Imagine if Hillary Clinton had a nice, warm chat with someone that 85 percent of African Americans think is a racist, and then tweeted that it was ‘an honor to share such a lovely and wide-ranging conversation with you’. The media would erupt, and diagnose Clinton as a racist. Or imagine if Elizabeth Warren hit it off with someone who consorts with Holocaust deniers, terrorists, and 9/11 conspiracists, and looked forward to combatting their global enemies together. Again the media would excoriate Warren. And with good reason, because we judge people by the company they keep.
So where is the disgust this morning about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement of Jeremy Corbyn, leader of Britain’s Labour party? Corbyn is a career communist, a supporter of Castro, Chavez, and Maduro. He is a supporter of Hamas and the IRA. He hates the United States, but he never has a bad word to say about Russia. He has accepted money to appear on the Iranian propaganda channel Press TV. He refuses to accept Israel’s right to exist, and endorses conspiracy theories about Israeli subversion in Arab states. He has an uncanny ability to share platforms with 9/11 conspiracists who say that the Mossad did it, with Islamists who say that the Mossad did it, and with Holocaust deniers who say that the Germans didn’t do it, but the Palestinians should.
As Labour leader, Corbyn has turned the social democratic party of Tony Blair into the largest and most successful anti-Semitic party in Europe. Eighty-five percent of British Jews believe that Corbyn is personally anti-Semitic. Given that two Jews have three opinions, this represents a stunning unanimity of opinion. When British Jews object to Corbyn’s bigotry, his followers issue death threats on Twitter.
‘Also honored to share a great hope in the peace, prosperity + justice that everyday people can create when we uplift one another across class, race + identity both at home & abroad,’ Ocasio-Cortez trilled to Corbyn after their lovely chat.
‘Great to speak to @AOC on the phone this evening and hear first hand how she’s challenging the status quo,’ Corbyn tweeted in socialist realist style. ‘Let’s build a movement across borders to take on the billionaires, polluters and migrant baiters, and support a happier, freer and cleaner planet’.
Always with the billionaires, Jeremy. The status quo that Corbyn describes is the grip of Judeo-American capitalism, whose tentacular global empire uses Israel to forestall the inevitable workers’ revolution in the Arab states. He is a fanatic and a bigot, whether he looks like a retired geography teacher or not.
And what should we conclude from this episode about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, regardless of what she looks like?
‘Thank you for bringing this to me,’ she tweeted graciously when one of her Jewish followers tweeted his distress. ‘We cannot + will not move forward without deep fellowship and leadership with the Jewish community. I’ll have my team reach out.’
This is what it looks like when digital know-nothings play the politician. For a socialist, Ocasio-Cortez gives good management-speak. She appended a purple heart to this memo to the everyday people. This shows that her undying compassion extends even unto the one percent of touchy Zionists, and also that she felt a little wounded by the suggestion that she was either an idiot or a fellow-traveler with anti-Semites. Of course, she couldn’t be. She’s far too young and perky for that. It’s just that the company she keeps is that of ‘everyday people’ like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib — and now Jeremy Corbyn.
Since 2016, the Democrats have hurried down the path that Britain’s Labour has followed since 2008. The Democrats are playing the same game of ethnic coalition-building as Labour and the left-wing parties in Europe. They are also heading leftwards on the economy. The hatred of Jews is foundational to the anti-liberalism and anti-capitalism of the radical left. It is also foundational to the Muslim societies that Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar come from, and alarmingly popular among African Americans and recent Hispanic immigrants, two groups vital to Democratic electoral strategy. This is why the Democrats have developed what used to be called a ‘Jewish problem’ — which is to say, representatives and voters who have a problem with Jews, and a DNC unwilling to do anything about it because that would cost votes.
Is Ocasio-Cortez so committed to the cause that she’s prepared to spend her life on the agitated fringe as Corbyn did, and wait decades, as he did, for the sub-Leninist moment when his party falls apart and a cadre of bold proletarians can commandeer the machinery? Or is she a shallow millennial who thinks life is a popularity contest, a telegenic hack who will track to the center where the cameras are?
We already know the answer. Socialism is back, because the West is losing its edge over the East and the millennials are so ignorant of history that most of them don’t know who Britney Spears was. Ocasio-Cortez is the acceptable face of socialism, washed clean of the crimes which New Left people like Corbyn have spent their lives explaining away. As the Republican party decays into the party of angry whites, there is nothing to stop her. Or the radicals and bigots who will march behind AOC, and mask their ugly hatreds behind her photogenic platitudes and cute purple heart. Meet your future president, Alexandria Ocasio-Corbyn.
Dominic Green is Life & Arts Editor of Spectator USA.
