Where have all the anti-racists gone? You couldn’t move for anti-racists in recent years. They thundered from their newspaper pulpits about the evils of ‘white privilege’. They were in schools, universities, workplaces, re-educating the throng in racial correct-speak. They loudly wrung their hands over Brexit, and us dim gammon who voted for it, warning that leaving the EU would unleash a 1930s-style hate fest.

They colonised football: every match came with a BLM knee-taking ritual and finger-wagging warnings about racial prejudice. They hit the streets, hollering ‘Stand up to racism!’ and ‘Silence is violence!’. They saw racism absolutely everywhere. In every nook of society, every innocent utterance. Remember when Sarah Vine was hauled over the coals for saying she had a ‘niggling’ feeling about Meghan Markle? Or when Lady Hussey was cancelled for asking someone: ‘Where are you from?’.

Yet now they’re nowhere to be seen. Pooft – the professional racism-hunters have vanished without a trace. Which is weird because Britain is experiencing a genuine racism crisis right now. No, I don’t mean an elderly lady who is not au fait with newspeak accidentally put her foot in it during a chat with someone from an ethnic minority. I mean that real, nasty, even violent racism has returned to our shores. Its targets? Jews.

Anti-Semitism has awoken from its slumber. Jewish institutions and Jewish people are being attacked. In London alone there have been 50 anti-Semitic incidents a day since the Hamas pogrom of 7 October. And yet from the self-styled anti-racists, those preening warriors against hate, we’ve heard virtually nothing. They haven’t marched. They haven’t written pained thinkpieces about the return of the 30s. They’ve been schtum. One wonders: is silence still violence?

Consider the fiery attack on the office of Mike Freer, the Conservative MP for Finchley and Golders Green. Mr Freer himself is not Jewish, but he represents a constituency with the highest proportion of Jewish voters in the whole country. He has been subjected to relentless abuse for daring to stand up for Israel and for Jews. One correspondent told him ‘you’re the kind of person who deserved to be set alight’. Then his office was.

We don’t know all the details. The police are treating it as arson but it isn’t clear who the arsonist was or what his motive might have been. It looks ominous, though. Freer has been targeted by bigots in the past. He was stalked by Ali Harbi Ali, the radical Islamist who went on to kill Sir David Amess MP. After that Freer and his staff took to wearing stab vests and carrying panic alarms.

This should send a shudder down the spine of the nation. An MP threatened with death, stalked by a murderer and forced to wrap himself in severe security measures, all because he is a Tory and he defends Israel and he represents many Jews. That the MP for the largest Jewish constituency in Britain has feared for his life is shameful. Again, though, silence from so-called anti-racists.

At certain points in the past ten weeks the anti-racists have piped up, but only to tell Jews to pipe down. Witness the ferocious mobbing of Stephen Fry after he gave the Alternative Christmas Message on the scourge of anti-Semitism. Leftists on X descended into an apoplexy of rage at the sight of a Jew talking about Jew hate. They branded Fry a genocide apologist, a narcissist, a c**t.

It was a staggering spectacle. The kind of people who have the BLM fist and the Pride flag in their social-media bios – maybe even their pronouns – unleashed hellfire on a sexagenarian Jew simply for raising the problem of anti-Jewish racism. ‘Be Kind’ is their motto, but not to Jews.

The silence of the self-righteous as Jew hatred has soared – a silence only punctured by their noisy denunciation of a Jew – has been incredibly revealing. It confirms, I think, that their ‘anti-racism’ was no such thing.

If Israel is evil, those who support it must be evil too

Their privilege-checking, speech-policing and whipping up of Twitterstorms over every social or linguistic faux pas had nothing to do with tackling racism and everything to do with fortifying their own cultural power. These were really acts of moral distinction, ways for the right-thinking sections of society to demonstrate their moral superiority over the rest of us.

So it’s not surprising they are spectacularly ill-equipped for an explosion of real and dangerous racism. Lecturing the gammon and noisily advertising their own decency is all they’re good for. Actually fighting racism, not so much.

In fact, it’s worse. They’re not only shamefully silent about rising anti-Semitism – they’re partially responsible for it. It seems clear to me that the left’s heated rhetoric over Israel, which they treat as a uniquely murderous, almost demonic state, is giving licence to dark passions. It is sanctioning hate. After all, if Israel is evil, those who support it must be evil too. People like Mike Freer, perhaps.

Everyone needs to get a grip. Calm and solidarity are urgently required if we are to ensure that our Jewish citizens feel safe and happy here.