DAVID CAMERON’S supposed anti-extremism speech in Birmingham was a mish-mash of divisive ignorance and ruling-class authoritarianism.

His obsession with demanding support for “tolerance, democracy, the rule of law and freedom of speech” sits poorly with the revelation that he authorised British troops to participate in US-led bombing raids on Syria despite Parliament deciding otherwise.

Tolerance, democracy, rule of law and freedom of speech are admirable goals, but they mean different things to us all.

Alarm bells will inevitably ring when Cameron, an inveterate apologist for Israeli war crimes, insists that opposition to Islamic State (Isis) demands condemnation of “conspiracy theories, anti-semitism and sectarianism.”

Who is he to judge when criticism of zionist colonialism descends into these categories?

More basically, when did thinking wrong things become a crime in Britain?

Some people harbour hateful attitudes towards black people, Jews, Gypsies, Travellers, lesbians, gay men and other minorities, but they are prosecuted only when their thoughts translate into action.

Many Irish people in Britain support the reunification of their homeland. Some were sympathetic to the military campaign waged by the Provisional IRA, but they were not persecuted for their thoughts.

There have always been Muslims in Britain and other states more sympathetic to a religious caliphate than secular democracy. They are a tiny minority within a minority.

The weight of the state should only be deployed against those seeking to turn fantasy into reality when they adopt violence.

It is distressing for most people — not least the families of those involved — to see young people born, raised and educated in Britain opt to travel to Syria, Iraq or elsewhere to join the Isis death cult.

It reveals a level of extreme alienation brought about by a combination of factors that could include internet propaganda, contact with religious extremists and despair over what they view as this country’s anti-Muslim foreign policy.

Cameron dismisses the idea that a succession of wars launched against largely Muslim countries and ongoing backing for Israel’s murderous occupation of Palestinian land play any part in fomenting alienation.

For him, the problem is simply ideological — “non-violent extremists” who radicalise young people by grooming them and brainwashing their minds.

His stance with regard to Syrians who join Isis is fundamentally different, identifying a materialist basis for their doing so — his contention that President Bashar al-Assad is “the chief recruiting sergeant for Isil because of his butchery of his own people.”

Imperialism’s obsession with overthrowing Assad, assisted by funds, weapons and recruits from Nato’s Arab allies, has weakened military resistance to Isis.

There is little use in Cameron wishing for viable governments in Iraq and Syria or anywhere else in the region when it is US, British and French oil-influenced military intervention or support for medieval despots that has rendered it unstable.

His Extremism Bill will not destabilise Britain because the vast majority of Muslims perceive no unbridgeable gulf between their own beliefs and attitudes and those of their non-Muslim neighbours.

However, his half-baked dog’s breakfast of bluster, loyalty demands and ill-thought-through censorship proposals to “put out of action” those who he decides “clearly detest British society and everything we stand for” will not help matters.

What absurd level of supremacist thinking does Cameron’s statement that “our values are so great that we should want to enforce them for all” reflect?

His agenda will probably collapse under the weight of its contradictions, but until then it will aggravate the process of integration in Britain rather than help it.