Remember back in the day when Jeremy Corbyn said he wanted “a kinder politics”? At the time, it felt like a Stalinist or Orwellian phrase in the tradition of the Big Lie, seemingly denoting something far more serious and sinister than mere chutzpah, fake news or the usual prattle from a slippery politician. Now, the longer lasting impact of that Big Lie is being revealed: and it will help drive even deeper animosity against mainstream Jewish communities.
An important staging post in the Big Lie has been marked by Mr Corbyn’s first major interview since he left the Labour Party leadership. The interview could not be further removed from the pre-General Election vivisection that he endured from Andrew Neil. Instead, Mr Corbyn is now firmly back in his comfort zone, managing his own mythology with the help of David Hearst, a former Guardian colleague of his chief spin doctor, Seumas Milne.
Hearst and Corbyn have more than Mr Milne in common. They were, for example, amongst the leading British cheerleaders for Sheikh Ra’ed Salah, who infamously preached a blood libel in Jerusalem.
The themes of Mr Corbyn’s interview will repeat in far-left propaganda for years to come, from university academics in sociology departments throughout the country, to street demonstrations and the mad, sad and obsessive losers who pollute social media.
The narrative is simple, yet dangerous. Mr Corbyn was a singularly good man who wanted to save people from the harm that is done to them. He wanted to tackle endemic poverty, end racism, stop wars and save the planet. Because of this, the establishment ganged up on him, bullying him with so much slander that his defeat was inevitable. The general public was hoodwinked by evil forces into rejecting their saviour and antisemitism was one of the primary lies wielded against him, which is why this is very dangerous for Jews.
The evil forces that sabotaged Mr Corbyn were the establishment, the Conservatives, the mainstream media and those complaining about antisemitism. In the interview, Mr Corbyn includes the highly respected Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) in this company, accusing it of lacking political independence. He does so in order to sabotage the EHRC’s forthcoming judgement on just how deep Labour’s antisemitism problem ran under his leadership, but the charge, like many others in the interview, reeks of brazen chutzpah and hypocrisy, a series of little and moderately sized lies, in service of the Big Lie.
One wonders what the justice warrior Baroness Chakrabarti makes of her ex-boss saying the EHRC antisemitism inquiry lacks independence, when her own appallingly compromised report on Labour antisemitism helped institutionalise the attitudes that the EHRC is now judging upon. Should we perhaps ask the courageous Labour whistle blowers, about their own experiences of political bullying, harassment and lies. Or, might we just consult the record provided by the online fake news factory that acts as a social media attack dog against Jewish MPs and women?
Of course, Mr Corbyn, famously, does not have an antisemitic bone in his body, but one of the deepest aspects of antsemitism is the alleged linkage between Jews, power, and the oppression of good and honest people. This is the fire that Mr Corbyn is playing with and this will be the legacy he leaves us.
