More Fake News – The Myth of Increasing Anti-semitism

All the evidence is that anti-Semitism is at a historic low in Britain

The Pew Research Centre's survey of racism in Europe - anti-semitism is low down on the list

Every year, in fact twice a year, the Community Security Trust, a Zionist charity, publishes a Report on Anti-Semitic Incidents.  Every year, regardless of the figures, there is one clear message.  Anti-Semitism is on the increase.  What is more important than the actual statistics is the spin put on them.  Unsurprisingly the CST has produced a 2017 Anti-Semitic Incidents Report with the same massaged figures and statistics.

The political methodology of the CST is clear from the above montage - it conflates all sorts of opposites into one melange - a pot pourri of sensationalist headlines meaning nothing at all other than that the CST has no analysis of what it is supposed to be analysing

The reason for this politically convenient narrative and it is why the government funds the CST so generously, is that the ‘anti-Semitism’ narrative is tied to opposition to Israel and support for the Palestinians.  It is a constant theme that ‘anti-Semitism’ is derived from opposition to the Israeli state, which in practice means opposition to a central plank of British Foreign Policy.  Support for Israel is support for our ‘special relationship’ with the United States.  Opposition to the alignment with the United State is thereby deemed ‘anti-Semitism’ and ‘extremism’.

If you repeat a lie long enough some people may come to believe it

Riding on the back of the CST’s Report are propaganda papers like Huff Post which was co-founded by the far-Right Jewish racist Andrew Breitbart of Steve Bannon fame.  In it Euan Philipps, of the non-existent Labour Against Anti-Semitism, which is no more than a group of Internet Trolls [Jessica Jacobs-Schiff, Saul Freeman, Euan Philipps. Emma Feltham, Denny Taylor] asserts that Labour Has A Massive Antisemitism Problem, It Isn't Going Away, And Only Action Will Tackle It.

 

If you repeat a lie often enough and big enough, as Goebbels observed, then people may believe you.  In fact very few people in the Labour Party believe this lie.  Philipps talks of a failure to win 3 London seats in what he called London’s ‘bagel belt’, surely an anti-Semitic trope if ever there was one!  Perhaps we should ask how many seats Labour could lose by becoming Islamophobic?  The whole talk of a Jewish vote, which has been pursued by racists such as Philipps is itself anti-Semitic.

Notice the contrast between the tabloids' opposition to 'antisemitism' and their racism towards asylum seekers

Other than the usual witch hunting nonsense, singling out people like Luke Cresswell or myself, Phillips has nothing to say apart from describing the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism’ as the ‘bedrock’ of Labours’ disciplinary processes. Since the only purpose of the IHRA is to conflate anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism it is clear where Philipps and his trolls are coming from.

We have the irony that the most anti-Semitic groups in Britain and in Europe, the people who deny the Holocaust and believe in Jewish conspiracy theories are also the most pro-Zionist and pro-Israel.  Groups like the EDL, BNP and Britain First in Britain and Le Pen, Geert Wilder’s Freedom Party, Herr Strache’s far-Right Freedom Party and the neo-Nazi AfD Alternative for Germany love Zionism and Israel but don’t particularly like Jews. 

We see this in the support of the mass media for the fiction that the Labour Party is overrun by ‘anti-Semitism’.  What was interesting last week was that on the same day The Telegraph, Mail and Sun all led with anti-Semitic attacks against George Soros who, in the words of the Sun’s Hugo Gye was the ‘puppet master’.  This is the same Hugo Gye who asks why Labour’s hard left ‘has a problem with Jews.’  The idea of rich powerful Jews as ‘puppet masters’ has a direct lineage to Nazi stereotypes. 

Yair Netanyahu's anti-Semitic cartoon welcomed by neo-Nazis

The attacks on George Soros by Europe’s far-right, including Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban are reciprocated by Israel and Netanyahu who hates Soros for funding Israeli human rights groups.  Last year Netanyahu’s son posted an anti-Semitic cartoon of Soros as the puppet master which received acclaim from the neo-Nazi editor of the Daily Stormer, Andrew Anglin and David Duke, the Holocaust denying former KKK Grand Wizard.

In the year 2016/17 the CST received £13.4 million from the Home Office in grants.  This grant has been renewed for 2017/18.  It is meant for ‘UK Jewish community security measures’ but there is no reason to believe that British Jews are under any threat.  This grant and the expansion of the CST is about hyping up a non-existent threat.  It is about creating fear and tension, not least inside the Jewish community, a fear which is then linked to Palestinian supporters and the Left in the Labour Party.  Such is the seamless narrative of our rulers and their prostitute media.

This grant is about 4 times the equivalent given to the Muslim community despite the latter being about 8 times as large as the Jewish community.  Whereas anti-semitism in Britain is virtually non-existent although hyped up by groups like the CST, Islamaphobia and anti-Black racism is a real problem.

There are no examples of vehicles mounting the pavements to run over Jewish worshippers.  There are no examples of firebomb attacks on synagogues, unlike mosques.  Yet 'anti-Semitism' is prioritised and Islamaphobia is ignored for reasons of political convenience and policy considerations.

For the financial y/e 31.3.17 the CST made a net profit of over £3m.  The income for a 15 month period (the end of year date has changed) was £30m compared to £15m for the previous financial year.  As their Report states ‘fundraising during the period exceeded the target set by the Trustees.’ The CST is awash with money and it has a vested financial interest and lots of employees to pay to ensure that in future years too the level of ‘anti-Semitism’ is seen to increase in order that it can make a case for yet more cash.  It now has £16¾m in reserves.

Despite an alleged increase of 34% in violent anti-semitic incidents there wasn't one injury - which raises questions to what constitutes a violent incident

The CST’s 2017 Anti-Semitic Incidents Report recorded a total of 1,382 incidents, an increase of 3%, itself statistically meaningless. The CST reported 1382 incidents for 2017 which is only 3% up on their revised 2016 figure of 1346  (despite a  much publicised 30% increase for first 6 months of 2017).  It did though record a 34% increase in assaults, which on the surface should be worrying.  But here is the strange thing.  Not one of these incidents was what they called ‘extreme violence’ i.e. at least Actual Bodily Harm. In fact there were four incidents of extreme violence in 2015 and one in 2014.  

For 2 successive years there were no serious anti-Semitic physical attacks on Jews causing injury.

What is even more strange is that assaults or violence in general were, on average, 33% of all hate crimes, so around 26 500 assaults in total and 20 500 related to race to end March 2017. One quarter of these resulted in injury.  Yet the number of assaults in the CST figures and this is allowing for the most trivial of assaults is 145 or 10.5%.  This is a massive disparity suggesting that the number of anti-Semitic ‘incidents’ is either vastly overinflated or what is termed an ‘anti-Semitic incident’ differs dramatically from other incidents of hate crime. 

Even more startling is that whereas some 8% of all hate crimes result in an injury, this is not the case with violent anti-Semitic incidents where there were zero examples of injury.

By its own admission, ‘there is a wide spectrum of what is classed as an Assault by CST.’  One suspects much of this is extremely trivial and minor even if an anti-Semitic motivation can be shown.

In fact, as the CST Report shows, there has throughout the year been a decline in anti-Semitic incidents, with December recording half (78) of the January figures. 

On page 5 of the Report there is what one can only call tendentious and mischievious political commentary.  Scrabbling around for an explanation of the increase in anti-Semitic incidents, the CST puts forward the hypothesis that

Speculation and an underlying political bias runs through the Report

‘there was unprecedented publicity regarding controversies about alleged and actual antisemitism in the Labour Party. As would be the case for any form of hate crime, both issues are likely to have emboldened offenders, whilst also causing victims to be more aware of the need to report incidents.’

If this is to be believed then the false anti-Semitism campaign of the Jewish Labour Movement and other groups has engendered actual anti-Semitism!  If that is true then it is a damning indictment of the Zionist organisations whose activity has resulted in self-fulfilling prophecies.

In London, where most British Jews live, there was a 7% decrease in anti-Semitic incidents from 835 to 773 in 2017, whereas the in Manchester there was a 27% increase from 206 to 261.

The bulk of the anti-Semitic incidents consisted of 1038 incidents of ‘abusive behaviour’ ranging from social media to hate mail and verbal abuse.  None of this is particularly serious. 

18% of the anti-Semitic incidents (247) occurred on social media.  Since one person can post a million tweets this is statistically absurd.  Social media should be stripped out of any such report.  No one has died from an anti-Semitic Facebook post or a Tweet.  This is just trivia.

An indication of the bias of the CST is that in reaction to Trump’s Jerusalem announcement the CST sought fit to talk about 

‘street protests in major cities across the UK including Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, London, Manchester, Nottingham and Sheffield. Whilst protesting against Israel is not automatically anti-Semitic and is not recorded as an antisemitic incident by CST, some of the rhetoric involved in these protests was targeted towards Jewish people.  Specifically, on Friday 8th December, during a protest outside the United States Embassy in London, some of the protesters chanted, “Jews, remember the Khaybar, the army of Muhammad is returning.” This references the battle of Khaybar in the year 628, in which Jews were killed and expelled from a town of the same name.’

What is noticeable about this is that the clear inference is that although not automatically anti-Semitic protests against Israel are usually anti-Semitic.  In fact all it could do to muster up some proof is the reference to a long forgotten battle some 1,500 years ago!  Given that Israel calls itself a Jewish state it is surprising that this is all the CST could find!

Of course some of the 145 incidents of assault are extremely unpleasant.  One example given is that where a group of Jewish school children were trapped on a bus and attacked and chased but there are no reports of any  injuries and all the perpetrators were caught and punished.  Other incidents include stones being thrown.  Again not very nice.

But compare this with what the Communal organisations of the Jewish community, the Board of Deputies and other Zionist organisations support in Israel and Palestine.  If Jews in this country were treated like Israel, the Jewish state, treats its non-Jewish citizens then there would be good cause for complaint.

Today Ha’aretz reported Settlers Caught on Film Throwing Stones at Left-wing Activists in West Bank. 

Ha’aretz reports about how ‘10 Israelis, members of the left-wing anti-occupation group Ta’ayush, along with international activists, were touring the area when they were assaulted’ and quote one activist Guy Batavia as saying that “The area there is very violent.  In recent months there have been a number of assaults on activists and on [Palestinian] farmers and shepherds. Yesterday there were two more assaults. We had gone to one of the villages where [settlers] had gone in during the week and made a mess – and a few teens came out toward us, three of them masked, and threw really big stones at us. It was really dangerous.”  The activists did not file a police complaint, saying the police “don’t really want to do anything.”

It’s a good job that the Jewish schoolchildren in Britain didn’t face the British equivalent of the Israeli police – who protect the racists and ignore the victims.  The article goes on to explain that ‘Last year a Haaretz investigative report revealed that although the police were aware of at least nine instances of assault by settlers against Palestinians, left-wing activists and soldiers over a period of two and a half months, all of which were filmed or witnessed by soldiers, no one was indicted, even though the unmasked faces could clearly be seen. In other cases, soldiers were very close to the stone-throwers, but did nothing to stop them.’

Unfortunately bogus and inflated accounts of ‘anti-Semitism’ in Britain, not least by the CST and the far-Right Campaign Against Anti-Semitism are used in order to prevent solidarity in Britain with the Palestinian victims of genuine violence in Israel/Palestine. That is what the false anti-Semitism campaign in the Labour Party is about.  Preventing solidarity.

If Jews in Britain faced even a fraction of the racism, violence and discrimination that Palestinians face in Israel then they would have real grounds for complaint about anti-Semitism.

Below are some comments on Home Office and Police statistics of hate crimes in general.  I must thank Dr Alan Maddison with help in compiling this.

Number and share of Hate Crimes

Note the growth of 29% overall and for individual threads, the police say this growth was both real and  combined with  improved reporting, (around only one in three are reported on average).

The Home Office do not usually provide the data for a breakdown of religious or racial hate crimes, but a freedom of information” request gave the number of anti-Semitic  hate crimes reported to police  in 2016 as 1078.  This is lower than the CST incidents figure of  1309 given in  their 2016 report; now in their recent report CST say this 2016 figure is 1346.

The distribution of hate crimes reported to police is shown in the pie chart below using the 1078 antisemitic hate crime figure.

Hate Crime Assaults

When you look at police data for assaults for each category below, you’ll see it varies from around 30% for Race and Religion and up to 45% for Disability. And the Grey section of “Violence with injury” (one quarter of assaults on average) is highest for Sexual Orientation.

The violence with injury for the Religion group looks to only  about 17% of violent incidents .  But of the 5949 religious hate crimes we know the 1078 for antisemitism may have pulled this down. The biggest group here are Muslims, and they are the most hated.  There is no reason why their injuries should be less than the average.

The CST reports of 107 assaults for 2016, if we assume they were all passed on to the police then that gives only 10 % (107/ 1078). No comment is made by the CST on injury, except to say no serious injury occurred and no GBH.

The shares of the hate crime assaults are given below, (for anti-Semitism, 107 over  26 500 = 0.4%)

The New CST Data

The CST now report 145 assaults for 2017 (again no serious injuries) but a growth of 34%. We can’t give the new share, but my guess is that total hate crime assaults will increase at around the same rate as shown below, and that the 0.4% share for antisemitic assaults will not change much.

We don’t have police data for either anti-Semitism or other hate crimes to end 2017, but projecting the 29% increase to March 2017, including assaults, then I guess the antisemitism assault share of all hate crime assaults will not change much from the previous 0.4%.

Just to give a context, whilst there were 145  antisemitic assaults reported to the CST in 2017, an increase of 40 events, we anticipate racist hate crime assaults alone  will rise to 22 500, an increase of  3500 events.

To take account of the small Jewish population the pro rata risks for assault are estimated below for 2016.

The recent 34% increase in anti-Semitic assaults reported by the CST, may be higher than that anticipated for other hate crimes ( we don’t know yet) which may probably increase between 20 and 30%. This would not lead to much of a change in the relative risk as depicted in the illustration.

Given this new CST data it will still be true that a Jewish person  will be around 40 times  more likely to be a victim to a general assault ( if carrying the same risk as the rest of us) than one motivated by anti-Semitism. 

Are anti-Semitic attacks at a record high or is it the Israel lobby up to their old tricks?

Hyping up Fears of Anti-Semitism is part of a strategy designed to make Jews feel unsafe

Below is a guest post by  Alan Maddison on what I've termed the fake anti-Semitism campaign.  In the Labour Party the Zionist/pro-Israel lobby has deliberately manufactured a media consensus that there is anti-Semitism in order that those who oppose Israeli Apartheid can be smeared with the label anti-Semitism.  All the figures and statistics show that anti-Semitism is and we should be grateful that it is, at a historically low level.

The Media reports “Anti-Semitic attacks at a record high” – but what does this really mean for British Jews? 

by Dr Alan Maddison

Following the recent publication of the latest Community Security Trust (CST) report into 767 anti-Semitic incidents for the 6 months to June 2017, an increase of 30% over the same period last year, we have seen many articles in the media (July 2017) with quotes such as, 

“Anti-Semitic attacks at a record high…….rising hatred and anger”

Then Gideon Falter, chairman of the 'charity' CampaignAgainst Anti-Semitism (CAA), made a scathing attack in the media on the Police and the Crown Prosecution Services. He accused them of betraying British Jews by failing to crack down on anti-Semitic crime and having low prosecution rates. Mr Falter went on to say, 

 “ British Jews continue to endure intolerable levels of hate crime …….there is a very real danger of Jews emigrating”

Such media articles and statements must be very worrying for British Jews to read, especially given the rise of Far Right neo-Nazi movements and Islamist terrorism, the main perpetrators of anti-Semitic attacks in the UK.

Whilst not wishing to under-play the real threats to British Jews, I think it might reassure them to give broader context to these rather ‘anxiogenic’ articles, and to tell them their home is here in the UK and they should stay. 

Are British Jews now especially at risk for hate crime attacks in the UK?

Anti-Semitism: From Prejudice to hate crimes

Surveys (Pew Research, YouGov) indicate prejudice against Jews does exist, but seems to be restricted to a small minority of people (7-8%), with the majority of UK citizens appreciating their Jewish neighbours and the contribution they have made to our society. Up to 6-8 times more prejudice was recorded against Muslims and Roma Gypsies respectively than for Jews.

Of course prejudice, though deplorable, is not hatred, and rarely leads to a hate crime offence. The police have not yet released data to March 2017, but their latest figures for reported hate crimes for the 12 months to March 2016 in England and Wales are shown below, together with CST data for anti-Semitic incidents.

The 924 anti-Semitic incidents published by the CST represented around 1.5% of the 62 518 reported hate crimes. This is illustrated above with estimates of the breakdown for other victim groups for comparison.

It is true that 1.5% seems a low share for anti-Semitism, but the Jewish population is only around 267,000, compared, for instance, with an Asian population of 4.37 million. To appreciate the relative risk for British Jews becoming a victim of a hate crime we need to look at the pro-rata data and these are shown below per 100 000 of each victim population. 

                                

For an anti-Semitic incident the relative risk is slightly less than for a racist attack for all forms of hate crime offences, but higher than for other groups. What seems surprising in the above illustration is that violent assaults (with or without injury) represented about 30-40% for most victim groups, yet only 8% of those anti-Semitic incidents reported by the CST.  So an Asian or Black person probably has a relative risk of a Hate Crime assault four times greater than a Jewish person.

In addition, over a quarter of hate crime assaults reported to the police involved injury, for anti-Semitism the CST reported only 4.6% for this period, at least using GBH as a criterion. 

It is possible that, given these assault data, attacks on British Jews may be less frequent and less violent than those on Asian or Black people. Another explanation is that the CST has succeeded in its mission to encourage reporting of the less serious incidents, those incidents less likely to motivate victims to report to the police. The CST also seems to have greater resources than other victim groups to identify social media abuse. This could mean that by reporting such less severe forms of abuse, the 924 anti-Semitic incidents reported by the CST are “inflated” in relation to police reports for other hate crimes by a factor of around four.

From both prejudice and hate crime data, it does seem that British Jews are NOT at greater risk, indeed BAME victim populations are four times more likely to be assaulted. 

   

Are the CAA allegations of “Police and CPS betrayal” justified?

 Gideon Falter, chairman of the CAA, reviewed recent information from their own records and other sources. He reported that according to his data compilation, 1078 anti-Semitic offences registered in 2016, but there were only 89 charges (8.3%) and 15 prosecutions.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) responded to this accusation by saying it was wrong to claim it does not take anti-Semitic crime seriously,  “ Last year we prosecuted more hate crimes than ever before – more than 15 000 cases.”  The CPS said they did not recognise the statistics contained in the CAA report.

In fact, records show that the CPS did indeed prosecute 15 442 out of a total of those 62 518 hate crime cases reported over 12 months to March 2016, as they say, a prosecution rate of 24.7%. 

Police also report the breakdown for prosecutions and convictions for the main strands (motivations) of Hate Crimes as shown below. As police do not report national figures for further sub-groups within each strand, such as those motivated by Islamophobia or anti-Semitism, I have inserted the CAA anti-Semitism data for the full year of 2016 in italics.

The average total hate crime prosecution rate (24.7%) is three times more than that which the CAA claims for the anti-Semitic hate crimes (8.3%), based on their own data. In addition, the CAA estimate of conviction rate for anti-Semitic hate crimes (16.8%) is very low compared with the 83% average.

These “betrayal” allegations from Mr Falter are very serious indeed, and must be worrying for British Jews, and other citizens who expect the police and CPS to do their job effectively and without bias.

It seems unlikely that over 40 police forces and the CPS would deliberately discriminate against British Jewish victims of hate crimes. Indeed most reports of any prejudice involved the past treatment of BAME individuals who make up most of the hate crime motivated by the Race category. This now has a prosecution rate of 25% and a high conviction rate.

The CPS says they do not recognise the CAA figures, so it could be simply that the Mr Falter’s allegations are based upon unreliable data. However, the CST did report only 22 successful prosecutions out of 1 309 for 2016, this represents 1.7% which is very low compared with the 20.5% conviction rate for total hate crimes reported to the police.

In the absence of more detailed police data it seems likely that the prosecution and conviction rates of anti-Semitic incidents are low. So how do we explain this?

The police record that in general the main reasons for failure to prosecute involve evidential difficulties (26%) and no suspect being identified (48%). Reporting an offence as a hate crime requires no evidence of motivation, just a claimed perception of the victim. But charges and prosecution DO need convincing evidence to be provided. Why should this be more of a problem for alleged anti-Semitic offences?  Well there are three possible reasons besides police and CPS “ betrayal”.

Firstly most hate crimes are reported directly to the police by the victim. But for anti-Semitic offences, many are passed on by the CST who in their recent report says only 38% come from the victim. In fact, the CST accepts anonymous reporting too. These processes would certainly make it harder for police to gather adequate prosecution evidence.

Secondly, the CST encourages reporting of less serious offences which is evidenced by the fact that only 8-10% of their incidents involve assault, yet for all hate crime victim group strands this is around 33%.  In one London Met Police report they stated that, “non-violent offences present less evidential opportunities.” It is therefore probably harder for police to gather adequate evidence for more minor incidents such as graffiti or social media abuse.

The fact that there were four times more violent assaults reported for other hate crime victims than Jewish victims could explain why their prosecution rate is three times that for anti-Semitic incidents.

Thirdly, the CST seems to use the IHEA definition of anti-Semitism and says they encourage the CPS to prosecute anti-Zionist or anti-Israel comments used in an accusatory or abusive manner. The validity of this has been challenged from a legal perspective. It is still lawful to voice legitimate criticism of the Zionist movement policies and those of the Israeli Government. Such freedom of speech may contribute to lower prosecution/conviction rates for anti-Semitic incidents.

It therefore seems that Mr Falter is NOT justified in his public accusations of  “Police and CPS betrayal of British Jews”. 

We need to place anti-Semitic attacks in a broader perspective.

Not all assaults are a result of hate crimes. In fact the general population was exposed, over the same period, to 745 528 general assaults (402 316 of them inflicting injury). Of these assaults only 21 950 (2.2%) were reported as a Hate Crime.

Below we illustrate the calculation of relative risk of being a victim of a general assault, or an assault motivated by either racism or anti-Semitism for each victim group.

These figures are based upon Police and CST reports for 2016 and estimates of population sizes, largely from census data. 

Based upon data from England and Wales above, each year all British residents share an average risk of 13.5/1000 for being the victim of a reported assault. This is 34 times greater than the risk of a British Jew being the victim to an anti-Semitic assault (0.4/ 1000).

We have also illustrated above, as seen earlier, that the Jewish community is exposed to only one quarter the risk for hate crime assaults compared with the predominantly BAME community.

In other words, if according to Mr Falter, British Jews ‘endure intolerable levels of hate crime”, how must the BAME, EU immigrant and other communities at risk for racist attacks feel when their individual risk for assault is four times greater? What about the rest of us? Should we all emigrate when we carry a pro rata assault risk 34 times that of a Jewish person for an anti-Semitic assault, and an even higher risk of injury? In fact, based on CST assault data, a Jewish person also shares with the rest of us, a 34 times greater probability of being the victim a general assault than they do for one motivated by anti-Semitism. 

Conclusion

I have attempted to provide a broader perspective for the relative risks regarding anti-Semitic attacks for British Jews, and alternative explanations for apparently low prosecution and conviction rates.

The allegations and remarks of Mr Falter do not seem justified. He has not presented convincing evidence that the police and CPS have betrayed British Jews. He is no stranger to unfounded claims such as these. Under his chairmanship, the CAA has devoted much of its time to attacking Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party with claims of rampant anti-Semitism. Yet in the Home Affairs Select Committee report into anti-Semitism  (October 2016) they state that there is no evidence to support this. Such alarmist and unjustified accusations against important British institutions, like the Police, CPS and main Opposition Party, are divisive and undermine the genuine fight against anti-Semitism.

We should remember that every week, in addition to TWO anti-Semitic assault cases, the police and CPS have to deal with 14 000 criminal assaults including over 8 000 with injury. Police resources are being cut, so it is understandable that some less serious offences, especially with poor evidence, may receive a lower priority, whether these are related to anti-Semitism or not.

In addition, the evidence does not support the idea that British Jews should emigrate to avoid “enduring intolerable levels of hate crime” because the individual hate crime risk for them is relatively low, and more importantly probably 34 times lower than for a general assault.

This is not to deny that hate crimes, however infrequent, are dreadful and lead to fear and anxiety of becoming a future victim oneself, or having a member of one’s family attacked. No British Jew, nor anyone indeed, should have to live in such fear. The rise of the Far Right neo Nazis in the USA may embolden those in the UK too. But we must fight anti-Semitism together, unrelentingly, using education, prevention measures and the application of the law. British Jews have excellent public, political and media support and should have confidence that the police and CPS are doing a good job on their behalf.

The vast majority of British people, including myself, appreciate our Jewish neighbours and want them to stay in the country we have shared as our home, often for generations.

The fight against ant-Semitism, Racism and all hate crimes, especially at this worrying time, requires bringing our communities together, not frightening British Jews to emigrate to Israel. 

                                                                                 Dr Alan Maddison, 20^th August 2017

The Myth of Increased Anti-Semitic Attacks & the Creation of a False Media Narrative

The Manufacturing of Consent Over False   Anti-Semitism

I want to thank Dr Alan Maddison for help in compiling this article.

Tony Greenstein

Alongside the false narrative of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party has gone the creation of false and distorted statistics.  No body is better at doing this than the secretive Zionist charity, the Community Security Trust.

It is extremely unusual for a charity to be allowed to keep the details of its trustees secret by the Charity Commission but it has managed this.  It is an extremely rich charity having reserves of over £12.3 million pounds at the end of the 2015 financial year.  I estimate that it seeks funding from half the Jewish charities in Britain.  In addition in 2015 it obtained Home Office and Community Department grants of over £6m.

It is supported by the wealthiest and most reactionary Zionist capitalists in Britain and in particular Gerald Ronson, who was jailed for a year in the Guiness fraud trial.  He is/was owner of the largest private company in Britain, Heron Ltd and is a far-Right Zionist.

The CST has historically seen its role as safeguarding the Jewish community from Jewish anti-Zionists and it has been used to eject hecklers from Zionist meetings and protect e.g. Israel's fascist foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman when he came to London.  It is known to have close links to Israeli intelligence and the Israeli Embassy, and its public spokesman Mark Gardener used to appear regularly on the media to defend Israel from 'anti-Semites' on the Left.  

His role has been superseded to some extent by its Deputy Director Dave Rich who late last year brought out a book entitled The Left's Jewish Problem Jeremy Corbyn, Israel and Anti-Semitism

You can get some idea of the ideology motivating the CST from the self-promoting blurb accompanying the book.  Dave Rich writes:

'There is a sickness at the heart of left-wing British politics, and though predominantly below the surface, it is silently spreading, becoming ever more malignant.'

This rubbish was written just a few months before Donald Trump gained the Presidency of the United States.  Rich was not of course to know that but what we have seen since his election is a rapturous reception by Netanyahu, the Israel government and the Israeli people.  Despite the support of open anti-Semites like Richard Spencer, the appointment of the CEO of the alt-Right Breitbart magazine Steve Bannon and what Spencer has called Trump's 'deJudaification of the Holocaust' the Zionist Organisation of America invited Bannon to be a guest speaker at its gala dinner.

Once again we see that Zionism has absolutely no problems with real anti-Semitism.  The only 'anti-Semitism' the Zionist lobby hates is that which condemns the racism and apartheid of the Israeli state.

UPDATE

2016 Anti-SemiticIncidents Report

The Community Security Trust, a Zionist group, has just issued their latest Anti-Semitic Incidents Report for 2016.  Apparently there were 1309 incidents of anti-Semitism, recorded over the last year compared to 924 incidents in 2015, an increase of 41% over the last year (the Guardian and the Report itself state that there were 960 anti-Semitic incidents recorded by the CST last year but the CST’s 2015 Incidents Report states that there were 924).

Protecting the Jewish community or protecting Israel and the Zionist movement?

No explanation is given for why the number of anti-Semitic incidents for last year grew from 924 in last year's report to 960 in this year's report.

In their half yearly report for January to June 2016 CST recorded 557 anti-Semitic incidents, so if the above figures are correct, then there was a 35%  increase in the second half of the year from 557 to 752 incidents.  However many of these figures need to be taken with a pinch of salt.

CST reported Incidents in London were 813, up 65% on last year (494).  This is however very strange because anti-Semitic reports to the London Met this year were only 513, an increase of 11.5% on last year (460).  Why is there such a difference - 65% vs 11.5%?

For 2015 the CST tally of anti-Semitic incidents in London ( 494) was similar to the London met’s 460.  For 2016 the CST result of  813 is 58.5% higher than the London met result (513).

One explanation is that this can only reflect an increase in more trivial incidents not transmitted to the police by the CST and one has to question their impartiality given CST's links to Israel and its Embassy. 

Interestingly under violent incidents the 2016 CST Report states that there were 107 violent antisemitic assaults in 2016, an increase of 29% over the 87 violent incidents recorded in 2015 and the highest number since 2010, when CST recorded 115 violent antisemitic assaults.

It is difficult to know what constitutes violence but it is noteworthy that none of the violent incidents recorded in 2016 were classified as Extreme Violence, i.e. incidents involving grievous bodily harm (GBH) or a threat to life as compared to four such incidents in 2015 and one in 2014.

287 (22%) of the incidents were social media related, cf. to 185 the previous year, an increase of 55%. 

The vast majority of anti-Semitic incidents, 1,006, involved what is termed ‘abusive behaviour’ which is a catch all category that includes social media content.  This is an increase of 40% over 717 last year and constitutes 77% of the overall total.  I would suggest that this category in particular is highly subjective and open to both misinterpretation and political manipulation.  

Of this 1006, 402 of these incidents were purely verbal abuse and given their Zionist bias, one has to question whether eg. support for the Palestinians directed at people who are Jewish counts as anti-Semitism in CST's eyes.   In 2015 there were 458 incidents of verbal anti-Semitic abuse.  In other words there was a decrease of 12.2% in verbal anti-Semitic abuse this year compared to last year.  This strongly suggests that this particular category should be treated with a great deal of scepticism because last year verbal anti-Semitic abuse constituted 49.5% of the category of abusive behaviour.  This year however the percentage had fallen to 40%.  Again there is no explanation of what this means.  What is none verbal abusive behaviour?  What does the other 60% constitute?

Presumably this is social media interaction.  When discussing the ethnic background of abusers the CST admits that ‘it is not always possible to obtain a physical description of the offender. Where there is no face-to-face contact, it would be a mistake to assume to know the ethnicity or religion of an incident offender on the basis of the abusive language they use.’ 

There was an increase in damage to property with 81 incidents this year cf to 65 incidents in 2015, an increase of 25%. 

What is particularly suspicious is that among the perceived causes of the rise in anti-Semitic incidents are ‘high profile allegations of antisemitism in the Labour Party.’  Given that the CST has made a false and misleading statement  to the Labour Party concerning Jackie Walker where they say that it is ‘disappointed and disturbed’ in respect of an ‘untrue slur; that ‘Jews played a leading role in the slave trade’ one can only conclude that there is a high degree of political manipulation buried in these figures.

Although Zionists argue that there is a ‘new’ anti-Semitism – i.e. hatred of Israel and Zionism, in practice they do their best to try and tie anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism together.  Some of them are honest, like Micky Davis, one of the biggest Jewish capitalists in Britain who gave evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee on Anti-Semitism [HASC].   They reported thus: 

Sir Mick Davis, Chairman of the JLC, told us that criticising Zionism is the same as antisemitism, because: Zionism is so totally identified with how the Jew thinks of himself, and is so associated with the right of the Jewish people to have their own country and to have self-determination within that country, that if you attack Zionism, you attack the very fundamentals of how the Jews believe in themselves.

However this was too blunt an approach.  The Committee therefore tried to inflate the incidence of anti-Semitism and conflate this with the upsurge in protests against Israel’s repression of the Palestinians.

In the Introduction under Key Facts the Committee report that the ‘The first half of 2016 saw an 11% rise in antisemitic incidents reported to Community Security Trust (CST), compared with the same period during the previous year.’

If true this is of course shocking but what is the reality?  In the CST’s Incidents Report for the first half of 2016 it is indeed reported that there was an increase from 500 to 557 anti-Semitic incidents.

However 133 of these ‘incidents’ involved social media, which could of course be just one individual racist tweeting something anti-Semitic.  Hardly a major incident.  These 133 incidents were themselves an increase on the 89 incidents recorded in the same period in 2015.  In other words, of the 57 extra number of anti-Semitic incidents, no less than 44 were on social media.  But there is more.  The CST tells us that:

‘The 557 recorded antisemitic incidents included 41 violent antisemitic assaults, a 13 per cent fall from the first half of 2015. None of these violent incidents were classified by CST as ‘Extreme Violence’, which would mean they involved potential grievous bodily harm (GBH) or threat to life.’

In other words there was a fall of 13% in violent anti-Semitic incidents in the first half of 2016, none of which were classified as being of ‘extreme violence’.  Looking at the January-June CST Anti-Semitic Incidents Report for 2015, one finds that there were 2 incidents of extreme violence.  So there was another, welcome drop in anti-Semitic incidents for 2016 but the HASC, through statistical manipulation, managed to dress this up as an increase.  The question is why they would do that.

The HASC Report was the subject of a scathing critique by David Plank, a former Special Advisor to the Social Services Select Committee.  He describe it as:

‘a partisan party political polemic which should not have been agreed and made public by a House of Commons select committee. It fails to meet the basic standards required of select committees as to their inquiries and reports. This is particularly distressing on so important and contentious a matter as antisemitism in our country....

C.     The Report purports to be the result of an inquiry into “Antisemitism in the United Kingdom”. It is no such thing. The Inquiry has no terms of reference: as a result, it is ill-defined from the outset. Its evidence base is partial and excludes a swathe of evidence sources that would have been essential to such an inquiry. It is unbalanced in the coverage it gives to political discourse as against other aspects of antisemitism in the United Kingdom – and grossly imbalanced within the topic of political discourse in the entirely disproportionate attention it gives to the Labour Party and personally to its Leader.

You can read the full critique here

David Plank has put his finger on at least part of the problem.  In order to sustain the false anti-Semitism allegations that have become part of the accepted narrative in the Labour Party it was essential that the HASC produce a report showing that anti-Semitism is on the increase.  In criticising Jeremy Corbyn for the alleged increase in anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, in actual fact there has been no independent evidence of such anti-Semitism and the Chakrabarti Report didn’t manage to find any either, it is clear that this Report was motivated primarily by an animus towards Corbyn.

This manufacturing of an atmosphere of hysteria and false panic over anti-Semitism is tied to an attempt to redefine what a racist incident is, by deliberately misinterpreting the conclusions of the MacPherson Report into the Police’s racist inquiry and handling of the murder of Stephen Lawrence.  Remember that Stephen Lawrence was the victim of a racist murder.  We now have the appalling vista of Zionists and imperialists using the findings of an Inquiry into racism to justify their attacks on anti-racists who criticise Israel, the world’s only official apartheid state.

Hate Crimes and Racist Incidents – How the Establishment Uses the Language of Racism to Protect Racism

The CPS’s Racist and religious crime – CPS prosecution policy explains ‘What we mean by racist or religious crime’ by reference to the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report which was published in February 1999.  According to the CPS, the Lawrence Inquiry defined a racist incident as:

“˜... any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person."
The CPS state that ‘We accept this definition.’ And it goes on to say that ‘We define a religious incident as:

"Any incident which is believed to be motivated because of a person's religion or perceived religion, by the victim or any other person".

At first sight this seems bonkers.  How can a racist crime, or indeed any crime, be decided on the basis of the victim’s perception alone?  Racism, like sexism or any form of discrimination, is not a subjectivity existing independently of the actual evidence.

What the CPS and the State, encouraged of course by Britain’s Zionist lobby is trying to do is to distort and decontextualise the findings of the Lawrence Inquiry.  The Lawrence definition of a racist incident was directed at forcing the Police to record the perceptions of the victim if s/he though they had been the victims of a racist attack.  It didn’t therefore mean to say that the attack was, automatically to be treated as proven or fact.  It applied to the Police’s own attitude to a possible racist attack in view of their blind disregard of the circumstances of Stephen Lawrence’s murder.
Is it seriously suggested that all allegations of rape are to be treated as fact?  If so why bother with a trial.  It is a trite fact that supporters of the Israeli state and Zionism consider that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are one and the same thing.  According to this logic, anyone who opposes Zionism is automatically an anti-Semite.  And because, according to the spurious logic of the CPS, it is for the ‘victim’ of racism to define a racist incident, an expression of opposition to Israel or hostility to Zionism can be counted as anti-Semitic if someone who is Jewish says they are racially offended!
Historically anti-Semitism was treated as hostility or violence to Jews as Jews.  Today it is treated as a form of hostility to Israel and its founding ideology, Zionism. 

According to the CPS’s ‘logic’ any Jewish Zionist who feels that an expression of hostility to Zionism or Israel is ‘anti-Semitic’ is entitled to declare that s/he is a victim of a racist incident.  Of course a Jewish anti-Zionist is likely to disagree, so it is not so much as the victim’s ‘perception’ so much as the politics of the ‘victim’ that counts.  Indeed one can go further.  A Zionist who is not Jewish may feel that they have been the subject of an ‘anti-Semitic’ incident and this too is to be treated at face value.

Shami Chakrabarti was faced with this dilemma, when Zionists in the Labour Party started alleging that the MacPherson Inquiry gave them carte blanche to define any expression of hostility to Israel as ‘anti-Semitic’.  In her Report she found that:

Submissions to my Inquiry reveal a level of concern and confusion (in some quarters) about the "Macpherson" definition of a racist incident. This is of course a reference to the famous Report of 1999 into the Metropolitan Police after its appalling mishandling of Stephen Lawrence's murder. The principle that an incident should be recorded as "racist" when perceived that way by a victim may indeed have some useful application outside the policing context, and even here in the world of Labour Party discipline. However the purpose of the approach is to ensure that investigators handle a complaint with particular sensitivity towards the victim. It is to suggest the seriousness with which a complaint must be handled, but in no way to determine its outcome. If I complain to the police that I have been the victim of a racist attack on the street, I should expect my complaint to be so recorded. However investigation and due process must of course then follow and it is perfectly possible that an investigator, prosecutor or magistrate will subsequently find either that no attack took place at all, or that its motivation was something other than racism. In the present context, my complaint that I have been subject to racist or other personal abuse by a fellow Party Member should be so recorded, taken seriously and handled sensitively. However it will be for the investigation and any subsequent process to determine whether my complaint was ultimately well-founded.

In other words the CPS’s definition of a racist incident as being dependent on the perception of the ‘victim’ is seriously misleading, not least as a statement of law.  An incident should, in the first instance, be recorded as racist if the victim declares that they believe it to be so, but that is only the starting point.  An allegation of racism has to be investigated and subject, if there is sufficient evidence, to a trial.  An allegation or ‘perception’ of racism is the beginning not the end of the matter.

Hate Crimes & the Depoliticisation of Race

We also have in recent years the growth of what is referred to as ‘hate crimes’.  Under this heading just about anything can be classified as hate.  Strikers who call those who go to work ‘scabs’ can no doubt be found guilty of this ‘crime’.  If we demonstrate against the bigotry and racism of UKIP and Nigel Farage then that could be a hate crime.  Indeed hating Donald Trump might also be a hate crime!  Therefore when we demonstrate our hatred of what Israel and its supporters do, then that too is a hate crime.

In other words racism, class rule, imperialism – all have been depoliticised.  Everything is subsumed under the rubric of ‘hate’ – I hate capitalism so maybe I should be charged with a hate crime.  Of course Zionists, who are adept at playing the victim, use this to the full extent but we should be aware that what is happening is a redefinition of racism such that racists can also be classified as victims.  Hence why arch-racists and bigots like Sir Eric Pickles, the former Tory cabinet member, who has no problem working with anti-Semites in the European Parliament, is nonetheless very concerned about ‘anti-Semitism’ when it comes to Israel.

This redefinition of anti-Semitism has gone hand in hand with the manipulation of statistics.

Is there an Upsurge in Anti-Semitism in Britain?

According to the Office of National Statistics there were 449,844 offences of violence against the person where injury was sustained.  There were another 624,972 violent incidents where there was no injury.  Compare this to the 4 violent anti-Semitic incidents against Jewish people in 2015 and none in the first half of 2016.

In other words using the pro-rata risk per 100 000 of each victim population

4/263 000 Jews gives 1.5 risk. 

Disabled assaults with violence were 409/ 11 million giving 3.7 risk.

BUT the pro rata risk for non-hate crimes is  431 000/ 58 million ( E&W) = 743.

Of course there may have been Jews amongst the latter, we don’t know as they aren’t broken down into religion or ethnicity but regardless the number of violent anti-Semitic attacks is tiny.  Certainly it doesn’t merit a Parliamentary Select Committee Report unless there is a hidden agenda.

Hate Crime Statistics 

In terms of what were termed ‘hate crime’s then the following figures provide some context for anti-Semitic hate crimes.

 

49,419 (79%) were race hate crimes;

7,194 (12%) were sexual orientation hate crimes;

4,400 (7%) were religious hate crimes;

3,629 (6%) were disability hate crimes; and

858 (1%) were transgender hate crimes.

 

Even assuming that the CST figures of 557 for the first half of 2016 are correct, making approximately 1,100 for the whole of 2016 if the second half of the year mirrors the second half, that mean that just over 2% of hate crimes were anti-Semitic.  Bearing in mind that 24% of these incidents were on social media.  Anyone can post a thousand hateful tweets and create a complete statistical absurdity.  In terms of actual person to person anti-Semitic incidents it would appear that there are about 800 incidents.  But even then, given that the CST is an overtly Zionist organisation, there is good reason for believing that what it sees as anti-Semitic is in fact a reaction to Israel’s crimes and that any anti-Israeli comment is likely to be classified as anti-Semitic.

 

In terms of the seriousness of such offences, even anecdotal evidence suggests that anti-Muslim racial incidents are of a far more serious nature than comments about Mohammad or social media tweets.  They involve firebombings of Mosques, the murder of individual Muslims and attacks on Muslim premises, not least by the far-Right. 

Below are statistical tables taken from the Office of National Statistics.

                                Reference sources for the Table below.

 Source : Overall Crime to March 2016

Note 15% growth in violence with injury over 2014/15, it fell for CST in 2015 and again first 6 months of 2016. Suggest CST exaggerates their total AS incidents to encourage support.

2.  Source : Hate Crime statistics to march 2016

or

https//www.gov.uk/hate-crime-1516hosb1116-appendix-tables-4.ods

The Sexual Orientation and Transgender figures are combined to give LGBT data.

CST data source is used for incidents for the incidents against Jews in the table.

I as unable to get separate data for Violence with Injury against Muslims as Tell Mama only recorded this for Islamophobic incidents (about 1/3 total) reported directly to them, and not the ones sent to them by the Police. I have written to them for this but no answer. I am told that TellMama are under the influence of CST who are giving  them “advice”!  Dave Rich of CST is involved in TellMama.

Below is an interesting article

Britain's real hate crime scandal

Believe what you see on the streets, not the media hype

Brendan O'Neill

6 August 2016

Britain is in the grip of an epidemic, apparently. An epidemic of hate. Barely a day passes without some policeman or journalist telling us about the wave of criminal bigotry that is sweeping through the country. It’s been bad for years, they say, but has become worse since the EU referendum. Police forces tell us that hate crime has ‘soared’ in recent weeks; there’s been an ‘explosion of blatant hate’, according to some newspapers. Twenty-first-century Britain, it seems, is a pretty rancid, rage-fuelled place.

If you feel this doesn’t tally with your experience of life in Blighty in 2016, you aren’t alone. There is a great disparity between the handwringing over hate crime and what Britain is actually like. The open racism even I can remember in the 1980s has all but vanished. Racist chants at football matches are a distant memory. Hard-right, foreigner-bashing parties may be thriving on the Continent, but they are dying over here. The likes of the BNP and EDL have withered due to lack of interest. This is a British triumph.

It’s not vainglorious to say that Britain is the most tolerant country in Europe, perhaps the world. In France, for instance, a national news-making hate incident is the attempted burning down of a mosque, which happened last month in Toulouse. In Britain, it is somebody shouting something nasty on a bus.

It’s almost impossible to argue reasonably that Britain is a bigoted country where ethnic minorities are somehow kept down. On the contrary, they are now more likely than whites to hold top jobs (doctors, lawyers, chief executives). More than a million Londoners voted for Sadiq Khan in May, giving him the largest direct mandate enjoyed by any individual in British history — not bad for the capital of a nation in which, according to Lady Warsi, it has become ‘socially acceptable’ to despise Muslims.

Yes, the statistics are scary, and nobody should downplay the hurt caused to those who are attacked and abused. The number of hate crimes recorded by the cops has grown year by year. Six years ago, there were 42,255; in 2014-15, there were 52,528.

But these figures need to be taken with a fistful of salt. There is something wrong with the way we report and measure hate crimes in this country. The numbers do not necessarily speak to any objective spread of hate in modern Britain. On the contrary, what the BBC calls an ‘epidemic’ is a product of the authorities redefining racism and prejudice to such an extent that almost any unpleasant encounter between people of different backgrounds can now be recorded as ‘hatred’.
Consider the Brexit aftermath. The police say that 3,192 reports of hate incidents were received in the last two weeks of June, and 3,001 in the first two weeks of July. Apparently that constitutes a rise of 48 per cent and 20 per cent respectively on last year’s levels of incidents. But can we engage in some scepticism here? Many of these incidents (the police can’t at the moment say how many) were reported through True Vision, a police-funded website that allows anyone anywhere to report something they either experienced or witnessed, anonymously if they like. No evidence is needed. Everything is instantly logged as a hate incident. This inevitably presents a warped view of reality.
Already, two infamous post–Brexit ‘incidents’ have been debunked. It was widely claimed, for instance, that an attack on a tapas bar in Lewisham, south London, was a hate crime; actually, police say it was a burglary. A photo of four boneheads in Newcastle holding a banner saying ‘Stop Immigration, Start Repatriation’ was widely shared as evidence of xenophobia. But Geordies have pointed out that those idiots have been holding up that banner every weekend for ages, long before Brexit.

Beyond the post-Brexit hysteria, it’s incredible how subjective the idea of ‘hate crime’ has become. The police and the Crown Prosecution Service first agreed a common definition of hate crime ten years ago and started measuring national hate-crime levels in 2008. A hate crime, the police say, is ‘any criminal offence which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice towards someone based on a personal characteristic’. They monitored ‘five strands’: crimes driven by prejudice based on race, religion/faith, sexual orientation, disability, and gender identity.

The police’s ‘Hate Crime Operational Guidance’ now stresses that the victim’s perception is the deciding factor in whether something is measured as a hate crime. No evidence is required. ‘Evidence of… hostility is not required for an incident or crime to be recorded as a hate crime or hate incident,’ the guidance says. ‘[The] perception of the victim, or any other person, is the defining factor… the victim does not have to justify or provide evidence of their belief, and police officers or staff should not directly challenge this perception.’ So you don’t need actual evidence to prove hate crime, just a feeling. The police are discouraged from asking for evidence. This is reflected in the policies of individual constabularies. So the ‘Hate Crime Procedure’ of the Surrey Police says ‘apparent lack of motivation as the cause of an incident is not relevant as it is the perception of the victim or any other person that counts’. No clear hateful motivation? Doesn’t matter. Record it as a hate crime anyway. Indeed, even when nothing hateful was said to the victim of a crime, still the police must record the incident as a hate crime if the victim perceives it to be so. The police guidance gives the example of a gay man being ‘sworn at and threatened’ by an assailant who said absolutely ‘nothing… about his sexual orientation’. If this gay man ‘perceives that he was targeted [because] he is openly gay’ then the police must ‘record this as a hate crime based on sexual orientation’. Think about this. If any gay man is shouted at in the street, by anyone, about anything, with no mention of sexuality, that can be recorded as an anti-gay hate crime. There’s no need for any proof whatsoever that anything anti-gay in sentiment was said or even intimated.

The unhinged subjectivity of the hate-crime definition becomes even clearer on the issue of what is called ‘secondary victimisation’. This is when a victim of an alleged hate crime feels that the police are not being sensitive enough and thus compound the ‘hate’ he or she has experienced. The police guidance says ‘secondary victimisation is based on victim perception, rather than what actually happens. It is immaterial whether it is reasonable or not for the victim to feel that way’. Again, this sanctification of perception over ‘what actually happens’ has trickled down into hate-crime policies of local constabularies. So the ‘Hate Crime Policy and Procedure’ of Greater Manchester Police says that if a hate-crime victim feels indifference from the police, this ‘victimises them a second time’ and ‘whether or not it is reasonable for them to perceive it that way is immaterial’. Truth, then, is ‘immaterial’.

In a world obsessed with evidence-based public policy, it is odd that a new crime category which explicitly eschews evidence in favour of emotion is subjected to such little scrutiny. And it gets worse: the prosecution of a hate crime doesn’t actually have to prove that hatred was the motivation. The CPS states: ‘The prosecution does not… need to prove hatred as the motivating factor behind an offence.’ The CPS says any crime that involves ‘ill-will, ill-feeling, spite, contempt, prejudice, unfriendliness, antagonism, resentment, or dislike’ on the basis of a ‘personal characteristic’ could be a hate crime. So unfriendliness can now be criminal. Next time you read about a hate-crime epidemic, bear that in mind.

Burglaries and robberies are often recorded as hate crimes. According to the Home Office, of all the hate incidents in the Crime Survey for England and Wales, 8 per cent are burglaries. And 1 per cent is bicycle theft. A racially motivated bike theft? You might think stealing is just about stealing, but if the victim thinks his stuff was nicked because he’s foreign, gay or trans, then it is recorded as hate crime.

The ‘Hate Crime Operational Guidance’ demands ‘increasing the reporting and recording of hate crime’. It specifies that success should not be measured by a reduction in hate-crime levels, perhaps because this will give people the impression that community life in Britain is getting better, and we can’t have that. ‘Targets that see success as reducing hate crime are not appropriate,’ it says, as this won’t ‘motivate managers’ to ‘promote positive recording’ or ‘increase the opportunity for victims to report’. So ‘success’ has one meaning only: creating evidence to suggest the problem is getting worse. The police are incentivised to find hatred, because their goal isn’t to tackle crime so much as to create a public impression of mass hatred.

Why are our authorities so willing to push this deceptive agenda? Why is our country determined to see itself as bigoted? It’s because creating a panic about hate crime gives officials and others a sense of purpose and history. But the squalid search for, and exaggeration of, hatred is dangerous and, to use a word so popular on social media, divisive. It is a slur on the white working classes to claim that what they think and say — on immigration, Europe, life in general — is racist. Such a perception convinces minorities that they should live in fear. It spreads anxiety and silences discussion. It rips Britain apart.

According to one leftie online magazine, Britain now evokes ‘nightmares of 1930s Germany’. But this doesn’t square with the reality of our country today, and you shouldn’t believe it. The hate-crime epidemic is a self-sustaining myth — a libel against the nation.