In the place where you can trust it to provide fake news, The Herald, another of Neil Mackay’s ‘Horrible Hyperbole‘ series, yesterday.

I take the laughable graphic was done by the same guy who delights in wee girls in red running down dangerous alleyways clearly in Rochdale and sad wee rough-sleepers to represent weans in temporary accomodation.

Neil writes:

‘It’s been a while now since the myth that Scotland was immune to racist and fascist extremism melted away. Once, we thought we were above all that; neo-Nazi thugs on the street was an English phenomenon, we naively believed

So, around 60 lads already members of a football Ultras team, with the same gear, turn up for another do, standing quietly outside Glasgow Cathedral rather than running through George Square shouting. I bet a few will be staying at home if the organisers don’t come up with something better than that. I had more fun in the Boys Brigade in 1964.

We know that extreme right-wing groups in Scotland are tiny, at best one-third the strength of those in England & Wales and referred to Prevent at a fraction of the level.

Let’s hope Neil doesn’t try to connect these groups to those other, for him, scary, extremist Nats in the SNP.

He tried that in May 2023:

In the Herald 7 May 2023, Neil Mackay’s ‘big read’ exclusive on the breakup of the far-right group Patriotic Union (PA), leads with this claim:

Today, The Herald on Sunday’s exclusive investigation carried out by our Writer At Large exposes extremists linked to the Scottish Conservatives and SNPhttps://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/23505742.uk-far-right-extremists-shattered-scottish-rebellion/

What is the evidence for these links? See this in the Herald article:

Today, The Herald on Sunday’s exclusive investigation carried out by our Writer At Large exposes extremists linked to the Scottish Conservatives and SNP – https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/23505742.uk-far-right-extremists-shattered-scottish-rebellion/

Taking the second case first, a former Conservative candidate attends PA rallies – fair enough, a link.

Second, though, a PA member ‘works as a cameraman’ at SNP conferences and Cop26? Really? Is that all you have Neil?

Is the SNP responsible for checking the records of employees of whichever company filmed their conference?

If they were at COP26, why are they not ‘linked’ to the Greens, the UK Government or the UN?

We’ve had a lot of shoddy journalism from Mackay but this tops everything.

Here is another of his attempts to drag Scotland into the past:

Neil Mackay may be ‘Scotland’s Columnist of the Year’ but he’s feck all use as an investigative reporter. Does ‘columnist just mean ‘blether?’ This is pathetic clickbait to make us anxious and cling to the Union but based on only a tiny number of street thugs, his own memories of life in Northern Ireland before the Good Friday Agreement and the notion planted in his head by Lord George Robertson, of ‘Dark Forces.’

Robertson’s warnings were soon dismissed as guff aimed at panicking the electorate in the run-up to the Referendum. Though former Secretary General at NATO, Robertson had no evidence to offer. Mackay has only this melodramatic literary guff:

Now, though, something is stirring in the darkest recesses of Scotland’s soul and it’s ugly. At the weekend, we had yet another display of sectarian hatred imported from my country and played out on the streets of Glasgow. There were arrests and a police officer was injured after a Republican march and a Loyalist counter-demonstration clashed.

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18191426.neil-mackay-dark-forces-sectarianism-come-exploit-independence-union/

Read that opening sentence again. Can you believe it? It’s not just guff in terms of being utter fantasy its also terrible writing. Even Dan Brown might reject it as being ‘too much.’ If Mackay wanted to tell us something true, he might have had a look at evidence from official statistics and/or from a respected academic researcher like, say, Professor Sir Thomas Martin Devine OBE FRSE FBA. Here’s Devine in the Mackay’s host, the Herald, in 2018:

‘SECTARIANISM is in decline and claims of widespread anti-Catholicism in Scotland are “unhelpfully alarmist”, according to the country’s leading intellectual, Professor Sir Tom Devine. The University of Edinburgh historian claims there is little chance of coming up against religious prejudice in 2018, apart from at Old Firm matches, and accused politicians and church leaders of “brazenly spreading fear” and reinforcing “victimhood” among Catholics.’

Might Devine have based his words on empirical evidence? Well, yes. Who’d have thought it? Is that how you get to be a prof? Here is some official evidence from 2015 (latest):

‘In contrast to the strong perceptions of sectarianism in Scotland, there is evidence to show that personal experiences of it are relatively uncommon in terms of harassment, discrimination and criminal victimisation. Over recent years the SCJS has reported relatively low levels of sectarian crime. In 2008/09 1% of crimes were thought to be motivated by sectarianism, falling to 0.5% in 2009/10. In 2010/11 it was 1% while in 2012/13 (the most recently available figure) it was again 1%. Religious hate-crime accounted for around 10% of all hate crime charges in Scotland in 2013-14 (racial hate-crime accounted for 69%) and is at its lowest level since 2009-10.’

https://www.gov.scot/publications/examination-evidence-sectarianism-scotland-2015-update/pages/4/

My father-in-law was a Catholic from Donegal who met me for the first-time only months after Bloody Sunday. Once he knew I would treat him with respect, he did the same for me. My father was a committed Presbyterian, hostile to the Vatican but friends with several Catholics. At 68, I have no memory of ever directly witnessing even sectarian verbal insults far less violence though an Orange Walk did wake me up once.