a tragic coincidence.
The same source confirms that the woman had a serious and long-term circulatory condition which was both inoperable and likely to lead to life-threatening trauma if triggered by, say, an external shock. My source confirms that she had such a shock, unrelated to the expulsion, before suffering a massive and tragically fatal aneurysm.
My heartfelt sympathy goes to the woman’s loved ones in this terrible moment for them. However, it has to be stressed that her death, while tragic, was not associated with the disciplinary action Labour had taken against her. Her expulsion was inevitable, given the incontrovertible evidence that she made antisemitic statements, repeatedly, over a long period.
There is no place for anti-Semites in the Labour Party.
Now here’s your challenge: prove that any of what I’ve said is untrue.
No comments:
Post a Comment