A PRETTY cast-iron rule in life is that people are what they accuse you of.
Nowhere is this truer than in the modern Left’s obsession with calling everyone else a racist.
If you believe in controlled borders you are a “racist”.
If you believe in limiting immigration you are a “racist”.
If you are proud of your country and its history then you are a “racist”.
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That’s at least according to the modern Left, which seems to believe everybody is guilty of racism except themselves.
So how to explain the behaviour of the Left’s in-house organ, the poorly-selling but still influential Guardian?
This is the newspaper most beloved of those who work at the BBC.
It is the one that, in all sorts of ways, sets the weather for our nation’s obsessions.
In recent years it has denounced as “racist” everything from gardening to the British countryside.
Nothing good about our nation can exist without being denounced as “racist” by The Guardian.
Yet it is The Guardian’s own behaviour that can be seen as “racist”.
Take, for instance, the paper’s attitude towards anyone in the Conservative Party who is from an ethnic minority.
The Guardian can for ever be found denouncing these people.
Why? They believe they should all be leftists, and that if they are Conservatives they are “sell-outs”.
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It is this sort of thinking that led the paper to demonise Priti Patel when she was Home Secretary.
Just one example of this was when the paper’s cartoonist depicted her as a bull, with a great ring through her nose.
The image was not just ugly and dehumanising but obviously racist.
The fact no one at The Guardian noticed this is a stunning thing in itself.
Or take the more recent example, when the paper’s Sunday edition, The Observer, published a letter by Diane Abbott claiming that only black people can experience racism.
In Abbott’s weird world, Jews, like ginger-haired people, might experience “prejudice”, but only black people can experience racism.
Apart from the bizarre desire to set up a racism competition, perhaps Diane could explain what the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust were.
Victims of mere “prejudice”?
Of course, Abbott has had the Labour whip withdrawn for her ignorant comments.
But still it is remarkable that no one at the paper thought to either go back to her and check if she meant this or had no other worries about printing the letter.
Then we come to this past weekend, and the cartoon published in a paper which calls itself “the world’s leading liberal voice”.
The cartoon depicted the resignation of BBC chairman Richard Sharp.
Sharp is Jewish, though that is no reason why he — nor anyone else in public life — should be immune from criticism.
Personally, I hate almost all attempts to censor or limit what a free Press should print, draw or say.
Yet The Guardian’s cartoon on the Sharp resignation was not just criticism or lampooning. It was outright anti-Semitism.
Martin Rowson, the cartoonist in question, depicted Sharp in the most ugly, stereotypically “Jewish” way imaginable.
Dr Goebbels would have loved the work.
Sharp is shown as dusky, with great, ugly, protruding facial features.
He is seen carrying his box of possessions away from the office.
You’d have thought that the box, if it said anything, would say “BBC”.
But no, strangely, the box said “Goldman Sachs”, the Jewish-founded bank that is such an obsession of modern-day anti-Semites.
Sharp used to work there, but that is irrelevant to his current predicament.
Bizarrely, the box has a squid in it, another anti-Jewish trope where Jews are meant to have their “tentacles” around everything.
There is also a head of Rishi Sunak in the box, implying that Sharp also somehow “controls” the Prime Minister.
To his side is a slaughtered pig, surrounded by blood.
The Guardian has since withdrawn the cartoon and the cartoonist apologised.
Elsewhere there has been silence from the paper’s contributors.
All these pious men and women who always berate the rest of us, preaching from such a very high pulpit, have been silent.
I have not seen a single Guardian journalist distance themselves from what their paper published.
So what are we to make of this? As I say — The Guardian is what it accuses everyone else of being.
Modern Britain is the most tolerant country in the world.
We are the country where immigrants actually have the best chance of succeeding.
We are the country which actually hates racism.
Which is one reason why we mind when people accuse us of it.
But the people doing most of the accusing are the ones who are most guilty.
I never did listen to The Guardian’s moral hectoring.
After this weekend, I suspect a few more people will feel the same way.
RON’S A UK FAN, AT LAST
US Presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis has been in the UK in recent days.
Though it’s his first trip he even described it as feeling like his “second home”, which is nice to hear.
After all, it isn’t as if Joe Biden has made any special effort to be particularly nice about this country.
For example, his administration made it plain from the outset that there would be no trade deal with the UK, something which (for all his flaws) the President before him worked on.
In fact, the DeSantis trip had a bigger purpose.
The Florida governor has not yet announced he is running for the Presidency.
But his arrival in the UK was a big “tell”.
His critics sometimes say he is not a foreign policy person, and while he has been a superb governor of Florida, he needs to start appearing on the world stage.
So yes, we may have been used to help bolster DeSantis’s image at home.
But I am perfectly comfortable about that. It would be good to have someone back in the Oval Office who thinks well of our country.
Most importantly, it would be good to have someone who can actually push through that big, beautiful trade deal that both our countries so desperately need.
STEAKS HIGH AT FARMS
IN recent years eco-zealots have kept insisting that we should all stop eating meat.
Farting cows and various other excuses have been trotted out to claim that if we eat meat we are killing the planet.
Other food options offered to us have ranged from fake vegan “meat” to insects.
Thanks, but no thanks.
Now almost 1,000 academics have signed a joint letter saying that eating meat is actually good for us, and that there are nutrients in it which we need.
Who knew that the image of the sickly vegan had some truth to it?
According to the letter’s signatories, livestock farming is too important to “become the victim of zealotry”.
Too late, I suspect.
The generation coming up has been taught that the planet is about to burn up and it’s your fault if you eat a steak.
Good luck turning around that story – or reprogramming the generation which has been brought up on it.
TUNE IN G-SPOT MAJOR
STRANGE event in Los Angeles, where a female concertgoer apparently had a “full body orgasm” during a performance by the LA Philharmonic.
The orchestra was performing Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No5 when, in a brief pause, the woman let out her titanic cry.
Everyone heard, though the band played on.
You can hear the recording.
I like a Tchaikovsky symphony as much as the next man.
Though perhaps not as much as the next woman.
WILL PET PROJECT GET US BARK TO THE OFFICE?
I HAVE railed here before about the people who used Covid as an excuse to work from home for the rest of their lives.
While a bit of flexibility is good in some jobs, we all know there are workers who have just been taking the p**s for the past three years.
The knock-on effect of them not turning up to the office is clear.
Businesses that relied on office workers have been shuttering.
Parts of cities that used to be heaving midweek are still strangely quiet.
So I’m not sure how I feel about the latest way to woo people back into the office.
These include extra time off for your birthday, so-called “duvet days” and also free doggy daycare.
The last is the result of a 24 per cent rise in pet ownership during the pandemic.
On the one hand, I’m for whatever is needed to get this country back to work again.
On the other, I can’t help feeling that we’ve become this lazy, soggy, wet-blanket of a country.
How adult do we expect to be treated? I mean “duvet days”.
How old are we? Try a little bit of coaxing, sure.
But some stick wouldn’t hurt in many cases
How about: “Come back to the office or you’re fired”?
Or would that just make people need more “duvet days” and comfort animals?
