Former Jewish Chronicle editor Stephen Pollard is no stranger to batshit-deranged opinions. He opined only in August that football body UEFA daring to place a message on a pitch calling for an end to the slaughter of children and other civilians was:

a fuck-you to all Jews.

In doing so, he somehow managing simultaneously both to suggest that all Jews kill kids or support killing kids and to make the Israeli military, which emphatically does kill kids, into the victims (Israel’s default position). Despite the findings of the UN, World Court, human rights groups, legal experts and genocide scholars that Israel is committing genocide, he has denied that, too, equating the expert findings to “tired” blood libels.

Why is Corbyn being brought up by this weirdo?

Pollard, a founder member of the deeply Islamophobic Henry Jackson Society who has said that he has been loyal to Israel since his thirties – though it’s supposed to be antisemitic for anyone else to suggest it – attacked then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn for spending a Passover seder with Jews. Presumably, Corbyn chose the wrong kind of Jews,since they weren’t pro-Israel). Pollard has also dismissed human rights group Amnesty International as a “woke joke” for writing reports condemning Israel’s crimes and those who weaponise antisemitism to defend it, and has called Stop the War “traitors” for wanting to, you’ve guessed it, stop wars against people he doesn’t like.

Under Pollard’s watch, the Jewish Chronicle was repeatedly and successfully sued by the victims of its “litany of lies” against left-wingers in its desperation to undermine Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party.  And, of course, the same rag was one of three to post identical front page headlines claiming Britain’s Jews were in “existential” danger because of the jam-making radical that is J-Corbz.

The reason we bring Corbyn up now is to provide some context for Pollard’s next batshit opinion.

Notorious racist Farage

And, given all the above it can reasonably be said that there are more than a few people who would consider Pollard to be deeply toxic, extremely right-wing, and not a little deranged. But even they might be surprised at his claim this week that Nigel Farage is a “bulwark against extremism.” Pollard also had the brass neck to make this claim in the context of an article condemning the Guardian, BBC and others for, wait for it… weaponising anti-semitism against Farage.

Farage has long been accused of profound racism as a young man and those accusations have been reinforced this week. Though Farage denies them, Pollard can’t claim to be ignorant of that because he not only mentions it in his article but says he believes the accusations to be true:

I should declare an interest. One of the 20 people cited in the Guardian making the allegations is a good friend of mine. I would stake my reputation on him telling the truth, so of course I believe him – and thus I believe that Farage did say some deeply unpleasant, indeed appalling things [highlight added.]

But whereas Pollard was perfectly happy to put nonsensical claims of ‘Labour anti-semitism’ on his front page, when it comes to Farage he’s all about the mitigating circumstances:

But before we rush to judgement, some context is needed… It’s important to remember that things were very different then. Casual racism was normal. We have moved on a lot since then and rightly look back in horror at behaviour that was normal.

Mhmmm.

Farage has both a racist past and a racist present

It’s not as if Farage’s school days – attested to by another twenty people recently – are the only examples of his racism. Farage routinely scapegoats immigrants as a threat – Pollard seems not to care that many in Britain, including the Telegraph that he likes writing for, wanted to limit the number of Jewish refugees entering Britain who were  fleeing from the Nazis; has smeared people from the Middle East as terrorists and ‘fifth columnists’; defended a racist Reform MP’s comments that there are too many Black and Brown people on TV by saying he thought the “intention” behind her comments was “ugly”, but not “racist,” and defended anti-Chinese slurs, to name but a tiny few.

Pollard, however, is deeply offended at the idea that anyone should describe Farage as ‘far right’:

It’s clear what is going on here: an attempt to portray Farage as far right, and thus Reform as some kind of British version of the German AfD or the French National Rally.

Birds of a feather

This objection from Pollard may well stem from the fact that many of Farage’s views on immigration, and particularly Muslim refugees and immigrants, align with Pollard’s. After all, Pollard said only in the spring that:

The economic element behind the strain put on social cohesion by immigration is important, but it is – to put it mildly – ludicrous to welcome into our country those who reject everything we stand for

Even that remark lone would have been enough to raise serious questions about his views on Muslims, even if he didn’t then go on in the same X post to drone on about “grooming gangs” and “terror plots” as an example of the “cultural issues involved in immigration”.

But Pollard’s defence of Farage at least served to expose, if inadvertently, the reality of the shadowy bulk of fascism and racism that he fronts, even if he ludicrously suggests that Farage is somehow holding them back:

But whether you agree with Reform or oppose everything about it doesn’t alter the fact it is a mainstream party led by a mainstream politician, with mainstream supporters. There is a danger of all this becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Farage has been a bulwark against extremism, and if he is out of the picture we have no idea what dark forces will emerge [highlight added.]

But perhaps this is slightly unfair to Pollard: his defence of Farage doesn’t only do that. It also serves, again inadvertently, to confirm the absolute truth that so-called ‘Labour anti-semitism’, and therefore the anti-semitism smears now deployed by Israel lobbyists against those who oppose Israel’s genocide in Gaza, are a wholesale scam. His readiness to forgive actual racism ‘because context’ while whipping up a moral panic about not-real antisemitism regardless of context, makes that amply clear.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

This post was originally published on Canary.