Even by his own standards, Sir Simon Jenkins's distasteful sophistry in today's Times was astonishing. He was attacking the proposals by the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, to give himself powers to subject suspected terrorists to house arrest. This is indeed a Draconian step for a democracy which arouses legitimate concerns, even among people who fully acknowledge the need to deal with the threat of terror.

But Sir Simon goes one step further to reiterate his obsessional belief, which came into full flower as a result of the Iraq war, that there is no terrorist threat at all. Readers of this Diary may recall, form an earlier post, that Sir Simon believes the whole thing has been coooked up by a global Jewish conspiracy. suddenly, he lurches into a gratuitous swipe at those who have accused his side of the argument of being appeasers of terror:

'Those who questioned the extravagant Anglo-American reaction to 9/11 are regularly accused of being "the sort of people who tolerated Hitler". On the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, I am inclined to return the odious compliment. It is they who are the sort of people who tolerated Hitler. They would have stood by complacently as Germany’s interwar rulers let go one freedom after another to avert some "foreigner threat", until suddenly there were none left. They ran in fear of fear. Hitler’s Enabling Bill of 1933 became his in-camera People’s Court of 1934 with "sole right to try cases of treason". But even that included two professional judges, which is more than will Mr Clarke’s "court of me alone".'

Uh-huh. Now let's get our head round this one. Those of us who want to tackle foreign terrorists are the same as the Nazis who preached fear of foreigners (ie German Jews and others). Hello? The difference, which has clearly passed Sir Simon by, is that the 'foreigners' feared by the Nazis were no threat at all to the state -- and weren't even foreign -- whereas the foreign terrorists feared by the west are people who are actually attempting to wage a war of terrorism against it. Even if you think that every single police officer and intelligence agent is a potato-head, we know this terrorist aim is so because the perpetrators and their acolytes helpfully tell us so.

Some difference! Some comparison! What does it tell us about Sir Simon's thinking -- that the current threat against the west is a figment of the imagination of politicians who can think of nothing better to do than put their reputations and careers on the line for a lie -- and that he thinks Clarke's proposals are the equivalent of Hitler's policies.

You've got to laugh. I mean, it is tragic for Britain, of course, that such writing is taken seriously, but on another level such absurdity is just priceless. Sir Simon has just announced that he is leaving the Times for the Guardian. A marriage made in heaven.

Posted by melanie at January 28, 2005