How the leftist academic who wouldn't talk to me is unwittingly feeding the far-Right

I’ve been working hard this week on an important long essay about how a lethal American far-Right conspiracy theory has found its way to Britain, where a third of people now take it seriously. You’ll be able to read it in the Daily Telegraph in the coming days.

While researching the piece, I approached a number of academics who study the far-Right for a living. Most were generous with their time. One, however, was not.

Enter Professor Aurelien Mondon of Bath University. He is a genuine authority on far-Right extremism and its mainstreaming, and we engaged in an interesting email exchange in which I tried to persuade him that the Telegraph was not the enemy. Ultimately, however, he declined to speak to me because I was writing for a conservative publication.

What he didn’t realise is that he was making himself part of the problem.