Nobody should feel obliged to think that one of Suella Braverman and Gary Lineker has to be right.
These weekend protests are neither 'hate marches', nor are they peaceful demonstrations in favour of a cease fire in Gaza.
Sure, there are rabid haters inside the crowds, just as there are well-meaning but ingenuous folk who think a ceasefire will help. But neither of these elements are providing the fundamental mob dynamic.
And while it's important to flag up anti-Semitism when it occurs (or surges, such as right now), we also need to bear in mind that anti-Semitism is very often a surrogate for some other disordered mentality.
We see this most clearly when hundreds if not thousands of Muslim (MEN) gather to perform religious rituals at or close to locations of symbolic significance in western capitals. There is only one way to describe this accurately: cultural lamp-post pissing.
A naked power play, which might be operating more or less within the form of a peaceful political demonstration as we liberal westerners understand it, but that is not what it is.
One has to ask if anyone who marches behind martial banners while shouting battle cries is protesting peacefully.
When the Wehrmacht marched down the Champs-Élysées they were then a minority in Paris demonstrating a position of relative power. Even if no punches were thrown, the French got the message.
If we think that the worse that can happen is the country and its traditions end up being a little disrespected, and as a result a few conservatives get miffed for while, we are being rather naïve.
There are Islamists cosplaying as Left-wing totalitarians and there are Left-wing totalitarians cosplaying as Islamists. It's an unholy alliance, a battlefront that claims to mirror that of the Middle East, but which is really about something else altogether, and the lamp-posts of our still, just about, pluralistic societies are likely to get rusty rather quickly.
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