The right-wing press and its hangers-on, including those favoured with being admitted into the body of the Pundit Establishment, have a tried, tested, and mostly unsuccessful way of dealing with inconvenient facts, and that is to either ignore them, pretend that they are not happening, or dismiss them as “non-story” or “conspiracy theory”.
After Michael “Oiky” Gove proclaimed that “The UK has a more ‘welcoming’ attitude to immigrants than any country in the EU”, that “the Windrush scandal had not damaged the UK's reputation for tolerance”, and that the Brexit referendum campaign “had not made race relations worse” - figures show it has - rabid Islamophobe Doug Murray The K added 2 and 2, obtaining a number which was rather larger than 4.
Murray starts his rant at the increasingly bigoted Spectator “In recent years the British public have been bombarded with allegations about our alleged bigotry … Since [the referendum] there has been a seemingly endless parade of pseudo-scientific claims that ‘hate crime has soared’ and the like”. Actual fact has become “pseudo-science”.
Spot the spin take 1. And here’s take 2: “Some of us - certainly a majority - knew all this to be nonsense”. The majority is with Doug! No polling or other research is required: the great Murray speaks, and “the majority” falls obediently into line with his superior insights. So what evidence would Sir care to pony up in defence of his claim?
You’ll love this. “I have been mulling several things since Saturday. Like a lot of other people I watched the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle with enormous joy. Indeed I found the whole thing deeply moving and uplifting. The bride looked wonderful. The bride’s mother represented her family with enormous grace and dignity”.
Yes? Yes yes? Yes yes yes? “The American minister Michael Curry stole much of the show with his sermon … A number of the prayers were read out by the Reverend Rose Hudson-Wilkin, who is Chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons and to Her Majesty the Queen. The music during the signing of the registry was played by Sheku Kanneh-Mason, the young cellist who won the BBC’s Young Musician of the Year in 2016”.
Some people who are not white were on telly! The clinching argument at last! And Murray is taking out of the back of his neck. As the Windrush scandal shows - and the experience of so many followers of The Prophet backs up - the racism is still there, and pretending it can be washed away by shouting “look over there at the Royal Wedding” is bunk.
It’s always a white Briton who comes out with this drivel. Gove was bad enough, but Doug Murray The K, the pundit who asserted - and has never withdrawn - the claim “conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board” - that’s too much.
As with all such outbursts, there is one test to see how racist that claim is, and that is to replace the word “Muslims” with “Jews”. Murray wouldn’t have got away with that, so he should not get a free pass with his version. And nor should he get away with his preposterous claim that the Royal Wedding has stamped out racism in the UK.
Certainly not in the magazine that publishes anti-Semite Taki, Rod “not really racist” Liddle, and ex-BNP alumnus Jack Buckby. I’ll just leave that one there.
2 comments:
Has he seen the vile abuse David Lammy gets? The most recent card he was sent?
The disgusting things that are sent to Diane Abbott? No racism? Is he on another planet?
Is that Michael Gove who 'joked about Meghan Markle’s “exotic” heritage at thinktank launch' (Daily Mirror) Casual racism. Not one of us. Othering. But no of course there is no racism here.
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