(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
It was just supposed to be a lunch on a hot spring day in Brussels. He is the best Prime Minister Britain has ever had. To this day. Instead, the country has chosen an irreplaceable upper-class clown as its leader. Even worse is that Jeremy Corbyn was pushed out of the Labor leadership by bureaucrat Keir Starmer. The paths of democracy are truly unfathomable.
But the lunch on the pavement at Mort Subite right by the Grand Place still turns into an interview. As one of Britain's most in-demand and controversial politicians, speakers and leaders, Corbyn is, surprisingly, without security guards. Without a purse-carrying secretary. Without chauffeur driven limousine. Without whims. He has ordered a vegetable omelette.
Unstoppable ongoing in his fight for the rights of minorities, against violence and imperialism.
What can Britain do to combat anti-Semitism, I ask: “It needs to be taken seriously in school education. But it must be mobilized and be an integral part of the racism debate. Treating anti-Semitism as something other than racism – ugly and undisguised racism – is itself anti-Semitic. It stigmatizes the Jewish as something different, something strange and different." That's what Hitler did, I think. "Such treatment of Jews is racism, in short," says Corbyn.
Hanged as anti-Semitic
But for some Jewish groups in the UK, to call anti-Semitism racism is to reduce the problem – like reducing the suffering of Jewish groups to the suffering of other groups. Therefore, Corbyn has more than once been hanged as an anti-Semite, and for failing to address the "problem" in Labour, allowed anti-Semitism to "degenerate".
But an investigation report said something completely different, that he was proactive, set the theme high. This report was stopped by the new party leadership under Keir Starmer. The report had revealed a sabotage of Corbyn's anti-Semitism measures – by forces within his own office. Corbyn was to be frozen out, and blackening with an anti-Semitic stamp was a convenient method. Which worked.
It is ironic and incomprehensible that the man sitting across from me is accused of being a "Jew-hater". In a YouTube video in 2019, I remember him celebrating a Jewish holiday and talking about the great contribution of Jews to British society: the New Year celebration, Rosh Hashanah.
I cannot remember a politician who has done something similar, or who has been so unstoppable in his fight for the rights of minorities, against violence and imperialism, against oppression and war. "My Jewish sister-in-law for many decades said she has never experienced anything but support for Britain's Jews from me," he says.
He could also have quoted the former Speaker of the House of Commons, the Tory John Bercow, who is himself Jewish. In an interview with Tony Blair's former spin doctor Alastair Campbell, Bercow was clear: "No, Corbyn is not anti-Semitic." They have known each other for decades.
He had to be stopped
"It's racism we have to talk about when we talk about anti-Semitism," says Corbyn. "In schools, in the media. Then we create unity between the marginalized, the oppressed. We need to talk about and include everyone.”
Is that Corbyn's crime? Always against imperialists and warriors: like the youth against South Africa's apartheid, Russia's invasion of Czechoslovakia or the US's aggression in Vietnam. Not to mention the Palestinians' long struggle for their land, culture and survival. His willingness to "talk about it" but also do something about it. Was the possibility that the British would get a Prime Minister who would put power behind the demand for justice about the plight of the Palestinians, such an intolerable possibility that he had to be stopped?
Life mission:
Anti-racism and solidarity
We have finished lunch and are going back to today's topic in Brussels: the fight for Julian Assange's survival and future. In Monnaie Square, Corbyn addresses an enthusiastic crowd. He is inspired. He is a rare communicator: "Now I feel that the fight for Assange and freedom of expression has become a movement," he says beaming with joy. "Something has happened!" I think of an equally joyful William Nygaard in Kulturkirken Jakob in Oslo the week before. The same joy that "something is about to happen".
Corbyn as Labor leader was replaced by the man who accused him of being anti-Semitic, Lord Keir. It's only now dawning on me that Starmer was also the man who warned the Swedish prosecutors against dropping the false rape charges against Julian Assange in 2011: "Don't you dare to get cold feet," read his email to Swedish Marianne Ny. Assange is locked up among terrorists and murderers in London. And Corbyn threw himself out into the cold a kilometer further north.
But if Corbyn was thrown out into the cold, his life's mission has not cooled. After the omelette at Mort Subite, journalists, several speeches, young people, and a film screening await Hacking Justice. He talks about the importance of freedom of expression. Corbyn believes the fight against racism can be won.
