Livingstone, Zionism and Labour.

The current whirlwind of hostility to the UK Labour Party's left leaders, albeit whipped up by some daft playacting in the media by by Ken Livingstone, and shadow cabinet and ex leadership contender Andy Burnham' very recent discovery of his own deep hostility to anti-semitism, is right wing Labour sensing Corbyn's blood and doing what they can to undermine Labour's May 5 electoral campaign to get it.

Although Livingstone's point was irrelevant to the current battles in the Labour Party, it was true that some German Zionists flirted with some Nazis (not Hitler) in the early 1930's, both about getting German jews to a Palestinian 'homeland', even in some cases extolling the Nuremberg race laws as potentially allowing the 'Jewish minority" to develop their culture and religion autonomously. Historically the Zionist movement always had a rightist as well as a leftist face. Today 'progressive' Zionists in the UK often chide their leftist colleagues for their lack of understanding that Zionism is but the name for Jewish national self-determination, an historic right of all oppressed people in the cannon of anti-imperialist and humanitarian politics.

It is not an issue for this blog or an explanation of the real nature of the explosion in the Labour Party; but it is worth noting that it is a uniquely odd act of 'national self determination' when a new nation is created on top of someone else's nation and where nationhood (whether you are allowed to be a citizen of that nation) is effectively determined by your prior culture and religion and not whether you live there. Such a definition of a nation legitimised pre WW2 Germany's 'right' to seize and 'protect' the 'German' Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. It stands contrary to the letter and spirit of the new idea of 'nation' created by the Enlightenment and enacted by the French Revolution, which characterised the nation on the basis of all who lived within its boundaries, and not by the 'culture', antecedants or 'souls' of certain people - regardless of where they lived.

Meanwhile Labour faces a dangerous battle, with the Corbyn leadership turning in every direction to defend its anti-racist credentials and the Labour right, including most of its MPs, plus the entire media determined to bring Corbyn down at any cost.

First the Corbyn leadership, and everybody else who has a stake in its survival, needs to call this conflict what it is; - the latest and most powerful effort yet to destroy the left leadership of the Labour Party and therefore an attempt to overthrow the decisions of the big majority of the Labour Party membership. Second, it must be made clear that any damage caused to Labour's support in the coming elections is a direct consequence of this offensive. Third, starting from the Corbyn leadership itself but essentially extending to all those mobilised by and fighting austerity and war is the need to make clear that the right wing Labour MPs need to call off their attack dogs. Already they no longer stand for Labour victory on May 5. Now they no longer stand for the new Labour Party.