If there is any doubt about that look to the UK. Britain now has within reach of power the first truly progressive politician in living memory, someone seeking to represent the 99 per cent, not the 1 per cent. But Jeremy Corbyn's experience as the leader of the Labour party massively swelling the membership's ranks to make it the largest political party in Europe has been eye-popping.
I have documented Corbyn's travails regularly in this blog over the past four years at the hands of the British political and media establishment. You can find many examples here.
Corbyn, even more so than the small, new wave of insurgency politicians in the US Congress, has faced a relentless barrage of criticism from across the UK's similarly narrow political spectrum. He has been attacked by both the rightwing media and the supposedly "liberal" media. He has been savaged by the ruling Conservative party, as was to be expected, and by his own parliamentary Labour party. The UK's two-party system has been exposed as just as hollow as the US one.
The ferocity of the attacks has been necessary because, unlike the Democratic party's success in keeping a progressive leftwinger away from the presidential campaign, the UK system accidentally allowed a socialist to slip past the gatekeepers. All hell has broken out ever since.
Simple-minded identity politics
What is so noticeable is that Corbyn is rarely attacked over his policies mainly because they have wide popular appeal. Instead he has been hounded over fanciful claims that, despite being a life-long and very visible anti-racism campaigner, he suddenly morphed into an outright anti-semite the moment party members elected him leader. I will not rehearse again how implausible these claims are. Simply look through these previous blog posts should you be in any doubt.
But what is amazing is that, just as with the Mueller inquiry, much of the British left including prominent figures like Owen Jones and the supposedly countercultural Novara Media have sapped their political energies in trying to placate or support those leading the preposterous claims that Labour under Corbyn has become "institutionally anti-semitic". Again, the promotion of a simple-minded identity politics which pits the rights of Palestinians against the sensitivities of Zionist Jews about Israel was exploited to divide the left.
The more the left has conceded to this campaign, the angrier, the more implacable, the more self-righteous Corbyn's opponents have become to the point that the Labour party is now in serious danger of imploding.
A clarifying moment
Were the US to get its own Corbyn as president, he or she would undoubtedly face a Mueller-style inquiry, and one far more effective at securing the president's impeachment than this one was ever going to be.
That is not because a leftwing US president would be more corrupt or more likely to have colluded with a foreign power. As the UK example shows, it would be because the entire media system from the New York Times to Fox News would be against such a president. And as the UK example also shows, it would be because the leaderships of both the Republican and Democratic parties would work as one to finish off such a president.
In the combined success-failure of the Mueller inquiry, the left has an opportunity to understand in a much more sophisticated way how real power works and in whose favour it is exercised. It is moment that should be clarifying - if we are willing to open our eyes to Mueller's real lessons.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
3
3
2
