The hard left is on the back foot over the anti-semitism
row gripping the Labour Party.
The Pete Willsman tape was too much even for some of Jeremy
Corbyn’s supporters – particularly the younger inner circle that act as his
minders and semi-official cheerleaders on social media.
These high-profile vloggers, bloggers and blaggers, who’ve bizarrely
chosen to hitch a ride to the festival in Jez’s clapped-out Trabant, understand
how poisonous the anti-semitism issue is for their movement and want some sort
of closure. They also don’t share the weird obsession of the traditional
British left with Israel and are almost certainly frustrated by old-timers who
seemingly can’t leave it alone.
They face two problems though.
The first is that Corbyn’s most vociferous supporters in
the wider online world – the trolls, misfits and cranks who populate Facebook
forums and Twitter – are virulently anti-Israeli and, in a frightening number
of cases, anti-semitic too. While it’s perfectly possible under the proper IHRA
guidelines to criticise the Israeli government for its actions, these people
are simply incapable of it.
They believe in Mossad conspiracies and rail against the
Rothschilds. Some don’t mind if the memes they share have their origins in the
warped worlds of David Icke or David Duke.
These people will not go away until Corbyn does. It’s as
simple as that.
They have landed in the world of Labour politics because
they think that it provides a warm and embracing home. That alone should be
enough to tell us that the gates of hell were opened by Jez’s victory in 2015.
The second problem is Corbyn himself.
He is a man who lives in a world of comic-book villains and
cartoon heroes. Profoundly intellectually incurious, he sticks with mantras he
learnt by rote decades ago.
The United States is bad. Any countries associated with the
United States – Israel, Saudi or even the UK – are bad too. Consequently,
anyone who opposes these states must be the good guys. Hamas and Hezbollah.
Vladimir Putin and the Ayatollahs in Tehran. Hugo Chavez. The Irish republican
movement.
He will never be shaken from these core beliefs. They are
the very essence of what makes Corbyn Corbyn. You can take Jez out of his
allotment (as it’s rumoured the London Borough of Barnet may do), but you will
never take the allotment out of Jez. Leopards, spots and all that.
So there is a fundamental problem confronting the hard left
right now, as they campaign to elect the so-called #JC9 slate to Labour’s ruling
national executive committee.
Their cohesion in the past few years has been built around
a cult of personality. Jez’s 21st-century schtick – humble and peace-loving
man of the people – seems to have some kind of traction among the well-meaning
anti-Tory segment of the population.
But this meticulously cultivated image is undermined by
Corbyn’s decision to host a Holocaust Memorial Day event in 2010, attended by people
who compared the Israelis to Nazis. It’s an image also undermined by his old
pal Pete Willsman’s ranting about rabbis on tape or by disciplinary action
being taken more swiftly against MPs Margaret Hodge and Ian Austin than against
alleged anti-semites.
Corbyn’s fan base won’t change until Corbyn does.
Corbyn won’t change. So Corbyn has to go.
But that’s a logic that Momentum and its hard-left
affiliates cannot yet accept.
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