An "anti-racist" racist

This Guardian "Commentary is Free" column by Seumas Milne shows how racist some leftists are - even when they pretend to be against racism:

What do the US, Canada, ­Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Italy and Israel have in common? They are all either European or European-settler states. And they all decided to boycott this week's UN ­conference against racism in Geneva – even before Monday's incendiary speech by the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad which triggered a further white-flight walkout by representatives of another 23 European states.

In international forums, it's almost unprecedented to have such an ­undiluted racial divide of whites-versus-the-rest. And for that to happen in a global meeting called to combat racial hatred doesn't exactly augur well for future international understanding at a time when the worst economic crisis since the war is ramping up racism and xenophobia across the world.

Milne predictably goes on to describe and justify how much of the (non-white) world views Israel as racist.

What is more interesting is how he himself views things. He looks at US, Canada, ­Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Italy and Israel as being primarily "white" nations. This is the type of statement one would expect from David Duke. He implies that it is the "white" nations who are guilty of ignoring an anti-racism conference, and not the "rest." The implication, of course, is that the "white" nations are racists - and that the Arab and African nations who agree with Ahmadinejad are the ones who are more concerned with the existence of racism!

This amazingly twisted viewpoint is a perfect example of how political correctness turns the truth on its head and ends up being racist itself. Milne somehow ignores that the "racist" US elected a black president (and his hated white predecessor chose two black Secretaries of State.) He somehow doesn't notice that every state that boycotted Durban is a democracy and is committed to equal rights for its citizens. He also ignores the small fact that it is entirely possible that a majority of Israelis today have at least one grandparent who came from a non-European country.

Boycotting Durban 2 doesn't imply that "European or European-settler states" are racist. Describing those nations as "white," however, comes close.