New Statesman
The New Statesman is a British political and cultural magazine published in London.[1] Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was connected then with Sidney and Beatrice Webb and other leading members of the socialist Fabian Society, such as George Bernard Shaw, who was a founding director. In 2024, Sohrab Ahmari wrote in it that we should be "grateful for the Deep State".[2]
Today, the magazine is a print-digital hybrid. According to its present self-description, it has a liberal and progressive political position.[3] Jason Cowley, the magazine's editor, has described the New Statesman as a publication "of the left, for the left"[4] but also as "a political and literary magazine" with "sceptical" politics.[5]
Contents
Left wing alibi
The magazine is using this "sceptic" image to offer "left-wing" alibi for positions preferred by the establishment. The trend seems to be more noticeable after Jason Cowley took over as magazine's editor in 2008.
- In March 2009 the magazine had its first guest editor, Alastair Campbell, the former head of communications for Tony Blair. Campbell chose to feature his partner Fiona Millar, Tony Blair (in an article "Why we must all do God"), football manager Alex Ferguson, and Sarah Brown, the wife of Prime Minister Gordon Brown. This editorship was condemned by Suzanne Moore, a contributor to the magazine for twenty years. She wrote "New Statesman fiercely opposed the Iraq War and yet now hands over the reins to someone key in orchestrating that conflict"[6]
- It aligned with the campaign against Labour-leader Jeremy Corbyn, and for the first time in the magazine's history explicitly chose not to endorse Labour, writing "but the essential judgement that must be made is on Mr Corbyn himself. His reluctance to apologise for the anti-Semitism in Labour and to take a stance on Brexit, the biggest issue facing the country, make him unfit to be prime minister."[7]
- It also functions as a part of a self-referencing network in foreign policy, to give credibility to select causes. In October 2012 the magazine was guest-edited by Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, a person much feted by US deep state think-tanks (NED,Freedom House etc) as part of their foreign policy strategy. As part of the strategy to create publicity around this, "for the first time, published simultaneously in Mandarin (in digital form) and English. To evade China's internet censors, the New Statesman uploaded the issue to file-sharing sites such as BitTorrent"[8]. As well as writing that week's editorial, Ai Weiwei interviewed the Chinese civil rights activist Chen Guangcheng (simlar story, he received money from the British government[9]), who fled to the United States embassy "after exposing the use of compulsory abortions and sterilisations."[10] The issue was launched on 19 October 2012 at the Lisson Gallery in London[11], where speakers including artist Anish Kapoor and lawyer Mark Stephens paid tribute to Ai Weiwei.
A Quote by New Statesman
Page | Quote |
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Open Society Foundations | “The conventional view, shared by many on the left, is that socialism collapsed in eastern Europe because of its systemic weaknesses and the political elite's failure to build popular support. That may be partly true, but Soros's role was crucial. From 1979, he distributed $3m a year to dissidents including Poland's Solidarity movement, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia and Andrei Sakharov in the Soviet Union. In 1984, he founded his first Open Society Institute in Hungary and pumped millions of dollars into opposition movements and independent media. Ostensibly aimed at building up a "civil society", these initiatives were designed to weaken the existing political structures and pave the way for eastern Europe's eventual colonisation by global capital. Soros now claims, with characteristic immodesty, that he was responsible for the "Americanisation"; of eastern Europe. ...
The Yugoslavs remained stubbornly resistant [to the sponsored free market revolution in Eastern Europe] and repeatedly returned Slobodan Milosevic's unreformed Socialist Party to government. Soros was equal to the challenge. From 1991, his Open Society Institute channelled more than $100m to the coffers of the anti-Milosevic opposition, funding political parties, publishing houses and "independent"; media such as Radio B92, the plucky little student radio station of western mythology which was in reality bankrolled by one of the world's richest men on behalf of the world's most powerful nation. With Slobo finally toppled in 2000 in a coup d'etat financed, planned and executed in Washington, all that was left was to cart the ex-Yugoslav leader to the Hague tribunal, co-financed by Soros along with those other custodians of human rights Time Warner Corporation and Disney. He faced charges of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide, based in the main on the largely anecdotal evidence of (you've guessed it) Human Rights Watch. ... The sad conclusion is...that....Soros deems a society “open” not if it respects human rights and basic freedoms, but if it is “open” for him and his associates to make money....He thus copied a pattern he has deployed to great effect over the whole of eastern Europe: of advocating “shock therapy” and “economic reform”, then swooping in with his associates to buy valuable state assets at knock-down prices.” |
Employees on Wikispooks
Employee | Job | Appointed | End | Description |
---|---|---|---|---|
Duncan Campbell | Associate editor | 1988 | 1991 | Investigations |
Duncan Campbell | Staff writer | 1978 | 1991 |
Related Document
Title | Type | Publication date | Author(s) | Description |
---|---|---|---|---|
Document:The Scruton tapes | article | 27 April 2019 | Douglas Murray | Deconstruction of a hit piece by The New Statesman which cost Scruton his unpaid goverment adisor position. It was based on egregious manipulation and misrepresentation of an interview with the paper's George Eaton |
Documents sourced from New Statesman
References
- ↑ https://www.britannica.com/topic/New-Statesman
- ↑ https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2024/06/joe-biden-debate-deep-state
- ↑ http://www.newstatesman.com/page/about
- ↑ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/the-media-column-why-the-left-wing-new-statesman-is-stubbornly-resisting-the-lure-of-corbynmania-a6753721.html
- ↑ https://twitter.com/JasonCowleyNS/status/1121688267064336384
- ↑ http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/debate/article-1163727/SUZANNE-MOORE-The-human-heart-Left-That-I-resign-New-Statesman-I-saw-Alastair-Campbell-did-it.html
- ↑ https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/election-2019/2019/12/leader-britain-deserves-better
- ↑ http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/politics/2012/10/move-oppression-china-must-recognise-itself
- ↑ Calum and Lijia Macleod (22 October 2000). "Chinese peasants fight for clean water". United Press International. "Scholar's report details 'violent birth control scheme' in China". Kyodo News Service. 5 September 2005.
- ↑ http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/human-rights/2012/10/chen-guangcheng-facts-have-blood-evidence
- ↑ http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2012/10/pictures-ai-weiwei-launch-party