HANDS ACROSS THE SPECTRUM
Where Far Left and Far Right Meet
Quiz question, what do the following people and organisations have in common: Nigel Farage, Jeremy Corbyn, Donald Trump, George Galloway, Viktor Orban, Pat Buchanan, Seamus Milne, Leave EU, Stop the War Coalition, Christian Evangelicals and The Morning Star newspaper.*
Answer: They all, at one time or another, have praised or acted as apologists for Vladimir Putin.
Now any list that brackets Nigel Farage, Jeremy Corbyn, The Christian right in the US, and Stop the War in the UK is an unusual list. Or perhaps, I should add, since it is more accurate, would once have seemed an unusual list. However, since we live in strange times the once inconceivable is becoming the norm. We are witnessing hands stretching across the political divide, from the fascist far right of Britain First and Marine Le Pen to the Trotskyite West haters of Stop the War, all either pay direct homage to Putin or continue to offer an apologia for his violence and thuggery.
Since the attempted murder, - using Russian manufactured nerve agent, far from the first such incident, not including other mysterious deaths of former Russian citizens living here, of an ex-member of Russian FSB on British soil, - this poison has poured like puss from an open wound out onto social and mainstream media. The scramble to try and find anything that might exculpate Putin has been as extraordinary as it has been disgusting, stretching as it has from Farage and Leave UK on the right to fanatical Corbynites on the ‘left’ [sic].[1]
Brexit and the election of Donald Trump have exposed a deep sickness in Western democracy as stark and unpleasant as any threat to democracy since the 1930’s. The obsequious worship at the altar of Putin and collusion with his hostility to the West is merely a symptom of this sickness.
The attractions of Putin for the right are obvious and, to some extent I have dealt with this elsewhere. Superficially at least, Putin’s attraction for those claiming to be left-wing or progressive seems more mysterious. However, given that the modern far left, and one now must include significant numbers of members of the Labour party in that category, is consumed by hatred of the West and of liberal democracy, it is not that surprising.[2] My enemy’s enemy is my friend and from Assad to Putin, they must be defended at all costs. The key here is hate, for aside from a few vacuous slogans, usual with the word neoliberal[ism] thrown in, there is in this support an ideological void. Hate for the Tories, ‘capitalism’ whatever that or neoliberalism is judged to mean, Zionism- which may or may not include all Jews,- hate for anyone opposed to Corbyn in the Labour party, and finally hate for anyone not signed up to their narrow and vindictive worldview. For opponents, must not so much be debated as shouted down, alternative ideas cannot be tolerated and their proponents refused a platform, smashed and destroyed.
 |
| Seamus Milne Jeremy Corbyn's Media Director and close advisor. A picture paints those proverbial 1000 words. |
For the most part, this visceral hatred is little more than a masturbatory fantasy, only given voice on Twitter or Facebook.[3] However when some force, ISIS, Assad, Iran, or Putin gives the West ‘a bloody nose,[4]’ the celebrations can be observed, sometimes muted or couched in weasel words, or fake ‘concern,’ across the militant left. To witness this one just as to observe the glee with which Boris Johnson’s inevitable mishandling of the Skripal poisoning was greeted.
As for the ‘offshore patriots’ of the right their hatred of British society, aiming at its best to be open tolerant, inclusive, multi-cultural, goes so deep that any enemy of these values, from Trump to Putin is to be embraced.
Of course, there has always been such power worship, well documented by Orwell in the 1930’s and 40’s. Then the struggle was, at least nominally, ideological. So long as Stalin mouthed Marxist platitudes fellow travellers could always convince themselves they were ‘on the right side of history,’ – which had the added bonus of being the ‘winning’ side. Now our latter-day Stalin and Mao, Mussolini and Hitler cults need carry no ideological baggage, they can travel light, visceral hatred of liberalism and liberal norms are all that is required.
*Formerly the house paper of The British Communist Party.
[1] This terminology, the bracketing of left or right wing cease to make much sense in a world it is ‘left wing’ to cheerlead for the Assad’s Baathist fascists or the theocratic regime in Tehran, and ‘right wing’ to dismiss the concerns of the CBI or the importance of the City of London’s financial services.
[2] I am not qualified to speak about the situation in the US, and from where I sit it looks more complex, though the woeful Susan Sarandon suggest there may be some parallels.
[3] Which is not to downplay the deeply unpleasant and corrosive impact that this vicious abuse can have on those to whom it is directed.
[4] This was the phrase used to describe the terrorist destruction of the Twin Towers in, amongst other places, The London Review of Books.
