
Labour HQ used Facebook ads to deceive Jeremy Corbyn during election campaign - rinze
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/labour-hq-used-facebook-ads-to-deceive-jeremy-corbyn-during-election-campaign-grlx75c27
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mindcrash
Dupe:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17531608](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17531608)

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fwdpropaganda
For our American friends, this is like finding that the Democrats screwed over
Bernie Sanders during the election campaign. Sounds familiar?

There's a difference, which is that here Corbyn actually became the Labour
party leader. However despite that he's _still_ portrayed as an outsider by
the establishment and the media.

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untog
The two situations really aren't that similar at all. You don't have to make
everything into an opportunity to bring up the 2016 election all over again.

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nextstep
You’re right, the difference was that Labour was unable to prevent Corbyn from
becoming the party leader, while the DNC was already decided on anointing
Hillary regardless of her actual popularity or electability and was able to
prevent all opposition.

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untog
Sigh. No. Just a few differences:

\- Corbyn is the leader of the Labour Party. Neither Hillary nor Bernie have
that position in the Democratic party, because it doesn't exist. A party's
presidential candidate is not the same as their party leader. And the method
by which each is elected is radically different.

\- Corbyn was already leader when these events happened. This is the
equivalent of Bernie winning the primary (which as mentioned above is already
a poor analogy) and then being lied to about what the DNC was doing in
outreach for the presidential election. So, not something that mirrors reality
at all.

\- Bernie Sanders was not a member of the Democratic party before seeking to
become it's presidential candidate. Corbyn has been a member of the Labour
party for decades.

\- Corbyn represents the resurgence of a relatively _old_ wing of the Labour
party, not the beginning of a new movement like Sanders.

Basically every part of this dynamic is different. They're both very
interesting to study in their own right, and trying to conflate the two to
make a political point does nothing justice.

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nextstep
In both cases, the party establishment tried to prevent a candidate on the
left from gaining power through deceitful means. They tried to rig things
against Bernie and Sanders.

That’s the comparison being drawn here. Does that make sense?

(Yes, the details are different as the mechanics of these party systems are
very different.)

~~~
untog
To the extent that the comparison is so absurdly simplistic that it doesn't do
justice to either of the situations it's trying to describe, sure, it makes
sense.

Staff within the Labour Party running ads to deceive their party leader into
believing they were running a more progressive message than they actually were
is literally nothing like anything that happened to Bernie Sanders in 2016.

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endtime
Sounds like, in effect, they also deceived the public _about_ Corbyn. Not to
say that it isn't pretty well understood what sort of fellow he is...

