Douglas Murray

The attacks in Canada probably seem non-sensical to some people. After all, much of the press and political class in the West has spent years trying to cover over the motivations of people like those who have spent this week targeting soldiers and politicians in Canada. 'Why did they target Canada?' headlines are asking today. And well they might. There has been a great push in recent years to put the causes of Islamic jihad not onto the perpetrators but onto the victims of this problem. So, for instance, when America has been attacked, it has regularly been suggested that 'the United States had it coming' (as Mary Beard so charmingly put it immediately after 9/11). Of course Israel should always be presumed to be inciting attacks by such people.

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_16_Oct_2014_v4.mp3" title="Sean O'Callaghan and Govinda Clayton join Lara Prendergast to discuss talking to terrorists." startat=808.5] Listen [/audioplayer] In a world often devoid of good news, there has been a fine development on the farthest-flung shores of insanity. The British National Union of Students aspires to represent students, though traditionally tends only to represent those students who are politically ambitious and possess left wing views. In any case, its latest idiocy is that it has tied itself in knots over the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria - Isis. A condemnation of the ebullient Islamic group was tabled by a student of Kurdish descent.

Clive James has published a new poem days before we meet. It opens, ‘Your death, near now, is of an easy sort’. It is about a Japanese maple his daughter has planted in the garden of his Cambridge home where we are sitting, and whether the poet will live to see the leaves flame red this autumn. The poem has made news. ‘At the moment,’ he says, laughing, ‘I am in the slightly embarrassing position where I write poems saying I am about to die and I don’t. My wife is very funny on that subject.’ It is part of an astonishing late body of work. This month there is a new book of writing on poetry, Poetry Notebook.

'We need new laws' is a phrase most often heard from people who haven't much bothered to investigate whether laws which are already on the books can be used. For some time I have suggested that it is inexplicable that laws like those which can be used against people for membership of a proscribed organisation were being almost totally ignored. So the arrest of Anjem Choudary and others for precisely this is doubly pleasing. The banning of the various manifestations of the radical group Al-Muhajiroun was always vaguely farcical. The Home Office would ban one offshoot of the organisation and A-M would respond by starting something of exactly the same beliefs and precisely the same constituent people and parts under another name.

‘Are Syria air strikes legal?’ asks the BBC as part of its lead story today. The answer is that nobody is very sure. But personally I do wonder: ‘Why should we even care?’ Is beheading people legal? Is crucifying people illegal? Probably not. But aside from some vague talk last month of international inspectors being sent in to Isis-controlled areas to try to collate evidence of war-crimes I have seen very little written about this. This debate over the ‘legality’ of hitting Isis reminds me of nothing so much as the conversation after Osama bin Laden was shot in the head.

On Sunday there was a rally in London demanding ‘zero tolerance’ of anti-Semitism. About 4,500 people gathered in front of the Royal Courts of Justice. Speakers who addressed the crowds included the Chief Rabbi, Maajid Nawaz and me. Among the things I told the crowd was to expect more and to demand more of their ‘communal leadership’. Long-term readers will know that I’ve never had much time for communal leadership of any kind. I don’t like the groups who claim to speak on behalf of all Muslims – groups which disproportionately represent a politicised and fundamentalist hard-line interpretation of their faith.

The customs developing around how modern British officialdom reacts to the gang-rape of children is very interesting. I’ve just watched an interview (above) with Shaun Wright, the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for South Yorkshire, a man who has to struggle along on a tax-payer funded salary of £85,000. The interview was in reaction to the revelation that Mr Wright was PCC during much of the period in which at least 1400 children in his area were raped and gang-raped by groups of men.  I’m not quite sure what we’re currently allowed to say by way of identifying these men.  We might once have said that they were ‘diverse’ or ‘vibrant’.

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_21_August_2014_v4.mp3" title="Douglas Murray and Shiraz Maher discuss Britain's jihadis"] Listen [/audioplayer]It is the now familiar nightmare image. A kneeling prisoner, and behind him a black-hooded man speaking to camera. The standing man denounces the West and claims that his form of Islam is under attack. He then saws off the head of the hostage. Why did Wednesday morning’s video stand out? Because this time the captive was an American journalist — James Foley — and his murderer is speaking in an unmistakable London accent. The revulsion with which this latest Islamist atrocity has been greeted is of course understandable. But it is also surprising.

It is the now familiar nightmare image. A kneeling prisoner, and behind him a black-hooded man speaking to camera. The standing man denounces the West and claims that his form of Islam is under attack. He then saws off the head of the hostage.

There is a whiff of Weimar in the air in Britain. Barely a week now passes without some further denigration caused by anti-Semitic, sorry, pro-Palestine demonstrators targeting businesses run by Jews/stores selling products produced by the Jewish state. You know, like Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Marks and Spencer, Starbucks and so on. Most of this fairly random targeting of whatever business sounds a bit Jewish goes unnoticed. Sometimes protestors manage to get the business closed – as with the Ahava store in liberal, enlightened Brighton. Generally they just succeed in intimidating shoppers and making it easier for people to shop elsewhere in some non-Semitic store.

This feature is a preview from this week's Spectator, out tomorrow: I am sure we’re all in agreement that watching videos of adults abusing children is wrong. At least outside the halls of BBC light entertainment (historically speaking) such a consensus must exist. So how has it become not just right, but seemingly virtuous, to watch and then promote pictures of big bearded men chopping off children’s heads? The proliferation of torture and beheading porn is one of the social media horrors of our day. Every minute millions of people around the world send links to videos and photographs. And as world news gets darker, even if you don’t seek them out, such images find their way to you.