Did a Corbyn-led Government Pose an “Existential Threat to Jewish Life” in the United Kingdom?
The 2019 General Election was preceded by several years of anxiety within the UK Jewish community and outside it, that the UK Labour Party and its leader Jeremy Corbyn posed an “Existential Threat” to British Jews and their community. As the debate over Labour and antisemitism focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the treatment of Jews within Labour, the activities of prominent Labour figures, and the Labour Party’s institutional response, the exact nature of an “Existential Threat” to British Jews and how it would manifest under a Corbyn-led government has been difficult to quantify. This article adopts a new approach to the subject, going beyond the familiar ground of Corbyn’s association with antisemitic groups and individuals, through a comparative analysis of three “revolutionary” states which have strongly influenced Corbyn and Corbynism: Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran. The article demonstrates how the “anti-racist” and “anti-imperialist” states celebrated by Corbyn and the wider British Left enacted social, economic, and foreign policies which destroyed Jewish communities without the methods of the traditional antisemitic Right, and the coalescence of antisemitic policy with both “antizionism” and the conspiratorial worldview espoused by Corbyn himself. Keywords: Corbynism, Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, forced migration, exodus, destruction, socialism, Castro, Chavez, antizionism