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We’ll have the vote total in Scotland long before we’ll have a ‘backlash’ in England.

WHILE PUTTING BACK the light fittings after the decorators had finished and wondering whether I should get a bottle of red in for tonight to celebrate whatever the Scots decide in their referendum, I had pause to wonder about The Backlash.

That’s specifically the backlash the media are keen to warn us about after every Islam-related atrocity or wickedness, such as the beheading of British aid workers or the organised sex trafficking of thousands of British girls. Today, for instance, the BBC, faithful to its multicultural promotion policy, was making out that Islamic extremism is “fuelling a far-right backlash”. “Far-right” in this context means white working class people who don’t read the Guardian and won’t be voting Labour.

These bien pensants are easily terrified, if the accompanying video piece of protestors marching in Leeds earlier this month is anything to go by. I reckon there must have been 15, maybe even 20 of them if you include the laggards at the rear (who may just have tagged along to keep their mates company), maundering along a nondescript street, carrying a couple of banners. If the BBC think this is frightening all I can say is they’re lucky they never encountered a gang of Leeds United supporters back in the 1970s. Or indeed a gang of real fascists like the National Front.

Ah well. Journalist Sima Kotecha ups the level of seriousness by conducting a brief undercover interview in a car with a “senior Home Officer advisor” who spends his time infiltrating far-right groups. He believes the government are underestimating their threat. All very sinister.

EXCEPT IT’S NOT. It turns out this piece is just a promo for Tell Mama, a group which monitors anti-Muslim behaviour in Britain. Grievance-mongering and victimology, in other words. Ever since 9/11 and the London bombings the media have tried to conjure up the spectre of a dangerous far-right movement stalking the country. It must be disappointing that the phantom has remained just that – a spectrer. The examples provided to the BBC by Tell Mama – graffiti on cars and buildings – are hardly the stuff of nightmares (that’s if you believe they’re authentic, of course).

To date the British public have proved disappointingly phlegmatic about Islamic extremism.

To date the British public have proved disappointingly phlegmatic about Islamic extremism. Even after the murder of Lee Rigby on a London street, the backlash amounted mainly to a bodged arson attack on a mosque in Grimsby. The other two major incidents — the burning down of a Somali “community centre” (Ie, mosque) in North London and the attempted arson of an Islamic boys’ school in Chislehurst — seem to have yielded no far-right involvement. That’s despite the fact that in the case of the community centre the media made a point of saying that EDL graffiti had been found daubed on the walls. Pity they never provided any photos or footage of it.

In both cases there are doubts about the authenticity of claims that these were right-wing crimes. The community centre was in bad condition before the fire and some people suspect the attack was an inside job to claim insurance. As for the Chislehurst school local reports had said that it may have been started by pupils. All we know is that four “teenagers” were arrested then bailed. What’s interesting is that in the following year and a half there has been total media silence on both incidents. I can only presume that’s because the police have not collared any right-wing extremists so there’s nothing worth mentioning. No backlash, no publicity.

Still, Tell Mama will always be able to find an offensive tweet to justify their existence and carry on trying to make us think everything’s our fault. In the meantime jihadis in northern Iraq continue to practise real extremism by shooting people, raping them, burying them alive and beheading them. Waiting for the backlash here is like waiting for the Second Coming, so I’m getting that bottle of red in to help me cope.

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