No different morally

Am I the only person who felt uncomfortable yesterday at the way prominent commentators attacked the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 for interviewing the EDL leader Tommy Robinson?

Daniel Trilling:  https://twitter.com/trillingual (scroll down to 11th June).

Mehdi Hasan:  http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mehdi-hasan/ten-questions-sarah-monta_b_3419665.html

Sundar Katwala:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/11/edl-tommy-robinson

Leaving on one side the fact that I don't like to see the BBC kicked by political commentators.

And also leaving on one side the fact that Mr Robinson has recently been the target of a murder attempt the organisers of which have just been convicted in court - and so like many other murder targets he is a legitimate subject to be interviewed by the BBC.

I am more interested in the pontificating by Mr Trilling, Mr Hasan and Mr Katwala on the subject of violence.

Of course, all violence must be condemned in all circumstances.

Whatever the problems we face as a society, violence cannot be the answer.

But there is more than one form of violence.

And unrestricted overwhelming immigration (the kind defended and espoused by all of these gentlemen) is also profoundly violent.  Of course it is a different, more subtle kind of violence than the EDL kind - it takes the form of passive social violence, insidious psychological violence, overt political violence, personal abusive violence, exclusionary possessive violence, revisionary deleting violence etc.  But it is violence nonetheless, and the people who experience it feel very real pain (pain that is all the more debilitating because the people experiencing it are often inarticulate and poorly educated and so cannot express what is happening to them).

Therefore on the subject of violence Mr Trilling, Mr Hasan and Mr Katwala (and Mr Hodges, Ms Laurie Penny, Mr Oliver et al) are no different morally to Mr Robinson.