Guilt by Association

Jeremy Corbyn has appointed Andrew Murray his Chief of Communications. The far-left Murray only left the Communist Party of Britain in December 2016.

It’s a standard tactic of many on the Left to attempt to shut down debate by accusing others of being far-right, if not directly, then through ‘guilt by association’, irrespective of the actually openly and plainly-stated values of the target of these accusations.

Perhaps those on the mainstream right should take a leaf out of this book and use the same tactics in kind, and they’d have every justification in doing so.

Consider the record of the extreme left and extreme right during the 20th century.

Fascism killed 28 million people.
Communism killed 94 million people.

Communism killed 335% as many people as fascism.

Can you imagine the outcry if someone who had only recently left the BNP were given a senior position in the Conservative Party? The party which is widely considered to be on the extreme right of British politics (UKIP) has an explicit exclusion clause for members of the BNP – something which can not be said of either of the two main parties.

Communism is not a cuddly and fluffy ideology. The above facts should put any such bizarre notions out of people’s minds. There are complex reasons why it is not seen by a British or a wider European audience in as negative terms as fascism, mainly to do with the inconvenient fact that the western Allies were forced to align themselves with Stalin in order to fight off the more immediate threat of Nazism.

So, I want to emphasise this again. A man who, less than six months ago, belonged to a party which holds an ideology which killed more humans than any other ideology in the 20th century is now a senior member of the Labour Party’s electoral campaign.

This is where any rational mind of the mainstream right would turn to a leftist and use the same ‘guilt by association’ tactics right back at them.

We rightly condemn those on the far right. By those on the far right, I mean those who actually are on the far right, and not those who are commonly accused of being on the far right by anyone who considers anyone to the right of centre as ‘scum’.

By any objective consideration, and unless those on the left are prepared to debate issues without resorting to ad hominem or guilt by association arguments, it’s time that those on the mainstream right simply responded in kind and dismissed their opponents as far-leftists in the same sneering and disgusted tones.