Sinister delusions

Peter Tatchell writes in the most recent edition of Democratiya:

We have long been used to the hypocrisy of the political right. In the name of defending 'freedom', many Conservatives defended the very unfree regimes of Botha's South Africa, Franco's Spain, and Pinochet's Chile. What is new is that this selective approach to human rights is now being echoed by sections of the left, with their inaction against, and occasional open apologia for, the regimes in Iran, Zimbabwe, and Sudan.

(emphasis added)

What a strange thing to say. Sections of the left have been ignoring human rights for decades. What is new is that as well as doing so in support of communist and socialist regimes (Cuba, Venezuela, even North Korea today, the USSR and its satellites before 1990) some sections of the left are now supporting deeply conservative, racist or theocratic regimes and movements.

The delusion on the part of the left that it is the fons et origo of political morality is one of the strangest phenomena of our time.