In short, if the British working class is illiberal, it is only as illiberal as John Locke and Thomas Paine. There are worse things in the world. There is nothing illiberal whatsoever in saying that if someone wants to see apostates killed, or blasphemers jailed, or immigrants beaten up, they should pack their bags and get out. After all, in the nineteenth century, Nietzsche remarked that it would be moral and useful to expel all anti-Semitic ranters from Germany, and one rather wishes people had listened.

In the classical sense there are two kinds of tolerance. Tolerance-from-acceptance is the tolerance due to anyone who accepts the responsibilities that come with rights, and it is due to anyone who makes that acceptance, regardless of colour or creed. Tolerance-from-sufferance applies to those that reject that basic compact, explicitly repudiate liberalism, but are too much trouble to remove. 

This isn't to say that in Germany there aren't illiberal and stupid laws on the books. Consider the laws against holocaust denial. Holocaust deniers may be vicious fools with ridiculous views, but their positions can be quite easily shredded in open debate. David Irving never recovered from the intellectual thrashing he received in the Deborah Lipstadt trial. The dividing line here is the willingness to use and support violence.

If the British state wants to get serious about the spread of totalitarianism amongst its Islamic population, it must take a few lessons from Germany. Cancelling the citizenship of anyone who goes abroad to join a jihad group, expelling hate preachers, seizing the property and funds of any group involved in supporting jihad are all perfectly feasible. Much more important, though, it should support those speaking out. The German government provides protection and support for those speaking against the neo-Nazis; I don't know of any comparable program by the British government to support Islamist apostates and dissidents. Similarly, why are there no funds set aside to help those fleeing the claws of ISIS? 

There's also a cultural matter.  No newspaper would dream of refusing to print a cartoon that annoyed a neo-Nazi gang. Yet during the Prophet Muhammad ‘cartoon crisis', that was the position of most media outlets, cringing behind the excuse of ‘respect'.

It's depressing how, despite these congruent points, many anti-fascists seem determined not to get it. Øyvind Strømmen has written hard and well about European fascism. His only comment on jihadism has been a smirking article saying that none of his Muslim friends had tried to kill him yet.  At the International Conference for Radicalization Research, Alexander Melagrou Hitchens and Hans Brun tried none to subtly to place the counter-jihadists Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer with the likes of the Golden Dawn, and implied that any concern about Islam or jihad was the product of washed up neo-Nazis, looking for a new schtick.  You are perfectly free to believe that, I suppose (to be fair, when I spoke with Roger Griffin, he assured me that a significant number of anti-fascist academics regarded the jihad as the filthy pest it is).  As regards Spencer and Geller, I've criticised them before, but to try to tar them with the fascist brush is not just pathetic but dangerous.

You cannot claim the mantle of anti-fascism while ignoring the source of violent Jew-hatred infesting Europe. You can't say that there's nothing to worry about in Islam when British born lads are travelling all the way to Syria to help with the slave trade. You can't wave aside concerns about Islamisation when everyone thinks twice about criticising Islam out of fear of the consequences. And you can't dismiss the idea that Islam is being shielded from criticism when you are doing exactly that.

Conversely, no 'counter-jihadist' can even afford to flirt with anything that even resembles fascism or racism. I'm thinking here of Pamela Geller's creepy eulogy for the white supremacist Eugene Terre'Blanche amongst other things. Quite apart from the moral dimension, there is the matter of practicality. The most important reason why people are reluctant to criticise Islam is fear of violence.   But the second reason is a fear of lending credence to anything that could support prejudice or bigotry. That is a completely legitimate and honourable concern.