East Leeds Labour MP Richard Burgon is currently on BBC News telling us that today is a great day for the Labour Party, with the re-election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader. This is the same Richard Burgon who has taken to Twitter in recent years to express his undying love for some of the most undemocratic, illiberal, violent regimes on the planet:
– This follows Diane Abbott, also doing the rounds across the media, explaining how today is an exceptional day for the Labour Party. The same Diane Abbott who once claimed that Chairman Mao did “…more good than harm“, and is keen on praising violent autocrats who lead their country to failed-state status:
And I guess a Corbyn-Labour Party roll-call of apologists for autocrats & bigots isn’t complete without someone in the Labour Cabinet linking Nazis to the one Jewish state (he has since deleted this Tweet):
All three support the re-elected leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn.
He’s a chap who happens to enshrine that regressive blame-the-west, support their critics mentality almost perfectly (not quite as perfectly as Galloway, but getting there). Take, for example, the time he spoke at a pro-Khomeinist rally to critique the West, offering no criticism of Iranian policy choosing instead to praise them for ‘religious tolerance‘ despite Iran’s apostasy punishments, and the complete banning of the Baha’i faith. Iran is a religious supremacist state that privileges just one faith. It’s like taking to a white supremacist state and praising their willingness to ‘tolerate’ other ethnicities. For the rest of us, those simply ‘tolerated’ should be liberated.
Indeed, in the same speech he then goes on to signal his moral superiority by reducing strategic airstrikes on IS targets that aid our ground allies in Syria as simply “bombing Syria” (something the people of Kobane and the allies who liberated that town, along with those who fled to Turkey and have since returned, might question). He does this, before noting that the only way to achieve peace is a convention with Iran also around that table. This is of course un-challengable because no one disagrees. It’s obvious that the only way to achieve peace, is to, you know, achieve peace. But this lack of any sort of plan has wider implications. It implies that the people of Kobane would – if Corbyn had his way – have to sit and wait under full ISIS control, until Iran, Assad, Iraq, Hezbollah, Putin, Obama, the UK, Saudi, Lebanon, can come to a democratic consensus, and agree not to keep funding, arming, supporting government or rebel forces. It sounds lovely, but practically, it’s very similar to doing nothing.
He then insists that the Syrian civil war cannot end with Western involvement, and swiftly moves on to praising Iran for this and that. It is of course framed as the fault of the West, with predictably no mention of the support given to Assad’s regime by the Iranian regime in terms of training, arms, and money to withstand sanctions. Indeed, according to a UN report published prior to this talk by Corbyn:
“Iran has continued to defy the international community through illegal arms shipments. Two of these cases involved [Syria], as were the majority of cases inspected by the Panel during its previous mandate, underscoring that Syria continues to be the central party to illicit Iranian arms transfers.”
– This of course presents problems for Corbyn’s narrative, and so is just left out entirely.
Of course this is the same Jeremy Corbyn who refers to Hamas as “dedicated to social justice“, absolutely adores a Chavez government, that cracked down on those who questioned the regime and whose time in power Human Rights Watch describe as “…a dramatic concentration of power and open disregard for basic human rights guarantees“., and signed a 2003 Parliamentary Motion implying an attempt at genocide in Kosovo was a US myth designed to justify invasion:
– This mentality has won the right to be represented in Party form, at the Labour Party Conference today, with Corbyn’s increased majority victory. The defining feature of that section of the left – or from now until at least 2020, the defining feature of the Labour Party – is a disregard for social liberalism, if it conflicts or gets in the way of economic socialism & criticisms of the US and Israel. The anti-Western forces around the World – who also tend to be anti-secular, anti-democratic, homophobic, misogynistic, and illiberal – are either treated like children unable to autonomously conclude that hanging gay folk is wrong, that the West forces them to do so or single-handedly created the conditions for those theocrats to thrive, or they are openly supported regardless of their abuses of power. Victims completely abandoned. Hence, excuses and support for socially illiberal regimes, rather than victims of those regimes. This is the Labour Party and the route it has decided upon. Rebel MPs put up no real fight to drag Labour away from that ditch, and did not adequately represent liberal dissent in the Party. They share the blame.
And so, if, like me, you believe that human liberty – free expression, free association, no natural birthright privileges based on gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or belief, the right to pursue happiness according to your conscience without harming the same liberty for others – necessarily and universally precedes state institutions & cultural norms, and so must be protected above the protection of culture or state institutions and regimes that run them. If like me you believe international relations is framed by a complex web of historical, religious, cultural, & economic variables including but not limited to the West being nothing but appalling, you no longer belong in the Labour Party.
You should be proud of that.
Futile Democracy 