Ranting next to Bob Vylan about ‘aggressive’ Israeli Jews, Louis Theroux finally comes out of the closet

Is the man intentionally trolling the Jewish community? To me, it seems the only conceivable explanation.

At one point, the quizzical, formerly benign presenter says that “Jewish identity… as expressed in Israel” has become an “aggressive, militarised form of ethno-nationalism,” which is “rolled out” as a “prototype” to other “white identitarians” around the world, including Donald Trump and Viktor Orban.

“It has become, sort of, this certain sense of post-Holocaust Jewish exceptionalism, or Zionist exceptionalism,” he muses. “Does that make sense?”

To the likes of Bob Vylan, yes indeed, it would make sense very well indeed. It makes a different kind of sense to the Jewish viewer, however, as well as any other member of the audience who has not succumbed to jihadi brainwashing. The sense it makes to us is… well, let’s just say it fills us with dread.

This, however, was only the tip of the iceberg. The cosy chat between Theroux and Vylan – which, the presenter was anxious to inform viewers at the start, took place “before the Manchester synagogue attacks… and before the ceasefire in Gaza” – contained numerous other gratuitous provocations of Israelis, Jews and all decent people.

For one thing, when questioning the so-called musician about his “death to the IDF” chant, Theroux criticised it on the grounds that it gave pro-Israel types “a stick to beat anyone who disagreed with Israeli policy”.

“You could argue that it gave them an opportunity to distract millions of people, hundreds of thousands of people,” from the supposed atrocities in Gaza, Theroux argued. “That becomes an opportunity to misdirect.”

That’s his problem with it? Sure, he was careful to interrogate it from other less controversial angles, too. But even then it had a soft-soap feeling, as if Theroux was coaxing cheeky details out of a friend.

“You reached out to me on Insta, didn’t you?” the presenter said at one point. “Saying like, if you want to do a chat, let’s hook it up. And we did.” How lovely!

Theroux’s defenders will surely point to the panoply of misfits, eccentrics and reprobates he has interviewed in the past and accuse the Jews of being too sensitive.

I’m sure they will also accuse us of weaponising antisemitism to shut down free speech.

But those who make that argument are hardly likely to be the ones concerned for the safety and wellbeing of Britain’s oldest minority, which is still grieving the murder of two worshippers in Manchester, still reeling from the banning of Israeli fans from a football match in Birmingham, and enduring an unprecedented level of daily threat.

Anyway, Theroux made it pretty clear what he thinks. Normally, like any good journalist, he hides his views in oblique questions, deft angles and ironical asides. On this occasion, however, he suggested that Jews from Israel – the sole democracy in the Middle East, where the majority are not white and Pride marches are held annually – was the “prototype” for “white identitarians”.

It rather gave the game away.

Never Again? How the West Betrayed the Jews and Itself, by Jake Wallis Simons, is out now