There’s an awful lot which can be said about Islamist poster girl and ‘Talibanette’ Yvonne Ridley and none of it is pleasant. Some suggest that she suffers from Stockholm syndrome but personally I would not afford her that excuse. In my view she is a common or garden attention-seeking narcissistic opportunist who has achieved a form of dubious celebrity status she was incapable of finding elsewhere by remodelling herself as an evangelical promoter of mass paranoia among Muslims. As much as she cuts a toe-curlingly risible figure, she is also a dangerous one, because like so many of her mentors, paymasters and colleagues, she is obviously lacking in even the most rudimentary moral boundaries.

CiF Watch recently cross-posted an article from Richard Millet’s blog concerning the Al Quds day demonstration in London.  Lo and behold, Ridley subsequently appeared in the comments to whitewash that Khomeni-inspired carnival of hatred. This patron of ‘Cageprisoners’, European President of the Muslim Women’s Union, member of ‘Respect’ and activist for ‘Free Gaza’ (a conglomerate including the ISM: obviously not averse to a little ‘troofing’ of its own and ‘Viva Palestina’ did not hang around for long and left numerous questions unanswered, one of which is why she agrees to work for the Holocaust-denying propaganda organ of the Iranian dictatorship known as Press TV.

Anyone who has followed the ‘career’ of the woman about whom George Galloway reportedly said “Yvonne, you make me look like a moderate” cannot be remotely surprised that she would end up in bed with one of the world’s most vicious and repressive regimes. Her ability to contextualize suicide bombings and video-taped beheadings, pride in the fact that her political party ‘Respect’ (the epitome of the ‘Red-Green alliance’) is “Zionist-free”, sympathy for just about every Islamist extremist in the book, whitewashing of the  post-election crack-down in Iran and dabbling  in 7/7 ‘troofology’ are ample evidence of a disturbing disconnection from reality mixed with a nasty underlying racism.

Her public flouting of the law by having herself filmed boasting that she gave money to a terrorist organization indicates that like her Respect colleague and fellow Press TV presenter George Galloway, she obviously considers herself to be above the legal constraints which bind ordinary mortals. Her public glorification of terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hizbollah would indicate the same. This is a woman who either lacks the self-regulatory little voice within – which keeps most people inside the boundaries ethically defensible behavior – or gets a kick out of transgressing such basic moral norms.

Of course what is or is not morally defensible differs vastly between societies, and in the circles  in which Ridley has become a self-styled celebrity,  views such as hers are far from being a grounds for being  socially ostracized because she has aligned herself with the most dangerous and extremist groups and regimes on the planet.  There’s a chicken and egg question here (albeit a pretty academic one in my view); did Ridley’s existing psychological make-up draw her to like-minded extremists, or does hanging around with extremists in the hope of becoming ‘somebody’ have an obviously destructive effect upon her sense of moral boundaries? Either way, the result is one which is clear for all to see. ‘Sister’ Ridley co-operates with, promotes, excuses and cheerleads for at least two Jew-hating, Holocaust-denying, murdering, aspirational genocidal theocratic dictatorships. In my book that makes her not only an anti-Semite, but a generally disgusting person all round.

She can deny being a Holocaust-denier till the proverbial cows come home, but the fact is that the Tehran mouthpiece Press TV which pays her wage does promote Holocaust denial, in perfect harmony  with the policies of the anti-Semitic regime by which it is funded. It has published (on its website) the theories of Nicholas Kollerstrom and promoted the despicable ‘Lady’ Renouf among others. Press TV’s anti-Israel rhetoric is equally infamous and includes the promotion of discredited historians such as Shlomo Sand.

Ridley’s faint-hearted protestations on Richard Millet’s blog do not cut the mustard. Not only is she in the pay of an anti-Semitic Holocaust denying regime, but, on her own website, she also engages  in a form of Holocaust denial known as Holocaust inversion -defined anti-Semitic under the EUMC guidelines.

And that, ‘Sister’ Ridley, is the trouble with hanging around with anti-Semites who are incapable of distinguishing between fact and fantasy: it’s a bit like spending time in a cow shed in that, at some point, one becomes incapable of discerning that there is a stench at all, let alone that one smells of it oneself.  In other words, Ms. Ridley, there are certain things that the best friends you choose to keep won’t tell you.

The only question which remains is how long the British people will have to put up with Ridley’s justifications of terrorism, terrorist funding, anti-Semitism and racist incitement before their government wakes up and begins enforcing the laws it enacted to protect the country from such clear threats to its security.