The news media continue to mine Jeremy Corbyn’s past for links to political extremists and terrorist groups, or, if you prefer, connive with a ‘Zionist conspiracy’ to remove the saintly Labour leader. Yesterday, The Sunday Times reported that Corbyn was investigated by Special Branch for his involvement in the 80s and 90s with a group that included IRA bombers who plotted several attacks in London.
We’ve become used to some fairly jaw-dropping detail about the people with whom the Leader of the Opposition has associated, but, even so, aspects of this story are extraordinary.
This particular far-left group, Red Action, was unusually candid about its enthusiasm for Irish republican violence. A police officer told the paper, “he (Corbyn) knew they were open supporters of terrorism and he supported them”. In its journal, Red Action stated, “both as an organisation and as individuals we support the activities of the Provisional IRA and the INLA unconditionally and uncritically.”
It’s worth taking a moment to digest that statement in all its breathtaking stupidity and naivety.
On Reaction, several writers have floated the idea that Jeremy Corbyn’s problems arise principally from the fact that he is a bit dim. Even if that is the case, it takes a special type of dimness to endorse a group capable of expressing this sentiment.
Which organisations or institutions might command unconditional support from a thinking person? A church perhaps, though that type of loyalty is fading quickly; royalty, at a pinch; most likely a favourite football team, but even then, one’s support is unlikely to be completely uncritical.
No thoughtful person could express unconditional and uncritical support for a political party, never mind a terrorist group. Anybody with a lively, curious mind will continue to analyse and interrogate ideas and the movements that espouse them, even when they agree and feel committed to their premise. Whenever the movement bombs and murders members of the security forces and civilians, it’s probably prudent to scrutinise its activities all the more carefully.
The facts about Corbyn’s comradeship with all kinds of dangerous zealots are shocking in and of themselves, but even more alarming is the rigid, totalitarian mind that they reveal. The Red Action story was accompanied by the now customary half-denial from the Labour leader’s office, christian name only of course, “Jeremy has never supported political violence in Northern Ireland. He… was completely unaware of any criminal activities.”
We’ve become far too familiar with these semantic games. For weeks now, Corbyn’s apologists have been fleshing out at length the distinction between hating Jews and hating the state of Israel. He has been mocked repeatedly for his insistence that he was “present” but not “involved” in an event that commemorated Palestinians linked to the Black September group that killed 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. There’s never the slightest hint that the Labour leader regrets his connections to extreme causes or has revised any of the outlandish beliefs that led him to associate with brutal, fanatical people.
For the true believers, each new story and revelation only confirms that there is a plot “to undermine the most honest man in politics today,” as one less-than-hinged follower put it on Facebook recently. It’s hardly coincidental that there is such an overlap on Twitter between avid Corbynistas and devotees of former snooker commentator turned conspiracy theorist and ‘son of the Godhead’, David Icke.
Like Jezza himself, the wilder fringe of his support base is unlikely ever to change its mind about anything, because it is almost impervious to reason. You could say that its devotion to Corbyn is “unconditional and uncritical”.
It’s worrying that a politician with connections to all kinds of extremists should have reached such a prominent position in British public life. It’s even more alarming that the next prime minister could be a man who warps and bends the world to fit his preconceptions and seems practically incapable of reflection and rethinking.
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Iain Martin and the team make sense of the news, providing commentary and analysis on the stories that matter in politics, geopolitics, economics and culture.