The far left’s Islamist blind spot

The alliance between the white far left and the Islamist right is a dirty secret in plain sight. Few can bear to look at it. None of the books and documentaries on Corbyn’s takeover of the Labour party asked, even in passing, how people who professed to be socialists and feminists, found themselves promoting theocrats and misogynists. I have no doubt that ‘serious’ scholars will be as negligent when they come to write their accounts. In supposedly stable Britain, there is a psychological aversion to admitting that the dark corners of modern history can be the best place to find the roots of current crises.

However much respectable writers hate to admit it, you cannot understand Brexit without understanding the rise of Ukip from its beginnings on the cranky fringe of James Goldsmith’s Referendum Party. We may one day explain the rise of anti-Muslim bigotry by looking at the shift of today’s Ukip supporters from hatred of the European Union to hatred of Muslims.