Ian Dunt still doesn't get it

I know, I know, I am breaking my own rules drawing attention to this. Ian Dunt asks when will we have the bravery to say that people complaining about immigration are racists and their concerns are not legitimate. As it happens that's pretty much all the left have done for about twenty years now.

As it happens, I think all of us can say that a lot of people, not the majority, are indeed racists and no, they do not have legitimate concerns about immigration. But then there are a lot of people who are not racist, the majority in fact, who are still concerned about immigration.

As to whether these concerns are legitimate, I don't know who appointed Mr Dunt the judge of this. But let us have a look at some of those concerns. Knife wielding men threatening lorry drivers in Calais. A mass incidence of sexual assault in Germany. A housing crisis where apparently large influxes of people, according to the left, has absolutely zero impact on rents. Then there's mixed reports from Sweden that incidences of rape have shot up.

Here we have a problem because newspaper reporting of these events is not in the least bit trustworthy and the debunking sites and "fact checker" sites are politically motivated. So we can call these concerns, at the very least, fears. Here's some news. It's perfectly legitimate to fear a large influx of people who may well have hostile intent. Without the means of verification, they remain unaddressed fears.

So if you want them to think a certain way and ultimately vote a certain way, how productive is it to call them racist? Because I don't obsess about immigration I don't really have a full command of the stories that have made it onto the front page of the Daily Express but what we do know is that those seeking to enter the UK from Calais have shown a willingness to use violence to enter illegally. It's a legitimate enough concern that these people shouldn't be allowed into the UK.

But then we see this from Doug Saunders, debunking the Sweden issue that Breitbart loves to bang on about. Seems convincing enough. But then that's looking at the statistics which don't tell the whole story. The Guardian seems to believe there has been a cover up. The Guardian, a left wing pro-immigration newspaper, has it that "It has been quite clearly established that there has been an increase in violent crime, and in reported rape, over the last 40 years in Sweden. In 1995, the first year for which statistics are easily available on the Crime Agency’s website, there were 179 murders in Sweden, of which 29 involved guns; in 2014 there were 317, of which 74 involved guns".

In this, a cover up is not so hard to believe not least since we have our own Rotherham scandal which is really just the tip of the iceberg. And then there's the Cologne sex attacks. For sure the tabloids had a field day with that massaging the numbers upward but it did happen. As did the rape at knife-point in the Calais jungle. Then there is the growing segregation in our own towns where whites receive death threats so that they leave their homes. That happens. It's common. It happened to me. The police did nothing.

So am I a racist? Are my concerns not legitimate? When we are at the sharp end of a global migration crisis during a major middle eastern conflict, the consequences of which has seen a number of massacres in France? Do tell.

Maybe my critical faculties are at fault here and maybe I'm reading it all wrong - after all you have to contextualise all of it and put it all in proportion. But in a world where media catches even the best of us out, these are the sorts of things we have to stay alert to. It seems to me that there is plenty of fodder around for those who want to self-radicalise against Muslims, but there is a case to answer. It seems to me that a capable writer with a respectable audience ought to be answering that case rather than calling people racist. But then we do live in a post-journalism age - and if ultimately this kind of attitude from hacks results in us leaving the EU then carry on Mr Dunt. You're doing us proud.