Douglas Murray on denunciations and Lawrence Fox

Good piece. I don't actually agree with Laurence Fox - I think he does speak from a position of white privilege, and I think there is racism in Britain, though I very much doubt that the racism in Britain is worse than the racism anywhere else.

But the reaction on the left was vastly disproportionate to what he actually said, which was fairly mild. He didn't advocate sending immigrants home, or rounding people up and putting them in concentration camps. Ultimately, he was just expressing an opinion that some people will agree with and some people won't, and he should be able to do that without everyone getting completely hysterical about it and denouncing him as some kind of evil racist.

If we denounce people like Fox, what are we going to do when confronted with the real racists? The sort who do want to put people in concentration camps?

I think what makes me more irate than anything about this is that there's a really big story at the moment that barely anyone is talking about. What happened in Manchester, and the way that the authorities failed to protect girls from rapists and abusers, should be a huge story that dominates the media and programmes like Question Time. Instead, everyone is obsessed with Laurence Fox.

That applies even though Lawrence Fox is being a complete dick.

Some of the criticism of Markle is driven by racism. Some of the criticism of Markle is not driven by racism. What's bothering me is that the only permitted narrative is that anyone who is happy to see the back of Markle's hypocrisy over climate change must be a racist. Anyone who says "hang on, that's a misrepresentation" is also a racist.

Even if people aren't that bothered about women's rights or feminism etc, they should still be extremely concerned by the assault on liberty and free speech that is being carried out by those who claim to be 'progressive'. Now is not the time for fence sitting or indecisive hand wringing.