Many people are asking in bewilderment where the revolting outburst of pro-Hamas propaganda and agitation from the halls of academe to the streets of Canada’s major cities and those of every Western nation came from. So we have to talk about the intellectual malaise gripping our elites. But also, finally, about immigration.

Raising the latter issue gets you pilloried as a racist, I know. But we can’t let ourselves be bullied right out of public debate. Especially not now, because a lot of the problem is large numbers of people who have come from countries where they sprinkle “Death to Jews” on their morning cereal. And you know it.

Those protestors calling for the destruction of Israel are not neo-Nazi farmers from Saskatchewan honking truck horns in defence of traditional Canadian values like free speech. Some are privileged left-wing zealots, including the lost souls holding up signs like “Queer Jew for Palestine” of whom I can only quote Philip K. Dick’s haunting maxim that “Thanatos can assume any form it wishes; it can kill eros, the life drive, and then simulate it. Once Thanatos does this to you, you are in big trouble…” But the vast majority chanting in public about driving the Jews into the sea are immigrants and the children of immigrants. It’s hidden in plain sight.

As I’ve written elsewhere, part of the extraordinary upwelling of support for terrorism and of hatred toward Jews clearly comes from the commanding heights. It comes from universities, public sector unions, politicians and others in the state sector where left-wing ideologies of DEI, critical race theory and deconstructionism rampage unchecked. But a lot of it comes straight in through our open doors, without any effort to conceal itself, because of our bizarre immigration policy and its even more bizarre intellectual underpinnings.

Part of it is a kind of soft multiculturalism that insists that all cultural habits are at bottom the same, so it doesn’t matter what exotic food you eat, magic hat you wear or colourful dance you do. This vision seems to me to make culture itself impossible, by declaring all symbols and habits charming but meaningless, thus giving us a Prime Minister who professes Roman Catholicism while disregarding its teachings on sexuality without any perceptible thought. But it is at least somewhat benign. Kiss, rub noses, whatever. We are the world. Peace, man.

Try selling a “Canadian values” test to Justin Trudeau, who as I’ve also written elsewhere had no idea that a great many Canadian Muslims held “conservative” views on sexuality. When he found out, his characteristically clueless and mean-spirited response was that they were being brainwashed by “misinformation and disinformation… particularly fuelled by the American right-wing”. And the same Justin Trudeau, who I am confident does not have a copy of Magna Carta on his wall, told an American publication Canada was the “first postnational state” and added “There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada.”

Be careful what you wish for. Because if there still were a mainstream, Hamas supporters would be outside it. Instead they’re marching boldly in our streets in large numbers. And a major reason is a much harder multiculturalism that says all cultural habits are good except those of the West. Thus giving us a Prime Minister who literally claims Canada is committing genocide now, with him in charge, without any perceptible thought of stepping down, let alone surrendering himself for trial. And academia is riddled with people who call Canada a racist, patriarchal “settler” state that should be abolished on the spot, so of course they want to bring in people from other places with other habits, including religious ones, because they are better than ours.

Remember right after 9/11 Sunera Thobani said women would never be free until Western influence was eradicated worldwide. In one sense it is inane, since no sane person thinks women are treated better in non-Western societies. Even if Margaret Atwood saw chadors in Afghanistan and hallucinated George Bush’s America forcing women into sack-wearing sexual slavery, historically the United States is the birthplace and home of feminism, from the Seneca Falls Convention onward. But in another sense such claims are malevolent, because the whole point is to make you grovel before ideas you know are false.

Here one risks getting into the fever swamps of “replacement theory”. But there’s no conspiracy. It’s just that radical leftism really is radical, and if you ignore it or pretend it’s cute and cuddly, you are astounded when people carry pictures of Chairman Mao, burn churches or shout “Palestine shall be free from the river to the sea” and wave images of gliders. Or when people like Laith Marouf aren’t ostracized by our politicians, they’re subsidized by them.

At some point neither coincidence nor error can explain it. But now that you’ve been astounded, and horrified, do we change course?

For decades the political establishment here and abroad, from left to pseudo-right, has been as united in their support for massive immigration as on any topic you can think of. Even abortion. And as vicious in their rhetorical pillorying of dissent as racist as they are spurious in their justifications, like the one about needing mass immigration to build houses for all the immigrants we let in to build houses for immigrants.

It’s time to push back, because this raw, unashamed anti-Semitism didn’t come from outer space. But it came from somewhere. And we all know where. Those crowds chanting “Gas the Jews” at the Sydney Opera house (no, really) were not immigrants from Norway, or grandchildren of immigrants from Britain. They or their parents came from places where fundamentalist Islam is dominant. And you know it and I know it.

What’s more, they know we know. Now they’re watching to see whether we care enough to do anything.

If I need to say I’m not talking about race, I’ll say it, and the usual suspects will deny it. But I’m not. I’m talking about culture, and culture isn’t just about the spices, or primarily about them. It’s about habits of thought and behaviour. It’s about world view. And yes, it’s about religion.

Islam is not a race. And of course many Muslims are not in the “itbakh al-yahud” crowd, and some have even dared speak up. But far too many are. In much of the Middle East broadly defined the blood libel is not even controversial. And if you bring in many thousands of people a year who believe it, they will flaunt it and despise you.

What becomes of our politics if we get a solid, make-or-break-governments bloc of left-wing big-city MPs who not only don’t denounce Hamas, they support it? Because we can, by continuing to bring in vast numbers every year from places where Hamas is popular and Judaism is illegal, along with homosexuality, and having them congregate in major urban areas. But why would we want to?

Thanatos, referred to above, is the death wish. And one could claim that the entire progressive ideology of the modern West is a death wish. But if so, it is not one most of us share. Is it really despicable to ask that potential immigrants say they do not believe Jews routinely commit ritual murders of non-Jewish children? If so, despise me and tell the world what you are.

That we would throw open our doors and our arms to people from anywhere in the world fleeing poverty or oppression and wanting to live the Western way is admirable. That our leaders would throw open our doors and their arms to people who share their hatred of the Western way is appalling. And that we would let them is stupid.

People are calling the Hamas incursion, and the widespread cheering for beheading Jewish babies, raping Jewish women and other anti-Semitic atrocities an inflection point. And I think it is. But it could bend either way.

If we want to keep Canada a land of decency and freedom, a refuge from persecution for those of all races and origins, if we do not wish to become judenrein in short order, we cannot allow ourselves to be bullied into silence on immigration policy any longer.