→ Farage vs. Corbyn is on
Populists from Britain’s Left and Right are set to do battle as former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn today announced his intention to take legal action against former Ukip head Nigel Farage. Writing on X, the Islington North MP cited “a highly defamatory statement about me” made on air by the now-GB News host last week.
I have asked my lawyers to take the first steps in commencing legal proceedings against Nigel Farage, following a highly defamatory statement about me.
We are a movement for peace — and we cannot stand by and let these disgusting and malicious lies go unchallenged.
— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) March 4, 2024
His spokesperson added that Farage had accused him of “subscribing to an antisemitic conspiracy theory”, namely that “Jews run the world”. In 2019, when he was still Leader of the Opposition, Corbyn was criticised for writing the forward to an edition of J.A. Hobson’s Imperialism: A Study, a book which claims that finance in Europe was controlled “by men of a single and peculiar race”. He denied any backing for the author’s statements about Jewish people.
Corbyn has already won in court against a rival politician, after Tory MP Ben Bradley had to apologise for accusing the Labour leader of selling British secrets to Soviet spies. Farage should be careful: what the magic grandpa lacks in electoral nous is clearly made up for by past legal success.
→ Sydney Sweeney becomes a conservative heroine
Move over, Donald Trump. Sorry, Marjorie Taylor Greene. The American Right has a new blonde figurehead, and her name is Sydney Sweeney. The Euphoria actress made a much-heralded appearance as host on Saturday Night Live at the weekend, receiving mixed reviews from the critics but winning over an entirely new fanbase: conservatives on social media.
“Wokeness is dead,” was the response of political scientist and writer Richard Hanania to a clip of Sweeney’s appearance on SNL, while Right-wing commentator Ian Miles Cheong reacted to the same video by saying that “wokeness is finished”. The actress’s appeal has been ascribed to her being “the first starlet in a long time to unrepentantly and cheerfully chase the male gaze”, while viewers pointed out her sketch dressed as a waitress from the conservative-coded restaurant chain Hooters.
Assumptions about Sweeney’s Right-wing politics follow an episode in 2022 when attendees at her mother’s birthday party were pictured in what appeared to be MAGA hats in support of Donald Trump. One of the actress’s most recent films is Anyone But You, a refrain no doubt shared by Democrats monitoring the contest for the Republican nomination.
→ Michael Moore solves the Israel-Hamas war
Middle East peacekeepers can rest easy — filmmakers are doing their work for them. Left-wing director Michael Moore has made a punchy appearance on MSNBC, in which he claims that Israel’s real enemies are not Hamas, but instead “white European Christians”, stretching back to the Spanish Inquisition.
Michael Moore:
"Your enemy is not the Palestinian people. It is white, Christian, European people who have been slaughtering Jews for the last two hundred years. Why are the Palestinians in an open-air prison?" pic.twitter.com/JStgijH5xS
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) March 4, 2024
In his interview, Moore accused President Joe Biden of “gambling” with democracy by “aligning himself with an authoritarian in Tel Aviv”. The director, whose politically informed documentaries have included Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11, has previously compared Netanyahu to Donald Trump and described Israel’s military action in Gaza as “slaughter”. Satirists can make further hay with Moore’s outspoken interventions, after he was portrayed as a morbidly obese suicide bomber (in puppet form) in 2004 film Team America: World Police.
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SubscribeLiberals should embarrassed to have ever looked up to a imbecile like Michael Moore.
On the other hand, he is quite the investor. His stock portfolio, made public after a FOIA request was granted, showed holdings in GlaxoSmithKline and Haliburton, among other corporations he has long railed against.