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1. For a long time now, I've scratched my head over this die-hard, protect-at-all-costs approach to Corbyn by his supporters / allies and wondered why he's so forcefully, obsessively and aggressively protected - often without any compromise. Corbyn is hailed as staunchly
1. For a long time now, I've scratched my head over this die-hard, protect-at-all-costs approach to Corbyn by his supporters / allies and wondered why he's so forcefully, obsessively and aggressively protected - often without any compromise. Corbyn is hailed as staunchly
2. anti-racist, fawned over as an untouchable man of peace and defended unequivocally by his devout supporters - despite his well-documented links to bigots, hate-figures, antisemites, terrorist organisations, anti-Western and anti-American factions, dictators, medieval
3. misogynists and messianic cults - whether these people are passive nobodies, intellectual somebodies or, as in all too many cases, genocidal lunatics. There's always an excuse for him and his actions, always smothered by his "goodness".
My mistake was to think these people
My mistake was to think these people
4. were defending Jeremy Corbyn, but that’s not what's happening here. The reason they protect his every action, pave over his misdeeds and deny his wrongdoings is that he has simply held a mirror up to their own faces, their lives, their beliefs, their own dirty little secrets.
5. Until 2015, they were subdued in obscurity, unspoken, uncomfortable and socially unacceptable. He has cleansed them and wiped away their sins. They have taken his projection of respectability, inhaled the collective intolerances and exhaled their self-righteousness as today's
6. "authentic goodness". A recent conversation with one such defender of Corbyn crystallised this.
"Because he speaks my truth for me".
It was said with sincerity, pride and empowerment, but as this polite conversation progressed I understood what this shared truth involved;
"Because he speaks my truth for me".
It was said with sincerity, pride and empowerment, but as this polite conversation progressed I understood what this shared truth involved;
7. that defining oneself as a defender of human-rights justifies overlooking certain human-right violations, these guardians of women’s rights can bypass misogyny aimed at Corbyn’s detractors and shelters their apathy to violently oppressed women in some parts of the world,
8. claiming alliance with the LGBTQ community supersedes a blindspot for oppressive homophobia elsewhere, their declaration of fighting all forms of racism cloaks the suspicion of Jews. Jeremy gives these people a free pass for their own bigotry. The reasons they defend Corbyn so
9. vigorously - in spite of everything - is that they're defending themselves from their own failings. If Corbyn goes, they're in too deep and it's too late to turn back. They will be left naked, exposed for what they are, but without his cover of mainstream respectability.
10. They're not defending Jeremy Corbyn's bigotry, they're defending the protection he provides for their own. Jeremy Corbyn is their guardian, not the other way round. And that's why he must defended by them at all costs.
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