The Tories’ Corbyn attack video is absurd, paranoid and nasty – and will work | Jonathan Jones

It may belong with the Conservatives’ Demon Eyes poster in the museum of crap propaganda: but portraying Corbyn as an extremist feeling sorry for Bin Laden is a smear with legs

You might almost conclude that the Conservatives are terrified of Jeremy Corbyn. The strident scare movie released by the Tories today does not exactly suggest a governing party that thinks the new leader of the opposition is a joke, a reincarnation of Michael Foot, or an unelectable far-left throwback. Was this always the plan, to go so ludicrously ballistic years ahead of the next general election, or has the scale of Corbyn’s support in the Labour movement and the novelty of his no-frills personality and raw unplasticated ideas thrown Tory spinmeisters into a panic?

It is the stuff of nightmares. Jeremy Corbyn, a threat to national security! The Labour party, a threat to national security! The rhetoric in the video is ramped up massively, the footage of Corbyn edited melodramatically and captioned too aggressively. It is easy to mock and makes the Conservative party look like it is on the back foot, unsure how to take on a new kind of Labour leader. We are back to Demon Eyes, the poster that absurdly tried to demonise Tony Blair back in 1997.

Related: Tory theme of Corbyn's 'threat to national security' draws criticism

All this is very reassuring for Corbyn’s new movement, until you imagine yourself as another kind of viewer

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