Anti-semitism and Islamophobia

Don't try and counter their bigotry and the blase assumptions this leads them to with actual facts. Their poor heads will explode.

Disagreeing with the Israeli government most decidedly is not antisemitism. To try and suggest that it is both cheapens the word and gives that government a free pass to do anything. It is a malignant and deliberate conflation designed to silence any and all legitimate criticism of Israel. And of course not all Israelis support their own government, anymore than all Britons support ours. Are these Israelis antisemitic too? You are clearly being ridiculous.

I cannot speak for the far left because I am not a communist or anarchist. Or are you trying to do as many do and suggest that anything left of Blair is far left? By which you actually mean people like me with a false label applied?

I do not equate dislike of Islam with the holocaust. The former is often a kind of bigotry yes. But the latter is bigotry actually acted upon in the most murderous and terrible way. The latter I of course condemn unreservedly, but will point out that the left took up arms against the kind of scum behind that far earlier than the right ever did. We fought alongside the Jews against such types in Cable Street. We were the first to start fighting these types in Spain, when our right wing government was ensuring that the Spanish anti-fascists got as little aid as possible whilst going out of their way to appease Hitler. Churchill was a noble exception on the right, yet even he was for a long time a fan of Mussolini.

Some Christians are indeed homophobes and transphobes, using their faith to justify their prejudice, though I dont suppose them to be any more prone to racism than the rest of the human race. And many Christians are of course not homophobes at all. But muslims too often use their faith to justify homophobia. This is thus something not unique to Christians and I fully acknowledge that.

But whilst being critical of those who use their faith - any faith - to justify bigotry, I support anyone's right to be an adherent of any religion or none, and think that hating people because of their religion is fundamentally wrong.

But there very much does appear to be a tendency on the right in recent years to try and justify blatant Islamophobia, which supposedly doesnt even exist.

The far right witterings of yourself being the epitome of common sense, naturally.

Two completely different ideas which you have conflated.

Just because people have the right to believe what they want, doesn't mean that you have to respect those beliefs or even like the people who hold them.

Lazy thinking like this is causing a lot of problems

You are kind of on the right track but with the following clarifications. I do not view the issue in racial terms at all. It is not a case of whites oppressing blacks as was clearly the case with Apartheid South Africa. Jews and Arabs are in fact both semitic peoples. For me it is simply a matter of the mighty oppressing the weak, with our own political establishment on the side of the oppressor.

For me it is firstly a case of the weak being oppressed by the strong and denied their sovereign rights and freedoms. And secondly a case of the oppressors being backed by our own establishment. It is the combination of these two facts - not race - which gets left wingers fired up about the issue.

Because I promise you something. If our government and establishment were backing Russia in spite of the war in Ukraine, the left would be screaming blue murder about it. It tends to be the complicity of our own establishment, either by crimes of commission or omission, in the oppression taking place which pushes our go nuclear button.

Apartheid South Africa too mostly became such a totemic issue for us in its day because of the failure of our own establishment at the time to effectively challenge it. 

Grasping and understanding that essential fact is the real key to understanding which acts of international oppression will most readily press our buttons.