As Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn inspired millions because he represented the promise of deep freedom and democracy, for people in Britain and around the world. “We stand with Jeremy Corbyn — just as he has always stood with us,” wrote a collective of BAME organizations, activists, and revolutionaries two days before the 2019 general election. And so defeat at the ballot box wasn’t enough — Corbynism had to be buried.

In his place, Keir Starmer, surrounded by cadres of Peter Mandelson and Tony Blair, hopes to show that he is a trusty custodian of Britain’s decaying imperial state apparatus. What better way — having already waved the legalization of torture and state murder through parliament — than to humiliate the man who threatened to topple this fragile order of domination and misery?

So it was that on Thursday, Starmer suspended Corbyn from the British Labour Party, while the war criminals and torturers who burned Baghdad and caged innocent British Muslims without trial shrieked about the “shame” and “moral failure” of the past five years.