WHILST hating people on the basis of their racial ethnicity is clearly very unhealthy, for recipients and perpetrators alike, the way in which perceptions of ‘racism’ are dealt with in the liberal-left media is always a great source of entertainment and this formulaic pantomime has now arrived on the sleepy shores of Portugal.

Ironically, laughable accusations that this country is ‘racist’ were originally generated by the election of three African women – Romualda Fernandes, Beatriz Gomes Dias and Joacine Katar Moreira – to the Portuguese parliament for the very first time. You couldn’t make it up: three black faces newly-ensconced in what had always been a most drab and colourless chamber of liars and hypocrites and suddenly everyone was being accused of ‘racism’.

Asked whether he believed Portugal is ‘racist,’ leading newspaper editor José Manuel Fernandes said exactly what you would expect any simpering White liberal to say: “I think we are all racist. That is a battle that never ends.” On the other hand, this automated response was tempered somewhat by his accompanying disclaimer that “When it comes to institutional racism, I don’t think it exists in Portugal.” That part, at least, is correct.

Joacine Katar Moreira of the marginal Livre party, on the other hand, was keen to ensure that nobody – not even self-hating liberals like José Manuel Fernandes – was able to evade the hysterical glare of what soon became a modern witch-hunt: “This is very specific to Portuguese racism: the absolute denial that there is racism in Portugal.”

Whilst this reminds me of the scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, when the besieged individual who has been mistaken for the Son of God is told – much to his horror – that “only the true Messiah denies his divinity,” it seems that one simply cannot win and that, like Fernandes, we should now accept that “we are all racist” whether there happens to be any truth in it or not.