… and no, we’re not talking about Nick Griffin. Mel has found an interview with French intellectual Alain Finkielkraut in the Israeli paper Ha’aretz that she claims supports her own view that it was Islam, not poverty, discrimination and alienation, that was behind the unrest in France.

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 21 November 2005

In reality, Finkielkraut’s take on the riots, bad though it is, still falls some way short of Phillips’s unhinged Islamophobia: “I have not spoken about an ‘intifada’ of the suburbs, and I don’t think this lexicon ought to be used.”

Finkielkraut’s main concern is to “wage war on the ‘war on racism'”. You can understand why he might not be happy about anti-racist campaigns. On the subject of football, he offers the following insight:

“People say the French national team is admired by all because it is black-blanc-beur [black-white-Arab]. Actually, the national team today is black-black-black, which arouses ridicule throughout Europe.”