Deborah Orr (Don’t blame victims for this toxic debate, 10 November) says, using quote marks to indicate a direct quotation, that I referred to “squawking women” in my Mail on Sunday column. I did not. No such phrase appears there. This is partly because I would never write such a thing, but mainly because I was in fact attacking the headless mob mentality of the witch-hunting frenzy then taking place. Anyone who actually read the column could see that, though mobs and their facilitators tend not to read very much or very carefully. Ms Orr may perhaps have sexist prejudices which lead her to associate the verb “to squawk” with the female sex, but I do not. I use it in a gender-neutral, equal-opportunity way. I can prove this. In October I used it to refer to state-sponsored panics over terror, saying: “When authority is squawking at you to run away, it is hard to be calm.” In August I used it to characterise the government’s approach to leaving the EU as “flapping and squawking”. In an article for the US website First Things I recently accused diplomats and media of “squawking about a ‘New Cold War’”. It is a symptom of the unreasoning rage now abroad that those who take part in it pay so little attention to actual facts.
Peter Hitchens
London
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