A Kurdish Peshmerga soldier stands next to arrested suspected Islamic State fighters as they are surrounded by media reporters at a camp for displaced civilians outside Irbil, 217 miles (350 kilometers) north of Baghdad, Iraq, Friday, July 15. (AP Photo)

By voting to turf NDP leader Tom Mulcair this spring, after their disappointing (but still historically successful) results in the 2015 election, federal New Democrats highlighted their habit of maiming themselves whenever they approach sustained political relevance.

It’s doubtful Jack Layton could have improved on his 2011 showing had he survived the cancer that killed him later that year. The stars were aligned for him then — but by 2015 the NDP was facing a Liberal party that had recovered in Quebec and was led by a leader even more dynamic than Layton. So its support slid. But Mulcair still took more seats than the NDP had ever taken before, apart from 2011.

But if forcing Mulcair’s exit was a mistake, it also offers an opportunity for the party to overturn some of its entrenched policies — particularly regarding foreign affairs and Canada’s role in the fight against the so-called Islamic State.

Mulcair campaigned on a promise to immediately end Canada’s participation in the coalition fighting ISIS. “So we’re out of the fight with ISIS if the NDP wins?” the CBC’s Peter Mansbridge asked Mulcair in an interview. “Yes, no question about that,” Mulcair replied.

Mulcair’s opposition to Canada fighting Islamic State is a symptom of a larger malaise that has gripped much of the Western left in recent decades — but from which more and more social democrats are emerging.

Movements that once built an identity around opposition to fascism lost their inclination to fight, or even to recognize the enemy. The Taliban — atavistic, illiberal, homophobic, misogynistic, religious bigots — are fascists. The members of Islamic State are fascists with perverted, sadistic fetishes and apocalyptic delusions.

The NDP aspires to be Canada’s progressive voice, yet it would have Canada stand down in the struggle against a movement that violently rejects everything the NDP holds dearest. This is a betrayal of common sense, and of some of the NDP’s historic roots.

The NDP talks a lot about solidarity. And on some issues — refugees or foreign aid, for example — it supports policies that reflect its slogans. But it has a blind spot regarding what fighting fascism really means. The NDP talks a lot about solidarity. And on some issues — refugees or foreign aid, for example — it supports policies that reflect its slogans. But it has a blind spot regarding what fighting fascism really means.

Eighty years ago this week, the Spanish Civil War began — a conflict that pitted an elected left-wing Spanish government against fascist rebels led by Gen. Francisco Franco and backed by both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, which eventually would grow into the NDP, raised funds to send Norman Bethune to Spain, where he established a mobile blood transfusion clinic for Spanish troops.

This week, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said Canada will soon deploy up to 60 medical personnel to lead operations at a field hospital supporting Iraqi forces in their battle to retake the city of Mosul from Islamic State. Had Mulcair’s NDP been elected, those forces wouldn’t be in Iraq.

As isolationist leftists, however, the NDP occupies increasingly lonely ground.

France’s Socialist Party president, François Hollande, declared that “France is at war” following terrorist attacks in Paris last November. This week, France confirmed for the first time that it has special forces in Libya, where Islamic State is active, after three of its soldiers died when their helicopter was shot down. A spokesman for the French defence ministry told France Info radio the special forces are there to “ensure that France is present everywhere in the fight against terrorism.”

In Britain last December, then-Labour Party shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn defied his party leader Jeremy Corbyn and voted, along with a minority of shadow cabinet members, in favour of launching airstrikes against Islamic State in Syria.

Islamic State and its fanboys have slaughtered hundreds across the Middle East and Europe this past year. Canada, which has suffered attacks by a couple of radicalized loons, has been lucky. Europeans of all political stripes might therefore be more attuned to the threat Islamic State’s jihadists pose than are their Canadian counterparts.

What was significant about Benn’s speech, however, was not that it signalled a move away from his party’s social-democratic heritage. Benn was proposing a return to those old principles.

“As a party, we have always been defined by our internationalism. We believe we have a responsibility to one another,” he said. “We are here faced by fascists … And what we know about fascists is that they need to be defeated.”

The NDP claims a similar internationalism. It talks a lot about solidarity. And on some issues — refugees or foreign aid, for example — it supports policies that reflect its slogans. But it has a blind spot regarding what fighting fascism really means — one that wasn’t going to go away under Mulcair’s leadership.

The party now has a chance not only to re-invent itself, but to rediscover itself — and in doing so, to redefine Canadian socialism as a force prepared to fight for its values, and against those who would so brutally and completely stamp them out.

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