A fellow Speccie writer asked me about what he called the ‘absurd equivalence’ being drawn between ‘anti-Semitism’ and ‘Islamophobia’. He made the interesting suggestion that all Jews want is the disappearance of persecution and hatred, while what Islam seems to want is complete acceptance and approval. It is certainly possible to understand the concerns raised by Keir Starmer’s openness to Sadiq Khan’s call for laws to make ‘Islamophobia’ a prosecutable criminal offence. This is a long shift from the original (1923) definition of ‘Islamophobia’ as ‘intense dislike or fear of Islam’ (Oxford). The idea that your dislikes or fears should be a criminal offence is bizarre. We all know that Islamic countries quite commonly have so-called ‘blasphemy’ laws that criminalise any criticism of Islam. How does Sadiq Khan’s idea differ from that?

What on earth do journalists mean when they use ‘populism’ as a sneer word? Paul Kelly has grown very find of doing this. He has written that ‘populism thrives on grievance but is devoid of genuine solutions’. Recently the Wall Street Journal’s Andy Kessler attacked ‘the new-right populism’ as promoted by J.D. Vance. So, what is the difference between ‘populism’ and ‘democracy’? The Oxford helpfully tells us that ‘populism’ means ‘the policies or principles of any of various political parties which seek to represent the interests of ordinary people’. That sort of nails it, doesn’t it? ‘Populism’ comes from the Latin populus meaning ‘the people’ and ‘democracy’ from the Greek demos meaning… oh, yes, ‘the people’! Kessler, in his attack on ‘populism’ makes a very strange point when he writes, ‘I get it, populism is about getting votes and winning elections. But it’s no way to govern.’ Really? What’s the alternative? Government by self-appointed technocrats? Be aware: these assaults on ‘populism’ are disguised attacks on democracy. The elites have always hated democracy. Now they’ve coined this word ‘populism’ to attack the right of the people to choose their own government. They are playing a very dangerous game.

Are colourful regional slang words dying out and being replaced by bland Tik-Tokisms? James Hookway (also in the Wall Street Journal) thinks so. His main focus is on what he claims is the death of British slang. He reports that in the UK 60 per cent of Gen Z don’t know such words as ‘ninny’, ‘prat’, ‘blighter’, ‘toe-rag’ and scores of others. But he also has a shot at us. Hookway writes, ‘In Australia, old classics like “bogan” have some legs. But the country that came up with “skulling a tinny in the arvo” isn’t generating as many new terms as it used to.’ Where do I begin pulling this nonsense apart? For a start ‘cobber’ (from the 1800s) is an ‘old classic’ while ‘bogan’ is from 1983. And as for new coinages, Amanda Laugesen at the Australian National Dictionary is currently deep in editing a third monumental edition –because there are so many new terms in Aussie English! Sorry Mr Hookway, you missed your target on this one.

The latest label the Democrats are applying to the Trump-Vance ticket is ‘weird’. Kamala Harris says Trump’s claims about her are ‘just plain weird’. Democrat governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, has called the Trump-Vance ticket ‘just weird’. And other Democrat campaigners are tossing ‘weird’ around as their word of the week. Perhaps they should check the etymology of the word first. ‘Weird’ has been part of English since around 1400 (coming from an old Germanic source word). And it’s initial meaning was ‘having the supernatural power to control the fate or destiny of human beings’ (hence Shakespeare’s ‘weird sisters’ in Macbeth). From this, ‘weird’ came to mean ‘that which is destined or fated to happen to a particular person’. So, if Trump and Vance really are ‘weird’ it may be because they hold Kamala’s fate or destiny in their hands!