The lesser evil

Ivan Golunov was arrested in Moscow at the beginning of June, supposedly for possession of drugs. In reality, Golunov had merely dug too deep whilst investigating lower-level corruption in and around Moscow. Normally, this kind of abuse of power passes unnoticed, but there was a media outcry within Russia this time — most likely because his investigation did not affect the really powerful interests. He was swiftly released.

Before that, for several days, anyone in the West trying to highlight Mr Golunov’s plight was shouted down by a loud chorus of ‘whataboutassange’. Irrespective of what one thinks about Assange, any comparison between a drugs charge in Russia and a sexual assault accusation in Sweden is ludicrous — the latter has a trustworthy law enforcement system and the former does not. And even the US, despite being a place Mr Assange should definitely not be extradited to, is not comparable to the Russian regime.

There are two wrong assumptions at play here. One is that unless your own act is spotless you have no right to criticise others. This is a typical tactic for Putin apologists worldwide — think of an incident from the West’s, admittedly chequered, past and go into full whataboutery mode. The other is to pretend there is no such thing as ‘the lesser evil’. A country that violates human rights in a small number of cases is, the story goes, exactly the same as one that violates them on a massive scale.

Unfortunately, such fallacies persist elsewhere. At about the same time, the Labour candidate Lisa Forbes was fighting the by-election in Peterborough. Forbes was accused of liking two antisemitic Facebook posts and signing a letter that opposed the IHRA definition of antisemitism and expressed support for the BDS campaign. Despite her apology for the ‘likes’, a number of high-profile Labour MP’s refused to campaign for her. But Forbes’ main opponent was none other than the Brexit party of Nigel Farage.

In the event, Farage’s candidate was only beaten by a few hundred votes and the party immediately launched into openly islamophobic dogwhistling. The Muslim community, supposedly, rigged this election by manipulating postal votes. They maintain this position at present, despite the police having dismissed allegations related to the misuse of postal votes. Unlike Forbes, the Brexit party and their cheerleaders in the media never apologise for racist statements and leave little to the imagination about their true beliefs. Yet, a lot of supposedly moderate people gave the impression of not caring about the result either way and even expressing regret that Forbes won.

The populist Right laps it all up — now they have a ready-made retort whenever anyone challenges them on hate and extremism. Just point to ‘bad people on the right and the left’ and hope it goes away, and this principle applies to synagogue shootings in the US as much as it applies to a garden-variety Brexit-supporting islamophobe here. Like the fans of Putin, they deflect criticism by attacking the messenger and the so-called centrists help out by pretending ‘there is no hierarchy of racism and prejudice’. Well, there is and to pretend otherwise hands the very worst perpetrators an easy excuse.

Farage is also connected to the far right German party AfD and, as if to make the point for us, the by-election happened on the day we commemorated the D-Day landings. The Second World War presented the Left with a similar dilemma: do you fight for the British Empire, an institution many (quite rightly) despised? With hindsight, the answer had to be ‘yes’, for self-preservation if nothing else (George Lansbury, probably the most famous of the pacifists*, was on the Nazi list of intellectuals to, presumably, put up against the wall as soon as possible after Britain were to fall). Pacifists who refused to fight would have ‘owned’ a German invasion as much as any of the wannabe collaborators. History is in this instance quite clear in the lessons it teaches: when presented with a binary choice between a greater and a lesser evil, you have a duty to fight the former. Yet, we forget this all too easily now.

We see those hierarchies everywhere. Nazi Germany was qualitatively worse than the British Empire**. Putin is qualitatively worse than the Western governments. Selling weapons to the Saudis is qualitatively worse than talking to terrorist groups. Tory austerity is qualitatively worse than just about any aspect of the Opposition at this moment. The fact your house is not in perfect order should not stop you calling out other houses in a far worse shape. There is no shame about uniting with the lesser evil to defeat the greater.

• In his defense, he died in 1940 and may have revised his views with more hindsight.
• **And what defense did the Nazis use at the Nuremberg trials? It was the same old ‘the Allies were just as bad’.