Countering this democratic drive required systematic propaganda. Under Corbyn, the Labour Party increased its membership by 354,000 people (between 20)-an unprecedented growth. 1Ĭorbyn won the first round of the leadership election of the Labour Party in 2015 by a margin that even outshone that of former Labour leader and prime minister Tony Blair in 1994. The real “threat” was the general public who would have used Corbyn as a political representative to bring services back into common ownership, moderately raise taxes on the wealthy, properly fund social security, and to some degree curtail British militarism abroad.

The propaganda scholar Alex Carey remarked in his classic Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda Versus Freedom and Liberty: “Domestic propaganda is propaganda directed, not outwards to control or deflect the purposes of some external enemy in wartime, but inwards to control and deflect the purposes of the domestic electorate in a democratic country in the interests of privileged segments of that society.” As Corbyn pointed out, he was not the threat. This article will first flesh out the individual components of this campaign and second dissect how it was amplified by the British mainstream media. Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of the British Labour Party, was subjected to a concerted propaganda campaign by the British right-wing military-industrial establishment, which regarded him as a threat to its interests. Coles is a postdoctoral researcher at Plymouth University, a regular CounterPunch contributor, and the author of several books, including Capitalism and Coronavirus. His latest book is Media, Propaganda and the Politics of Intervention.

Florian Zollmann is a senior lecturer in journalism at Newcastle University.

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