Corbyn was defeated – but his miserable ideas were not
By Pete North - October 30, 2020
Was Corbyn right about antisemitism in Labour being exaggerated? I think so, not least because I played a part in exaggerating it. When your enemy giftwraps its weakness and hands it to you, what else are you meant to do with it? Like many, I took the view that it was necessary to defeat Corbynism by any means necessary.
The thing about adversarial politics is you fling all kinds of shit and see what sticks. And with Corbyn and the far left, the antisemitism sticks. The far left has always had a rich seam of antisemitism not least because socialism is born from the politics of envy and class hatred. Corbyn’s movement simply breathed oxygen on a dying prejudice which, prior to his arrival on the scene, barely registered in Britain.
As it happens, though I’m glad Corbynism is defeated, I think it was a mistake to defeat Corbynism on those terms. The man is defeated but the ideas are not. Socialism is the unflushable turd and it will find a new champion on the left. Corbyn just made it easy for us by toadying up to Chavez and Hezbollah.
The fact is, socialism is a horrible idea. It finds popularity with simpletons but nobody can identify a single instance where it produces better outcomes for the poor. In the west it’s dressed up as the politics of the socially conscious but you always know a movement by way of its fringe protestors. With socialism, whenever its fringes gather, they wave palestinian and communist flags and back some of the most violent and illiberal regimes on earth.
The reason we know socialism doesn’t work is because we have so many glistening examples. Africa can tell us a lot about the politics of social justice inspired by Marxism. Populists bang the drum of injustice, talking about reparations and restorations, and when they take power they go in for “land reform” which always results in strategic assets being handed to the unwilling, incapable and corrupt. Every time this happens in Africa there follows a famine.
We in the west like to think our politics is more advanced than the developing world but it really isn’t. We’re just better at marketing the same bad ideas. Instead of the open class warfare we see among Marxist movements in Africa, preaching victimhood and othering, the modern left dresses up the same toxic ideas as compassion, telling us that forfeitures are the only way to atone for the sins of our ancestors. Not for nothing has the SNP been compared with Mugabe.
Politically, one of the easiest things to do is to convince idealistic youth that racist authoritarian policies are in fact the epitome of anti racism just so long as you disguise it as restorative justice. That’s why left wing propaganda is nearly always directed at young people. It’s why you see grubby old deviants like Corbyn at Glastonbury.
Thankfully the youth in the west (who have better things to do than politics) tend not to vote, which is why leftist ideas struggle to gain a foothold. This is why the left are always trying to gerrymander elections by lowering the voting age – in the hope that their fellow bigots will brainwash their own children.
Though I rejoice that the imminent danger of socialism has passed by way of Corbyn’s assassination (something I am proud to have participated in), these same toxic ideas keep bubbling away in the background, stalking politics waiting for the next window of opportunity. The fifth is never over – which si why we have to guard against insidious attempts to bring it in by the back door – which in part is why I’m so hostile to the idea of free school dinners. They seek to recruit the next generation into their filthy communist ways.
As to antisemitism, we’ve probably seen the last of it as a recurrent political theme now the far left is defeated. It will no doubt continue to manifest in the Israel-Palestine discourse but that conflict is no longer politically relevant. It’s had more attention than it ever deserved and people are rightly bored of it. It serves only as an indicator to see where the mainstream left stands, When the Labour conference shows more of an interest in Gaza than it does Rotherham we shall know that their obsessions are still with Jews and not the plight of the working classes. Until that changes, Labour must never be allowed near power.