Twitter is a strange place: a rich source of (often unintentional) humour, populated by the puritanical and the po-faced. One such example was provided in May last year, when Dr Pete Newbon, a lecturer in humanities at Northumbria University, ended up being investigated by his employer for making fun of Jeremy Corbyn.
His crime? Tweeting a picture of the former Labour leader reading to a group of schoolchildren from Michael Rosen’s We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. Only the image had been photoshopped to show Corbyn holding the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion instead – a classic example of satire. Only Rosen, who is also on Twitter, didn’t take too kindly to his book being used in this way, leaping onto the social media platform to condemn the ‘loathsome and antisemitic’ manipulated image.
A Corbynista pile-on swiftly ensued, in what was something of a Kafka-esque nightmare.
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