Daily Mail and ‘alt-right’ put lefties in firing line | Letters:

Paul Dacre, the editor of the Daily Mail.
Paul Dacre, the editor of the Daily Mail. Photograph: Chris Ratcliffe/Rex

So the Mail responded “with both barrels” (Letters, June 23). That trigger-happy metaphor says it all. Lefties don’t reach for their guns or express “hatred” against others – including Daily Mail readers – they use satirical cartoons and mild rebukes. The increasing numbers of death threats in our society virtually all come from “alt-right” extremists, as even Charles Foster might agree. It is not the readers who lead the alt-right charge at the Mail, but the unbalanced editors, who go far beyond simply having “opinions”. Has this mild letter put me in the firing line?
Virginia Cumming
London

• As Charles Foster suggests, it isn’t always possible to divine the political stance of people from the newspapers they read. A late and much-missed colleague used to buy the Daily Mail every day, which astonished me because I knew where he stood politically. I tackled him one day about it. “You’re about as leftwing as it’s possible to be without disappearing over the horizon. Why do you buy the Mail,” I asked. To which he replied: “It’s the only paper that gives Tony Blair the kicking he deserves.”
Nigel Stapley
Wrexham

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