What I love about this comment is not only it’s textbook execution of “Whatabouttery” but the abject failure to understand or address the point.

And the best bit is Mr Van Bronckhorst even links to the HP Blogpost so it only takes a click to see how stupid his Whatabouttery is.

Not only does Bronckhorst apply the terms “Islamist” and “anti-imperialist” himself (they don’t appear in DavidT’s blogpost) – but he also fails to realise that there’s no “parsing” going on at all.

The social and political allegory in the BBC’s latest imagining of Robin Hood is so obvious as to make “parsing” redundant. Most people would have realised this simply by watching the show, but in case some didn’t the actors helpfully explained the wider “subtext” in every interview publicity could wrangle.

An example of which was included in the blogpost Mr Van Bronckhorst linked to.

So in one comment, Bronckhorst has:

Defended Iranian State anti-semitism by changing the subject. Misunderstood the nature of the subject. Failed basic reading comprehension.

And linked to the proof of his laziness and stupidity.

That’s some effort in one shot comment!

Hamid Tehrani of Harvard University has done an excellent piece of the blogging element of this cross media spectrum effort

http://www.hnn.us/articles/50535.html

Its important to note that this degree of government organised anti-Semitism is without precedent in modern Iranian history. While there has always been a strong undercurrent of Islamist anti-Semetism amongst Iranians till the onset of the Islamiic Revolution and the acendancy of the hardline Ahmadinejad faction there has never been such a concerted effort to spread anti-Semetic propaganda within Iran.

The fact that the Western liberal media ignores and whitewashes this effort – the BBC is especially at fault here is noteworthy.