Nothing to see...

Putin? Russian hackers? Meddling with democracy, etc? As you know, I’m not one for conspiracy but the furore over apparently state-sanctioned murder by nerve agent on British soil - and what Theresa May intends to do about it - is dominating the news right now. Rightly so, you may say, but it is an ill wind which blows nobody any good and as a former adviser to Teflon Tony Blair said, it’s a good day to bury bad news. Muh, Telford...

But this is the age of the Internet and social media; the news will out. And the stories that piqued my interest over the last few days are the curious cases of the new enemies of the state. Brittany Pettibone, Martin Sellner and Lauren Southern are a very far cry from Abu Hamza and Anjem Choudary and a host of others who have openly called for mass insurrection, praised public beheadings, demanded the imposition of sharia and salivated at the prospect of enslaving the kuffar to the fictitious will of a non-existent and insatiably murderous deity.

What have they done, these viciously white, attractive, young, articulate, earnest, concerned monsters? Why, they have expressed views which suggest they think it doesn’t have to be this way. They have challenged our establishment’s ready submission to islam and they have dared to suggest that white, Christian heritage is worthy of preservation. Off with their heads!

All three have been denied entry to Britain on spurious ‘hate’ grounds. Hate, of course – much like racism and xenophobia – no longer means what you think it means. I don’t have hate in my psyche; I have no need for it. The closest I come to hate, generally, is mild disappointment. But if I did succumb to hate I imagine it to be an all-consuming emotion, rendering me blind to reason and expressing itself in bulging veins, glaring eyes and a snarling insistence that my detractors should suffer for holding the views they do. It sounds exhausting, frankly.

Hate is what activists like Antifa display; hate is the tool of those vocal minorities who seek to bend society to their will. We see hate on the streets every week in the UK as the manipulated masses of extremist ideology parade their loathing. Momentum, Tell Mama, many of the current Labour shadow cabinet and the ironically named Hope-not-Hate all have hate as their stock in trade. Whip up animosity, rustle up a lynch mob and claim to denounce that which is your primary recruiting tool and bingo; uprise and pantomime in one handy press package.

I’m not suggesting for one minute that there are not those on the right with hatred in their hearts, but I’m pretty sure Brittany, Martin and Lauren are better than that. They don’t parade around shrieking, bellowing and drowning out others. And those few who do try and mount demonstrations are quickly set upon by a mob of masked ‘anti-fascists’ with brickbats and apparent police collusion. The anti-hate mob really does hate anybody who dares to stray from their orthodoxy; hate is a pretty immature thing to harbour.

Nothing to declare...

Of course, no action is too petty to weaponise, so the objection by we moderate, right-thinking citizens to the exclusion of people like us from entry to the UK has been met by howls of derision. Hypocrisy, they cry, for us to complain about the border force exercising control over who enters our kingdom, when it is a thing we have been demanding for years. Except that is not what we are objecting to – many hundreds of known jihadis have been allowed to quietly return and have even, allegedly, been offered welfare bribes to reform.

Using the Terrorism Act to exclude friends is just another assault on the freedoms the left demand from themselves but would deny to others. If there is hypocrisy here – and I am under no illusion that we are all inclined to it -  I’m pretty certain the balance lies with those who allow their own hatred to blind themselves to the honest motives of others. Russia? Perhaps we should do more to put our own house in order.