He didn’t say it, but its sentiments, if you read it in the way it’s intended to be read (I think), are fine. ‘Islamophobia’ Is used to shut down criticism of a belief/value system. If you think about it it makes no sense to call it racist, race isn’t involved at all. Anti Zionism is also a criticism of a belief system. Both however sit uncomfortably close to racism with the false assumption that Jew = Zionist and Arab/Middle Eastern = Islamist, so hatred is turned on people because of what they look like/where they are from (perhaps generations ago) rather than what they believe. The line has become blurred. Perhaps irreversibly so. ‘Racism’ is a very confused concept (as is race itself, there is much less genetic diversity between human beings than there is between chimpanzees) and it’s pretty fruitless to debate it in an academic way - but we all know racist behaviour when we see it. So many of the Tories railing against Islam are probably racist as are a lot of the Lefties attacking Israel. And Bobmid you should care about it, because it makes the world we live in a nasty place.
My,my Mr Trump stirs up strong feelings doesn’t he? As his one technique is to disrupt, he should be delighted, but his vanity probably prevents that. All this protesting about him rather obscures the fact that he (like Lega/Five Star, AfD, Corbyn/Momentum, Erdogan etc) are a symptom, not a cause. The cause is the failure of rich liberals to manage the world in a way which prevents such populists from gaining support. It’s a failure of liberal values, and the longer we spend being appalled by Trump rather than holding our hands up and saying ‘we ****ed up, we have made huge parts of our populations feel alienated, ignored and scared by assuming that because we were doing ok, everyone was’ and then trying to do something about it, the more likely we will see more and more Trump like success and behaviour. And it will damage the rich liberals - but not as much as it will ultimately damage the people who think that the populists are actually going to make their lives better.
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