Whoever thought that a conference on education could be interesting? Last week, Laurie Penny and David Starkey made one so by having a loud dingdong about race. Ms Penny – a columnist for The Independent – called Starkey a racist because he implied that gang culture was an import from the Punjab. Dr Starkey – a freelance historian – lost his temper, pointed his finger at Penny and shouted, “I will not be lectured to by a public school girl like you!” The whole farce would have gone unreported had Penny not turned to Twitter to imply that Starkey physically assaulted her. The video that leaked out suggests different. Starkey’s rage contains all the terror of a bichon frise growling at a suspicious looking tree. Ms Penny has enough sangfroid to return to the microphone to, once again, call her opponent a big auld racist. It's pure Punch and Judy.

The story went global and partisans fell into two camps. The Left said Starkey’s insensitive pronouncements on British identity made his racism obvious. His vocal outburst, coupled with having the audacity to wear linen in the 21st century, confirmed an implicit violence within his politics. The Right argued that Penny was the real bigot for twisting the words of a respected historian to denounce all conservative views as inherently racist.

Both sides are equally guilty of misreading the politics of race. The Right often exhibits a paradoxical cultural chauvinism. On the one hand, they will insist that racism isn’t a problem in Britain – partly because our society is more homogeneous than the Left thinks it is and partly because Britishness is a byword for tolerance. On the other hand, they use this claim of tolerance as a reason to exclude outsiders, because they perceive the “invading” culture to be intolerant. Most of Britain’s problems are imagined to be the result of outsiders getting inside and exploiting the British soft touch: asylum seekers scamming benefits, Islamic sex rings, Muslims building super mosques to preach destruction of the West etc. The repugnant assumption behind much of the conservative take on multiculturalism is either that foreign cultures are breeders of violence or that individuals raised in those cultures are incapable of independent moral action. That’s why Starkey’s infamous claim on Newsnight that the London riots were a cultural import from Jamaica was so wrong. Civil unrest isn’t unique to the West Indies – the English have been revolting for centuries.

If the Starkey’s crime is myopia, Penny is guilty of trying to use the racist label to shut down debate. Consider what happened during the Starkey vs Penny confrontation. On the subject of “What is Britishness?” Penny said, “For people like my colleague Professor Starkey, it’s playing xenophobia and national prejudice for laughs. And if you ask people who organise conferences like this, it’s sitting by politely while people play xenophobia and national prejudice for laughs, pretending that this is an acceptable part of contemporary debate.”

I highlight the last part of that sentence because this is a key part of the contemporary Left’s agenda: dividing political opinions into legitimate and illegitimate. The Left insists that it is illegitimate to say that homosexuality can be a choice, that the fetus is a human being, that the welfare poor must take some responsibility for their life choices or that there is some other explanation for global warming. These positions may be wrong or even despicable. But the Left’s very undemocratic goal is to drive them from the public sphere. Happily, all we will be left with once we effectively outlaw cultural traditionalism is liberalism and socialism. Then we can all get on with the business of becoming the kind of people Laurie Penny wants us to be.

Of all the forms of thought policing that the Left uses, the most egregious is the accusation of racism. Of course, racism does exist in both conscious and subconscious forms – given its history of imperialism and slavery, it is truly the West’s Original Sin. But if we overuse the word racism, we dilute its meaning and lose our ability to judge between who is and who is not racist. David Starkey might be prejudiced, but he is in no way analogous to Nick Griffin and the BNP. By labeling Starkey as such, the Left empowers the BNP to claim that its views are both germane to the mainstream Right and the victim of the same kind of thought policing that Starkey suffers. It’s notable that Nick Griffin offered to make Starkey an honorary member of his party after his Newsnight appearance.

In the same way that overuse of the phrase “ethnic cleansing” to describe things that come nowhere near to the historical uniqueness of the Holocaust is offensive, so too is misuse of racism. It dilutes the power of that word, so that an ugly, stupid throwaway line by a politician about Africans is treated with the same seriousness as the Rwandan genocide. It also blinds us to non-political forms of prejudice that genuinely need tackling. The worst is the racism of low expectations – a variety of racial oppression that the Left unwittingly participates in. By constantly asserting that ethnic minorities can’t get ahead because of white bigotry, we often condemn them to a culture of low morale reinforced by shockingly bad schools. Aspiration and Capitalism have historically been far kinder to the poor than therapeutic welfarism.

In short, the Right constantly confuses the meanings of culture and race, but the Left does nothing to help by taking an already toxic debate and poisoning it further with a mix of righteousness and paranoia. And the discussion so rarely actually improves anyone’s lives. Step back from the Starkey vs Penny fight and you see two white figures from the establishment claiming to speak for the disenfranchised. They do not. The only thing that distinguishes their privileged voices is that Laurie Penny shields herself from criticism with the claim that she is being physically and intellectually oppressed by violent patriarchy. To his credit, Starkey’s bombast is more honest, cheerful and self-aware. David Starkey doesn’t care who he offends or what people think about him, and that's why his brand endures. He isn’t just thick skinned – he’s all skin.

I wrote a piece on Marine Le Pen – sexy gauleiter of the French Far Right – on Monday morning that attracted a lot of comments. A lot of comments. They ran about 100-1 against what I wrote, which is to be expected. In case you haven’t read the original post, I’m anti-Le Pen. To me that’s as inoffensive as being anti-acid reflux, or the Massacre of Amritsar. But a lot of people seem to disagree.

Unlike some bloggers, I’m not against a spot of vitriol in the comments and I’m not worried about email abuse.  I’ve had it all: in fact I’ve been called everything from a Nazi homophobe to a boy-hungry communist – with paradoxical allusions to evangelical zealotry and unnatural relations with a tree. My hair (which entirely my own) is a frequent target of abuse, as is my age (I’m older than I look, which is the right way round to have it). I am often called “Timmy,” sometimes "Timbo." Might I suggest, as an alternative, a play on my middle name of Randolph? In the US “Randy” is a perfectly acceptable boy’s name, but in the UK it has sexual connotations (“Switch off the electric blanket, I'm feeling randy.”) If people are going to insult me, may it at least be Chaucerian.

None of this bothers me. But I am surprised that I should have to defend myself because I came out against a nationalist.  Let me clear something up for those who left negative comments: no one told me what to write. I do not receive orders from the politically correct lobby over a morning conference call with Jesse Jackson, the King of the Freemasons, and Israel’s press officer. Whatismore, I’m not a “liberal,” as was suggested by some people. In fact, of all the terms of abuse you could use against me, that’s the one I actually find offensive. To me, “liberalism” is the summation of everything wrong about the last two hundred years of history – all of the ineptitude of Marxism, the interference of petite-bourgeois conservatism, without any of the Romanticism of either. “Liberal” is interchangeable with “secularist,” “eco-friendly,” “politically correct,” and “Dr Who fan.” Please don’t use it again.

In fact, I sympathize with some of the policy positions that Marine Le Pen holds. Just because her philosophy is wrong doesn’t mean that she’s incapable of stealing a good idea or two from here or there. Protectionism? Yes, I could protect a few British enterprises that face unfair competition from China. Curbs on immigration? Yup, a country has the right to at least know who goes in and out. Death penalty? I hate it in the abstract, but recognize that it’s necessary to maintain some semblance of  law and order. In fact, my traditionalism probably convinces most liberals that I, too, am a nationalist authoritarian.

So why come off against Le Pen? Two reasons. First, her brand of communitarianism isn’t volunterist – it’s coercive. It accords with a strong state tradition in France that conflates the needs of the individual with the will of the nation. Hence, her economics is far to the Left and her social policies smack of authoritarianism. Her desire to tear the burqa off the heads of Muslim girls is a fine example of muscular liberalism turned into fascism, along with its disregard both for the ability of the individual to chose to wear the headscarf and for the strength of religious belief found beneath it. A truly Christian voter cannot endorse Le Pen’s statism because it rejects free will on every level - and a coerced faith is valueless. She is Robespierre in high heels.

The second problem I have with the Front National is the whole racism thing. I despise it. Sorry to get all holier-than-thou here, but racism is loathsome, contrary to ethical standards of human behavior, and a barrier to the kinds of relationships that keep our society and species ticking along. So long as we hate, we cannot love. And the highest commandment of God (and man) is to love. I do not privilege myself above Jews, African-Americans, Asians, or even the French. I don't even judge them by their character as the Americans are want to do: I regard them as fellow sinners and souls of equal value. I love them, insofar as my personality will allow.

I wrote this in the post: “The FNP’s underlying concern is not the preservation of secularism, feminism or La Revolution. It is that little white babies not be outnumbered by little brown babies. It is racism, vile and simple.” That sentence received a lot of outrage, with many people arguing that what I am describing here is not an attempt at racial preservation but cultural preservation - that I was wilfully misrepresenting Marine's politics as racism. As a cultural conservative, I take that challenge very seriously. And here is my answer.

Culture is not rooted in race. Some of us believe that it has a spark of divine will, but for the most part it is the product of environmental factors, intellect, tradition, trial-and-error, and change. Over time, culture matures like a fine wine to the point when it can be enjoyed by all. It is not limited by geography or race, which is why European Christian culture was able to spread across the globe, adapt, and survive. Very few faith-based cultures have accepted race as a determinant because it contradicts the universalism of faith and it places artificial boundaries out its message.

Hence, whenever you see a self-described nationalist (a term not necessarily racist), ask yourself what “culture” they are trying to preserve. If it is a system that can survive a little dilution of the blood – a culture that can be communicated through ritual or language – then you have someone genuinely trying to preserve a cultural tradition that they believe makes meaning of the lives of those who live it. If, however, a nationalist determines wellbeing by birthrates and closed borders, you have something else. You have biological determinism masquerading as social identity. I reject it, I hate it, I will have nothing to do with it. And Timbo will continue to condemn it so longs as the Telegraph employs him.