More and more, it seems, the nutters are taking over the asylum Internet. Take this dispiriting discussion on the Graun’s website. In the first few posts, the Germans are Nazis, the Russians are Soviets, and the Brown Peril (was Yellow) is poised to sweep across Europe, which has been rendered weak by its democratic system and minimum wage laws.
As you can probably tell, comments of this nature often come from gloating Americans, insecure in their imperial overstretch and determined to prove that only the US of A can save the world. Typical are comments such as this:
All I am saying is that I believe democratic institutions are not capapble [sic] of reacting quickly enough within Europe in response to the growing internal peril that is evident. I may be wrong but I think, as an American, that supporting the [BNP and other far-right parties] (providing these parties are not anti-semitic) may be the way to go.
By the growing internal peril, they mean people like Sajid Mahmood.
Perhaps the surest sign of right-wing US nuttery is that it’s OK for us to vote for racists and xenophobes, as long as they’re not anti-Semitic. In case you were wondering where that leap of logic came from, it’s because we Europeans are incorrigibly anti-Semitic, and therefore can’t be trusted not to start herding people into camps at the first opportunity. America – where levels of anti-Semitism in actual scientific surveys come out about the same – is beyond rebuke on such issues, and can therefore lecture us all it likes.