The right-wing columnist and Sky News host is now bordering on justifying mob violence, writes Michael Brull.

Andrew Bolt has long had a problem with Muslims and Islam, but his latest column is inflammatory to the point that it seems dangerous. Even by his standards, it is shocking. In it, he argues that Islam is a “warlike religion that licenses our destruction”, predicts a “Right-wing backlash” where vigilantes “defend themselves” by taking up arms, and innocent Muslims get hurt. But “Who could blame them”? As he predicts this “civil war”, he urges us to stop “demonising” those “with the courage to warn of the dangers, even of a Pauline Hanson.” Instead, “no more multiculturalism”, and “no more mass immigration from the Muslim world.”

Bolt begins by commenting on the attack in France, arguing that “We in the West cannot live like this”. Readers can guess who in the West is included in this we, and who is not. Bolt puts the blame for this and previous attacks by jihadi terrorists on Islam, writing that “we” can’t “keep letting in carriers of a faith whose most dogmatic believers wish to destroy us. What madness is this ‘tolerance’ of ours that we deem it rude to even discuss the warlike religion that licenses our destruction and demands an end to our most cherished liberties?”

Let me stress that. Islam is a “warlike religion”, which “licenses our destruction”, and “demands an end to our most cherished liberties”.

He then outlines what he thinks is a natural – and understandable – response: “civil war”.

“And if our politicians will not speak frankly and protect us from Islam, watch out for a civil war. A frightened public will not put up with this for much longer and will defend themselves. Here, yes, that ugly day has not dawned and let us pray it never does. But in France, God knows how soon non-Muslim vigilantes will themselves take up arms.

Who could blame them, after the murderous attacks by Islamists on a Jewish kindergarten, on a satirical magazine that mocked Islam, on a kosher supermarket, on a policeman and his wife at home and, last year, on Paris in a full-on military assault that killed 130 people. (Emphasis added).”

Who could blame them? It’s just self-defence.

Bolt writes that the French chief of the Directorate General of Internal Security had said that before this attack, one more could lead to “a huge Right-wing backlash”. Is Bolt worried about the huge backlash? Should we do something to prevent it? Bolt explains that: