Al-Quds Day proves it – multiculturalism has been the death of Britain

Today in London, a huge mob gathered to sing the praises of a tyrant. They fawned over a murderous theocrat. They swooned like the most sycophantic of acolytes over a man who hated Jews, denied the Holocaust and green-lit the massacre of women. Anyone still denying that multiculturalism is Britain’s death warrant should have been made to mingle with these brash lovers of foreign tyranny.

It was the Al-Quds gathering. That’s the annual pro-theocracy shindig, where fanboys of the Iranian regime gather to laud the ayatollah and libel the Jewish State in cities across the world. This year, because of the war in Iran, the London march was banned by the UK home secretary. But a static get-together took place, on the south bank of the Thames. I went down there to see it for myself, and it was one of the most menacing assemblies I’ve ever witnessed.

Many were in mourning for the butcher of Tehran: Ayatollah Khamenei, who was taken out by an Israeli airstrike on 28 February. His likeness was everywhere. Children waved placards adorned with his face. A vast banner with his beardy image invited us to join him on ‘the right side of history’. This is a man whose vicious militias murdered thousands of innocents just two months ago and yet he was being gushed over as if he were Nelson Mandela.

‘Khamenei is our leader’, a sea of placards said. Not anymore he isn’t. He’s dead. Jot that down. He’s been sent packing for his 72 virgins by those Jews you hate. Are we allowed to talk about how serious this is, not to mention how sickening – this dystopic vision of people in the UK openly swearing allegiance to an enemy of the West whose proxies murder Jews and whose guards butcher civilians? You can call me ‘Islamophobic’ till the cows come home – to my mind, this is straight-up treasonous behaviour.

There was the usual Zio-baiting. Placards cried: ‘Stop the genocide! Hands off Iran!’ It’s not genocide, it’s war, you pussies. And it’s a war your idol started when the army of anti-Semites he funded and armed invaded Israel to rape and murder Jews. What a brilliant insight into the fathomless self-pity that lurks within strongman Islamism, when they’ll wail ‘Genocide!’ like big babies just because the Jews had the temerity to respond to the fascistic provocations of their sainted ayatollah. Total soy boy behaviour.

‘Israel is a terror state!’, they chanted, which is rich from fools who fall at the feet of a medieval regime that shoots women in the head for wanting freedom. I saw a kid with a placard saying ‘Al-Quds will be liberated’. Al-Quds is Arabic for Jerusalem, of course. Al-Quds Day was instituted by the Islamic Republic itself, to engender global support for its deranged imperious goal of conquering Jerusalem. I felt a pang of sadness at the sight of what I presume is a British-born kid, innocently giving voice to the anti-Semitic atrocity dream of stealing Jerusalem from the Jews.

Anti-Semitism spread through the crowd like electricity. A truck beamed a blood-red image of Jeffrey Epstein, Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump staring down the mullahs. ‘World War Epstein’, it said. This is Jew hatred masquerading as cultural critique, the implication being that a network of Jewy paedos is trying to destroy the holy Islamic Republic.

It was the mob’s dog-whistlin’ Epstein euphemisms that led to me getting into trouble. I saw an elderly lady, a leftist I think, with a placard that said: ‘Operation Epstein Fury. The Epstein class will burn the whole world down to save themselves.’ By this point, I was at the end of my tether. ‘Nice anti-Semitic placard’, I said. Then all hell broke loose.

The lady snitched on me to the organisers. Before I knew it, I was surrounded by a mob of fuming young men. Someone complaining about anti-Semitism? Fucking get him! They squared up to me, shoved me, asked me, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’. ‘I’m observing and taking pictures’, I said. They put their hands up to block my view, they pressed up against me with menacing intention, they glared. So I said what had to be said: ‘This isn’t the Islamic Republic – you can’t silence journalists.’

That was game over for me. The fury was palpable. The expletives flew – quite unbecoming of religious men, I thought. The police had to escort me away for my own safety. The mob followed. The cops waited until I had got on a Lime bike before returning to the demo. I gave a little wave to my theocratic harassers and cycled off, wondering to myself: what has become of my city?

I was left in no doubt whatsoever of the double standards that fuel ruling-class identitarianism. Imagine if white Brits had gathered to laud a foreign neo-Nazi who revels in the murder of Jews. Or if they had swarmed the streets to swear allegiance to some far-right regime overseas. The Guardian would cancel all leave for its hacks. Keir Starmer would be readying a televised homily. The cops would have cracked heads on those streets today. But when it comes to a non-white minority, it’s fine apparently. This is the racism of low expectations, in all its bigoted, demented glory.

Fundamentally, though, it was the ideology of multiculturalism that was indicted on the streets of London today. There is a tendency to see multiculturalism as merely divisive. If only. The true social cancer in this self-hating creed is that it actively incites hostility towards the nation itself. It simultaneously inflames a culture of grievance within minority groups while heaping sarcastic derision on Britain and its history, giving rise to an extraordinary amount of anti-British, anti-Western, anti-social animus. I glimpsed that today. A bristling hostility towards me not only for my crime of refusing to hate Jews, but also for what I was no doubt seen to represent: whiteness, Britishness, them. The Iran War has dragged into the spotlight the deep fissures on the Western homefront – it would be suicidal to ignore them.

Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. His new book, Vibe Shift: The Revolt Against Wokeness, Greenism and Technocracy, is out now. Find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy.