Is Melanie Phillips a racist?

June 12, 2008 at 12:23 pm | Posted in Barack Obama, Idiot Hall of Fame | 8 Comments
Tags: Barack Obama, Melanie Phillips

Or an ally of racists? Or merely a discredited hack who’s spent so long slurping at the septic tank of the far right that everything she says, everything she writes and everything she thinks is a slush of gangrenous bile?

Enquiring minds have a right to know!

Under the banner of Truth! Justice! and The Endless Pursuit of Fear-mongering Smears!, Ms Phillips reheats the old lie that a certain candidate for President of the United States of America is/was a Muslim. Uncritically citing one source that’s been debunked and dumped, and another by a blogger whose greatest hits include – get this – advocating bombing the US State Department, Ms Phillips suggests that Obama has been less than truthful about his filthy Muslim past and that his ‘conversion’ to Christianity over two decades ago might have been nothing but a ploy to help get himself elected:

We are entitled therefore to ask whether the Muslim world supports him because it believes he is still a Muslim. We are entitled to ask precisely when he stopped being a Muslim, and why. Did Obama embrace Christianity as a tactical manoeuvre to get himself elected?

Yep, she’s asking you to believe that Obama was planning a run for President 20 years ago!

Now, I’m not going to waste my time debunking that which has already been discredited over and over again, but if anyone’s still anxious about it, the truth is no more than eight clicks away. What I will say, however, is that it’s astonishing that a mainstream British commentator is uncritically parroting a smear that’s only being made by people on the outermost fringes of American politics.

Let’s return to our questions.

Is Melanie Phillips a racist? No. She may sensationalise the scale of the threat from radical Islam, and her work may be quoted by people who are racist, but that doesn’t mean she shares their views.

Is she an ally of racists? Not intentionally, but by spreading such smears under the guise of ‘I’m just asking in the public interest’, she inevitably helps reinforce a narrative being framed by bigots.

Is she “a discredited hack who’s spent so long slurping at the septic tank of the far right that everything she says, everything she writes and everything she thinks is a slush of gangrenous bile?”

Well, I’ll let you make up your own minds.