To those still attacking Martin Amis.

1. Amis has been a bit of a “daft cock” (to steal a phrase from a fellow PopinJay). This does not necessarily make him a racist.

2. Attacking Amis now is nothing more than a vanity project. “How should the liberal-left approach such issues?” asks one particularly vapid commentator who presumes to know the answer. If you disagree, you may be a racist.

3. Attacking Amis is attacking Amis. It does not undermine strong more considered left wing critiques of Islamism, which are neither racist, indicative of wider racist sentiments in the left, or Western imperialist constructs. When people say they are calling Amis a racist, they hope that the slur of racist will smear others they disagree with a little bit wider than Amis.