DOMINIC LAWSON

CAN we get one thing straight about the hard-Left, whose takeover of the Labour Party is now almost complete? They are not hateful only because of their rank odour of anti-Semitism. The antiSemitism is just one manifestation of their all- embracing hatefulness. Or, to put it another way: even if we hadn’t become aware of the way so many of Jeremy Corbyn’s most ardent supporters use the word ‘Jew’ as a form of abuse, there was already ample evidence that they are filled with an almost murderous hatred of their political opponents, and of any group in society they regard as an enemy.

I am not attempting to diminish the revelations in this and other newspapers about the disgusting emanations of antiSemitism with which the Labour leader has contentedly co- operated (whether Middle Eastern terrorist organisations or so-called street art redolent of the Nazi publication Der Sturmer).

My mother’s Jewish family — prominent as the owners of the J. Lyons catering empire — was on a list of those the Gestapo had identified for immediate arrest following Adolf Hitler’s planned invasion of the UK, so I owe my existence to the successful fight against the most lethal of all manifestations of anti-Semitism — the German government of 1933-1945.

Quarrel

But World War II was not fought to save the Jewish people — that had nothing whatever to do with the heroic British decision to challenge the military might of Nazi Germany.

I’m under no illusion that the vast majority of British voters cared much about anti-Semitism then, or do now. The rally last week in Parliament Square organised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews in protest against Corbyn’s indulgence of Jew-haters will have been regarded as an obscure internecine Labour quarrel of no great significance by most voters.

But such voters should be aware that, even though they might not be Jewish themselves, they have reason to be afraid of the pathologically intolerant forces that support and nourish Corbynism; or what used to be called the hard-Left.

If you are a woman, you should certainly be aware of it. Misogyny as much as anti-Semitism characterises their attacks on those within the Labour Party they perceive as enemies.

Those such as Yvette Cooper or Liz Kendall (both of whom stood against Corbyn in his first campaign for the Labour leadership) received appalling abuse of a sexualised nature.

And when it seemed likely that she might later challenge that leadership, the lesbian Labour MP Angela Eagle experienced homophobic abuse (as well as a brick thrown through the window of her office.)

A glimpse of the wide river of filth that is showered over Corbyn’s critics, real or imagined, was revealed by the Daily Mail’s Guy Adams last week as he uncovered (an unpleasant job, but someone had to do it) filthy anti-Semitic comments from Facebook groups favoured by the Labour leader. And yesterday the Sunday Times reproduced foul postings from Facebook sites such as We Support Jeremy Corbyn, Jeremy Corbyn Leads Us To Victory and Let’s Help Make Jeremy Corbyn Prime Minister. A selection follows.

On the BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg: ‘Give her a body bag’; ‘I’d love to slap that stupid Tory b****’; ‘Shut your neck and jump off a cliff’ (No wonder the BBC felt it necessary to hire bodyguards to protect Ms Kuenssberg when she attended the last Labour Party conference).

On Theresa May: ‘What she needs is a .45 bullet in the back of the head’; ‘I’d just f****** shoot her’; ‘How much for a paid assassin?’

On Esther McVey, the Work and Pensions Secretary: ‘ This f****** cow needs lynching’; ‘Hit her with a brick to shut her up’; ‘Should be publicly whipped.’

And, of course, the Jewish critics of Jeremy Corbyn got the usual treatment. So, to Jonathan Arkush, the President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews: ‘I am not anti-Semitic but tell the Jews go and get f***ed;’ ‘F*** off and take your Zionist holier than thou fake attitude back to where you were spawned.’

Given that Corbyn claimed to stand for a ‘kinder, gentler politics’, this foamflecked abuse masquerading as political argument would, you might think, cause their beloved leader deep embarrassment. But he shows no sign of being discomfited. Perhaps because he laps up the almost mindless adoration he receives (‘Oh, Jeremy Corbyn’) it is hard for him to disown the flip side of that idolatrous support: feral attacks on the doubters.

Violent

Never forget, also, that Corbyn’s favourite newspaper — and the one for which he wrote a column for many years — is the Communist daily, the Morning Star. For decades it followed the Stalinist practice (and, indeed, of Lenin before that) of using grotesquely violent language against all opponents.

They were to be ‘crushed’, ‘annihilated’, ‘ground into dust’. Lenin and Stalin did just that to their enemies within what is laughably called the Socialist family.

And when on the Andrew Marr Show on the BBC in January, Corbyn praised Mao Zedong’s so-called ‘Great Leap Forward’ — the forced collectivisation of Chinese agriculture which caused the death of an estimated 50 million by starvation or state- directed killing — it should have become clear to the British people as a whole that the Labour leader can accept almost any outrage if it is conducted in the name of Socialism.

He — and his most viperous fan club — feel able to do so because they have convinced themselves it is all being done in the name of the poor, who, in their deluded doctrine, are poor only because the rich are rich.

What this means, in turn, is that the rich are inherently wicked. Which is where the Jews come in. The anti-Semitism of the hard-Left is not based on religious intolerance (the ancient and now nearly extinct Christian enmity towards Jews which Hitler cunningly exploited, while being an atheist himself). No, it is based on the idea that Jews are the black heart of the global capitalist conspiracy against the masses.

Karl Marx himself (who was baptised after his Jewish father converted to Lutheranism) took this line.

Tract

In his 1844 essay On The Jewish Question, he wrote: ‘What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. Money is the jealous God of Israel. The Bill of Exchange is the real God of the Jew.’ And in an article for the New York Daily Tribune in 1856, Marx pronounced: ‘The real work is done by the Jews, and can only be done with them, as they monopolise the machinery of the loan-mongering mysteries . . .’

In fairness to the father of Communism, such language was commonplace then: it is impossible to imagine a prominent newspaper publishing a tract like that nowadays. Which makes it all the more depressing and bizarre that such views have been springing from the lips of Labour Party members. Yesterday, the comedian and novelist David Baddiel recalled being told by someone identifying himself as ‘progressive’ that while it was vile to use the ‘n’ word to describe African-Americans, it was perfectly OK to mock Jewish people as ‘Yids’.

And when Baddiel asked this ‘progressive friend’ why he drew that distinction, he responded: ‘Because Jews are rich’.

I suspect something like that lies behind Corbynite Labour’s reluctance to discipline party representatives who post articles on Facebook asserting that the Holocaust is a hoax and the Nazis’ gas chambers never existed (a calumny which once would have been associated only with the far-Right).

They seem to think that as Britain’s small Jewish population is white and, in the main, comfortably off, they do not deserve any protection. But the millions of people not part of that community should be worried, too. Because the intolerance of the Corbynite shock troops will extend to anyone who seeks to challenge their divisive and, frankly, conspiracy-obsessed doctrine.

Their hate extends way beyond those who demonstrated against them last week in Parliament Square. The only good news is that, as has happened before, the hate-filled and fanatical far-Left will end up devouring itself.