(theguardian)- The far left’s ideology is not “leftwing” in any sense that a socialist from the 19th or 20th centuries would have understood. It is simply opposition to the west whatever the west does. Occidentalism explains the appearances of Labour’s leaders on Iran’s propaganda channels , the endorsements of Russian imperialism, and the silence that greets the Syrian massacres.
There is no secret about the nihilism and double standards. Both have been obvious to me at any rate since the bulk of the left failed to show solidarity with the victims of Saddam Hussein in the Iraq war of 2003 . Nor does the far left, if we can call it a left, try to hide its prejudices. When asked why the streets of London were not heaving with demonstrators protesting against Russia turning Aleppo into the Guernica of our times, Stop the War replied that it had no wish to add to the “jingoism” politicians were whipping up against plucky little Russia. The left’s task was “to oppose the west”. That was all.
I have criticised the hollowed-out leftism of the 21st century many times, and could fulminate about how no one has yet provided a satisfactory answer to the question: why is it “leftwing” to support the gangster-capitalist Russian state?
I could note that the mainstream media has not realised that British Islam is overwhelmingly Sunni, but its supposed defenders on the “left” are now allied with Putin, Assad and the Iranian and Hezbollah death squads – the Shia side in the Sunni/Shia religious war, in other words.
But let me be generous instead. Jeremy Corbyn does not often give me the chance to defend him, and it is therefore all the more of a pleasure to redress the imbalance today. When his supporters say he is consistent, they are telling the truth. His illiberal worldview is entirely coherent. The trouble is, it is wholly despicable, and provokes the troubling question whether it is so different from the worldview of the west’s “respectable” leaders.
There have been repeated opportunities for Barack Obama to take a lead on Syria. The Syrian revolution was political, rather than sectarian, in its initial stages, but he looked away. He might have responded when Assad imitated Saddam and used chemical weapons against civilians, or raised the conscience of the world when Islamic state engaged in the industrial-scale rape of Yazidi women.
As it was, the practical effect of Nato policy has been to give Russia a free pass, as Corbyn does.
Suppose western leaders called Russia’s bluff and insisted on a no-fly zone over Aleppo and a safe haven in northern Syria for refugees. I think you can imagine the reaction. I am very uncomfortable with the term “far left” for many reasons, not the smallest being that Corbynism is not an alien ideology that appeared from the fringe, but a grotesque version of the worst prejudices of polite society.
In the last decade, mainstream liberals were just as likely as post-socialist tyrannophiles to tell you that the west was the source of the world’s ills. Those who disagreed were browbeaten with accusations that they were neo-cons, Zionists, warmongers, supporters of torture in Abu Ghraib and so on. Propaganda techniques allowed the mainstream to assure itself that criticism of its orthodoxies was driven by the lowest of motives; a myopic certainty that stopped it seeing sinister movements in the British left that were in front of its nose, let alone sinister movements in the rest of the world. People complaining about Stop the War failing to organise demonstrations against Russia should ask why Amnesty International and other liberal organisations don’t mount them instead. Obama and European leaders must have known that, after Iraq, opposition to intervention in Syria would have come from all quarters: from the far left, from liberal opinion, and from a right wing that is increasingly nationalist and isolationist.
The sympathy shown for Putin by Corbyn and Jill Stein, the American Greens’ presidential candidate, is all the more shameful because Donald Trump is an admirer of Putin, as is Marine le Pen’s National Front and the leaders of Europe’s other far-right parties. The very people Corbyn and Stein condemn at home for their racism, they tacitly endorse abroad. As I said earlier, there is an “L”-shaped hole where the left should be. But in terms of practical politics it is clear that whatever label people slap on themselves, their similarities are more striking than their differences.
From the president of the United States, via the liberal left and nationalist right, to you and me, are we all Jeremy Corbyn now? When we turn off the pictures from Aleppo and look in the mirror, do we see the blandly wicked features of the Labour leader gazing back at us?
Shiraz Maher and other authorities on the Syrian revolution still believe that Putin would back away from a determined western effort to enforce a no-fly zone. I am not a military authority and cannot judge. It feels as if the time for intervention has passed, and al-Qaida is too entrenched in the Syrian opposition. Europe will now have to live with refugee flows, and the rightwing backlashes they provoke, for decades.
I can say from experience that, however, if you do not want to see Corbyn’s face in the mirror, you must resolve to never again bend the knee before fashionable opinion.
Perhaps the best that will come from the far left’s control of the Labour party is that it will change the minds of hundreds of thousands who went along with fashionable but disgraceful ideas, as much because of the social pressure to conform as any political motive.
I could be sneery and say they should have thought for themselves before the “left” dumped us with a British nationalist government without an opposition capable of fighting it.
But you should never sneer at people finding the bravery to shake off old prejudices, and learning while they do it that it does not need a great deal of courage for comfortable westerners to change their minds.
Indeed, when compared to the courage of civilians trying to escape Russian bombs and Iranian guns in Syria, it takes no real courage at all.
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