Karl Marx’s sinister legacy of anti-Semitism

When I lived in the Soviet Union in my early twenties, I developed a personal hostility to socialism. I saw the misery it had visited on that society – the political, spiritual and economic harm. I understood at first-hand how the secret police corrupted personal and public life, how state propaganda denied freedom of thought and how the regime hid the slaughter and imprisonment of millions of its own people.

I came to the conclusion that whichever totalitarian power had survived World War II – Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union – they would probably have looked much the same by the time of their demise. I never understood why Westerners did not – or could not – see the closeness of Left and Right extremes and the similarities between their fellow travellers. So when I hear people like Labour’s Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell praising Marx – he has said: “I’m honest with people.