I agree, George. The forces unleashed by racism, homophobia and so on go far beyond the immediate perceived problem. It seems to start with the deep inner conviction that "something" is badly wrong, progresses to finding a scapegoat, then legitimnises violence against that scapegoat. After this point, the violence sustains itself quite simply because it can, that the primitive and childish instinct to lash out to alleviate feelings has been held in and is now released. That what was behaving badly is now defending your community. So perfectly respectable career soldiers like Ratko Mladic were transformed into inhuman war criminals.

We might seem to have have got a long way from a Daily Mirror grumble about PC, but you've only to be in a pub full of (white) football supporters to see how easy our society could fall into such a trap. the Italians appear to have done so this week, trumpeting their outrage against crimes by foreigners, while remaining silent about crimes committed by Italian "vigilantes" on (probably innocent) EC migrant workers.