Rod Liddle accused of 'racism' over Spectator blog entry

Alex Massie (pictured), on Spectator blogs takes aim at fellow Spectator blogger, Rod Liddle, and his penchant for mistaking prejudiced for provocative.

Massie writes, ‘...like his comrades Clarkson and Littlejohn, Liddle confuses being offensive with being provocative.’

Liddle, in a recent blog entry entitled ‘Benefits of a multi-cultural Britain’, wrote: ‘The overwhelming majority of street crime, knife crime, gun crime, robbery and crimes of sexual violence in London is carried out by young men from the African-Caribbean community. Of course, in return, we have rap music, goat curry and a far more vibrant and diverse understanding of cultures which were once alien to us. For which, many thanks.’

To which Massie responds:

‘The majority of crime in London is committed by white people. I assume that you know this, which makes me wonder why you didn’t limit yourself to saying that young black men commit a disproportionate amount of crime and that the arrest rate for blacks is 3.8 times that of white people? Then again, we’re familiar with this and so perhaps limiting yourself to an observation that is, like, true wouldn’t be shocking enough would it? And nor, of course, would actually addressing problems.

‘…it’s your suggestion that blackness is somehow the cause of these problems that is shameful. Worse than even that, mind you, is your insinuation that if only we could send Black Britons back to Africa and the Caribbean we wouldn’t have any of these problems because, you know, it’s all the fault of “multi-culturalism”. If that were true one wonders why Glasgow’s murder rate is two and a half times that of London. It’s not because there are gangs of McYardies terrorising entire communities. I’d also suggest that comparing offending rates between black graduates and those who fail to even sit, let alone pass, their A-Levels might reveal that class, educational achievement and any number of other factors might have a little more to do with crime rates than pigmentation.

‘Accusations of racism are often too easily made and perhaps you don’t care if you’re so labelled. But if you do then perhaps you should cease peddling nonsense that a reasonable person might reasonably consider racist. This isn’t a question of being “politically correct” it’s just a matter of behaving in a decent fashion.’

With Liddle’s recent take up of the term ‘Muslim savages’, it’s unlikely that behaving in a decent fashion is high among his priorities.

Liddle’s remarks have been denounced by Simon Woolley, of Operation Black Vote. Woolley told the Independent:

“Rod Liddle abandoned rigour for bigotry a long time ago. In recent months he has become more emboldened about expressing his racism. That Rod Liddle is a racist is in no doubt. The real crime is that he is published by The Spectator.”

And Dianne Abbott, MP for Hackney North, said:

“It is obviously statistically false to say that the ‘overwhelming majority’ of the crimes listed by Rod are committed by young black men… The interesting thing is why he chose to post something which, if you chose another set of hysterical racial stereotypes and substituted Jew for Afro-Caribbean, would not have been out of place in a speech by Oswald Mosley.

“We have all got so used to Rod Liddle’s low-level racism that it has lost the power to shock.”