I've started this thread because the issue it discusses has become the dominant political issue in British politics today, and those of us who want Britain to move away from the utter misery of Toryism, as part of freeing the world from the utter misery of capitalism-an economic model we now know can never again incorporate humane or democratic values-need to be aware of the horrific campaign of smears and lies being directed against not only Jeremy Corbyn himself, but the vast majority of Labour members and supporters who stand for the values he has fought for as leader: The despicable, indefensible campaign to paint one of the most decent and honest figures in modern political life as an enabler of antisemitism.
Here is the background as to why this campaign is not grounded in any actual reality, but simply in an antidemocratic effort to strip the British Labour Party of the core values it has re-embraced since 2015, when Corbyn won the leadership in a landslide victory over candidates from the right wing of the party, all of whom were running on "stay the course" platforms.
1) Labour has never had an actual problem with antisemitism-other than among certain people on its right wing, such as Ernest Bevin, the postwar Foreign Secretary who denied most Jewish refugees and other displaced persons admission to not only the Mandate of Palestine, but to the UK itself, and anti-Corbyn strategist Alastair Campbell, who was caught preparing anti-Semitic campaign ads to use against Conservative leader Michael Howard in the 2005 election(Howard was a Jewish war orphan who was essentially forced to convert to Anglicanism by his Christian adoptive parents).
2) Before he won the Labour leadership-in a contest where those who now lead the anti-Semitism lie campaign still refuse to accept that his victory was legitimate-nobody in British politics ever, at any time, accused Corbyn of being weak on anti-Semitism, and he had an unblemished reputation as a lifelong campaigner against all forms of prejudice-which by itself proves he was an active lifelong opponent of anti-Semitism.
3) The antisemitism lies began to be spread after Corbyn led the party to large gains in the seat count and massive gains in popular vote share, winning 40% of the vote in a race in which Labour started almost 20 points behind the Tories in the popular vote. Those gains were made even though the anti-Corbynites used tactics never used against any previous Labour leader by Labour MPs DURING a general election campaign-a coordinate series of announcements in which twelve sitting MPs announced, over a series of days, that they were not standing for re-election, each of them using their announcement to demand Corbyn's resignation as leader-even though it is impossible for a major political party in a parliamentary system to change leaders during an election campaign and still have any chance of even making a respectable showing.
4) The antisemitism lies intensified when Corbyn accepted all the valid and pertinent recommendations of the IHRA on what was to be considered antisemitism-rejecting only those which attempted to extend the definition to include virtually all forms of criticism of the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinians, criticism which, as all decent human beings know, is virtually never antisemitic in character at all. Even though the form of the guidelines Corbyn accepted encompasses everything that can actually be considered antisemitism, the authors of the slurs would not let up on their vilification of Corbyn-a vilification which, in fact, is actually driven almost entirely by establishment rage at Corbyn's opposition to austerity, concentration of wealth in the hands of the few, war, and oppression.
5) Not satisfied with vilifying the most decent and honest person in UK politics, the perpetrators of this lie are now trying to purge Corbyn's supporters from the party by forcing through a policy in which anyone ACCUSED of antisemitism is automatically expelled from the party. It goes without saying this will be used to expel anyone who is not an unquestioning supporter of the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinians, and likely be extended to anyone who questions the "consensus" Anglo-American-European policy of perpetual war against the Arab/Muslim world. The auto-exclusion policy will leave Labour with no socialists, only "center-left social democrats", a term which no longer involves any support of humane, egalitarian social values or any notion of human equality at all.
6) If auto-exclusion on accusation alone is adopted, it will destroy the Labour Party. There will be no significant group of party members allowed to stay in the party at all, no one on the Left, no one who backs the unions, no one who campaigns against poverty. Virtuall all such people are on the Labour Left, and the purpose of the auto-exclusion policy is to remove all left-wingers from the party. There won't be enough people remaining in the party to do the work of electing a Labour government, those who remain will all be "moderates"(i.e., Tories), and the party will have no non-Tory policies in its election program, just as it had none from 1997 to 2015.
It's not enough to say that Jeremy Corbyn has done nothing to deserve this. Jeremy's supporters have done nothing to deserve this. And those voters in the UK who depend on the defeat of the Tories to stay alive-a defeat that will only matter if the party who defeats the Tories rejects everything the Tories stand for-will have no hope.
Please-see this campaign of slanders and lies for what it truly is-it's a fight to make the United Kingdom a permanently left-free zone. Who but an all-out Thatcherite would want that to happen? What reason would the Labour Party have to continue to exist if it succeeded, given that the only reason for their to be "the opposition" in a parliamentary system is to oppose what the government of the day is doing and propose policies totally different from that government?
And in what universe should legitimate criticism of a sovereign government in another country ever be equated to bigotry or hatred?
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