Terrorism and the truth about hate-filled politics of the Left
IN a moment of revelatory candour, Jeremy Corbyn once said he could never be true friends with anyone who did not share his politics. It was simply beyond the pale to countenance comradeship with someone who did not subscribe to his Marxist philosophy (though being chums with the IRA was perfectly acceptable).
Diane Abbott, Mr Corbyn’s former lover, was just as smitten with the IRA back in those far-off days when she sported her ‘splendid Afro’ – though she assures us she has now ‘moved on’ from those views.
Her colleague, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, once sickeningly praised the ‘bravery’ of the IRA but has since apologised.
In fact, he assures us, he was utterly dedicated to the peace process, as was Mr Corbyn, who claimed a few days ago that he had never met anyone in the IRA – until photographic evidence forced him into a U-turn.
Political vantage points come and go, just like embarrassing hairstyles.
But you might have hoped politicians of whatever hue would share a common ground of unshifting shared values (like, for example, refusing to fetishise a bunch of ruthless killers).
It might be possible to take the Corbynistas at their word – they once thought something unpalatable, and no longer do – if it were not for the fact that this kind of behaviour is, it seems, endemic among the Left.
Green MSP Ross Greer, who became Scotland’s youngest Holyrood parliamentarian last year, has supported Palestinian terror group Hamas, even boasting on Twitter he had ‘wound up the Zionist lobby’.
Elliot Davis, joint chairman of the Judeo-Christian Alliance, said at the time of Mr Greer’s election: ‘It is deeply disconcerting to Jews and to all right-minded people in Scotland when an MSP is elected who supports a terrorist organisation.’
And don’t forget Nationalist MSP Sandra White, who was given a police warning in 2016 after retweeting an anti-Semitic cartoon compared to the ‘very worst of the Nazi propaganda’.
But this conduct fits into a hate-filled pattern that straddles party boundaries, manifesting itself not only in the appalling love-in with murderers but also a desire to smear and to ‘other’ anyone with opposing views.
Simple disagreement is impossible: if you are not on their side, whatever the issue, you are fair game for the useful idiots and attack dogs of Twitter; you are there to be demonised, discredited, undermined and pilloried.
One of the greatest ironies is that the virtue-signalling standard-bearers of the Left pride themselves on their compassion – they stand up for the poor, for the homeless, and for the dispossessed – unlike the malign Tories.
Intimidation
And yet there is precious little compassion when it comes to the intimidation and denigration of their opponents, with activists, their political masters and pundits joining together to pour vitriol on anyone who shows signs of non-compliance with their political perspective.
This intolerance of opposing views was evidenced by the unedifying case of SNP activist Lorna Taylor who drove around Cowie, Stirlingshire, hurling abuse at Tory election volunteers.
The footage was posted online and as police began investigating, Mrs Taylor was unrepentant, citing her right to freedom of speech.
In another example, Brian Smith worked for SNP candidate Ian Blackford in a successful campaign in 2015 to oust Charles Kennedy, sending vile online messages to the former Lib Dem leader which branded him ‘a Quisling’ and ‘a drunken slob’.
When the full extent of these inhumane exploits came to light, Mr Smith quit, but such was the fallout from the affair that Mr Blackford, a friend of Mr Smith, was banned from Mr Kennedy’s funeral.
Two years ago, Andrew Szwebs, convener of the Stirling branch of the SNP, used a fake Twitter account to label an opponent a ‘Quisling’.
In the run-up to the 2014 referendum, playwright and author Alan Bissett, a leading pro-independence campaigner with close ties to Mr Salmond, branded Scots Unionists sufferers of ‘Jockholme [sic] syndrome’.
Oh so cleverly, Mr Bissett, was punning ‘Stockholm syndrome’, a condition in which hostages form a close psychological bond with their captors. In a McDonnell-style recantation, he later admitted it had been ‘inappropriate and insensitive’, and deleted the remark from Twitter.
This disgusting behaviour was allowed to happen because the party hierarchy too often turned a blind eye to it.
Some Nationalists have even offered succour to nasty bigots using online hate to smear Unionists by following them on social media.
Perhaps this sewer running directly beneath Left-wing politics flows from its supporters’ self-identification as perpetual outsiders.
Many of the saloon bar bores who made up so much of the Nationalists’ initial support base later became conspiracy theorists who refused to use pencils in polling booths, in case shadowy Unionists rubbed out their crosses.
Innately distrustful of authority, they massively overreact to the slightest opposition – witness Mr Salmond’s ugly recent attacks on the ‘yoon’ or Unionist media.
For their part, the Corbynistas never dreamed of being in power and are happiest in campaigning mode.
This might explain their unexpected success so far in the election campaign (helped along by the Tories’ sporadically kamikaze performance).
But there is also a desperate immaturity among the Left, for theirs is all too often the politics of the student union.
Patrick Harvie, the Greens’ co-convener, asked for assurances at Holyrood last week that anti-nuclear campaigners would be able to continue their protest at the Faslane naval base, as troops were drafted in because of the increased terror threat.
In the aftermath of a suicide bombing, this was, of course, the top priority of his constituents (not that Mr Harvie, as a veteran list MSP, has any).
Contravention
The ‘snowflake generation’ so enamoured of the Corbynistas and the Nationalists cannot brook the slightest contravention of their right-on agenda.
This helps to explain the jokes that so many of our university campuses have become – riddled as they are with safe spaces and ‘trigger warnings’ for over-sensitive students.
Indeed, Donald Trump’s presidency can be explained at least in part by a rejection of snowflake politics, dominated by an incessant focus on trendy topics such as transgender bathrooms which meant nothing to the bulk of the US populace.
The massive polarisation of politics in the UK, over Scottish independence and Brexit – and the Corbyn ascendancy pitching the Labour movement into civil war – has created division, among friends, families and workmates.
But while the Right has attempted to move on and heal those rifts, it is the Left – on both sides of the Border – that has been unable or unwilling to leave behind the hate-filled prejudices of old.