The challenge to Jews from the US right has reached our shores

My aim was to help separate Fuentes from the still larger part of the right that doesn’t want to be on “team Hitler”, and also to make more people aware of the dangerous rise of his sort of thinking. And I think a small advance was indeed made on both these fronts. It was worth it. Even if the flood of antisemitic messages that came my way – literally thousands of hateful taunts – was unpleasant to say the least.

As these taunts, memes, YouTube videos and songs begun to taper off, I noticed a subtle change. The English had begun to join in to what had been an American sport. And an argument about Jews and about this country started to take the place of the cartoons and insults. It was only a mild improvement.

In the United States people like Fuentes and the broadcaster Tucker Carlson have been arguing that the foreign policy of America is really being set by Israel. The country should put America First but instead it puts Israel First.

In this country this ludicrous argument hasn’t got any resonance. So instead of arguing that Jews make Britain’s foreign policy, it is instead suggested that Jews make Britain’s immigration policy. And do so hypocritically.

Jews believe, these people contend, that there should be a nation for the Jewish people, but not that there should be a nation for the British people. We are happy to see the English replaced by all sorts of foreigners (Muslims are their main target) while maintaining Israel as a bolthole, and one reserved for Jews.

And we defend any questioning of this so-called “double standard” by claiming to be victims. Fox and Robinson accuse me, for instance, of emotional and commercial (because I have written a book) exploitation of the Holocaust. And that liberal Jews are as bad as the worst kind of Islamist because we constantly play the victim.

The podcasters add an attack on “Talmudic Jews”, using a phrase US conspiracy theorists are particularly keen on. Robinson explains that this makes Jews antagonistic to Christians.

The arguments aren’t worth much. Israel was established as a refuge for a displaced and persecuted group. And it isn’t exclusively Jewish, having a bigger ethnic minority population than the UK.

As for the suggestion that we Jews cast ourselves as victims, has there ever been someone keener to be seen as a victim than Laurence Fox? He has even found being a white, male, wealthy and successful actor hard to endure.

But the arguments are hardly the point. Over the last few years Jews have fought a challenge from the left and from Islamists and fellow travellers. Criticism of Israel has become obsessive and often (not always, but certainly often) been indistinguishable from antisemitism.

Combatting this has been our focus.

Now we have to realise that the front has broadened. There is a new challenge from the right. It has started in the United States.

Here it has only travelled to fringe figures like Laurence Fox. But we have to work hard to ensure it stays on the fringe.

And the first part of that is being alert to the danger. Even if that means making the sacrifice of listening to Fox and Robinson for a whole hour. You are welcome.

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Daniel Finkelstein is associate editor of The Times.