The United Kingdom’s Labour Party, which produced six prime ministers over the last century, has effectively become a hate group. Whether Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is responsible for the transformation or whether it was the party that enabled the likes of Corbyn is immaterial. Labour today promotes hatred not only in Britain but also gives hatred solace on the world stage.
In 1975, British journalist and writer Gerald Seymour coined the phrase, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” in his novel Harry’s Game, set during the height of the British conflict with the Irish Republican Army. A generation of statesmen has seized upon the phrase to justify moral equivalence. But Corbyn goes beyond that: In the most recent scandal to surround the British Labour leader and possible future prime minister, photos emerged proving that Corbyn had laid a wreath at a monument for the terrorists who tortured and murdered much of the Israeli Olympic team at the 1972 Olympics.
The nightmare for political aides on both sides of the Atlantic is that a photo will emerge with their boss shaking hands with a criminal or charlatan who somehow made it past the rope lines and then uses that photograph to imply legitimacy. In most cases, the resulting photo might be worth a day’s headline, but are quickly forgotten. Here, too, Corbyn is different. He associated with a Holocaust denial group — not just once, but for an entire decade. He has won praise not only from the office of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei but also from the Ku Klux Klan.
While the Palestinian cause and the quest for a two-state solution has attracted a broad array of activists over the years, Corbyn joined its genocidal fringe, embracing Hamas, a group which seeks not only the eradication of Israel but the murder of Jews worldwide.
But is the problem just Corbyn? Consider this expose from The Times:
It’s clear that Labour has an anti-Semitism problem and, perhaps more broadly, a hostility toward the Western liberal order. But is it fair to castigate it as a hate group?
Yes. It can be held to the same standards as previous political movements and groups which have likewise promoted intolerance and hatred. The Ku Klux Klan began as a political and religious movement in the mid-19th century and contemporary leaders like David Duke have embraced electoral politics to seek to use the levers of government for their hateful purposes. While overused as an analogy, it is true both that Nazism rose as a political party before its reality was discredited in the eyes of the civilized world and that many Germans rallied around Hitler even when they disagreed with his racial and religious theories.
While in both Europe and the United States, far-right and white supremacist organizations often attract opprobrium, the rise of hate on the Left is as serious a phenomenon. Consider Antifa, for example, a conglomeration of self-styled ‘anti-fascist’ organizations that embraces hate speech and promotes political, racial, and religious violence. While it is true that both U.S. Republicans and Democrats can find racists and purveyors of anti-Semitism among their ranks, none define their parties as does Corbyn. Both parties have bad apples, but not spoiled barrels.
Corbyn promotes his hatreds and obsessions without shame, and increasingly insists his inner circle does as well. More than economic philosophy, their hatred has come to define the Labour Party and, by extension, those who maintain their affiliation with it. And, unlike in the United States where two parties predominate, the Labour rank-and-file has a liberal alternative in the Liberal Democrats, a party which has tackled the scourge of anti-Semitism with more seriousness. When the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism asked British Jews, “Do you feel that any political parties are too tolerant of anti-Semitism among their MPs, members, and supporters?” 87 percent identified the Labour Party, while the Tories merited only 12 percent.
Jeremy Corbyn is the new face of the Labour Party, but his excesses are no longer simply individual faults. Rather, he is a face of a movement which, like other hate groups before, seeks to use the trappings of the political process to advance an agenda of hate and demonization. The United Kingdom increasingly has a hate problem: Jeremy Corbyn may be its head, but the Labour Party has become its body.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.
