Backlash against Donald Trump’s retweets Wednesday morning from the ultranationalist Britain First group, purportedly featuring violent acts by Muslims, was swift.
British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn tweeted: “I hope our Government will condemn far-right retweets by Donald Trump. They are abhorrent, dangerous and a threat to our society.”
Corbyn, who is the loyal opposition leader to Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May, was not alone in lashing out at Trump, but his critism was by no means unanimous.
Corbyn’s branding Trump’s words “abhorrent” and “dangerous” was a bit much for many Britons to take — especially those who recall the Labour leader’s own history of defending groups and individuals such as the militant Muslim organizations Hezbollah and Hamas, the late Marxist dictators Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, and the Irish Republican Army.
“It is rank hypocrisy for Jeremy Corbyn to criticize groups as being dangerous, considering his prior longstanding support for murderous regimes and terrorist groups,” Ben Harris-Quinney, head of the oldest British conservative foundation known as the Bow Group, told Newsmax.
When Corbyn won the leadership of Labour in 2015, the Jewish Chronicle, the top Jewish publication in the United Kingdom, claimed that he was linked to “Holocaust deniers, terrorists and some outright anti-Semites. We are certain that we speak for the vast majority of British Jews in expressing deep foreboding at the prospect of Mr. Corbyn’s election as Labour leader."
In 2009, Corbyn offered to host representatives of “our friends from Hezbollah” and Hamas at the British parliament. Both groups are on the list of 28 “foreign terrorist organizations” of the U.S. State Department and dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Hezbollah, which is bankrolled in part by Iran and Syria, is believed responsible for the death of 241 U.S. military personnel with the 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon.
Corbyn has long made little secret of his admiration for Cuba’s Fidel Castro. When the world’s senior communist strongman died in 2016, Corbyn hailed him as “a champion of social justice” and “a huge figure of modern history.”
When even admirers of Castro acknowledged his ham-handed crackdowns on any dissent and years of jailing and torturing opponents, Corbyn gushed: “For all his flaws, Castro’s support for Angola played a crucial role in bringing an end to Apartheid in South Africa, and he will be remembered both as an internationalist and a champion of social justice.”
Of the terrorist IRA, the Labour Party leader has the closest ties. He once was heavily involved with an IRA-backed magazine London Labour Briefing, which praised the bomb plot against Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that claimed five lives and injured 31.
“The British only sit up and take notice [of Ireland] when they are bombed into it,” wrote the Labour Briefing. "What do you call four dead Tories? A start."
During an interview in the general election campaign earlier this year, prime minister hopeful Corbyn refused five times to condemn the IRA by name and simply stated his opposition to “all bombing.”
“To my knowledge, Britain First has never killed anyone,” said the Bow Group’s Harris-Quinney. “Which is more than can be said for many of those who Corbyn has supported."
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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