Corbyn and Trump join hands against the liberal world order

The organising ideology of Corbynism is not pacifism but anti-Americanism

What would Jeremy Corbyn have made of the bombing of Guernica during Spain’s civil war? This seems a silly question to ask of Britain’s Labour leader. Mr Corbyn wears his socialism on his sleeve. His parents met at a rally in London in support of the pro-republican international brigades fighting Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s nationalists.

And yet. By the logic of his reactions to contemporary events — say, the savage aerial destruction of the Syrian city of Aleppo — Mr Corbyn would have shrugged off the carnage in the small Basque town, mumbled something about talks at the League of Nations and, if pressed for something less equivocal, solemnly declared that he opposed violence by both sides in the conflict.

Donald Trump, who refuses to admit even the line separating Nazis and anti-racist protesters, is far from alone in drawing false moral equivalences. European populists of the far right and the far left habitually join the US president in refusing to take the side of liberal democracy against violent authoritarianism. Like Mr Trump, most of them are apologists for Russian president Vladimir Putin. Mr Corbyn has joined a club that also counts among its leading members Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s National Front.

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the Guernica attack. The indiscriminate bombing of civilians was carried out by Nazi Germany’s Condor Legion and Fascist Italy’s Aviazione Legionaria. Memorialised by Pablo Picasso, the raid was at once a mark of the ruthlessness of the Generalissimo and a precursor of the terror bombing of cities by the Luftwaffe during the second world war. While Germany’s Nazis and Italy’s Fascists backed the nationalists, Europe’s democracies chose to sit on the sidelines. The volunteers of the communist-led international brigades were no match for the forces of fascism...................

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