On Sunday Nick Cohen wrote a column in the Observer: Extremism thrives because of cowardly collaborators.  It was fairly run of the mill. Republican politicians who pride themselves on their desire to emulate Churchill and compare Obama’s rapprochement with Cuba to Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler are showing cowardice and hypocrisy by refusing to condemn Donald Trump whom Cohen describes in these terms:

I don’t throw the word “fascism” around, but can we at least accept that Trump follows the Führerprinzip? He has no colleagues, only followers. He is a racist. Not a closet racist, or a dog-whistle racist, but a racist so unabashed that the Klan endorses him. Above all, he has the swaggering dictator’s determination to bawl opponents into silence with screams of “loser”, “dummy”, “fraud”, “puppet,” “biased”, “disgusting”, “liar” and “kook”.

Cohen believes that Trump is unfit to hold office and that any Republican worth his or her salt should come out and say so. But most are staying silent or openly endorsing him, either out of fear or self-interest. This is unremarkable stuff. Many American commentators are making similar points, going so far as to say that Trump is destroying the GOP. This might be expected from The Washington Post but a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush is saying the same thing.

Now, I imagine the last person most people would compare to Trump is Jeremy Corbyn. Yet Cohen does just that in his final paragraphs.

Compare them to the British Labour MPs fighting Jeremy Corbyn. They are everything that conservatives despise: hand-wringingly PC, eco-conscious, emotionally literate, bleeding-heart do-gooders every last one of them. Christ, some of them may even read the Observer. But after the killing of Jo Cox by an alleged rightwing extremist, Angela Eagle, Jess Phillips and all the other anti-Corbyn MPs who are speaking out know that the death and rape threats from left-wing extremists may not just be bluster.

They are showing true courage. Not just moral courage but physical courage. A courage that those American conservatives, who are so loud in the determination to fight the threats of the past, and so silent before the dangers of the present, entirely lack.

By extolling the courage of Labour MPs who stand up to Corbyn and denigrating the cowardice in the GOP is Cohen implying that Corbyn is no better than Trump? And having already compared Trump to Hitler is he suggesting a similar parallel with Corbyn? Perhaps he is harking back to the furore about alleged anti-Semitism in Labour’s ranks and laying that at Corbyn’s door.

And note the not so subtle reference to the “alleged” right wing extremist who murdered Jo Cox that is set against the unequivocal “left-wing extremists” who are blamed for the anonymous online abuse being aimed at Corbyn’s opponents. You can almost hear the subtext.

“They say he was rightwing but just you wait until the left-wing extremists start making good their threats of violence. He may turn out to be not so rightwing after all.”

I happen to agree with Cohen about the craven hypocrisy of Republican politicians. But conflating that with the death of Jo Cox to imply that Labour MPs are more at risk of violence than their American counterparts in the GOP is taking the campaign against Corbyn to new depths. And it is not true. Apart from the IRA bombing campaign against Britain very few UK politicians have been the subject of political violence. By comparison, thirty-four US politicians and senior officials have been assassinated since 1825, including four Presidents of the United States. The most recent was a federal judge, John Rolls in 2011. Sixteen have been killed since the assassination of JFK in 1963. Following his assassination seven US presidents have been the subject of assassination attempts including Barack Obama. The plot to kill him was thwarted at the planning stage in 2008. You can read the full list here.

But in Cohen’s book the Left are all potential murderers and rapists unless proven otherwise. When allegations are raised about conduct within our ranks we are expected to condemn them out of hand whether they are true or not. Remember Angela eagle’s constituency office window that was never broken?

Perhaps he should reread his column, particularly the part where he says,

Latinos have to explain why they are not rapists and murderers or shut up and give up. Muslims have to explain that they are not terrorists or they lose the right to a hearing. At every stage, the argument is shifted on to the troll’s terrain of ethnic and religious loyalty tests. Except here the troll could become the world’s most powerful man.

We know how they feel. Except that here the troll writes a weekly column for the Observer.