It's all here: Tinfoil hats and respected think tanks, plus Judophobia, and do crowds know when they're being manipulated?

Mr Bumstead says he doesn't know what he needs to apologise for. How about the following words of his, which appear to imply that it is even possible that I would accept money from a tainted source? "If somebody had said: 'If some future BNP member list reveals that Peter Hitchens was financed by the BNP to further their agenda (as is quite possible), will we all have to change our views about how wonderful he was?' That would be a slur as it would raise the possibility (as you concede), without evidence, that Peter Hitchens (good) was manipulated by the BNP (bad) in order to discredit him."

For me to be 'financed' by the BNP, it would be necessary for me to know at least that I was the recipient of money from somewhere. I might seek not to know what the ultimate source was, or I might actually know. But either way I would be severely culpable, either for knowingly accepting tainted support or for failing to make proper checks on the source of that support.

I submit that a crowd of people in a large square are not remotely in the same position.

If a regime has used the techniques used (for instance) by Britain and the USA in 'Operation Ajax' in Iran in 1953, I might well be a westernised Egyptian/Tunisian/Bahraini/Libyan with dreams of democracy, inspired by what appeared to be a spontaneous movement, and genuinely idealistic. I would not know that the events in which I was taking part had been orchestrated or paid for by agents of a foreign power - for both the paymasters and the recipients would have an interest in keeping this fact secret from me.

Knowing what I know of Arab countries, I think the idea that they can be transformed into Anglosphere or even European Continental style law-governed democracies is absurd, and that those who think this possible are impractical idealists who are bound, sooner or later, to be used by less idealistic, less scrupulous forces (as has in effect happened in Egypt, now ruled by the Army). And by the way, do we know for certain that the Army will now continue indefinitely with the foreign policy of the Mubarak regime? I should say it was unclear.

It is not a slur to raise the possibility that the crowds may have been unconsciously manipulated, nor is it a slur to speculate on one possible source of that manipulation. These things happen. Given the hugely different nature of the regimes targeted by sudden coincidental outbreaks of 'people power' and the curious fact that equally corrupt, equally tyrannical Syria has been immune from it (as has the Hamas tyranny in Gaza), one does have to wonder. Britain and the USA certainly used to do such things. Iran intervenes constantly on the affairs of other countries, especially post-Saddam Iraq and Syria. Syria intervenes in Lebanon, acting largely as Iran's proxy. These are known facts. I resent being accused of a 'slur' for speculating reasonably on the basis of them. I also dislike the suggestion that I could conceivably be the recipient of money from a tainted source.

If realistic thinking aloud, combined with a rational rejection of naive and superficial optimism, is to be characterised as a bad action (and surely the word 'slur' has this effect) then reasoned discussion is impossible. It's good old emotional censorship again, by which I am said to have 'insulted' various people by doubting (say) the existence of 'ADHD' or of 'dyslexia', or casting doubt on the value of modern examinations, etc etc.

Mr Denton asks: 'Isn't it very hypocritical how you, on the one hand, disapprove of politically correct terms like 'homophobia' and then, on the other, freely use the term 'Judophobia' whenever the Israel or Jewish subject pops up?'
No. It isn't. The word 'homophobia' is used (for instance) by my enemies to describe and so defame me. I have no 'irrational fear' or 'irrational dislike' (choose your preferred translation), or any other sort of fear or dislike of homosexuals, as individuals or as a group. The use of the expression is designed to portray a reasoned position as a pathology and to damage me personally.

By contrast, we have as evidence of an irrational fear and dislike of Jews in the Arab and Muslim world the speeches of President Ahmadinejad casting doubt on the Holocaust, the description of Jews in Arab propaganda and the speeeches of popular preachers as being 'descended from pigs and monkeys' (the website MEMRI can and does provide reliable translations of this sort of stuff), foul 'Der Stuermer'-type depictions of hook-nosed, child-killing Jews such as the wall-painting in Gaza witnessed and described here by me, the continued propagation of discredited tripe such as 'the Protocols of the Elders of Zion' in the Arab media, the repetition in mainstream publications even of the mediaeval Blood Libel (the alleged use of Christian children's blood in the making of Passover pastries), the passages in the Hadith about the stones and the trees denouncing Jews at the last day, the close ties between many past Arab leaders and German National Socialism (most notably Haj Amin al Husseini, who fled to Berlin during the Third Reich and helped raise a Muslim division of the SS, he was the personal hero of Yasser Arafat), the sheltering of Nazi war criminals by Arab regimes - Alois Brunner, a notorious National Socialist child murderer was for many years given asylum in Damascus, where he may possibly still be living. I have myself listened to perfectly agreeable, well-educated, sane and intelligent Arabs spouting the most embarrassing rubbish about Jews as normal conversation in their living rooms.

I might add that my attempts a couple of years ago to hold conversations just outside my office with British 'anti-Zionist' protestors against the Israeli attack on Gaza (an attack I myself denounced as a cruel folly), in which I attempted to suggest that Arabs were sometimes mistreated by each other, were met with such unreasoning fury that I had to flee for my own physical safety when it became clear to them that I sympathised with the Jewish state.

And in general when I ask critics of Israel to explain why they single that country out for criticism, in a world full of comparable or worse wickedness, they tend to become either silent or enraged. What they never do is explain their selective rage. To do so would be to admit that there might be an unreasoning core to it. The whole phenomenon of Judophobia is a very strange one, not as far as I can see susceptible to reason. I've tried many times to hold reasoned, fact-based correspondences with persons who have this difficulty. It is quite futile. Some people just have this trouble, and there we are. One would feel sorry for them if it were not that from time to time their trouble leads to murder and other cruelty. My own solution is to try to persuade them that it is a problem, and one they should make an effort to control. But the temptation to indulge it, under the flag of anti-Zionism, is too strong for many sufferers.

I use the term 'Judophobia' for two reasons: First because I know that it will get past their outer mental defences against unwelcome thoughts. When they hear something described as a 'phobia', they initially assume that it must be one of those things that they ought to be against. This is the way they proceed. The jolt they receive when they realise that their views could be described in this fashion is potentially educative, and certainly satisfying.

Second, I do it because the phrase 'anti-Semitism' has lost its power. People either assume that they are themselves too nice to be such a thing, or assume that they are being called Nazis, when they know they aren't Nazis, so it bounces off.

I don't in the least think that 'Holocaust denial' is a loaded term. There is no doubt that the German National Socialist government engaged in the systematic, deliberate, industrial mass-murder of Jews, including women and tiny children. Those who seek to deny or minimise this are to be despised, as are all apologists for, and coverers up of crimes.

Mr Bumstead asks of the ECHR: 'There is another point though. The ECHR in our legal system is a superior court of appeal to which British cases can be referred. If it has ruled that prisoners have the right to vote and a British litigant pursues his case there then the ECHR will rule in his favour and damages and legal costs will have to be borne by the government. This function of the ECHR was meant to be abolished by the 1998 HRA which was meant to implement human rights law within the domestic legal system but if we stop doing this (i.e. start ignorning judgements from the ECHR) then we simply open ourselves up to indirect payments at a later date. Therefore the only way to avoid inevitable payments to prisoners would be to leave the jurisdiction of the ECHR - leading to the same result (by a circuitous route) as direct fines would have.'

I'm not sure I understand this point. This particular case was initiated, so far as I know, before the ECHR was incorporated into British law, which is why it wasn't ruled on by a British court. The Strasbourg court is not a 'superior court in the British system' but a separate body with no legal power to impose its judgements here. It has no power to force the British government to do anything. If this country denounced the whole Convention, as in my view it should, then our courts would no longer be able to use the Convention as a basis for decisions, and they could get back to their proper job of interpreting law rather than masking government policy on the hoof by extravagant 'interpretation'.

Mr Finn writes: 'You will find his less than cordial encounters with Barbara Roche, George Galloway, Yvette Cooper, Alistair Darling among others pre and post Blair. Do you really think that Gordon Brown (who I am sure you regard as hopelessly left wing) would have relished the opportunity of going up against Jeremy Paxman? '

This laboriously misses the point, which I clearly made from the start. Yes, Mr Paxman had clashes with such people, but *not from a conservative position*. Do I regard Mr Brown as 'hopelessly left wing'? I am not sure, Certainly he is an unreconstructed egalitarian (hence the ghastly Laura Spence episode). But his association with Blairite economic policies, and with the Iraq war, would have made him unpalatable to most leftists at the BBC.

Mr Finn again, writes of the 'many caveats you have had to add to your main assertion, including the one saying that the BBC decided, with Paxman in tow, to turn on the Brown government the moment they realised that Cameron was 'one of theirs' '

I have not 'added these caveats'. These are points made many times here before (do please use the index) and elaborated in the book 'The Cameron Delusion' .

Then Mr Finn continues down his slope of utter (but deeply self-serving) misunderstanding of the point at issue: 'Let's run with this preposterous notion for a moment. Another search on Youtube reveals Tony Blair, long before, being grilled quite convincingly by Jeremy Paxman along with others from the Blair government. '
Yes, Mr Finn, but *not from a conservative position* - rather from the position of a discontented leftist. Such criticism of New Labour was always permitted in the BBC, because their only dissatisfaction with the Blair government was that a) it was economically Thatcherite/liberal and b) it went to war in Iraq.

Then we get cheap abuse (this is the ultimate weapon of the BBC person challenged in this fashion - quite a senior BBC figure called me a 'liar' without foundation on a public platform only last week, and I had to make him apologise for it). Mr Finn writes :'I was merely reacting to those tin-foil hat-wearers who frequent this forum and claim that the BBC is of the left.'

How unimprovably witty and trenchant.

Well, while wearing my tinfoil hat this morning I distinctly heard the Today programme presenter Evan Davis (approx 7.35 am) refer to the think tank 'Politeia' as 'right-leaning' or 'right-wing' (the sausages were sizzling so I am not absolutely sure which - but I am sure it was one of them). Now I would be most surprised if Mr Davis or any other Today presenter would ever refer to a left-wing think tank as such. The word 'respected' tends to be used for those. And they don't even know they're doing it, just as Mr Finn doesn't (and cannot) actually understand the argument into which he has so self-righteously and superciliously ventured. It really is very easy to work out why.