We must all learn to be able to hold two thoughts in our head at the same time. It is so easy to see hypocrisy in others and often almost impossible to acknowledge that we can all have the same problem when we spend so much time looking out, and forget to wipe our own lens clean.
It is something I am struggling to wrestle with as it’s grasp is very fatiguing and habit forming, with tendrils that reach far back into the past. At it’s heart is the startling realisation, that the problems we think our uniquely ours, are in fact, much more universal, and something that friends and enemies, heroes and bastards, all have to struggle with equally.
So no, Jeremy Corbyn is not immune from criticism or incapable of hypocrisy, but pretending that very different people like Keir Starmer are not human or deserving of any kind of respect, is equally unhelpful. That is not an apology for the actions of one, or a damning indictment of the other either.
Criticizing Israel’s Government policy is of course not anti-Semitic, but that is not what most rational and fair people are talking about when they talk about anti-Semitic tropes and antisemitism either.There is this idea on the left that Israel as a country is beyond redemption, and that it should be rendered obsolete using the exact same kind of personal invalidation and character assassination that has been used to try and obliterate Corbyn. That may sound extreme, but actually the same kind of cancel culture values that the new right are blind to in themselves, whilst leveling that accusation at anyone seeking to reveal a more honest account of historical whitewashing, is at play here.
I have had to sit back and listen to it for 35+ years now as well meaning friends on the left, knowingly or unwittingly fall into the easy trap of laying the blame for everything from running the entire media and entertainment industries, to controlling the worlds economy, at the foot of ‘The Jews’.
They may call them ‘The Illuminati’ or any number of other names but just like the new right and it’s bizarre invented bogeyman that is ‘Cultural Marxism’, what the alternative left really mean when they use such opaque language is, also, ‘The Jews’.
No they will say, not all Jews. Sound scarily familiar? Just ‘Zionists’ or just ‘Religious Jews’, as though their own righteous indignation trumps any kind of harm done by the ready and easy willingness they have to put people into the same boxes they would castigate others on the right for doing.
Terms like ‘Jewish Money’ and the persistent idea of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust, are not just talked about casually, but promoted in art, music and literature of people who just like me think they can spot hypocritical double standards a mile off.
So totalitarian is this insipid intolerance, that I am starting to become aware of how divisive, even mentioning religion, is among many here on the radical left. The most heartbreaking thing about that is, that along with it comes another double standard, and the rejection of compassion even for your enemies. (Not the same thing as unconditional love.)
Again, it is exactly the same thing, that were it expressed by a right wing Islamophobic hard Brexit supporting bigot, calling all Muslims easily led uneducated idiots, would be rightly dismissed as a stupid and lazy trope.
Remember that it is often a religious motivation that has fired the hearts of many people who helped found animal rights, anti war, and other humanitarian movements, and just because your own inspiration may come from song sheets and atheist luminaries, that does not somehow give you the right to refuse to extend the same freedoms of belief you avail yourself of, in choosing not to believe.
This is basic stuff we should all be practicing on the left.
So no, Jeremy Corbyn is not incapable of bad judgement. This is why so many people got behind him as a new force representing a break with tradition. It was his flaws and unpolished nature that people connected with. That did not endow him with some kind of God like infallibility, quite the opposite. And that is at the heart of what happened yesterday. It was in my opinion, an error of judgement. Others around him on the left, who may well have agreed with all he said, at least had the common sense to hold their cards closer to their chests, as they said they would in taking a few days to digest the report before commenting.
I understand why Corbyn was not so judicious. He is a human. The sustained campaign against him by sections of the media and the center and right in general has been dirty and unprincipled, based mostly based on lies, exaggerations and falsehoods. Anyone one of us when faced with that, would probably be far more furious, and would lash out in much more self destructive ways at a such a character assassination.
(None of that though excuses the kind of vitriol now being displayed by hordes of of supporters tearing up their Labour membership and embarking on the same self defeating character assassination attempt on Starmer)
Jeremy did not help himself. It is as simple as that. An error of judgement. He has made the point that he and the Labour party (even under him) was, and still is, at the coal face of fighting discrimination and prejudice. Yesterday was a time for taking a breath and considering the possibility that other people’s concerns might well justify taking precedence. Even if he could not see it, many around him had displayed the kind of insensitivity and crude ignorance he would be the first to point out in others.
So please do not fuel the fire of Corbyn’s detractors, and the far right blatantly racist and bigoted hypocrites smirking into their coffees, by jumping on the other end of the see saw. Dismissing the very idea that you may be invulnerable to creating the same kind of hostile environment, not just for Jewish people and their allies, but for those friends and family, who you have marched alongside for years, just because they walk to a different beat, is playing into their divide and conquer hands.
The Conservative party has far more than the failure to complete an investigation into Islamophobia to be laid at it’s feet. It is rotten to the core and those prejudices are writ through it as clearly as a place name in a stick of tooth rotting rock. None of that though suddenly removes the blind spot so many on the game changing left have, for a bad habit that so easily dulls the blade of clear judgement on other matters.
Anyone can show solidarity with a group that has the same interests, but it is far more useful, brave and challenging, to widen that embrace and include a more disparate group with which you share a common goal and can offer mutual support to.
So please, think about why your refusal to accept an admittance of human failure in a good man actually does even him, let alone our shared cause, a great disservice.
Please at least entertain the idea, that it is not only that Jeremy Corbyn can be blamed for everything that is a problem, but also the idea that he can never be held account for anything.
