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The West’s Politically Correct Dictatorship

December 6, 2016

The West’s Politically Correct Dictatorship, Gatestone Institute, Giulio Meotti, December 6, 2016

The brave work of the artist Mimsy was removed from London’s Mall Galleries after the British police defined it “inflammatory.”

In France, schools teach children that Westerners are Crusaders, colonizers and “bad.” In their efforts to justify the repudiation of France and its Judeo-Christian culture, schools have fertilized the soil in which Islamic extremism develops and flourishes unimpeded.

No one can deny that France is under Islamist siege. Last week, France’s intelligence service discovered another terror plot. But what is the priority of the Socialist government? Restricting freedom of expression for pro-life “militants.”

Under this politically correct dictatorship, Western culture has established two principles. First, freedom of speech can be restricted any time someone claims that an opinion is an “insult.” Second, there is a vicious double standard: minorities, especially Muslims, can freely say whatever they want against Jews and Christians.

There is no better ally of Islamic extremism than this sanctimony of liberal censorship: both, in fact, want to suppress any criticism of Islam, as well as any proud defense of the Western Enlightenment or Judeo-Christian culture.

Twitter, one of the vehicles of this new intolerance, even formed a “Trust and Safety Council.” It brings to mind Saudi Arabia’s “Council for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.”

Under this political correctness, the only “win-win” is for political Islam.

It might look like a golden age for free speech: more than a billion tweets, Facebook posts and blogs every day. But beneath this surface, freedom of expression is dramatically retreating.

Students at the City University of London, home to one of Britain’s most respected schools of journalism, voted to ban three newspapers from its campus: The Sun, Daily Mail and Express. Their “crime”, according to the approved motion, is to have published stories against migrants, “Islamophobic” articles, and “scapegoating the working classes that they so proudly claim to represent.” City University, supposedly a place dedicated to openness and questioning, became the first Western educational institution to vote for censorship, and ban “right wing newspapers.”

The filmmaker David Cronenberg called this self-censorship, after the massacre at Charlie Hebdo: “a weird, serpentine political correctness.” It is one of the most lethal ideological poisons of the 21st century. It is not only closed-minded and ridiculous, it makes us blind to the radical Islam that is undermining our mental and cultural defenses.

The countless attacks by Muslim extremists testify that the multicultural world to which we have been led is a fiction. Political correctness simply encourages the Islamists to raise the stakes to win the war they are advancing. The resulting tension has been fed by the Western elites with their sense of guilt for “colonialism” in the Third World.

“ISIS Threaten Sylvania” — an art exhibition featuring cute little stuffed animals picnicking on a lawn, and unaware of other cute little stuffed animal terrorists carrying assault rifles on a knoll just behind them — is the work of the artist known as Mimsy (she hides her identity). The protagonists of this series of light box tableaux are a family of stuffed animal dolls that inhabits an enchanted valley. Gunmen, dressed like the Islamic State henchmen, strike the innocent inhabitants of the valley, at school and on the beach, at a picnic or in a gay pride parade. It looks like an updated version of Maus by Art Spiegelman, a graphic novel depicting Nazi cats and Jewish mice during the Holocaust.

Those wishing to see this artistic panel at the Mall Galleries, in London, will now have to console themselves with the work of Jamie McCartney, “The Great Wall Vagina,” nine meters of female genitalia, less important and less provocative.

The brave work of Mimsy, after the British police defined it “inflammatory,” has been eliminated from the program of this London cultural event. Its organizers informed the gallery owners that if they wanted to put it on display, they would have to shell out £36,000 ($46,000) to “secure the venue” for the six days of the exhibition.

2101The brave work of the artist Mimsy, satirizing the brutality of ISIS, was removed from London’s Mall Galleries after the British police defined it “inflammatory.” (Image source: Mimsy)

Under this politically correct dictatorship, Western culture has established two principles. First, freedom of speech can be restricted any time someone claims that an opinion is an “insult.” Second, there is a vicious double standard: minorities, especially Muslims, can freely say whatever they want against Jews and Christians.

And so it came to pass that the most famous Spanish football team, Real Madrid, removed the cross from its crest after a commercial deal with Gulf emirate of Abu Dhabi. The Christian symbol was quickly ditched to please the Islamic Gulf sponsors.

Perhaps soon the West will be soon asked to change the flag of the European Union — twelve yellow stars on a blue background — because it contains a Christian message in code. Arsène Heitz, who designed it in 1955, was inspired by the Christian iconography of the Virgin Mary with a crown and twelve stars on her head: what a heartless “Western Christian supremacist” message!

Political correctness is also having a huge impact on big business: Kellogg’s withdrew advertising from Breitbart for being “not aligned with our values” and Lego dropped advertising with Daily Mail, to mention just two recent cases.

It should not cause alarm if companies want to decide where to advertise their products, but it is very alarming when it happens due to “ideology.” We have never read about companies abandoning a newspaper or website because it was too liberal or “leftist.” If the Arab-Islamic regimes were follow these views, why should they not ask their companies to stop advertising in Western newspapers that publish articles critical of Islam, or which publish pictures of half-naked women?

Libraries on US campuses are now putting “trigger warnings” on works of literature: students are advised, for example, that Ovid’s sublime Metamorphosis “justifies” rape. Stanford University even managed to exclude Dante, Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare and other giants of Western culture from the academic curricula in 1988: supposedly many of their masterpieces are “racist, sexist, reactionary, repressive.” This is the vocabulary of Western surrender before totalitarian Islamic fundamentalism.

France has removed great figures, such as Charlemagne, Henry IV, Louis XIV and Napoleon, from schools, to replace them, for instance, with studying the history of Mali and other African kingdoms. At school, children are taught that Westerners are Crusaders, colonizers and “bad.” In purportedly justifying the repudiation of France and its Judeo-Christian culture, schools have fertilized the soil in which Islamic extremism develops and flourishes unimpeded.

It is a question of priorities: no one can deny that France is under Islamist siege. Last week, France’s intelligence service discovered another terror plot. But what is the priority of the Socialist government? Restricting freedom of expression for pro-life “militants.” The Wall Street Journal called it “France’s War on Anti-Abortion Speech.” France already has one of the most permissive and liberal bodies of legislation on abortion. But political correctness makes one blind and ideological. “In four and a half years, the Socialists have reduced our freedom of expression and attacked public freedoms,” commented Riposte Laïque.

In the US, academia is rapidly closing its doors to any debate. At Yale, professors and students these days are very busy with a new cultural emergency: “renaming.” They are changing the name of buildings to erase all traces of slavery and colonialism — a revisionism out of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.

Everywhere in the US and in the UK, an air of hostility is spreading against opinions and ideas that could cause even a hint of distress in students. The result is the rise of what a writer such as Bret Easton Ellis called “Generation Wuss“.

The jihadists surely grin at this Western political correctness, since the result of this ideology will be the abolition of the Western critical spirit and a surreal reeducation of the masses through the annihilation of our history and a hatred of our truly liberal past.

Bristol University in the UK just came under fire for attempting to “no-platform” Roger Scruton for his views on same-gender marriage. Meanwhile, British universities are giving a platform to radical Islamic preachers. In the politically correct universe, conservative thinkers are more dangerous than ISIS supporters. London’s former mayor, Boris Johnson, called this dystopia “the Boko Haram of political correctness.”

Students and faculty at the Rutgers University in New Jersey cancelled a speech by former US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. Students and professors at Scripps College in California protested the presence of another former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, who, according to the protesters, is a “war criminal.”

A New York University professor, Michael Rectenwald, who attacked political correctness and the coddling of students, was recently booted from the classroom after his colleagues complained about his “incivility”. The liberal studies professor was forced to go on paid leave. “It’s an alarming curtailment of free expression to the point where you can’t even pretend to be something without authorities coming down on you in the universities,” Rectenwald told the New York Post.

There is no better ally of Islamic extremism than this sanctimony of liberal censorship: both, in fact, want to suppress any criticism of Islam, as well as any proud defense of the Western Enlightenment or Judeo-Christian culture.

Censorship is happening not only in the liberal enclaves on the coasts of the United States, but also in France. The Eagles of Death Metal — the American band that was performing at Paris’ Bataclan Theater when ISIS terrorists murdered 89 people there on November 13, 2015 — were banned by two music festivals: Rock en Seine and Cabaret Vert. The reason? Jesse Hughes, the band’s frontman, gave a very politically incorrect interview:

“Did your French gun control stop a single f*cking person from dying? I think the only thing that stopped it was some of the bravest men that I’ve ever seen charging head-first into the face of death with their firearms. I think the only way that my mind has been changed is that maybe until nobody has guns everybody has to have them. Because I’ve never seen anyone that’s ever had one dead, and I want everyone to have access to them, and I saw people die that maybe could have lived, I don’t know.”

After the jihadist massacre at Orlando’s Pulse gay nightclub, Facebook enforced the pro-Islamic injunction and banned a page of the magazine Gaystream, after it had published an article critical of Islam in the wake of the bloodbath. Gaystream‘s director, David Berger, had heavily criticized the director of the Gay Museum in Cologne, Birgit Bosold, who had told German media that gays should be more frightened of white bigoted men than of Islamic extremists.

Jim Hoft, a gay journalist who is the creator of the popular Gateway Pundit blog, was suspended from YouTube. Twitter, one of the vehicles of this new intolerance, suspended the account of Milo Yiannopoulos, a prominent gay critic of Islamic fundamentalism — but probably not the accounts of Islamic fundamentalists who criticize gays. Twitter even formed a “Trust and Safety Council.” It brings to mind Saudi Arabia’s “Council for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.” Could it be an inspiration for the liberal mullahs?

Yes, it might have looked like a golden age for free speech. But under this dictatorship of political correctness, the only “win-win” is for political Islam.

Categories: "Right wing extremists", "Unacceptable rhetoric" about Muslims, Censorship, Europe, Europe and Islam, European "democracy", European left, European Union, Islamism, Media and Islam, Media and Islamist terror, Obama's America, Political correctness, Political Islam, Western civilization
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One Year After Paris, What The West Still Needs To Learn About Islamic Terror

November 25, 2016

One Year After Paris, What The West Still Needs To Learn About Islamic Terror, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Abigail R. Esman

(Please see also, Europe: Let’s Self-destruct! — DM)

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In fact, many European counter-terrorism experts expect that savagery to worsen as growing numbers of European Muslims now living in the so-called “Islamic State” start making their way back home. Many are disillusioned by what they found there. But their hatred of the West is as deep as it was when they first left, if not deeper – and now they are trained in warfare. Meanwhile, the potential collapse of the Caliphate is likely to add to their fury and desire to take revenge on Western targets.

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On Nov. 13, one year after Islamist terrorists killed 130 people and injured 368 others in a series of attacks across Paris, music legend Sting performed at the city’s Bataclan theater. It was at this popular haunt that three gunmen opened fire during an Eagles of Death Metal concert that fateful night.  Sting’s appearance, which coincided with the theater’s reopening, was meant not only to memorialize the 90 lives lost there, but to mark a new beginning, a return to life.

Yet just six days later, in the hours between Nov. 19-20, police across France apprehended seven men said to be plotting yet another attack. The suspects, said to be French, Moroccan, and Afghan, may be connected to others arrested just prior to the European Cup games in June. Their capture brings to 418 the number of terror-related arrests made so far this year, 43 of them in November alone.

France has suffered a disproportionate and disturbing number of terror attacks in the past two years, from the Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket massacres in January 2015, to the November Paris attacks and the 87 killed while enjoying Bastille Day festivities in Nice on July 14. There also have been smaller attacks, including when militants in Normandy forced 85-year-old priest Jacques Hamel to kneel before slitting his throat in front of his parishioners in July.

But with over 400 would-be terrorists off the streets, is France at least safer than it was a year ago?

In many ways, yes. It would have to be. Along with those arrests, French authorities have seized 600 firearms and closed down dozens of illegal Muslim prayer halls, Europe1 reported. Soldiers patrol Paris’ streets and transportation centers, and an ongoing state of emergency has allowed the government to increase its levels of surveillance.

But few experts feel that this is really ameliorating the threat. After all, those expanded surveillance regulations were in effect when Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhel plowed his truck through the crowds along the Nice Promenade.

The fact is, the number of arrests is dwarfed by the numbers on the other side of the fight. Somewhere between 900 and 1,500 French citizens are believed to have joined ISIS, according to International Centre for Counterterrorism reports.  In September, Prime Minister Manuel Valls noted that, while plots are being foiled “every day,” 15,000 French Muslim youth are still radicalizing.  Consequently, France’s national police spokesman Christophe Crépin  told Time, “We have the means now, but it is not sure that [there] won’t be further attacks. There is a savagery that is very, very strong now.”

In fact, many European counter-terrorism experts expect that savagery to worsen as growing numbers of European Muslims now living in the so-called “Islamic State” start making their way back home. Many are disillusioned by what they found there. But their hatred of the West is as deep as it was when they first left, if not deeper – and now they are trained in warfare. Meanwhile, the potential collapse of the Caliphate is likely to add to their fury and desire to take revenge on Western targets.

What this means is that Europe – and especially France – can expect the return of several hundred trained jihadists, all part of a wider international network. Some will be arrested at the borders. But others will slip in, unnoticed as security agencies already are overtaxed.

Moreover, France also must rely on the counterterrorism measures and border protection of its neighbors, especially Belgium, which was home to many of the Nov 13 attackers. Yet Belgium is still stumbling in its own counter-terrorism efforts, despite two attacks there this year.

Meantime, there are those 15,000 out there already radicalizing within France, many of whom spend time communicating on social media with soldiers still living in the Caliphate. European intelligence officials agree that as ISIS loses ground at home, it is increasing its call to radicalized Muslims still living in the West to execute attacks in their own cities and towns.

In the face of this, France is now putting much of its hope into controversial de-radicalization programs, aiming to enroll 3,600 Muslim youth in such systems in two years, according to a France Local report.

But even if such programs work – and it isn’t yet clear they do, they remain part of an ongoing game of cat-and-mouse, unsustainable over the long-term. Should the Islamic State fall, other groups will inevitably rise up in its place. The ideologies that drive radical Islam have endured for centuries. And the revolutionary methods adopted by ISIS leaders, particularly with social media, continue to pose challenges to the West.

All of which suggests that France24 journalist Wassim Nasr, speaking to the Huffington Post, had it right when he observed, “There is much to be done; it’s a long run.”

What is clear is that if the West – and France especially – is going to protect itself from Islamic jihad in the future, it will have to find new ways to approach its Muslim youth before they radicalize, not after.

But so far, no one seems even to be trying.

Categories: Europe and Islam, European establishment, European terror threat, Islamic invasion, Islamic radicalization, Islamic refugees, Islamic terrorists returning to Europe
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Europe’s New Blasphemy Courts

November 4, 2016

Europe’s New Blasphemy Courts, Gatestone Institute, Douglas Murray, November 4, 2016

(Please see also, America’s “Arab Spring” — DM)

Europe is currently seeing the reintroduction of blasphemy laws through both the front and back doors, initiated in a country which once prided itself on being among the first in the world to throw off clerical intrusion into politics.

By prosecuting Wilders, the courts in Holland are effectively ruling that there is only one correct answer to the question Wilders asked. They are saying that if someone asks you whether you would like more Moroccans or fewer, people must always answer “more,” or he will be committing a crime.

At no point would it occur to me that anyone saying he did not want an endless flow of, say, British people coming into the Netherlands should be prosecuted. Nor would he be.

The long-term implications for Dutch democracy of criminalising a majority opinion are catastrophic. But the trial of Wilders is also a nakedly political move.

The Dutch courts are behaving like a religious court. They are trying to regulate public expression and opinion when it comes to the followers of one religion. In so doing they obviously aspire to keep the peace in the short term, but they cannot possibly realise what trouble they are storing up for our future.

 

Europe is currently seeing the reintroduction of blasphemy laws through both the front and back doors. In Britain, the gymnast Louis Smith has just been suspended for two months by British Gymnastics. This 27-year old sportsman’s career has been put on hold, and potentially ruined, not because of anything to do with athletics but because of something to do with Islam.

Last month a video emerged online of the four-time Olympic medal-winner and a friend getting up to drunken antics after a wedding. The video — taken on Smith’s phone in the early hours of the morning — showed a friend taking a rug off a wall and doing an imitation of Islamic prayer rituals. When the video from Smith’s phone ended up in the hands of a newspaper, there was an immediate investigation, press castigation and public humiliation for the young athlete. Smith — who is himself of mixed race — was forced to parade on daytime television in Britain and deny that he is a racist, bigot or xenophobe. Notoriously liberal figures from the UK media queued up to berate him for getting drunk or for even thinking of taking part in any mockery of religion. This in a country in which Monty Python’s Life of Brian is regularly voted the nation’s favourite comic movie.

After an “investigation,” the British sports authority has now deemed Smith’s behaviour to warrant a removal of funding and a two-month ban from sport. This is the re-entry of blasphemy laws through the back door, where newspapers, daytime chat-shows and sports authorities decide between them that one religion is worthy of particular protection. They do so because they take the religion of Islam uniquely on its own estimation and believe, as well as fear, the warnings of the Islamic blasphemy-police worldwide.

The front-door reintroduction of blasphemy laws, meantime, is being initiated in a country which once prided itself on being among the first in the world to throw off clerical intrusion into politics. The Dutch politician Geert Wilders has been put on trial before. In 2010 he was tried in the courts for the contents of his film “Fitna” as well as a number of articles. The trial collapsed after one of the expert witnesses — the late, great Dutch scholar of Islam, Hans Jansen — revealed that a judge in the case had tried in private to influence him to change his testimony. The trial was transparently rigged and made Dutch justice look like that of a tin-pot dictatorship rather than one of the world’s most developed democracies. The trial was rescheduled and, after considerable legal wrangling, Wilders was eventually found “not guilty” of a non-crime in 2011.

But it seems that the Dutch legal system, like the Mounties, is intent on always getting its man. On Monday of this week the latest trial of Geert Wilders got underway in Holland. This time Wilders is being tried because of a statement at a rally in front of his supporters in March 2014. Ahead of municipal elections, and following reports of a disproportionate amount of crimes being committed in Holland by Muslims of Moroccan origin, Wilders asked a crowd, “Do you want more or fewer Moroccans in this city and in the Netherlands?” The audience responded, “Fewer, fewer.” To which Wilders responded, “Well, we’ll arrange that, then.”

1546By prosecuting Dutch member of parliament Geert Wilders for making “politcially incorrect” statements, Dutch courts are behaving like a religious court. They are trying to regulate public expression and opinion when it comes to the followers of one religion. (Source of Wilders photo: Flickr/Metropolico)

Opinion polls suggest that around half the Dutch public want fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands and many opinion polls going back decades suggest that the Dutch people want less immigration in general. So at the very least Wilders is being put on trial for voicing an opinion which is far from fringe. The long-term implications for Dutch democracy of criminalizing a majority opinion are catastrophic. But the trial of Wilders is also a nakedly political move.

Whether or not one feels any support for Wilders’s sentiments is not in fact the point in this case. The point is that by prosecuting someone for saying what he said, the courts in Holland are effectively ruling that there is only one correct answer to the question Wilders asked. They are saying that if someone asks you whether you would like more Moroccans or fewer, people must always answer “more,” or they will be committing a crime. What kind of way is that to order a public debate on immigration or anything else? People may say, “He wouldn’t be allowed to say that about any other group of people.” And Wilders himself may not say that about any group of people, because he has his own political views and his own interpretation of the problems facing his country.

It is worth trying a thought-experiment: If Wilders or any other politician got up and asked a crowd “Do you want more or fewer British people in Holland,” I may not — as a British person — feel terribly pleased with him for asking the question, or terribly happy with the crowd if they chanted “Fewer.” Although if British expats in Holland were responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime and disorder in the country, some mitigating sympathy for the sentiment may be forthcoming. But at no point would it occur to me that anyone saying he did not want an endless flow of British people coming into the Netherlands should be prosecuted. Nor would he be.

Like the behaviour of the British Gymnastics association, the Dutch courts are behaving like a religious court. They are trying to regulate public expression and opinion when it comes to the followers of one religion. In so doing, they obviously aspire to keep the peace in the short term, but they cannot possibly realise what trouble they are storing up for our future.

Categories: Blasphemy courts, Europe, Europe and Islam, Geert Wilders, Islamic invasion, Islamic supremacy, Islamisation, Islamist freedom
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EU Commission’s Willful Blindness on Islamist Terror

September 29, 2016

EU Commission’s Willful Blindness on Islamist Terror, Clarion Project, Leslie Shaw, September 29, 2016

see-no-evil-hp-flickr-ally-aubryIllustrative photo: © Flickr/Ally Aubry

This outright refusal to call a spade a spade mirrors the policy of the Obama administration. The terminology is identical, with no reference to Islam, as if the problem were a generic one common to all belief systems rather than one in particular.

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On September 26, 2016 the European Commission organized a conference in Brussels titled Addressing Radical Ideologies and Violent Extremism: The Role of Research.

The absence of the word “Islamic” from the title, prospectus and agenda of the conference is an indication of the extent to which the European Commission is in denial as to the nature of the threat, in spite of the fact that all of the terrorist attacks throughout Europe in the past number of years have been perpetrated by Islamic radicals.

This outright refusal to call a spade a spade mirrors the policy of the Obama administration. The terminology is identical, with no reference to Islam, as if the problem were a generic one common to all belief systems rather than one in particular.

The conference, attended by around 120 people, mostly academics and representatives of NGOs, was organized to coincide with the publication of the policy review Addressing Terrorism: European Research in social sciences and the humanities in support to policies for inclusion and security written by Gilles Kepel and Bernard Rouquier, two of France’s leading experts on the global jihad.

Their policy review is a summary of currently available scientific knowledge, including 10 projects funded by the European Union on emerging forms of violent radicalization and terrorism. It proposes concrete areas of research needed to further increase this knowledge.

The conference opened with an informative and no-holds-barred joint presentation by Kepel and Rougier, who, surprisingly, identified the threat for what it is: global jihad driven by Islamic radicalism.

Recognizing that the main problem was one of national security, they nevertheless subscribed to the idea that research conducted by social scientists could at least partially contribute to dealing with the problem by addressing the causes of radicalization and proposing ways to minimize or contain it.

However, they left the audience in no doubt that from their perspective the problem is not one of radicalization but jihad.

One could sense a degree of unease and embarrassment among the European Commission representatives on the panel, as well as in the audience, at the straight talk of Kepel and Rougier, as if their presentation had caused the mask of denial and political correctness to slip.

Robert-Jan Smits, Director General for Research and Innovation of the European Commission, even asked them to confirm he had understood correctly when they said that Europe was at war with radical Islam.

The conference continued with a series of presentations on EU-funded projects including topics such as identities, personal belonging, youth, cities and ideologies that erode social cohesion.

Not one of these presentations pointed the finger at radical Islam as the principal source of the deadly threat that Europe is facing and will continue to face for decades to come, if not longer.

Close observation of the body language of Kepel and Rougier revealed beyond a doubt that they were not impressed with the content of the presentations nor with the recommendations for the bridging of knowledge gaps and future research needs.

This is not surprising given their close proximity to global jihad in the course of their work. Kepel is even on the Islamic State hit-list.

None of the questions put by members of the audience challenged the softly-softly approach of the speakers, and some audience members seemed to be of the opinion that jihadists are victims of European society rather than its mortal enemies.

An obvious question would have pointed to the blatant policy contradiction involved in admitting over a million migrants to Europe in 2015 and continuing to let them in during 2016, in the full knowledge that among those migrants were Islamist terrorists and that the homegrown Islamist terrorists in France, Belgium and elsewhere are the children and grandchildren of previous waves of Muslim immigration.

All in all, aside from the outstanding contributions of Kepel, Rougier and Hugo Micheron, another French expert on jihad, one left the conference with the impression that the European Commission is willfully blind to the jihadist threat.

It is as if people living in a building with a leaking roof decided to research the causes of rainfall by studying meteorology, in the vain hope of finding a way to stop the rain, instead of fixing the roof.

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