The Curate’s Egg

The Right Reverend Host: ‘I’m afraid you’ve got a bad egg, Mr Jones !’

The Curate: ‘Oh no, My Lord, I assure you ! Parts of it are excellent !’

My last post has deeply offended some comrades. They feel that, in my negative characterisation of the ‘radical’ left, I am being extremely sectarian and McCarthyite. For how can one characterise the entire traditional radical ‘left’ as reactionary, purely on account of a few unrepresentative bad apples who support genocidal dictators or fascists or who apologise for mass murder ? Not every left-wing radical is a George Galloway or a Neil Clark, after all. This is a reasonable argument that deserves a response.

The response is that it is the good apples – the small number of honourable socialists, Trotskyists, anarchists, pacifists and others – who are in the minority in a barrel whose contents are mostly rotten. However well meaning the good apples may be, they are part of a movement that is corrupt overall. This is so, because ‘the left’ is largely made up of supporters or followers of Milosevic, Saddam, Hezbollah, “the Iraqi resistance”, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and others. Alongside such elements, no self-respecting Croat, Bosnian Muslim, Albanian, Serb anti-fascist, Kurd, Iraqi democrat, Jew or homosexual would be willing to march. The good apples may feel that it is preferable to shed a few Jews and gays and the odd Croat as the price for remaining in the rotting barrel with the bad apples. This is their choice, and while I do not agree with it, I do not think it necessarily makes them into monsters. But they have then rather forfeited the right to lecture those of us who point out to them that this is a dishonourable place to be.