[lbo-talk] Corbyn refuses to bow to right wing pressure to disavow Stop the War Coalition

[MM]

> On Dec 12, 2015, at 8:06 PM, Marv Gandall <marvgand2 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Good for Corbyn for his principled decision to attend the coalition’s fundraising dinner last night, and to Tariq Ali, whose blistering attack on the “Thatcherite” Labour MP”s who challenged Corbyn to disavow the group appeared in the British mass circulation Independent a day earlier. The hate campaign against Corbyn inside and outside the Labour Party parliamentary caucus has seized on every issue, most of them trivial, to discredit him. Here’s the link to Ali’s piece:
> 
> http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/the-assault-on-stop-the-war-is-really-aimed-at-jeremy-corbyn-a6768651.html

It should be pointed out that there are much more important criticisms of StWC et al from voices to their left, and that are far more relevant to understanding the ongoing implosion of StWC, which Ali’s piece linked above seems tragically desperate to wave away:

"The fundamental message of the speech [by Ali, of 28 Nov] and of the day’s events, that Syria should not be bombed by UK military forces, is one that I support, but the narrative surrounding Syria and the question of bombing, contains an untold number of lies.

"Whether Tariq Ali is genuinely so ill-informed as to believe what he says, or whether he is deliberately pushing a certain narrative, is a question for another time. What we are here to look at are the falsehoods, or lies for want of a better word, that Ali espoused as truth.”

http://troubleandsqueak.com/2015/11/29/tariq-alis-dont-bomb-syria-speech-confused-misinformed-or-simply-untrue/ <http://troubleandsqueak.com/2015/11/29/tariq-alis-dont-bomb-syria-speech-confused-misinformed-or-simply-untrue/>

The above passage precedes an extensive debunking of misinfo / disinfo in Ali's speech. There are also some very worthwhile comments following the article.