There is a tree which stands at the centre of one of the killing fields in Cambodia. The trunk is covered in bits of cloth as a memorial to the children and babies who were smashed to death there by the Khmer Rouge. I do not have a clear photo of it. My hands were shaking far too much to steady my camera.
A few weeks ago I visited the Choeung Ek killing fields, a few miles outside Phnom Penh. This sad place was eerily quiet, except for birdsong. Groups of westerners, sweating in the heat, walked slowly from one horrific gravesite to another. The fact that this is just one of the many places where socialists inflicted the crime of genocide on their fellow citizens is too monstrous a concept to grasp.
As I toured Phnom Penh, I kept wondering what this amazing city must have been like before. As interesting and welcoming as it is, the city is a mess, a shadow of its former self after the Khmer Rouge obliterated it. Appalling traffic, smog, old men with amputated limbs begging for food and street children using the Mekong River as a toilet are its distinctions now. Very little government infrastructure exists to help genocide survivors and many live in extreme poverty.
Despite this, Cambodians are friendly and welcoming. Children waved to me as I navigated broken pavements, their parents coaxing them to give the traditional namaste greeting. Back at the hotel, staff were eager to know what I thought of the killing fields. They want the world to remember the Cambodian genocide.
Cambodians are a young people. Two million people were killed during the genocide – a quarter of the population at the time. Not many over the age of forty are still alive and those who are were forced into labour camps as children and saw their parents slaughtered in the killing fields. At that exact same time I was learning to spell and play hopscotch. They are living reminders of the evils of socialism and the folly of ideology.
Somehow the meaning of word socialism has been forgotten. This has led to the crazy idea that socialists are kind and caring people and the rest of us are evil capitalist pigs. The events of the past week at the Labour Party conference, and of history, show that this is a lie. The appalling misogyny, violence, racism and anti-Semitism so prevalent now in the Labour Party has led to MPs begging their members to be nice to one another. If they cannot treat each other decently how will they act towards everyone else?
Their conference was really a deluded homage to socialism. Corbyn, his apparatchiks and Momentum have turned their Party into a socialist movement for the envious, the malcontent, the anti-Semite, the clueless Millennial and the misfit. Those who proudly claim to be socialists are ignorant of history and should be ashamed of themselves.
The purge that Momentum is threatening Labour members with, is for now, a mild imitation of the purges which socialist fascists are so fond of. The Khmer Rouge also liked to purge. It purged Cambodia of its intellectuals, middle classes, doctors, writers, artists and Buddhist monks.
Too many are now drinking from the cult of Corbyn’s Kool-Aid. His groupies are starting to resemble the personality cult of North Korea, especially with their ‘Poems for Jeremy’and their petition to have a statue of him erected in Islington. As for my fellow Jews who still support Labour – they seem to be suffering from the worst form of Stockholm syndrome.
Labour Party members are becoming increasingly fond of the words revolution, comrade, solidarity and socialism. They are mistaken if they believe these have positive connotations. These words represent a murderous ideology and warn of potential destruction to our great country. Perhaps we should remind Labour members to tack on the words genocide, famine, murder, starvation, poverty and suffering, and maybe then they will realise that their blather is nothing new or heroic. But maybe they prefer to use phrases like ‘Zionist bitch’ and ‘Tory vermin’ instead. The Hutu also made use of words they liked too when they called the Tutsi ‘cockroaches’, right before they began the Rwandan genocide.
John McDonnell might have thought he was being clever when he obscenely quoted Mao Tse-tung’s Little Red Book in Parliament. What he really did was spit on the graves of the millions who died under Mao’s torturous Marxist-Leninist regime. His conference ode to socialism was just as bad. Perhaps he has forgotten Stalin’s forced collectivisation policy in the Ukraine, which killed millions. Or his Marxist comrade, the insane Robert Mugabe. How many more examples do these foolish middle class social warriors need to realise that socialism does not work? Perhaps they should pay Venezuela another visit.
Conservatives can mock the stupidity of the Labour Party. But we are one economic crash away from the electorate voting for Corbyn. Theresa May and her government need to lose their complacent attitudes and work towards making sure this never happens.
In my hotel room, away from the sweet and kind Cambodians, I wept. Not with shock, because as Jew and an African I am well versed in the horrors of genocide. But with rage at the futility of murdering in the name of such a poisonous ideology. I cried with pity for those who suffered, and are still suffering, the incomprehensible effects of genocide.
By claiming allegiance to socialism the Labour Party pays homage to the worst despots and murderers ever to have lived. This is nothing to be proud of. There is a common belief that wars are fought over greed and land. But wars are really fought over ideology. Socialism is a twisted vision of a utopian society and never works, because we are all flawed beings. This savage doctrine, and its offshoots, must never be inflicted on our country. We can, and we must, learn from history.
(Image: Andrew Kitzmiller)
