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Friday, June 9, 2017
Corbyn's triumph is a triumph for the socialist left
Forget the endless years now of empty "social democratic" non-platforms tailored to appeal to liberals and reactionaries, Jeremy Corbyn has repudiated and destroyed the logic of them all.
In an election that he went into far, far behind in the polls, written off and undermined by not just the press but by his own "caucus" full with Blairite centrists certain despite a long era of utter defeat that Corbyn would be "unelectable", Corbyn has proven them and their narratives wrong. He has overcome their overt and public attempts to destroy him.
Not only did Corbyn run on an avowedly and openly leftist platform, he did so in the face of relentless attacks from the cowards and careerists in his own midst. In the face of the "social democrats" we are all familiar with who think their narrow collective groupthink is somehow representative of society and whose astonishing track record of failure seems to have no impact on their noxious nonsense.
In an election where he was supposed to be obliterated Jeremy Corbyn achieved something that is likely to reverberate and alter the discourse not just in the UK but in Canada as well. His vindication in the face of those who praised the empty politics of politicians like Blair, Brown and, in Canada, Layton and Mulcair, is complete.
Labour mobilized the young and the disenfranchised on a message of hope and optimism. On a message that we can collectively construct a better future, on an idea that a better society is possible and that this society can be built by all of us together with the help of government.
He repudiated the narrow, ugly, careerist cynicism of Tony Blair and his spawn whose Labour Party it is no more.
He has shown conclusively and irrefutably that you can stand up on a platform that reminds that a different course is possible and a different tomorrow achievable.
It is impossible to overstate Corbyn's accomplishment within the context of the times.
A total, incredible, demonstrable victory.
While it is possible that the Conservatives may fashion some kind of narrow ability to continue to govern this changes nothing. Had the Blair wing been in charge the catastrophe would have been disastrous to Labour..
Instead May and crew have lost all moral authority.
As leftists we have been told, especially by collaborationist centrist social democrats who are de facto liberals, that the ugly and undemocratic careerist cynicism of what they are doing is what it takes to get elected and that leftist ideas are detrimental to that.
This despite decades of evidence that it is not working.
This despite the abject failure to get elected and, in the rare cases where they do, to change anything.
Corbyn has overturned this narrative. Hopefully forever.
And now it is to us in Canada to rid ourselves of the do-nothing, say-nothing irrelevance that has been the NDP and its leadership and to build a Socialist movement and future that we can actually be proud of.
The NDP needs to, in some ways, return to its roots of working for the "average Canadian." Simple. That's a re-think from where the party has been heading. It is a clear and different option from what has been happening in Canada.
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