Labour’s “useful idiot”
The British Left has a long and inglorious history of producing “useful idiots”, said Oliver Kamm on Capx: propagandists for Lenin, Stalin, Mao and other revolutionaries. Today, the Labour Party is led by such a person. In 2013, Jeremy Corbyn described Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela as “an inspiration to all of us fighting back against austerity and neo-liberal economics in Europe”; as recently as 2015, he marched in support of its regime. Even now, when Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, has led the country to total economic collapse, when his security forces are shooting protesters and arresting opposition leaders ( see page 6), Corbyn appears unable to condemn Venezuela’s government. Instead, this week he decried “the violence done by all sides”, and called for a “dialogue”. Typical “weasel words”, said the Scottish Daily Mail – like those he uses “to exculpate his terrorist friends in the Middle East and Ireland”. British people should look at Venezuela’s vicious political violence, its 700% inflation, abject poverty and child malnourishment, and consider what a narrow escape we had from “Corbyn’s utopia” in the June election.
“When the world comes to contemplate what is happening in Venezuela today, a dose of humility is advisable,” said The Observer. Chávez was a legitimately elected ruler who tried, for the first time, to share Venezuela’s great oil wealth with its people, and to give them a say in the nation’s direction. That he failed was down to his own embrace of authoritarian measures and disastrous economic policies: but these were “in part a reaction to the entrenched resistance he encountered” from vested interests inside Venezuela, and from Washington – which approved a 2002 coup designed to remove him. “As they ponder the current crisis, Western leaders and the political Right should consider their share of the responsibility.” I think we on the left need to be more honest, said Asa Cusack in The Guardian. Chávez’s good intentions, and his striking achievements – poverty was halved, illiteracy was eradicated, millions received free health care for the first time – blinded us to his “dangerous failings”. We downplayed abuses that we would have denounced in a more right-wing government.
The problem with Corbyn and his ilk is that they have always subscribed to the idea that “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”, said Sean O’grady in The Independent. They seem to think that “if some murderous monster somewhere is opposed by the United States or by British Tories or Blairites, then they must, ipso facto, be worth supporting”. After Castro’s death, Corbyn said that, “for all his flaws”, he had been a great fighter for social justice – as if “it’s OK to shut newspapers because Cuba had some damn good free dentistry”. Corbyn’s media director, Seumas Milne, has defended, among others, Robert Mugabe and Slobodan Miloševic. It’s time these people woke up. Venezuelan democracy, such as it is, is being extinguished. People are dying. “Corbyn, please listen.”