Why Ocasio-Cortez shouldn't be taking pointers from Corbyn

Source: CNN | February 5, 2019 | Kate Maltby

(CNN) – Subscribers to the London Times this Monday found a familiar face, Luciana Berger, writing about a wearily familiar topic in British politics: the resurgence of hard-left anti-Semitism. Berger is one of the UK Labour Party’s highest profile Jewish MPs, a prominent activist since her college days. Three far-right trolls have served jail sentences for sending her racist harassment or death threats.

But what now worries Berger is the increasing online abuse she receives from social media accounts that claim to support the leader of her own political party, Jeremy Corbyn. With Corbyn in charge of the Labour Party, attention is shifting in Britain from the anti-Semitism of the hard-right to that of the hard-left. The eminent political scientist Vernon Bogdanor recently warned the Jewish community that “there can be no comparison between the minuscule anti-Semitic threat from the far right and the widespread legitimization of anti-Semitism by the Corbynite leadership of the Labour Party.”

Not surprisingly, on Monday night Labour MPs passed a formal resolution calling on their own leadership to do more to tackle anti-Semitism. Yet this weekend, of all weekends, American Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez chose to publicly thank Corbyn for a mutually congratulatory phone call in which they discussed “the peace, prosperity, + justice that everyday people can create when we uplift one another across class, race, + identity both at home & abroad.”

Clearly, Ocasio-Cortez did not ask how “uplifted” Jewish people in Britain feel by Corbyn. Since her tweet about Corbyn, Ocasio-Cortez has responded to Jewish community leaders’ concerns by promising to “reach out” and reiterating her “deep fellowship and leadership with the Jewish community.”

But it’s not difficult for any American member of Congress to know that citing Corbyn as a political model might be bad idea. Were it possible to ignore his seeming tolerance for anti-Semitism, his post-truth attitude to political debate and his intrinsically anti-American foreign policy would still be reason enough to fear the contagion of Corbynism in US politics. But as it is, his tolerance for anti-Semitism is indeed impossible to ignore.

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