Why was Lee Anderson the only one punished for stoking Islamophobia?

Lest week a whole host of Westminster politicians deliberately stoked up anti-Muslim hate, so why was former Tory Deputy Chair Lee Anderson the only one to take a fall for it?

Last week a whole host of politicians from Labour and the Tories worked together to whip up an Islamophobic panic, yet only former Tory Deputy Chair Lee Anderson was punished for it by losing the Tory whip.

So why was Lee Anderson singled out, when so many other politicians were also spreading anti-Muslim hate?

Let’s have a look at just a few of the most high-profile examples of this Islamophobic panic-mongering:

Lindsay Hoyle (Speaker)

The supposedly impartial Speaker Lindsay Hoyle caused parliamentary chaos by colluding with Keir Starmer to sabotage the SNP’s Gaza ceasefire debate.

Hoyles decision to rip up the parliamentary rules and hand the SNP’s opposition day over to Labour staved off the threat of the biggest Labour rebellion against Starmer’s leadership to date, over his belligerent refusal to call Israeli war crimes and genocide what they are.

Later Hoyle cited unspecified "threats" and "abuse" from unspecified Palestine solidarity campaigners in order to create an Islamophobic panic and distract attention away from his cynical collusion with Starmer.

Suella Braverman (Tory)

Former Tory Home Secretary Suella Braverman waded into Hoyle’s Islamophobic panic to argue that if the Speaker is ripping up the parliamentary rules to appease unspecified Palestine protesters, that means the "Islamist mob" has taken over Britain.

Lee Anderson (Tory)

Former Tory Deputy Chair Lee Anderson invoked the extreme-right propaganda trope of London-istan to claim that Islamists have taken over London, directly accusing the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan of giving over control of the capital city to his "Islamist mates".

Rachel Maclean (Tory)

Current Tory Deputy Chair Rachel Maclean made lurid claims that there had been "extremely aggressive & violent protests from Islamist extremists" outside parliament, despite there being absolutely no evidence to back up such claims, no video footage, no arrests, no charges.

She was simply smearing multicultural and entirely peaceful Palestine solidarity activists trying to lobby their MPs as if they were a violent mob of Islamist extremists.

Paul Scully (Tory)

Former Tory minister for London Paul Scully provoked a mix of outrage and ridicule when he invoked the extreme-right trope of "Muslim no-go zones" to claim that Tower Hamlets in London and Sparkhill in Birmingham were "no-go areas".

It’s not so long ago that we were sharing #FoxNewsFacts and laughing at the stupid yanks after a Fox News "expert" claimed that Birmingham was a "Muslim-only city … that non-Muslims simply don’t go in", but now things have shifted so far to the extreme-right in Britain that it’s apparently fine for politicians from the party of government to spread the same kind of fact-averse, fear-mongering, far-right propaganda rubbish.

The difference

The differentiating factor between Lee Anderson’s rant and the rest of this horrible Islamophobic panic-mongering is that the others all pinned their accusations on unspecified people making unspecified "threats", unspecified Palestine solidarity protesters, Muslim communities in general, and Muslim people in general, while Anderson engaged in absolutely clearcut defamation against a specific Muslim person, Sadiq Khan.

Lee Anderson was singled out for punishment because he was too thick to understand the rules of the toxic Islamophobic insinuation game the rest of them were playing.

When Nick Ferrari asked the Tory Illegal Immigration Minister Michael Tomlinson why Lee Anderson had been suspended, he outright refused to answer the question properly until Ferrari booted him off the air in frustration.

The reason he couldn’t answer the question properly is that he could hardly admit that it would have been absolutely fine for Anderson to spread Islamophobic conspiracy theories aimed at peace protesters in general, Muslims in general, Muslim communities in general … but that the silly sod needed to suffer because he’d made up a load of slanderous rubbish about a specific person.

They can’t simply spell out the rules of their diabolical Islamophobic panic-mongering game to the public that they’re trying to rile up, can they?

Note: I referenced Lee Anderson’s stupidity in resorting to clear defamation in a previous article about the surge of political hate-mongering against Muslims, but I thought it was worthy of a stand-alone post. Apologies to anyone who felt they were reading the same kind of thing again.