The keen-eyed among you might notice that one of these people is rather unlike the others.

From My hot take – Lenin was bad by Ed West.  He starts off with a striking exchange in Britain.

After Boris Johnson had told Keir Starmer ‘you’re a lawyer, not a leader’, Labour frontbencher Emily Thornberry (whose father was also a lawyer) hit back: ‘On Lawyers and Leaders #PMQs:- I think it's pretty cool to be in the company of the lawyers Obama, Mandela, Blair, Ghandi, Clinton, Roosevelt, Lenin and Lincoln. And better that than to be remembered as the leader who needed a lawyer! #PartyGate’

The keen-eyed among you might notice that one of these people is rather unlike the others.

Vladimir Lenin, like Tony Blair, was a former resident of Thornberry’s Islington South and Finsbury constituency, working on the revolutionary paper The Spark while living in Clerkenwell Green. Finsbury Council actually made a bust of the man during the Second World War to show their solidarity with our great allies. (You know, that war which the Soviets helped start alongside the Nazis.)

Emily Thornberry is the Labour Party shadow Attorney General.  

Her list - Obama, Mandela, Blair, Ghandi, Clinton, Roosevelt, Lenin and Lincoln - is striking.  Yes, all lawyers, but Lenin was clearly and obviously a murderous tyrant and shouldn't be on there.  In fact, for your normal classical liberal, only Lincoln and Mandela warrant being on a Classical Liberal heroes list.  All the others were authoritarian chancers always in pursuit of power, rejecting central tenets of Age of Enlightenment and Classical Liberalism

West spends most his time documenting why Lenin should not be on anyone's admiration list.  I agree but I have a simpler question.  What is it with leftwing socialists like Thornberry and their inherent admiration for dictators and thugs?  We have it here in the US as well where many of our public "intellectuals" frequently swoon in admiration of China's ability to take direct and swift action on some issue.  They have no regard for due process or human rights, etc.  They simply like to see governments doing things decisively without regard to the actual consequences.

Ed West is more relaxed about the sins of the others on Thornberry's list.  While they do not rise to the fever pitch of Lenin's psychotic blood thirst, few of them are respectable figures in terms of delivering the culture of Classical Liberalism.  Still, his is one of the few voices insisting that we remember the real crimes of those whom the progressive left are always trying to redeem: Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Lenin, Mao, etc.  These were all evil men.  Those who seek to normalize them are the angels of autocracy.