I realise it’s bad form to point at someone and shout ‘Stupid!’. But sometimes it’s just a statement of fact.
One of the least remarked-on aspects of the Corbynite cult is their remarkable stupidity. I’m not talking about their embrace of various lunatic policies – whether it be hero-worshipping the Kim dynasty in North Korea or even their antisemitism. I’m talking about more fundamental things which make you wonder how some of them manage to meet the daily challenges of life.
Take their latest foray, the film ‘Oh Jeremy Corbyn: the Big Lie’.
It’s being shown at various screenings which you can buy tickets for online. Until yesterday – when the organisers realised how toxic it is and pulled it - it was due to be shown at this year’s Glastonbury festival.
Unlike some people, I find the idea of these lost souls gathering together for screenings rather sweet. Their entire world has collapsed, after all. They need each other’s comfort. It wasn’t long ago that their wishes were coming true all at once: St Jeremy, the Blessed One, was leader of the Labour Party and Jews were leaving it in droves. In 2017, the crowd at Glatonbury was singing ‘Oh, Jeremy Corbyn’ and life could hardly be better – all they needed was an election and they would be in charge of the country.
And then it all went wrong. They lost two elections in a row, lost the Labour leadership and the new leader decided that it wasn’t the greatest ad for a party to declare, ‘Jews not welcome here’, so he started to kick out not the Jews but the people who had forced the Jews out. Oops.
Today, they are back where they started before the 2015 Labour leadership election, with only more Stop the War rallies protesting that Vladimir Putin doesn’t get a fair press and he is really nice, go on, give him a chance, to look forward to.
So yes, I am happy for them that they now also have their film. Which brings us to stupidity.
If you weren’t, well…stupid, you really would not have called it ‘Oh Jeremy Corbyn: the Big Lie.’ In fact it’s difficult to imagine a more stupid title. ‘Oh Jeremy Corbyn’ refers, of course, to the Glastonbury chanting in 2017. Nostalgia has its uses, but when it serves only to highlight your utter irrelevance six years on, it’s not so great an idea.
All those three words serve to illustrate is how far the world has left the cult behind. In 2023, far from singing along, Glastonbury has pulled the film.
Those poor Corbynites; they don’t even have a field in Somerset any more.
But not content with the stupidity of reminding people of their irrelevance, the final three words of the title are epically stupid. The Big Lie was first used by Hitler in Mein Kampf, to describe what he called the use by Jews of a lie so huge that no one would believe someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously". He was referring to what he said was Jews blaming German general Erich Ludendorff for defeat in World War One - a lie designed to remove “the weapon of moral right from the only adversary dangerous enough to be likely to succeed in bringing the betrayers of the Fatherland [the Jews] to Justice.”
The phrase was subsequently widely used to describe the Nazis’ propaganda technique to poison Germany against “international Jewry”, the real holders of power in the world.
In other words, the title ‘The Big Lie’ reminds people that the Corbynites share with the Nazis an obsession with Jews.
So while the first three words of the title remind people of the cult’s irrelevance, the last three words remind people why.
Stupid, or what?