Some people say there should be more liberal Muslim voices denouncing the crimes and inhumanities perpetrated in the name of their religion. What is more surprising is that there are any at all — because Islamic totalitarians enjoy an acceptance and toleration that the neo-Nazis do not. When Michael Schaeffer, of the German NPD, was caught on camera giving a Hitler salute at a Blood & Honour concert, it was the end of his public life. When Mehdi Hasan was caught on camera bellowing about kafirs being of congenitally low intelligence, he continued his career unscathed. It's not even necessary to think of the more polished deceivers — Ken Livingstone famously embraced Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who supports suicide-murder and death for apostasy (renouncing your religion), among other things.

This is partly explained by the desperate hope of liberal minded people to treat everyone with the same methods of discussion and dialogue. It's understandable, and even admirable, but it's futile. It creates an atmosphere where you don't need to be a totalitarian to play on the threat of violence, you can just be an unscrupulous opportunist, such as Baroness Warsi. On resigning from the cabinet, Warsi said that if Britain's policy towards Israel and Palestine did not change, it would "lead to further radicalisation of Muslim youth".

There's no point in being evasive: that's a threat. It is saying "while I wouldn't advocate the bombing of public transports, there's nothing I can do if young Muslims do so because of Gaza, and don't say I didn't warn you..." It's a blatant challenge to the liberal and democratic state.

The German experience of dealing with the problem of the neo-Nazi underworld paves the way for how liberal societies can deal with such types. The German government has broad powers when it comes to clamping down on them, including banning the organisations, as well as their symbols and regalia, and seizing the property of these illegal organisations.

Many intellectuals consider such measures unacceptable. In Welcome to Everytown, Julian Baggini describes his discussions with working class Brits about why not to deport hate-preachers from Britain — because they might face torture abroad.  The response was "We don't care about their rights, what about ours?" Baggini says this attitude is illiberal.

But it is only illiberal if one ignores the history of liberalism, particularly in its Anglo-American form. In The Rights of Man Thomas Paine argued that a bill of rights was also a prescription of duties. If I claim the protection of a set of rights, I am obliged to defend those rights for the rest of that nation. Not to passively accept, mind you, but actively defend. Conversely, someone who does not accept that duty will enjoy no protection. That's the source of the term ‘outlaw'. It did not mean someone who had transgressed the law; it meant someone who was now beyond its protection, whose crimes meant that no violence done to them would ever be prosecuted by the state.

John Locke certainly understood this point. In his 1689 'A Letter Concerning Toleration' he argued for tolerance of the different Protestant sects, but not for the Catholic Church. At the time it seemed the Catholic Church would likely exploit any acceptance and reassert itself in England, then eradicate the protestant sects, destroying any hope of open-mindedness. In short, intolerance of the intolerant was necessary for tolerance to exist at all.

A similar principle underlies the German laws on counter-fascism. It's all very well to say that the state should only intervene against the explicit — like a skinhead beating up a kebab vendor — but in practice that's completely unworkable. Any witnesses would know that the skinhead's comrades could easily take revenge. So even with these broad powers, once a neo-Nazi gang has burrowed into a community, creating a volksbefreitezone, it can be a devil of a job to dig them out again.