Recently I have encountered, several times, the claim that a certain number of jewish people believe with utmost sincerity that if Labour wins this next general election, they must take flight from Britain for their own safety. And in many cases they have even devised a concrete plan for how they intend to do so. Now, this claim was put forth by ostensibly credible figures, and I have not seen it disputed. So I am inclined to take it at face value for argument’s sake.

I don’t mind telling you that I do not follow British politics exceptionally closely. I just don’t find it very interesting. But, given that I do happen to live on this unhappy little island, its relevance is rather inescapable. As such, I try to at least keep up with it from a bird’s-eye-view. The broad strokes of what the hell is going on at any given time, and then a heightened focus during the lead-up to an election. That kind of thing. So when I hear that there are members of a marginalized group who are literally planning to run for their lives if one of the two major parties — and the left-leaning one, at that — takes power, my ears do perk up just a little bit, it must be said. I think to myself: ‘boy, I must have missed something pretty fucking big!’ For such an incredible claim to be true, there must be some crucial gap in my knowledge you could drive a busload of frightened émigrés through…

Because as far as I personally have ever seen reported — and one imagines such a news story would not be little-covered — the Labour party itself does not officially have any antisemitic ideological positions or policy proposals, and Jeremy Corbyn also has not espoused antisemitic beliefs.

So why then is the prospect of a mini-exodus of self-preservation hanging over this election?…

I freely and unequivocally admit that figures like Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson are difficult — or perhaps impossible — to extend any sympathy or compassion to. It would require something approaching a herculean effort to make one’s heart hurt when hearing about their misfortunes. I imagine that would hold true even for a Buddhist who had spent a lifetime practicing the form of mediation meant to cultivate a deep sense of indiscriminate loving-kindness. Everything has limits, after all.

So I wouldn’t dream of appealing to your sense of pity here. Nor am I going to waste your time by issuing the (implicitly mandated) lengthy, perfunctory disclaimer about how vile I find the above-named figures. I’m long-winded at the best of times, so I’d probably just end up writing a few thousand extra words eviscerating them and the seething bigotries they represent. But you already know all the things I would say, don’t you? You’ve heard them a million times before. (A rare repetitiveness I’m actually glad of.) Besides, the reasons why they and their ilk are so morally repulsive also happen to be elementary. We ought to have taken them in with our mother’s milk. So if you’ll just lend me the small assumption of basic decency and sanity, we can skip straight to the point, y’know? I’m sure you have other things you’d like to do today, and I mean to respect your time.

I’m simply going to tell you why even if you (understandably) despise them and their crypto-racist anti-immigration politics you should still be appalled by the ‘milkshaking’ trend. Not to mention, appalled that the attacks are being glibly cheered on by so many dolts. Because these were acts of violence intended to punish people for their political stances and forcibly disrupt their ability to campaign for elected office. That is just about as fundamentally anti-democratic as can be.

I’d like to get one thing straight right off the bat. Physically assaulting someone in any way is not a legitimate form of protest whatsoever. It just isn’t. In a civilised society, protesting should be purely about communicating an idea or message. Via words. Not fists or improvised projectiles. And I don’t care how loudly or crudely or vitriolically you choose to express yourself, go nuts. I would defend, to the hilt, your right to scream and shout and march and wave flags and brandish inflammatory placards concerning any subject you happen to be passionate about. No matter how much I disagreed with you on it. Because that’s the cornerstone of any free, pluralist country. It’s something that was hard-won. And it’s something that we should be proud of and protect.

In the aftermath of the recent Mosque killing spree, the New Zealand government have announced that they will be banning “military-style semi-automatic” guns (which, despite the oh-so-scary buzzwords in apposition, evidently just denotes most modern firearms under NZ law). The intention being to prevent further such attacks.

I’ll put it bluntly. This plan is remarkable for being both stupid and immoral.

To explain why that is, allow me to delineate a crucial distinction.

I vehemently despise and oppose the wide-ranging firearm prohibition here in the UK. It is disgusting. It is an utter disgrace. I’m appalled and disheartened that there is not public outcry about it every day. And I have felt this way for a long time. It’s one of the very first political commitments I remember becoming passionate about.

However, I will concede something important. When someone argues for maintaining (or even intensifying) the strict gun control here, that is — at the very least — not an infeasible proposition. On the face of it anyway. For there are relatively few legally-owned guns in the UK. I have read estimates that there are a little over 1 million shotguns as well as half a million ‘other’ firearms in private hands. And, yes, that’s unquestionably far more than most people would ever guess. But you also have to keep in mind three counter-balancing facts. Firstly, those figures apply to a country of nearly 70 million people. Secondly, because individual gun-owners often have multiple (or even very many) guns, they constitute a much smaller group than those figures suggest. Thirdly, there is a de facto national registry of every single legally-owned firearm. And so, advocating that guns continue to be tightly regulated and largely kept out of the hands of the populace is — sadly — achievable. It can, therefore, simply be debated in terms of whether it is right or wrong.