Then there was that Nick Cohen piece answering that excommunication by Peter Wilby that I commented on last week. He criticises the same thing I did.

The least attractive characteristic of the middle-class left – one shared with the Thatcherites – is its refusal to accept that its opponents are sincere. The legacy of Marx and Freud allows it to dismiss criticisms as masks which hide corruption, class interests, racism, sexism – any motive can be implied except fundamental differences of principle. Wilby went through a long list of what could have motivated mine and similar ‘betrayals’. Perhaps we became right wing as we got older. Perhaps we wanted to stick our snouts into the deep troughs of the

Johann Hari had a good column the other day.

But in among the bad reasons for opposing multiculturalism – hinted at by Davis – there are some good reasons, and it is time we overcame our nervousness and heard them. I am the child of an immigrant myself, and I believe we should take more immigrants and refugees into Britain, not fewer. But it is increasingly clear that, forged with the best of intentions, multiculturalism has become a counter-productive way of welcoming people to our country. It promotes not a melting pot where we all mix together but a segregated society of sealed-off cultures, each sticking to its own.

Which used to sound good, or at least okay. Vibrant, … Read the rest

The Guardian on Dilpazier Aslam and his critics, part 2. Scott Burgess pointed out this article by Shiv Malik in the New Statesman.

What readers of the Guardian were not told was that Aslam is a member of the extreme Islamist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir. Though it publicly dissociates itself from violence, Hizb ut-Tahrir is shunned by most British Muslims and banned from many mosques…My strongly held view is that members of such a group should not be allowed to write on this subject in the national press (just as the British National Party, which also claims to be non-violent, is very rarely given space), but if they do their connection should be made clear, preferably at the beginning of the

Remember that peculiar article in the Guardian after it fired Dilpazier Aslam? It was two weeks ago now, but I want to mumble a few belated words.

Rightwing bloggers from the US, where the Guardian has a large online following, were behind the targeting last week of a trainee Guardian journalist who wrote a comment piece which they did not care for about the London bombings. The story is a demonstration of the way the ‘blogosphere’ can be used to mount obsessively personalised attacks at high speed.

That’s peculiar stuff. There were leftwing bloggers not from the US who criticized Aslam. And why call it ‘targeting’? (To make it sound illegitimate, that’s why.) And ‘did not care for’ is a … Read the rest