Gavin Mortimer

I’ve been writing a diary for 26 years and 2020 is shaping up to be a vintage one. I thought 2019 would be hard to beat, what with Brexit, Greta and Labour's implosion, but this year I've been feeling like Samuel Pepys as the 21st century answer to the bubonic plague sweeps the world. The virus first came to my attention on January 24, when I mentioned in passing 'the spread in China of something called "coronavirus".' But it wasn't until February 9 that I informed my diary that the arrival in Britain of Storm Clara has 'given the media something else to panic about other than coronavirus. Seven people now infected in the UK and 800 deaths in China.

I might be feeling more confident about the government's decision to give Huawei a limited role in building Britain's 5G network, 'on the advice of intelligence agencies', were I not reminded of the effectiveness of British spooks by the recent appearances of Alexandre del Valle on French radio. Del Valle is the author of numerous books on Islamism and the Middle East, a knowledge accrued over many decades, including a spell in the late 1990s working for France's General Secretariat for Defence and National Security, an inter-ministerial body answering to the Prime Minister. His latest book, The Project, explores how the Muslim Brotherhood has successfully spread across the West, and to promote the book he's been giving a series of media interviews.

Two years ago I wrote on this platform that France is the most 'dangerous European country for Jews' – and so it remains. Anti-Semitic attacks in 2018 soared by 74 per cent on the previous year and the figures for the beginning of 2019 have revealed a 78 per cent increase on the same period in 2018. 'Jews, who make up less than one per cent of the population, are subjected to more than half the racist acts committed in France,' said Francis Kalifat last week. Kalifat, who is president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF), believes the number of victims is actually higher. 'A lot of people don't make an official complaint,' he said. 'Either because it serves no purpose or because they fear reprisals.' French Jews are right to be scared.

Five years on from the horrific Charlie Hebdo massacre in which a dozen people lost their lives, politicians have been busy showcasing their sanctimony. Socialist mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo urged people 'never to forget' the price the cartoonists paid for the courage. Yet only last week, Hidalgo used Twitter to express her 'profound shock' at a small publicity campaign on the Paris transport network opposing assisted medical procreation for lesbian couples and single women, an issue currently under discussion in the Senate. Once she had recovered her equanimity, Hidalgo ordered 'that the posters be withdrawn immediately'. But what did Charlie Hebdo stand for if not the freedom to publish things others might vehemently disagree with?

France has endured an appalling series of Islamist terror attacks in recent years. One might feel a sense of relief that the country escaped relatively lightly last Friday. That will, of course, be no consolation to the family of the man who was killed by 22-year-old Nathan C, a recent convert to Islam, who stabbed his victim to death as he defended his wife in the Parisian suburb of Villejuif. She is recovering in hospital, as is another woman, while a passer-by apparently has his religion to thank for his survival. Confronted by the killer who was dressed in a djellaba and shouting 'Allah Akbar', the man pleaded for mercy, pointing out that he was a Muslim. The terrorist ordered him to recite a prayer in Arabic, which he did, and so off he went in search of other victims.

Boris Johnson may have received a lukewarm reaction from Emmanuel Macron to his emphatic election victory last month but one French politician was cock-a-hoop at the result. Shortly after the scale of the Conservative win was clear, Marine Le Pen tweeted her delight, declaring that 'the crushing victory of Boris Johnson shows that neither manoeuvring nor intimidation can sway a people who have decided to take their destiny in their own hands.' Other than finding the EU objectionable, Johnson and Le Pen have little in common and economically, the Frenchwoman's desire to nationalise banks is more in line with Jeremy Corbyn's worldview. But the triumph of the Conservative leader has been a tremendous fillip for her. Like Johnson, Le Pen has had a rough couple of years.

East Germans had a name for their version of 'woke' culture'; it was Zersetzung, or 'decomposition' in English. It was a form of psychological warfare deployed against citizens suspected of 'subversive incitement'. There were several techniques to Zersetzung but probably the most effective was what the Stasi described as the 'systematic discrediting of public reputation' by eroding the 'self-confidence and self-esteem of a person [to] create fear, panic, confusion'. This is now the strategy of the online mob, who have become ruthlessly adept at degrading those they charge with subversion: Toby Young, professor Nigel Biggar, Germaine Greer, Ian Buruma, Placido Domingo, Sir Tim Hunt and Sir Roger Scruton are just a few who have been targeted.

Remember when Boris Johnson met Emmanuel Macron for the first time as Prime Minister? It was in August and, as the Guardian made clear to its readers, it was the French president calling the shots. The newspaper illustrated its point with a photograph of the two leaders at their lecterns, the French president looking statesmanlike and the British Prime Minister with a hand clasped to his head. Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron on the Guardian website[/caption] How different the fortunes of the leaders are four months on. Johnson has just been returned to power with a 'stonking' majority, as impressive as the one Macron's centrist LREM (La République En Marche) enjoyed in the 2017 French parliamentary elections.

I've just finished reading William Manchester's absorbing memoir about the Pacific War. 'Goodbye Darkness' is a reminder of just how brutal that campaign was, particularly the battle for Okinawa in 1945, where Americans and Japanese fought in hand-to-hand combat in conditions that Manchester likened to Passchendaele. There was one key difference though: in the East China Sea, Americans were up against an enemy only too willing to die for their cause. Few Japanese surrendered; most fought to the end and some died as suicide bombers, ambushing Marines with explosives strapped to their bodies. Manchester, who became a renowned writer and historian after the war, still harboured a grudge against the Japanese when he wrote his cathartic memoir in 1980.