SARAH VINE: The silent, sane majority must stop Britain being torn asunder by extremists
Far Right, far Left – they’re all the same, bedfellows in hate.
Yesterday, London played host to the worst of them, from Tommy Robinson and his gangs of xenophobic thugs to pockets of openly pro-Hamas supporters (still) effectively celebrating the massacre of Israeli civilians even as they lament the desperate plight of the citizens of Gaza.
It was as though Twitter had suddenly sprung into life, every toxic troll and keyboard warrior converging on SW1 in search of someone at whom to hurl their vitriol.
London, filled with bright autumn sunshine, echoed with cries of hatred and the sound of helicopters.
How utterly wrong. Yesterday was Armistice Day. A day when we honour the victims of conflict and give thanks for our freedom.
SARAH VINE (pictured): As I watched the various encounters on television, I couldn’t help thinking of my grandfather, who survived the Second World War only to lose his mind in the jungles of Burma
Counter-protesters (left) and pro-Palestinian protesters clash in Trafalgar Square in central London
Far-right protesters with St George’s flags clash with police in Parliament Square in central London
What kind of tinpot patriot does that by brawling at the side of the Cenotaph?
As I watched the various encounters on television, I couldn’t help thinking of my grandfather, who survived the Second World War only to lose his mind in the jungles of Burma.
God knows what he would have thought of yesterday’s scenes. Is this what he – and countless others – gave his youth and sacrificed his sanity for? So that a bunch of thugs can throw bottles at each other in the streets of the capital, on this day of days? I’m just glad the poor bugger’s dead so he doesn’t have to see it.
It’s just so depressing.
None of these people represent me, or you, or anyone with half a brain or an ounce of compassion. They are just deranged extremists, professional miscreants whose only aim is to sow the seeds of hate and division.
And yet it is they, not the silent, sane majority, who now increasingly set the agenda. All our lives, it seems, are now dictated to by this deranged minority.
The actions of some pro-Hamas supporters on the streets of Britain have, over the past few weeks, chilled me to the bone.
But Tommy Robinson sparks equal levels of revulsion.
Far-right protesters wave Union Jack flags and St George’s flags at Whitehall on Armistice Day
Right wing counter-protesters are forced to the ground by police on Bridge Street near Parliament Square
Far-right agitator Tommy Robinson attends the Armitice Minute’s Silence at the Cenotaph in Whitehall
Far right counter protesters gathered at Wellington Arch on Armistice Day
The idea that the way to resolve any of the issues related to weeks of protests – the tearing down of posters of kidnapped Israelis, the threats to British Jews, the open encouragement from certain quarters for the actions of Hamas – is for a bunch of tooled-up thugs to storm the Cenotaph is clearly insane.
You might as well try to extinguish a fire with a flame-thrower.
The only thing such actions achieve is to reinforce the hatred felt by some people against Jews and Israel, and to make everyone else who – entirely reasonably – just wants to voice their distress at the terrible loss of human life taking place in Gaza feel frightened and angry.
Robinson and his followers aren’t just thugs, they’re thick as the proverbial by-product of pig farming. And wicked with it.
Because they haven’t just ruined Armistice Day, they have also handed ammunition to those (wrongly) dismissing any people who are concerned about the pro-Hamas, anti-Jewish sentiment that has reared its ugly head in the wake of the October 7 attacks as Islamophobic.
As soon as Robinson and his crew showed up, social media was alive with renewed calls for the sacking of Suella Braverman for voicing her worries – worries that she may have been unwise to express in a newspaper article, but which many people nevertheless share – about the police’s handling of some of the worst elements of these marches.
Perhaps most disgraceful is the way Robinson and his band of brutes have attached themselves to the victims of the October 7 attack like some monstrous carbuncle, exploiting the horrific torture, rape and murder of Israeli citizens at the hands of gleeful, boastful terrorists to justify their thuggery. It is grotesque.
I’m glad that the police arrested so many of them: they came with the sole intention of causing trouble, of making a bad situation even worse. They got what they deserved.
Tommy Robinson speaks to police officers as he arrives at the Cenotaph in Whitehall
But however repulsive their presence may be, it does not alter the reality, which is that the views of some pro-Palestinian protesters expressed over the past month have been deeply disturbing. Yesterday’s march was relatively low-key compared to others, the organisers clearly having taken on board at least some of the sensitivities expressed by the Prime Minister when he said it risked coming across as ‘disrespectful’.
But make no mistake, the past few weeks have seen some very ugly anti-Semitic – not to mention anti-British – views expressed openly on our streets.
Yesterday’s Right-wing thuggery should not detract from that. Robinson is a knucklehead and a racist, but his actions do not cancel out those, equally knuckleheaded and racist, of others.
Ultimately, no reasonable, intelligent person – Jew, Gentile or of any other creed – wants Robinson and his ilk marching in their name, just as no reasonable, intelligent Muslim wants their faith to be hijacked by extremists or associated with the atrocities committed by Hamas and other Islamist groups hell-bent on pursuing a global jihad.
And yet both extremes succeed in hijacking our national debate, resulting only in a deepening of the divisions that are tearing Britain asunder.
Somehow, as a nation, we need to find a way of rising above all this – for the ordinary, sane people of Britain, the silent and beleaguered majority who this weekend simply want to honour the glorious dead in peace, to rise up in our many millions, and reclaim the political, social and religious agenda. Not just for the sake of our country, but also for the sake of humanity itself.
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