Yasmin, who are you really?

Peter Briffa calls Yasmin Alibhai-Brown the Yazzmonster. It has more letters in it than the word paranoid but less than the more risqué title of Guardian columnist. A happy compromise I suppose.

She’s a difficult woman to understand but that may well be as a result of prejudice. You see equality cuts many ways. If one were to, say, speak up for the rights of one particular racial group then you would expect that those same rights should be extended to all racial groups. For instance, thou shall not prescribe a particular kind of wicked behaviour to a particular racial group. It makes sense. All people have the right to go through their daily lives without this kind of prejudice forced upon them. Don’t they? Don’t they?

Let’s ask Dr. Gabb.

Hello everybody.

Hello Dr. Gabb

I once questioned Yasmin, here’s what she said::

"Yasmin, are you saying that the white majority in this country is so seething with hatred and discontent that it is only restrained by law from rising up and tearing all the ethnic minorities to pieces?"

Her answer was yes, though she seemed to think better of this answer immediately after. But she did not take the invitation to deny that the white population was only kept in line by criminal laws to restrain them from attacking ethnic minorities. When Dr Gabb asked if she seriously believed he wanted to murder her, his microphone was turned off and he was "released" from his engagement with 20 minutes of discussion still to run.

Strange way of thinking eh? Like I said, a difficult woman to understand. She fights against prejudice with prejudice. What you gain in chips you loose in beans. We really should have both.

Mr. Briffa brings us further news on the monster herself:

In February last year David Goodhart wrote an essay about diversity. As he puts it:

"All hell broke loose. I was accused of ‘nice racism’ by Trevor Phillips, ‘ignorant scapegoating’ by Sukhvinder Stubbs and people even rang my wife to ask what it was like living with the new Enoch Powell".

…

"The Independent columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, whom I had once counted as a friend, was the most distraught and irrational. She refused to look at the essay when I asked her for comments before publishing it and then attacked me personally with barely a glance at the argument in several of her newspaper columns. She refuses to give up. This year at the Edinburgh book festival she told 300 people that I had once said to her at a Christmas party, ‘Don’t you think there are too many people like you here?’ This is pure invention.

I don’t know what her problem is I really don’t. Can it really be paranoia as Peter Briffa suggests?

Posted by John at September 23, 2005 09:23 AM | TrackBack