Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Why won’t Gary Lineker call out the fascism of Hamas? 

(Photo: Getty)

One of the most curious things following Hamas’s massacre of the Jews on 7 October was the silence of Britain’s fascism-spotters. You know these people. They see fascism everywhere. Everything from a fiery speech by a Tory politician to millions of ‘gammon’ going out to vote for Brexit reminds them of the 1930s. The minute someone says something they don’t like or votes for a thing they disapprove of, they’re logging onto Twitter to wail: ‘Is this Nazism?!’ 

It’s striking that someone so interested in contemporary events that echo the evils of the 30s has had so little to say about the worst anti-Jewish pogrom in 75 years? 

And yet when Hamas carried out the worst assault on Jews since the Holocaust, the fascism-spotters were nowhere to be seen. In the wake of that unconscionable act that really did echo the 1930s, the virtue-signallers just stopped signalling. You and me saying ‘We hate the EU’ gets them weeping about the rebirth of the 30s, but the sight of a marauding gang of anti-Semites slaughtering Jewish men, women and children seemingly does not.

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