[On the argument in the UK about whether to extend bombing of ISIS to Syria]

Benn even had the unbelievable gall to say this:

‘And it is why as we have heard tonight socialists and trade unionists and others joined the international brigade in the 1930s to fight against Franco. It’s why this entire House stood up against Hitler and Mussolini. It is why our party has always stood up against the denial of human rights and for justice. And my view is that we must now confront this evil. It is now time for us to do our bit in Syria and that is why I ask my colleagues to vote for this motion tonight.’

To call this playing fast and loose with the facts does not even begin to describe what Benn has done here. The ‘socialists and trade unionists and others’ who crossed the Pyrenees put their own lives on the line, something that today’s armchair bombardiers would never dream of doing.

It is a very different matter to go unarmed to fight for a country and a people you have never seen, knowing that you may never come back, than it is to stand up in parliament and describe a bombing campaign as an act of socialist internationalism. .

Some brigaders fought in defense of the Spanish Republic because they supported the Spanish revolution; others did so because they regarded Spain as a frontline in the coming war against fascism. But their efforts were actively undermined by the British and French governments, who used the Non-Intervention Pact to cut off military support to the Republic even when they knew that Franco was being armed to the teeth by Italy and Germany.

To evoke the international brigades in support of Cameron’s bombing campaign requires real audacity, bad faith, and an indifference to history or the political realities of the 21st century. Benn does not even seem to realize that the jihadist movement that ultimately spawned Daesh is far closer to the spirit of internationalism and solidarity that drove the International Brigades than Cameron’s bombing campaign – except that the international jihad takes the form of solidarity with oppressed Muslims, rather than the working class or the socialist revolution.