On March 1st 2019 the independent media site Evolve Politics exposed an absolutely despicable Tory Facebook hate chamber full of bigotry, racism, anti-Muslim hate, and the kind of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that would have sent the mainstream media into paroxysms of condemnation had they been found in a Labour group run by Labour Party councillors.
One of the most disturbing comments was posted by a woman called Dorinda Bailey where she agreed with someone calling for all mosques to be bombed, but criticised them for using a swear word in their comment!
When Ash Sarkar asked the Tory chairman Brandon Lewis about this despicable mosque-bombing comment he responded with a simple one sentence reply; "she is not a member of our Party".
The problem of course is that there's loads of evidence out there that Dorinda Bailey is an active member of the Tory party, or at least was one until very recently.
Here's a picture of her out on the campaign trail with the Tories during the 2018 local elections.
And here's evidence that she was actually one of the Tory party candidates in the Bradwell ward of Newcastle-under-Lyme, which means she was definitely a Tory party member within the last year, which makes Brandon Lewis's "not a member" comment extremely evasive and deceptive at the very least.
If Dorinda Bailey has been thrown out of the Tory party within the last year, Brandon Lewis clearly has an obligation to explain why.
Did the Tory party know about her bigoted tendencies. If so, why were two other Tory party councillors running the Facebook Tory hate-chamber with her?
Don't they have rules in place for preventing party members from co-operating with people who have been thrown out of the party?
But there's also the possibility that Brandon Lewis was outright lying that she's not a member since he provided absolutely no evidence to support his "not a member" claim.
It's pretty obvious that any political party that is serious about combating bigotry and racism in their ranks should be transparent about how they deal with proven bigots who stood as their official party candidates in elections less than a year previously.
It's pretty obvious that Brandon Lewis and the Tories have an obligation to explain why someone who was until very recently a party member (at the absolute best) was behaving in this despicable manner on a pro-Tory Facebook page run by other Tory Party members, and provide documentary evidence to back up Brandon Lewis's assertion that she's not a member of the party, and an explanation of why.
Will the mainstream media pick up on this and work to hold Brandon Lewis and the Tories accountable?
Will they pick up on the fact that Brandon Lewis has used the exact same "not a member" line to distance the party from a bigoted Tory party member who organised an extreme-right protest involving a hate group called the North East Infidels?
Will they pick up on the fact that stating "not a member" is absolutely insufficient when Tory party activists have been caught spreading bigotry and hatred in a pro-Tory Facebook propaganda page. At the very least the disciplinary processes used to remove them from the party should be detailed, and an apology should be made for the bigoted behaviour.
The likely answer is no. They won't pick up on this issue because it contradicts the whole narrative they're trying to construct, that it's the Labour left (who were actually amongst the tiny minority of just 18 anti-racist MPs to oppose Theresa May's unlawfully racist "Hostile Environment" legislation in 2014) who are the nasty racists.
But just imagine if this was the other way around and it had been a Labour Party candidate at the 2018 local elections who had agreed with a proposal to 'bomb all synagogues' using a picture of them grinning alongside a famous Labour Party figure as their profile picture as they made their despicable comments.
Do you honestly think the media would allow Jeremy Corbyn to get away with evasively claiming "not a member of our party" with no apology, and no details whatever of the disciplinary procedures used to remove that person from the party?
Of course they wouldn't. It'd be spun out into a days-long re-examination of the Labour anti-Semitism issue and used as personal ammunition against Jeremy Corbyn (and whoever was pictured alongside the racist bigot too).
This disparity in mainstream media coverage that's actually just as concerning as the rampant bigotry and racism in the Tory ranks, and Brandon Lewis's outright evasiveness in not apologising for it.
If they're working as hard as they can to portray one side as having a bigotry problem, whilst deliberately turning a blind eye to the much worse bigotry problem on the other side (and the other side's deceptive, evasive, and unapologetic responses to it) then they're not reporting the news, they're manufacturing it.
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It doesn't seem to matter what the Labour Party does, some people will simply not allow the subject of anti-Semitism to be dealt with calmly and rationally.
This hysteria is clear on both sides. This is clear whether we're talking about:
- Chris Williamson's latest crass comments about Labour being "too apologetic" (comments that have drawn me back into writing about this subject again).
- Margaret Hodge publicly bombarding the Labour disciplinary bods with dozens upon dozens of anti-Semitism cases to investigate 90% of which turned out to not even be Labour Party members, then having the absolute gall to complain that they're taking too long to investigate the actual genuine cases!
- Or social media conspiracists outright denying that there's even a problem at all.
Moral perspective
From a moral perspective it's obvious that Labour should be apologetic every time an example of anti-Semitism is found amongst the 500,000+ people in the Labour ranks.
It's obviously fair to add context too by pointing out the facts and evidence that partisan anti-Labour critics would never provide. Stuff like the fact that the rates of anti-Semetic views amongst Labour supporters have gone down dramatically since Jeremy Corbyn became leader in 2015, the fact that disciplinary procedures have been sped up significantly since Jennie Formby took over from the Blairite Ian McNicol at the NEC, and the fact that anti-Semitism is and always has been way more prevalent in the Tory party than Labour.
However, it's beyond obvious that whenever anti-Semites are caught in the Labour Party, the party needs to apologise and demonstrate their continued commitment to combating all forms of racism and bigotry with disciplinary procedures and bans.
Realpolitik perspective
From a realpolitik perspective Labour is obviously getting the whole thing completely wrong.
Instead of apologising and seeking to actively deal with the issue, the mainstream media have educated us about what the correct response is with their absolute dearth of coverage about the Tory Islamophobia scandal.
The Tory party has been accused of tolerating despicable anti-Muslim bigotry by several senior Tory politicians, including Sayeeda Warsi. For over a year the Tories have been refusing to apologise, refusing to investigate, and outright refusing to listen to calls by the Muslim Council of Britain for an inquiry into anti-Muslim bigotry in the Tory ranks.
The Tories have simply stonewalled the subject, and a result the mainstream media have rewarded them with an absolutely minuscule fraction of the negative coverage they've heaped on the Labour anti-Semitism issue!
As far as the mainstream press are concerned Labour talking about and debating anti-Semitism in order to deal with the issue is worthy of inordinately more coverage that the Tories staying silent about anti-Muslim bigotry, and outright refusing to do anything whatever to deal with the problem in their party!
The ones who talk about the issue and take action are continually bombarded with criticism, while the ones who stay silent and refuse to take action are given a free pass.
Given these circumstances, from a realpolitik perspective it's obviously absolutely stupid for Labour to keep talking about anti-Semitism when the strategy of steadfastly refusing to engage has worked so well for the Tories when it comes to anti-Muslim hate in their ranks.
History
One of the main reasons Labour can't stop talking about the issue is that the party has a long history of standing up for minorities. It was the left who stood with the Jewish people at Cable Street to oppose Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists in 1936 while the Tories we're signing up in droves to anti-Semitic pro-Nazi pressure groups like the Right Club.
And it was the left who stood with the Jewish community at Wood Green in the 1970s to face down the National Front thugs too.
Given this history it's obvious that any level of anti-Semitism in the Labour ranks feels like a betrayal that needs to be apologised for, and rightly so.
With the Tories it's a different story. In the 1930s they embraced the new fad of Nazism and joined up to anti-Semitic hate groups in their droves. In the 1960s they ran racist "If you want a coloured for a neighbour, vote Liberal or Labour" leaflet campaigns in by-elections. In the 1980s they sided with Apartheid South Africa while the Tory youth were parading around in "Hang Mandela" T-shirts. And Theresa May is personally responsible for the introduction of sickeningly racist legislation in 2014 that was used to deny black Britons the right to housing, employment, banking services, social security, health care, and the right to return to Britain. This vile "Hostile Environment" legislation even resulted in black Britons dying in exile overseas.
The Tory party has a long history of racism stretching from their adoration of Nazism in the 1930s all the way to the present and their current policies of deporting black Britons and turning a blind eye to anti-Muslim bigotry in their own ranks.
Bigotry in the Tory ranks isn't a touchstone issue because there have always been loads of bigots in the Tory party. It's not news, and never will be, because it's just accepted as the norm.
Weaponisation
If you're the kind of person who can hold two thoughts in your head simultaneously then try this:
1. A tiny minority of Labour's 500,000+ members have expressed anti-Semitic views. They people should be weeded out because racism and bigotry of all types are unacceptable.
2. A lot of very bad faith opportunists are deliberately weaponising the Labour anti-Semitism issue for their own cynical political purposes.
There are no contradictions whatever between these two statements because they're both observable facts, however you have to be extremely careful stating the second fact because the very opportunists the statement refers to will attempt to misrepresent it as if it's a denial of the first statement that anti-Semitism is a problem.
There's obviously a huge distinction between pointing out the that Labour-opponents and mainstream media hacks like to use super-cynical tricks to weaponise anti-Semitism (like deliberately conflating the anti-Semetic abuse of jailed extreme-right thugs with the Labour Party, or taking quotations miles out of context in order to manufacture outrage), and outright denial that there's any problem at all.
But if cynical opportunists are prepared to mislead, manipulate, and lie in order to weaponise anti-Semitism for their own political purposes, why on earth wouldn't they use the same dishonest tactics to attack anyone who calls them out?
Tory glee
The weaponisation of anti-Semitism for political purposes is particularly galling when it comes from Tory MPs and partisan pro-Tory pro-austerity hacks in the mainstream media.
What's even more galling still is their barely suppressed glee whenever anyone tries to argue back that they're hypocrites due to the brazen Tory refusal to even address anti-Muslim bigotry in their own party.
They respond with glee because they know that not only are they winning from a realpolitik perspective by simply refusing to talk about or address their own bigotry issues, they also know that the perception that they're an anti-Muslim party actually plays extremely well with the sizeable extreme-right ultranationalist blue-kip demographic they've been openly courting and welcoming on board with open arms ever since the collapse of UKIP.
They know that anti-Semitism is a hugely problematic issue for Labour because of the left's history of solidarity with Jewish people, and they also know that accusations of anti-Muslim hate in the Tory ranks actually serve as recruitment calling cards amongst the far-right demographics they're actively targeting for support.
And they know they're being opportunistic hypocrites by banging on about Labour anti-Semitism when they have no intention whatever of dealing with much more serious problems of bigotry in their own ranks, but that's just how amoral opportunists roll.
From a realpolitik perspective they'd be idiots to actually investigate accusations of anti-Muslim bigotry in their party and root out the worst offenders because they know that doing the right thing like Labour have been doing would just invite media scrutiny and lots of negative commentary.
Conclusion
The conclusion is that the moral thing to do is to fight anti-Semitism and all other forms of bigotry, and apologise whenever bigots are exposed in your own party's ranks.
But the behaviour of the Tories and the mainstream media proves that from a realpolitik perspective any kind of apology whatever is "too apologetic" because why apologise when the media give you an infinitely easier ride when you just stonewall the bigotry problem like the Tories have?
So the answer to the question of "have Labour been too apologetic on anti-Semitism?" depends entirely on whether you believe in doing the right thing, or you've got such a tribal win at all costs mentality that you'll steadfastly ignore evidence of bigotry within your party purely for party political advantage.
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In 2016 Zac Goldsmith ran a despicable anti-Muslim fearmongering operation during his campaign to become Mayor of London. This campaign included several high profile Tories hiding behind parliamentary privilege to smear an innocent man as a terrorism supporter, and culminated in an absolutely despicable BNP-style propaganda piece designed to associate his Muslim rival Sadiq Khan with the 5/5 London terrorist attacks.
This bigoted Tory anti-Muslim campaign went right to the top of the Tory party, and it's being cited as one of many examples in calls for an inquiry into Tory anti-Muslim bigotry.
One of the leading figures calling for an investigation into Tory anti-Muslim bigotry is the Tory peer Mohamed Sheikh.
It hardly seems like a coincidence that Zac Goldsmith has taken to Twitter to call for Sheikh's immediate expulsion from the Tory party for having attended the same peace conference in Tunisia that Jeremy Corbyn is being smeared over.
Aside from the fact that he's calling for one of his main accusers to be expelled from the party, Goldsmith's choice of source is very telling indeed. It's widely known that the Guido Fawkes comments section is an absolute cesspit of bigotry and abuse, including an awful lot of anti-Muslim hate.
Imagine the kind of person who would actually share a link to one of the most vile anti-Muslim hate chambers on the Internet in order to call for the expulsion of a Muslim man who is calling for an inquiry into anti-Muslim bigotry that would certainly end up investigating their own anti-Muslim hatemongering. That person is Zac Goldsmith.
If Zac Goldsmith and his chums at the top of the Tory party succeed in purging one of the only senior Tory voices who dares complain about anti-Muslim bigotry in the Tory ranks in order to avoid an internal party investigation into their own actions, then we'll have absolute proof that anti-Muslim bigotry isn't just accepted within the Tory party, but that the party actually closes ranks to protect the perpetrators.
Whether you think Jeremy Corbyn is doing a good enough job of handling the Labour anti-Semitism row or not, there's no denying that he's publicly criticised anti-Jewish bigotry on numerous occasions, and that the party has sped up the disciplinary process when it comes to allegations of anti-Semitism.
What the Tories have done is completely the opposite. Theresa May has been stonewalling calls for an investigation into Tory anti-Muslim bigotry for months, and now we've got the disgusting spectacle of one of the worst offenders of all actually seeking the immediate expulsion of one of his accusers!
Don't expect to hear anything about Zac Goldsmith's desperate and transparent efforts to purge one of his accusers from the party, because it simply doesn't chime with the primary objective of attacking Jeremy Corbyn in order to defend the four decade long neoliberal orthodoxy that most mainstream media hacks have done very nicely out of indeed (while millions of others have paid the price of it).
Just imagine the furious reaction if Jeremy Corbyn had spent months denying anti-Semitism and stonewalling calls for an investigation, then a hypothetical senior Labour MP who cynically capitalised on anti-Jewish bigotry in an election campaign actually demands that one of his Jewish accusers is expelled from the party.
There'd be an unprecedented shit-storm of condemnation (and rightly so), but somehow, because it's Theresa May, bigoted Zac Goldsmith, and the Tory party, there's hardly even a whisper about it in the mainstream media.
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When the extreme-right hate-monger Jonathan Jennings was jailed the BBC ran a short piece on their website about his 16 month sentence for multiple offences between March and August 2017, which included extreme anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic abuse and a threat to kill Jeremy Corbyn.
One thing the BBC somehow 'forgot' to mention in their article was that this extreme-right fanatic was selected by BBC Question Time producers as one of the select few to be awarded a question on live TV in November 2017 (after the abusive messages and death threats he was jailed for).
By November 2017 Jennings' online abuse had already been well documented and reported to the police, but the BBC somehow managed to pick him out of an entire crowd as one of the lucky ones to be given a question.
It beggars belief that the BBC somehow managed to pick one of the most vile extreme-right fanatics in the UK to be be given a question. Even the most cursory of background checks would have come across Jennings' White Genocide podcast and articles like this one detailing his extremist views, like "all those who oppose Donald Trump must be killed".
Whichever way you look at it, the BBC's platforming of this vile individual is unforgivable.
Either they knew about the White Genocide podcast and the Twitter abuse and decided to give him a platform because they believed that extreme-right fanatics like him are more deserving of a question than any of the scores of decent ordinary people in the crowd, or they didn't bother to do the slightest check on who they were awarding airtime to.
Anyone who is familiar with the continual stream of Tory party activists who have been handed headline questions on Question Time must surely suspect that Jennings was not given a question on the show despite his vile extreme-right views, but because of them.
Jennings was so delighted at having been awarded the chance to push for a hard-right "no deal" brexit on national television that he uploaded a clip of his Question Time appearance on his extreme-right White Genocide podcast.
It's hardly a surprise that the BBC 'forgot' to mention the fact that they gave this jailed extreme-right fanatic a platform on national television less than a year ago, because had they (or anyone else in the mainstream media) bothered to mention it, surely people would be demanding an investigation into how on earth it happened, and whether the show's producers were aware of his extreme-right activities when they made the decision to put him on air.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
This week's Spectator magazine hosts an article by the right-wing agitator Rod Liddle calling for more Islamophobia within the Tory party.
This extraordinary call for even more anti-Muslim bigotry in the Tory ranks comes against a backdrop of Theresa May deliberately stonewalling Muslim people's demands for an inquiry into the shocking scale and frequency of Islamophobic abuse within the Tory ranks.
There's no denying that the Tory party is riddled with anti-Muslim bigots, from the rank and file all the way up to the top of the party.
One of the most bizarre things about Rod Liddle's Spectator article is that it starts off with one of his trademark transphobic rants, which is still going on as the article hits the paywall fadeout!
But if you do get beyond the paywall you find that Liddle is re-using the simplistic extreme-right trick of conflating criticism of the Islamic religion with bigotry and hatred towards Muslim people.
He tries to imply that the loony liberal left are somehow censoring people from criticising Islam by accusing those who criticise the religion of being Islamophobes.
It's an utterly misleading argument, but unfortunately right-wing idiots buy into it.
It only takes the briefest glimpse at reality to see that the majority of people criticising the vile homophobic, misogynistic, democracy-crushing, head-chopping, terrorism-promoting, tyrannical Saudi war criminals are lefties.
Meanwhile Theresa May and the Tories continually suck up to the vile Islamist Saudi tyrants in order to hawk them even more British weapons, and right-wingers like Liddle and his chums at the Spectator turn a blind eye to this absolute depravity.
In fact, the very same Boris Johnson who the extreme-right hate mob are lauding for sticking the boot into Muslim women this week is the very person who outlined the Tory government's position that Britain will continue selling weapons to the Saudi tyrants to commit their war crimes with because if we don't cash in on their war crimes, someone else might!
Then if you look at the countries that are banning arms sales to Saudi Arabia and openly criticising them for their grotesque human rights record, it's the kind of socially liberal governments that Liddle and the Spectaror mob regularly spit their hate at (Canada, Norway &Germany).
If you look at the UK politicians who do the most to oppose arms sales to Saudi Arabia while they're committing war crimes in Yemen, it's lefties like Emily Thornbury, Caroline Lucas, and Jeremy Corbyn (all hate figures for Rod and his mates in the Spectator mob).
If you look at people who are actually leading the fight against grotesque practises like female genital mutilation, forced under-age marriage, and rampant misogyny, again it's usually leftie liberals and western Muslim women doing the heavy lifting, while hard-right idiots like Liddle carp from the sidelines and use these issues as ammunition to call for even more bigotry and hatred towards Muslim people in general.
Let's get it absolutely straight. It's absolutely possible to utterly condemn vile Islamist regimes like Saudi Arabia, and to oppose barbaric practises that are still commonplace in the Muslim world (like FGM and forced marriage) without spitting bigoted Islamophobic vitriol at all Muslims in general.
In fact there's nothing Islamophobic about criticising the Islamic religion at all (especially if you're doing it from an atheist/agnostic stance that includes criticism of other religions too).
But if you're using cheap and nasty appeals to "our Judeo-Christian history" to deliberately conflate criticism of Islam with spewing bigotry and hatred at Muslim people (as Liddle does in his article), you're blatantly being an utterly disingenuous shit.
We all know that had a left-leaning magazine or blog posted an article that openly called for "more anti-Jewish bigotry in the Labour ranks" and created a ridiculously deceptive argument that the freedom to criticise Israel somehow justifies this call for more anti-Semitic abuse, there would have been an absolute tidal wave of condemnation, but somehow Liddle continually gets away with this kind of extreme-right trolling.
What's even more telling is that the BBC's heavyweight political presenter Andrew Neil is the chair of Spectator magazine which published this disgracefully deceptive article calling for more anti-Muslim bigotry in politics.
So next time you see Andrew Neil, or any other BBC journalist, spewing faux outrage about the Labour anti-Semitism row, just remember that Neil is perfectly happy to turn a blind eye to outright calls for more anti-Muslim bigotry in the Tory ranks, and that the BBC are quite happy to have Neil continue to be the heavyweight front man for their supposedly impartial political coverage.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
A fanatical extreme-right hate preacher has been jailed for two years after numerous disgusting anti-Muslim rants and a threat to kill Jeremy Corbyn.
Jonathan Jennings was jailed by Swansea crown court for his social media postings, and for lobbing a brick at a local police station after he was warned to stop posting vile abuse and threats.
Here are some of the things that Jennings wrote:
- Called for Muslims to be sterilised
- Claimed Adolf Hitler was "born 100 years too soon"
- Promoted the idea of a "bomb a mosque day"
- Threatened to "Jo Cox" Jeremy Corbyn if he ever becomes Prime Minister
- Said that Muslims should be gassed
- Praised a racist thug who kicked a pregnant woman in the stomach as a "national hero"
- Changed his Twitter handle to "Muslim Slayer"
- Called for Gina Miller to be executed as a traitor
- Called for JK Rowling to be hanged
- Called for Muslims to be burned on bonfires
One of the most interesting and important aspects of this case is one that has received no mainstream media coverage whatever is the question of how this extreme-right fanatic was radicalised.
This is an important question because we already know that the Britain First hate chamber helped to radicalise at least two murderous extreme-right terrorists, and we also know that the Finsbury Park killer had Tommy Robinson quotes in the hire van he used as his murder weapon.
So who was Jennings radicalised by?
It's actually spectacularly easy to see who Jennings was radicalised by given his (bold/reckless/stupid) decision to not wipe down his social media accounts once it was clear he was facing prosecution for his online ranting.
So it's no surprise whatever to find that Jennings is a Tommy Robinson acolyte, as well as being a Facebook follower of several other extreme-right agitators like Paul Joseph Watson, Milo Yianopolous, Sargon of Akkad, Mike Cernovich, and Count Dankula.
It's hardly surprising that Jennings follows the Muslim-fearmongering Leave.EU campaign, other Brexity Facebook pages like "Leave Means Leave", and "Get Britain OUT of the EU" and two vitriolic anti-Labour pages too.
The only currently elected politicians that Jennings follows on Facebook are Donald Trump and the Tory Brextremist-in-chief Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Just think about it. If a Jeremy Corbyn following leftist had been jailed for issuing an online threat to kill Jacob Rees-Mogg, do you think the mainstream media would have completely ignored that angle?
Even forgetting the threat to kill Jeremy Corbyn, if this vile anti-Muslim anti-Semitic ranter had been following Jeremy Corbyn's Facebook page rather than Jacob Rees-Mogg's, do you really honestly think the mainstream media would have failed to mention it at all in their report on his sentencing?
Given that his Facebook likes are clear for everyone to see, it's not even remotely difficult to find out who this guy was radicalised by. Yet the mainstream media have absolutely failed to cover it for some reason.
Of course reactive defenders of the extreme-right will try to argue that not all Tommy Robinson followers end up spewing vitriolic bigotry, issuing social media death threats, and/or carrying out acts of extreme-right terrorism, but the evidence is absolutely clear now that a percentage of them do.
If the online agitators who inspire disgusting tirades of bigoted abuse and online threats to kill (Jonathan Jennings), and actual terrorist atrocities (like Darren Osborne) had been Salafi Islamist hate preachers rather than extreme-right fanatics, then there's absolutely no way they would be given platforms to spew their hate and conspiracy theories on the BBC in the way Tommy Robinson was on the very day that one of his followers was jailed for carrying out a deadly terrorist atrocity.
In the end part of the blame for this rise in violent and abusive extreme-right fanaticism must be apportioned to the social media platforms that host these extreme-right hate preachers, and another part of the blame falls squarely on the mainstream media outlets like the BBC that actively help to boost their profiles, and inject their extremist politics into mainstream political discourse.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
Boris Johnson's comments ridiculing women who wear the veil were a blatant ploy to rile up the extreme-right by throwing them the red meat of Muslims to hate, and the free speech issue to gnash their teeth over.
It's no coincidence whatever that Johnson has decided to whip up the extreme-right like this, having just had a secretive meeting with the alt right "kingmaker" Steve Bannon who was the one who unified the Swastika-waving "Jews will not replace us" crowd and the Donald Trump Presidential campaign.
Picking minority groups to bash rather than talking about policy issues has been a classic extreme-right tactic ever since Hitler and the Nazis, and just look how it's already worked a treat for the hard-right Brextremists:
Look how they successfully pinned the blame for the devastating consequences of their own hard-right austerity agenda onto immigrants and the EU in order to con people into voting for their 'make it up as we go along' Brexit shambles.
Public pressure has eventually convinced the Tory leadership to drop their usual "ignore it until it goes away" stance in favour of a supposedly independent inquiry into Johnson's conduct.
But this inquiry is disastrous for multiple reasons. The main one is that it feeds into the victimhood narratives that the extreme-right rely so heavily upon to spread their divisive bile.
Boris was clearly hoping his comments would generate pushback so that he can pose as the poor innocent victim who is being silenced, so it's played right into his hands.
Another reason such a limited inquiry is a disastrous idea is that it's a lose-lose outcome for Muslims. If Boris is cleared then it sends out a signal to every single bigot in Britain that ridiculing Muslim women and demanding they be denied access to public services is now approved and acceptable behaviour. Boris gets off scot free, Muslims take the hit
If Boris is sanctioned for his comments, then he's sure to be anointed with martyrdom sainthood by the extreme right, with Muslim people bearing the brunt of the criticism for the fact he's been sanctioned. Boris gets a huge popularity boost with the extreme-right mob, Muslims take the hit
What the Tory party really needed to do is call the wide-ranging inquiry into anti-Muslim bigotry in the Tory ranks that the Muslim Council of Britain and several senior Tories have been demanding for months.
Instead they've cobbled together this rigged Boris wins - Muslims lose farce.
If you're under any doubt whatever about whether Boris Johnson's comment were a ploy to garner support from the extreme-right ultranationalist blue-kip demographic, just take a look at what's been going on in the Tommy Robinson hate chamber since Johnson made his remarks.
These are just a tiny sample illustrating the wave of extreme-right Boris adoration and anti-Muslim commentary he's managed to whip up.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
