For Jeremy Corbyn and his followers, it is as if the Berlin Wall never fell. For a while following the collapse of communism in Europe, it looked as though there might be an apology forthcoming from those who had devoted their intellectual and political efforts to whitewashing the Soviet Union or praising the ‘people’s republics’ of China and Vietnam.
But the moment was short-lived. Within a decade the left-wing establishment was back in the driving seat. Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn renewed their intemperate denunciations of America, the European left regrouped against ‘neoliberalism’, as though this had been the trouble all along, and the veteran communist Eric Hobsbawm was rewarded for a lifetime of unswerving loyalty to the Soviet Union by being appointed Companion of Honour to the Queen.
To read the full article see Spectator Life Autumn 2015
