This rape gang proves that my politics are correct

Seven members of one of Scotland’s biggest child sex abuse rings have received lifelong sentences. They are lucky not to have received death sentences. Their abuse of three children under the age of thirteen was so appalling that I hesitate to reproduce the details. They leave one feeling disgusted in one’s own skin.

It is unfortunate that this horrendous crime has been absorbed into “the discourse”. Still, now it is there, we have to deal with it. Leftist commentators have rushed to draw attention to the crime — not because of the scale of its evil, though, as far as I can tell, but because of its rhetorical value. 

Right-wing commentators spent a lot of time in the first weeks of 2025 talking about Pakistani grooming gangs. Now, leftist commentators are falling over themselves to cry, Look! Look! A white grooming gang!

“Yo @LeeAndersonMP_,” writes dimwitted provocateur Bushra Shaikh, “What were you saying about ‘import the third world, get the third world’ again? This your lot — homegrown paedos.” She could have at least spent a couple of words condemning the criminals or sympathising with the victims before starting an argument with Mr Anderson. No, she had to pick the news up and throw it without as much as a crocodile tear.

This is unsurprising from a shameless opportunist like Shaikh, who has blamed the Southport killings on Israel and declared “Islam is going to save Great Britain”. Somehow, this never stopped viewer-starved producers from inviting her to appear on TV.

“More sex offenders sent to jail today,” posts the popular disinformation merchant “BladeoftheSun”, “But the Far Right will ignore them because they aren’t muslim.” Presuming that Mr Sun thinks “Far Right” means “somewhat more right-wing than David Cameron”, I’ll note that the gang was reported on by GB News and condemned by everyone from myself to the factually challenged citizen journalist Dave Atherton.

“The vile, sadistic crimes of this rape gang wont make national headlines, or trend for days,” says the immigration researcher Zoe Gardner (above, of course, a screenshot of a BBC headline), “All of us are less safe, because there is a concerted campaign for us to focus only on perpetrators with brown skin.” The actual means by which Britons have been made “less safe” go unexplained. 

Daniel Finkelstein justifiably posted a screenshot of various national headlines addressing the atrocities, to which Gardner responded:

Yes, very clever, this is definitely a story that is getting and will get an equal amount of coverage and reaction from politicians & the public as ones about Muslim gangs. Definitely. 

Why it should get “an equal amount of coverage and reaction” when the gangs that were the subject of debate this year victimised thousands of girls, and openly engaged in racial hatred, and were verifiably ignored and enabled by the authorities is mysterious. (To be clear, I am not asserting that the Scottish rapists were dealt with appropriately by the state. I don’t know, and the question deserves to be asked. But Ms Gardner is not asking the question — she is using the case as a rhetorical tool.) It is not diminishing the titanic evil of the Scottish case, or the rage that should be felt towards it, to say that it is simply not equivalent in terms of scale or societal implications.

As it happens, I agree that it is important to emphasise that white people, like all people, can commit such horrific crimes. We should never be complacent enough to think that evil is exclusively located anywhere — whether that is on the basis of class, or sex, or nationality. Weeks ago, I made that point here and here with reference to this specific case — before, it seems, our left-wing friends had heard about it.

So, if anybody really does believe that child sex abuse rings will always be composed of men with migrant heritage, well, pull your head out of your ass. (Here is another one, if you are sceptical. And here is another one.) But I am dubious about how many people actually think this. It’s difficult not to conclude that anti-right influencers are less concerned with what the right actually thinks than with promoting a narrative about what they claim the right thinks. They are less concerned about the actual case than its value as a mud-slinging device aimed at their political opponents. There is absolutely no problem with talking about the political implications of tragic and appalling events. It can be natural and right. The problem is when those political implications don’t exist.

The irony is that they want to cast us as opportunists. Ah well. May the victims of the Scottish rapists and the victims of the Pakistani rapists find comfort — and may all child abusers burn in Hell.