How to Oppose Fascist Violence

Imagine if, following the barbarous shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego this week, the press started prattling on about the sins of the Iranian regime. Imagine if people who fancy themselves as ‘progressive’ said the killings were sad, sure, but what do you expect when an Islamist nation overseas is committing violent acts? Imagine if woke talking heads breezily declared that this slaughter of innocents was ‘complex’ because it happened against a ‘backdrop of the horrors of the Islamic Republic’.

We would be horrified, right? I would be. To me it would smack of the most spineless equivocation. Worse, it would reek of a craven effort to rationalise the killings, to depict them less as the bloody handiwork of bigoted minds than as a response, albeit a regrettable one, to the wickedness of Iran’s mullahs. It would represent the sinister suggestion of collective guilt against all Muslims, as if each and every one bears the moral stain of Tehran’s crimes.

Yet that is exactly what happens when Jews are targeted. Every time. From the mountainous digital dungheap of Israelophobia right up to the establishment media, the cry goes out: ‘Israel is to blame for this.’ If the Jewish State were not so demonic, maybe Jews over here could avoid being stabbed, shot, beaten and insulted. Perhaps now, after the slayings in San Diego, people will realise just how repulsive it is to engage in such lowlife sophistry in the wake of fascist atrocities. I won’t hold my breath, though.