Dear John

If Reform want to head off Rupert Lowe, they need to bite the bullet with Islam

A Reform supporting Substacker called John thinks I’m racist (which I’m not), a white supremacist (which I’m not) and an Islamophobe — about which I would quibble because my fear is not irrational.

He says in passing that I’m the sort of person who would like to plunge a knife into a small child because of religious hatred.

Hmm John deleted the accusation and blocked me — so the link is dead now. You win some, you lose some.

John is actually a rather strange fish — a Reform supporter who thinks that a heightened anxiety about the impact of immigration on our civic and national culture is indicative of a frothing, crazy-eyed, genocidal, knife-wielding psychopath.

He claims to be a liberal but also that civil discourse only applies to those with whom he agrees.

I like civil discourse, your views are not civil. Some liberal values are good, lots are not. Only wanting to punish those that do wrong doesn't seem unreasonable to me. I think I'm more a libertarian than a liberal. Freedom is the most valuable thing we have. We mustn't let hard line prejudices take it from those who merit it. Your ideology would. Mine removes all the bad but leaves the good, yours takes it all.

The problem is that his libertarianism is completely ahistorical. He imagines liberal societies just appear — dropped off by the Gods of ideology by a passing Stork.

In actual fact, the historical antecedents for erasing tribalism and creating a national society of individuals required hundreds of years of coercion, dispossession and violence (right up to the crushing of the Scottish and English border clans).

The long and short is that liberalism is predicated on a consensus and shared culture that was produced illiberally ….and if damaged, can only be re-established illiberally. We are at that point now — as I have argued in the past. Most pressingly the problem that only has an illiberal solution is Islam. Not ‘radical Islam’ — but Islam.

The portal has closed. There are no small steps back

So John I have no animus against Reform UK. I do want them to go further and be more specific. But charges of racism and white supremacy by the Farage camp against Restore are simply absurd. In particular the distinction between Islamists and ordinary Muslims doesn’t hold up. It’s nothing like that between ideological Nazis and ordinary Germans.

Look at the statistics on world Islam. Which of these countries bears out your insistence that Islam itself is perfectly compatible with modern, individualist, post Enlightenment, liberal values? https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/muslim-majority-countries

If you look at the top line -- Muslims are 100% of Moroccan population. 100 %….think about that. Not one Jew. Not one Christian. Before the war the Jewish Population was estimated to be around 100,000 to 150,000,, growing to approximately 160,000 by 1936. Before the mass emigration that began in 1948, the population peaked at roughly 250,000–350,000 in the 1940s and 1950s. Demographics: Jews constituted about 10% of the total Moroccan population at that time. Now there are none. And the same people want to exterminate Jews from Israel — which you claim to support.

Same pattern in pretty much every single case.

Why is it white supremacist to notice this?

My colleague and friend is Jewish Iranian. She had to take 6 months off work because of harassment by mainly Muslim Palestinian activists after oct 7th and the occupation of the campus by the same.

Why is it white supremacist to notice this?

All those rape gangs were not Islamists...not Jihadists.....they were ordinary mostly Muslim men, who have internalized a view of infidel/white (and Sikh) girls...All very normal in their communities....which is why the mainstream UK Muslim community was so muted....it has said almost nothing. No cultural introspection...no soul searching. Just claims of racism and Islamophobia (like yours)....

Why is it racist to notice this John?

Islam is a problem per se. Not radical Islam. That is a distinction without a difference. However civil and law abiding, Muslims — qua Islam —hold to a view of the world which heads in one direction only. If I’m wrong, then by all means give me the counter examples. Which of these Muslim majority countries would be a good place to be a Christian, or a homosexual, or a woman, or a Jew? How about a Jewish lesbian?

The bottom line is this: If Reform want to head off Rupert Lowe, they need to bite the bullet with Islam. If they do this, then the two can cooperate — which is what Britain needs