The leader of the British Labor party has a long history of defending and even praising brutal dictators—from Hugo Chavez to Slobodan Milosevic to Bashar al-Assad—and expressing his admiration for terrorists, not to mention advocating his country’s unilateral nuclear disarmament. Yet, argues James Kirchick, too many on the British and American left are willing to dismiss Jeremy Corbyn’s unsavory views as unpleasant quirks, thus allowing these attitudes to be considered normal. He writes:
Perhaps the most disturbing phenomenon to have become “normalized” in Britain thanks to Corbyn is anti-Semitism. It should hardly come as a surprise that a man who called Hamas and Hizballah “friends,” attended pro-Palestinian events organized by a Holocaust-denier, invited a purveyor of the blood libel for tea at the House of Commons, and hosted programs on an Iranian propaganda network would embolden Jew-haters within Labor’s ranks.
That was indeed the finding of a 2016 cross-party parliamentary inquiry into anti-Semitism, which concluded that Corbyn had “created what some have referred to as a ‘safe space’ for those with vile attitudes toward Jewish people” in his party. The nature of this “safe space” was illustrated when Labor chose not to expel the former London mayor, Ken Livingstone, for repeatedly (and inaccurately) claiming, in a series of interviews and public statements, that Adolf Hitler “supported Zionism.” . . .
Corbyn supporters, [however], view the entire anti-Semitism controversy engulfing their party as a cynical, partisan campaign orchestrated by unscrupulous Jews “weaponizing” charges of anti-Semitism to defame his good character. . . .
[M]any Corbyn defenders insist that, when the future leader of the Labor party was attending IRA rallies or standing on stages draped with Hizballah flags, he was merely encouraging “dialogue.” This is disingenuous, at best. For whether the cause was Northern Ireland or Palestine, it was only the most violent and rejectionist elements with whom Corbyn associated during his decades as a parliamentary backbencher. And he always did so in clear support of their tactics and objectives, not as some neutral arbiter facilitating “dialogue.”
Read more on Slate: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2017/08/british_labour_leader_jeremy_corbyn_s_praise_for_dictators_and_extremists.html