This is an anti-Semitic sentence. And so is this. And this one too. How do I know? Because they’re written in English, the language of Chaucer , Shakespeare and Dickens . Those stale pale males were all anti-Semites, therefore English is an anti-Semitic language and all sentences written in English are implicitly seething with bigotry and hate. QED .

Combatting Corbyn

The logic couldn’t be clearer and many people look forward to the day when it can be deployed against anyone whom the Jewish community disapproves of. For example, Jews in Britain have been trying to topple the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn for years. They want a decent politician to take his place, someone who will, like Tony Blair and Theresa May , obey Jewish orders without question and support Israel without limit.

But so far Jews haven’t managed to topple Corbyn. Again and again they’ve produced what is, to them, incontrovertible proof of his anti-Semitism. Dismayingly, ordinary Labour members have refused to accept it. Imagine how much easier it will be when English is declared an inherently anti-Semitic language. Corbyn will instantly be guilty of spewing anti-Jewish hate in countless speeches, media interviews and newspaper columns during his entire political career. He won’t simply be toppled as Labour leader: he’ll be locked up for life as a fully certified anti-Semite.

Defining anti-Semitism as they please

And let’s have no nonsense about Jews and their allies using English themselves. That’s completely irrelevant. As the contrite and humbled leftist Billy Bragg pointed out after he fell from grace with Jews: “I failed to recognise the right of the Jewish community to decide for themselves what does and doesn’t constitute racism [against them]. It’s the Macpherson principle, and I made a very insensitive response to someone’s question that implied that I knew better than the Jewish community about what is and isn’t [anti-Semitic]. … It denied them the right to decide what is a racist attack on their community, and that’s wrong and I apologise for it.”

By “Macpherson principle,” Bragg means the principle set out by the judge Sir William Macpherson in the enquiry into the martyrdom of the Black teenager Stephen Lawrence : “The definition of a ‘racist incident’ will now include incidents categorised in policing terms both as crimes and non-crimes. It will now encompass ‘any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person’.” Accordingly, if Jews say something is anti-Semitic, it is anti-Semitic – no ifs, ands or buts. And if Jews choose to say that Jeremy Corbyn is anti-Semitic because he speaks English, then no-one should argue with them. If anyone does argue, then that person too is anti-Semitic. It couldn’t be simpler: Jews can define anti-Semitism however they please and against whomsoever they please.

A classic anti-Semitic trope

This brings me to the right-wing philosopher Sir Roger Scruton . In “ The Value of Victimhood ,” I described how he had been condemned as an anti-Semite in November 2018. After he was appointed as an advisor on architecture to the Conservative government, his leftist enemies went digging for dirt to use against him and uncovered a speech he had made in Hungary some years before. He had criticized George Soros and said that “Many of the Budapest intelligentsia are Jewish, and form part of the extensive networks around the Soros empire.” Labour MPs like Luciana Berger , a heroine of the Jewish community, declared that Scruton was obviously an anti-Semite. George Soros is Jewish and Scruton had criticized Soros for being powerful and influential. Such criticism is a classic “anti-Semitic trope,” therefore Scruton is an anti-Semite and the truth of Soros’s power and influence is irrelevant. Having deployed this logic, Berger and her allies demanded that Scruton be dismissed from his role serving the Conservative government.

Luciana Berger is denouncing you!

Jews in Britain “ overwhelmingly back ” that government, but did any Conservative-supporting Jews spring to Scruton’s defence and denounce Berger for her dishonesty? Of course not. Fake accusations of anti-Semitism are standard practice in Jewish culture and no-one wanted to weaken their effect by criticizing Berger. Nor did Scruton criticize her or condemn other Jews for accepting her dishonesty. Instead, he indignantly denied that he was anti-Semitic in any way, thereby accepting the general legitimacy of the charge and merely rejecting its particular application to him. This denial was enough and he managed to maintain his role as advisor.

Roger and Out

But leftists hadn’t given up trying to topple him. They were merely biding their time. In late March 2019, an SJW called George Eaton at the very woke New Statesman asked Scruton for an interview . Stupidly, Scruton agreed. He repeated his criticisms of Soros and of the concept of “ Islamophobia ,” and added further criticism of the Chinese communist party for imposing conformity on the Chinese people. Eaton took the quotes, dishonestly edited them , and sent them out on Twitter as examples of Scruton’s vileness and bigotry. Here’s one:

If you were told that a man had said to a magazine interviewer, “Each Chinese person is a kind of replica of the next one and that is a very frightening thing,” you might assume the man was a racist. That was certainly the impression New Statesman Deputy Editor George Eaton intended to create when he blared that quote on Twitter under the description “Roger Scruton on the Chinese.” Except that the famous British philosopher, whom Eaton interviewed for the April 12 issue of his magazine, wasn’t talking about the Chinese people. He was talking about their Communist government. Anyone who bothered to click through to the full interview would find a longer version of the quotation which makes that clear in the preceding sentence: “They’re creating robots out of their own people by so constraining what can be done.”

After reading Eaton’s tweets, other leftists emitted squeals of horror at Scruton’s crime-think and the so-called Conservative government did what conservatives have been doing for many decades. It surrendered abjectly to the left, sacking Scruton for what it called his “ unacceptable comments .”

George Eaton celebrates the fall of a crime-thinker

Indeed, some so-called conservatives went further than surrender. They emitted leftist squeals of their own, fully accepting leftist ideology and the need to battle the demonic forces of hate. An SJW called Alex Wickham reported that : “Tory MP Tom Tugendhat told BuzzFeed News: ‘Antisemitism sits alongside racism, anti-Islam, homophobia, and sexism as a cretinous and divisive belief that has no place in our public life and particularly not in government.’” Tugendhat, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in parliament, is expressing mainstream Jewish views on race and the need to crush free speech. And so it should be no surprise that he is of “ Austrian-Jewish ” and “ Polish-Jewish descent .”

The Mystery Minority

Of course, Scruton has again indignantly denied that he is an anti-Semite. He has received warm support and sympathy from Mark Steyn , Douglas Murray , Brendan O’Neill and many other right-wing and libertarian commentators. These commentators have assailed the left for its deceit and totalitarianism, excoriated the Tories for their cowardice and capitulation, and proved in minute detail that Scruton has been treated with outrageous unfairness. But reading their commentary on the Scruton affair has reminded me of this poem by T.S. Eliot :

Macavity’s a Mystery Cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw —

For he’s the master criminal who can defy the Law.

He’s the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad’s despair:

For when they reach the scene of crime — Macavity’s not there!

Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,

He’s broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.

His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,

And when you reach the scene of crime — Macavity’s not there!

You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air —

But I tell you once and once again, Macavity’s not there! (“ Macavity: The Mystery Cat ,” T.S. Eliot, from Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats , 1939)

There’s a Macavity in the Scruton affair. But it’s not a Mystery Cat that’s “not there.” Rather, it’s a Mystery Minority. This is because no-one, from Scruton himself to the most minor of his many defenders, has referred to the central role of Jews in his downfall. Scruton has issued an ironically titled “ Apology for Thinking ” in the Spectator in which he notes that: “We in Britain are entering a dangerous social condition in which the direct expression of opinions that conflict – or merely seem to conflict – with a narrow set of orthodoxies is instantly punished by a band of self-appointed vigilantes. We are being cowed into abject conformity around a dubious set of official doctrines and told to adopt a world view that we cannot examine for fear of being publicly humiliated by the censors.”

The Board of Deputies: “We are satisfied.”

But who are the “self-appointed vigilantes” and “censors”? Scruton doesn’t say. Let me correct his omission with this quote from the Jewish Chronicle: “A Board of [Jewish] Deputies spokesperson said: ‘As soon as we saw Roger Scruton’s unacceptable comments we contacted the government to make our concerns heard. We are satisfied the right decision has been made to dismiss him.’” I suggest that the hand of BoD was decisive in this affair. Muslims also called for Scruton’s sacking, but the Tories have stoutly resisted loud Muslim calls for an official enquiry into the party’s “Islamophobia,” so Muslim views aren’t important to them.

The Goy Grovel: Wannabe PMs Sajid Javid , Priti Patel and Boris Johnson perform at CFI

Jewish views, on the other hand, are very important to the Tories. As I pointed out in “ Love Islam, Hate Freedom ,” ambitious Tories put in years of grovelling before Jewish audiences at Conservative Friends of Israel and the Community Security Trust . If a Tory wants to become prime minister, he has to have the Jews on his side. And that’s why I think Scruton was sacked after the Board of Deputies “ contacted the government ” about his “ unacceptable comments .” After all, the Tories used the same words to justify his sacking: they said that Scruton had made “ unacceptable comments .” And compare what happened when the Tory MP Suella Braverman was exposed in early April 2019 for using the horrendous “ antisemitic trope ” of “ cultural Marxism .” She was first “ rebuked ” by the Board of Deputies, then called in for a “ discussion ” with the Board, just as the fiery contrarian Rod Liddle had been after he seemed to make “ offensive online ” comments about a visit to Auschwitz in about 2009.

Suella is certified kosher

After its “discussion” with Braverman, the Board certified that she is kosher: “Conservative MP Suella Braverman is ‘in no way antisemitic’, the Board of Deputies has declared after meeting her amid concern about her denouncing ‘cultural Marxism’, a word with anti-Jewish origins.”

I find this “declaration” by the Board highly disturbing. As a democratically elected politician, Suella Braverson is supposedly answerable to no-one but her constituents. Why on earth was she being interrogated by an unelected organization representing a tiny ethnic minority? Why on earth didn’t she tell the Board of Deputies to go take a running jump at a rolling bagel?

Because she didn’t dare, that’s why. The Board of Deputies are quite clearly, in Roger Scruton’s words, acting as “self-appointed vigilantes” and “censors” who control politicians with “fear of being publicly humiliated.” But Scruton won’t criticize the Jews who behave like this and who were central to his sacking. Nor will any of Scruton’s supporters. And Scruton won’t criticize the dishonest and self-serving concept of “anti-Semitism,” which was quite clearly the model for the dishonest and self-serving concept of “Islamophobia.”

Think “Blink”

As I’ve pointed out before , Jews in the West enjoy power without scrutiny. But in fact they’re not like “ Macavity: The Mystery Cat ,” because Macavity is “not at the scene of [the] crime.” Jews are at the scene of the crime, again and again. They were central to Scruton’s sacking and they are central to the war on free speech. If Roger Scruton and other noisy defenders of Western civilization don’t recognize this, they’re idiots. If they do recognize it, they’re obviously frightened to say so. But what would happen to them if they spoke out against Jewish power? Like James Watson after his comments on Black genetics, they would lose their reputations and their incomes.