The ‘intimate connection’ between empire and UK media that silenced the left

There’s an ‘intimate connection’ between the workings of the US empire and the UK media. And they didn’t just batter the left in the Jeremy Corbyn years. They also set us up with a cold, rotten dish of Keir Starmer, Peter Mandelson, and their ilk of soulless corporate stooges.

Filmmaker Victor Fraga made the film The Bad Patriots, which is now available on major streaming services. And to mark the occasion, he told us about how establishment propagandists got away with smearing prominent left-wingers Ken Loach and Jeremy Corbyn.

This is a film for everyone because, as Fraga asserted:

I’m not asking people to love Ken and Jeremy… It’s not a film about their ideas. It’s a film about misrepresentations.

He added:

We like to believe Britain is free, but it really isn’t that free.

UK Media and legal collusion blocked the left

Having previously made a documentary about media enabling of countless coups in Brazil, Fraga followed up by looking at the same dynamic in the UK. Through his film about Loach and Corbyn, he said, a key focus was to show:

how the British media has consistently and promiscuously attempted to defame and degrade Ken and Jeremy, paint them as antisemitic, spineless, fruitcakes, too old, … not being patriotic enough

As an establishment mouthpiece, he stressed, the mainstream media played a “crucial role” in the propaganda war on the left that put the right back in charge of the Labour Party:

Keir Starmer would have never been elected without the support from the media. I mean, the Sun supported Keir Starmer and Tony Blair. That says a lot, doesn’t it?

Imperialism and media bias, meanwhile, are “intimately connected”. As he insisted:

You can talk about imperialism without talking about the media, but I don’t think you can talk about the media without talking about imperialism. Obviously, the media attend to the interests of the few, not the many…

The objective of the media is not to inform people. It’s to control people. And most mainstream media, virtually all of them, are owned by millionaires.

And the people the media smears target struggle to fight back because of how expensive it is in the UK, where the law favours obscenely wealthy actors over ordinary people. At the same time, the smears were so systemic in the case of Corbyn that it would have been almost impossible to challenge them legally. As Fraga asserted:

The legal costs are so high that even when you win, sometimes you lose…

So, yeah, the justice system is complicit.

And it’s not just the legal system playing along. Because as the Canary has detailed previously, there is a whole infrastructure of repression against the left in the UK, including the political policing project that unjustifiably spied on hundreds of left-wing groups for decades.

This infrastructure isn’t always obvious for everyone, because of the veneer of freedom and democracy that our establishment sells us. But there are times, like with the Peter Mandelson scandal (connecting into the whole anti-socialist offensive to put Keir Starmer in power), where the dark dealings of establishment politics and media come out into the light.

The interests behind the misrepresentations

The empire and its propagandists want to sell an upside-down view of the world — as we’ve seen during the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza and the repression surrounding it. As Fraga stressed:

In the same way Keir Starmer purports to be left-wing (someone who supports foreign invasions, who’s deeply xenophobic, and who shudders at the thought of anything vaguely socialist), Jeremy is painted as an extremist for wanting to nationalise rail and for policies which are widely implemented in France and Scandinavia. They paint a pacifist such as Jeremy Corbyn as an extremist, and a warmonger like Tony Blair as moderate. That’s pretty sick.

Corbyn was certainly a concern for the US empire and its junior partner in the UK. Ex-CIA director and secretary of state Mike Pompeo admitted as much when he promised to “push back” to undermine Corbyn’s chances of winning the 2019 election. Figures in the British army and secret services also briefed against him.

And whether or not there was direct coordination, the establishment media was absolutely singing from the empire’s hymn sheet. It played a key role in smearing Corbyn and ensuring his loss in the 2019 election. And even the biggest supposedly left-wing paper, the Guardian, was in on it. As Corbyn later told Declassified:

I do not trust the Guardian… it’s a tool of the British establishment.

Prominent filmmaker Loach also represented a concern for the powers that be due to his longstanding critique of capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, racism, and state repression. And he has faced significant attempts to censor and silence his work as a result.

As Fraga summarised, the whole country should be aware that the media’s behaviour is “not an accident”:

On many occasions, they do know they’re lying blatantly. They do know what they’re doing.

And that intentional behaviour serves the interests of the rich and powerful, undermining what limited democracy exists in the UK even further.

This matters to absolutely everyone in the country, and Fraga hopes The Bad Patriots can help to ‘burst the bubble’ and get people talking about the media’s actions more. So invite friends, family members, and anyone you can to watch the film. Because only by facing this issue head on can we stand a chance of changing things.

Featured image via Journeyman Pictures