The left is to blame for the creation of Donald Trump

A few weeks ago I recorded a podcast with the American author and neuroscientist Sam Harris. He is one of the few people on the political left in Europe or America who recognises the problem of Islamic extremism and doesn’t mind talking about it. For this he gets – I think it is safe to say – more trouble than the average liberal left-wing west coast American might wish to expect. But his role on the left, along with Bill Maher, Dave Rubin and a very few others, is incredibly important not least because it should remind people that the great problem of our time does not have to be a partisan issue.

But the political left has a problem at the moment. In Britain it is – as I said here recently – unsalvageable, led by people who have spent their life tolerating and stoking anti-Semitic racism and whose track record shows them not only excusing our enemies but urging them to win. In America the left has not gone this rancid, but the wider political problem is in some ways even starker because in response to the political left failing to identify the problem, the political right has started going off.

The American left has a huge problem in the form of a President who refuses to name Islamist terrorism or identify where it comes from. His likely successor, Hillary Clinton, has the same issue. Of course the word-play this leads to may be perfectly well-meaning, and the desire to ensure that you’re not talking about ‘all Muslims’ when you use the term ‘Islamist’ for instance is a legitimate concern. But when you have 14 people being gunned down in America again apparently in the name of a specific extremist ideology, not identifying where it comes from becomes part of the problem, driving people on all sides mad with rage and making them wonder what else is being kept from them.