Yale and Oxford incidents prove that universities are the real centres of anti-West radicalisation

"Cancelling" the Queen at Oxford and a racially incendiary lecture at Yale reveal the source of a lethal threat to Western freedom

You will have heard by now that students at Magdalen College, Oxford University voted to remove a portrait of HM Queen Elizabeth II because of its perceived connotations with colonialism. The attack on the head of state of the nation (and 15 nations besides that) is entirely in keeping with the drive of a radicalised British Left to dismantle every aspect of British and Western Civilisation from within.

But don’t think for a second this has just happened in wake of last year’s (and this year’s) protests. The British Left isn’t just copying ideological fads from other countries, it has arguably been for decades one of the central players in fostering anti-Western extremism globally, through its centrality to the the transnational network of politicians, academia and NGOs which promote postcolonialism, identity politics and Third Worldism.

A hatred of British and Western values and culture goes hand in hand with support for Marxist and Islamist movements globally facilitated by these networks. The radicals have always been in the Labour Party and have now taken over. Their professed “anti-racism” has proven to be a fraud since they have helped facilitate the biggest outburst of anti-Semitism in the West since World War II. This has been furthered with their sinister alliance with brands of Political Islam far more radical than is the mainstream in the Middle East.

Meanwhile on the other side of the Atlantic, Yale University has come under fire because of an racially incendiary lecture by a psychiatrist, Dr Aruna Khilanani, in which she fantasised about “shooting white people”. To be sure, this has been condemned by a Yale professor. But the fact that it could take place demonstrates the normalisation of violent rhetoric with far-ranging consequences.

The promotion of such virulently anti-Western ideologies in academia, highlighted by writer Merv Bendle in his 2015 letter to The Australian, is only likely to encourage radicalisation through nurturing hostility towards Western nations, culture and values. It risks the creation of division, alienation and resentment that could result in a generation of people ripe for recruitment into extremist groups.

The fact that Shamima Begum was British born and bred, and radicalised in Britain, while John Walker Lindh grew up in affluent and liberal Marin County, California, serves to underline the dangers of this ideological trajectory marching unchecked in all areas of Western life.