Heads Up

This morning, Jeremy Corbyn won the vote for Britain’s Labour leadership election - basically the equivalent to the American democratic party primary - in a blowout, garnering almost 60% of the vote while the runner-up, Andy Burnham could only muster 19% of the vote. Jeremy Corbyn, a self-described socialist, outflanked his opponents to the left on many issues, including militarism, immigration, unions - breaking ranks on a whole host of centrist orthodoxy that Labour had embraced since the mid-90's.

The American media, perplexed as to how someone labeled with the dreaded “s" word could not only capture a major party nomination but do so with the largest mandate in the history of the party, went into full smear mode.

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It's understandable to be mystified about how a man who had the largest mandate of any party leader ever can be called "divisive" but so it goes in a corporate media which conflates elite conventional wisdom for the will of the people. The reality is Corbyn's win isn't just a rejection of standard neoliberal orthodoxy -- it's an indictment of it. For years we've been told the will of the people is to be anti-union, pro-austerity, and pro-corporate take over of pensions and education. Now the tide is shifting dramatically and the cognitive dissonance of those in charge of our media is too great to compute.

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The goal of cheap smears like "Karl Marx admirer" (not that there's anything wrong with that, but the goal is to red-bait) and "far left" and divisive" is the same as those leveled against Bernie Sanders: "unelectable", "socialist", "far left". Though Corbyn's positions are demonstrably more to the left of Sanders', both pose an existential threat to the pro-corporate position of the establishment left of the UK and US respectively.

  Adam Johnson/Alternet