In respect to Tony Benn, the tabloid press spoke of “Dictatorship under Führer Benn” (Daily Express, 1 Februrary 1975), “Benn The Dictator” (Daily Express, 28 May 1981), “Citizen Benn who shouts from the rooftops the debt we owe to a man called Joseph Stalin” (News of the World, 13 September 1981), “the Bennite monster” (Daily Mail, 16 January 1984), or wrote that “some say Tony Benn is raving bonkers” (The Sun, 1 March 1984) (cited in: Hollingsworth 1986). Jeremy Corbyn’s win of the Labour leadership election in September 2015 was accompanied by the return of the loony Left- and anti-socialist ideology.
I conducted an empirical ideology critique of tweets about Jeremy Corbyn during the leadership election. General opinions presented without arguments formed an important discourse topic in the dataset. One general bias that was frequently encountered in this respect was that Corbyn is a “loony” left-winger:
a wet handwringing leftie terrorist supporting anti Semite for Prime Minister?? Corbyn will Drive Brit off a cliff. (#242)
the radical extreme left wing lunacy of Jeremy left wing lunacy left wing loony lefty extreme radical Corbyn. (#438)
Dangerous communist (#1228)
Bloody pinko (#1287)
Corbyn is satan (#4927)
socialist pig (#12741)
When will everyone realise that #Corbyn is a communist bastard? He’s gonna fuck this country up if he gets in power #Labour. (#17405)
Corbyn is a radical left wing idiot (#17528)
Corbyn is a left wing socialist scumbag (#20456)
Single tweets even expressed the wish that Corbyn is killed because he is left-wing:
Jeremy Corbyn…. A communist fraud …. hope he goes the way of Trotsky #Mexico1941 #NeverForget (#15440)
The sensationalist right-wing anti-Corbyn Twitter-discourse was not simply accepted, but contested. There were various strategies that Corbyn supporters used for #Panorama cheap smear campaign against Corbyn tonight trying to link him to terrorist group short memory of this
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Themes