The American Right’s Problem

I never thought I would write this but Sarah Palin had a point when she said that she was a victim of a “blood libel”. The Left has gone wild and criticised her for implying she was on the receiving end of murderous anti-Semitism – the blood libel is the allegation that Jews delighted in murdering Christians. (For a modern example of the lie that has launched a thousand pogroms readers should note the Liberal Democrat peer Jenny Tonge’s call for an inquiry into invented allegations that Jewish doctors were harvesting the organs of the dead and injured of the Haitian earthquake.)  With equal force, her critics have also accused Palin of making the Arizona murders “all about me”. She meant us to attend to her pain rather than the pain of the bereaved.

But strictly speaking she was right. To date there is no evidence that Palin, the Tea Party or Fox News inspired the killer.