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Christians “Slaughtered Like Chicken”

December 17, 2017

Christians “Slaughtered Like Chicken” Gatestone Institute, Raymond Ibrahim, December 17, 2017

“These draconian [blasphemy] laws are being used as a tool for discrimination and forcible conversion every day and the world stays silent. This poor boy will now face a most daunting court case and will lose most of his life in prison…” — Wilson Chowdhry, Chairman, British Pakistani Christian Association. Pakistan.

The pastor, Amos Lukanula, said, “We cannot allow the Muslims to put up a mosque in place of the church.” The congregation first purchased the property in 2004; once they had erected a temporary church, local Muslims pulled it down. Another structure the congregation had spent three years building was again brought down by area Muslims in 2007. When, by 2009, Muslims could not raze the third partially built church —made of stone blocks not easily brought down—they filed a legal complaint prompting a court order to halt construction until the legal dispute could be resolved. The court case has dragged on for over eight years. — Tanzania.

A Muslim man raped a 3-year-old Christian girl, injuring her permanently. “[H]er 10-year-old son, Daud, was looking after his younger sister, a Muslim friend of Altaf, named Muhammed Abbas, came over. The man requested Daud to buy cigarettes for him from a nearby market. When Daud came back from a shop, Abbas kept him waiting outside the house and raped his sister. Abbas finally opened the door for Daud, lit a cigarette and left. When Daud went inside, he found his sister naked, covered in blood and screaming.” Police initially refused to investigate the rape until a local lawmaker exerted pressure on the authorities. — Pakistan.

“Christians who refused to renounce their faith were jailed indefinitely without trial. 173 long-term prisoners of faith remain behind bars in brutal conditions. They include many church leaders.” — Rev. Dr Berhane Asmelash. Eritrea.

Luc Ravel, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Strasbourg “went against the grain of Church leaders in France who have largely remained politically correct,” states a report, because he criticized “the demographic shift in France. Muslims, he said, are having far more children than native French, and slammed the widespread ‘promotion’ of abortion.” “Muslim believers,” he continued, “know very well that their birthrate is such that today, they call it … the Great Replacement, they tell you in a very calm, very positive way that, ‘one day all this, it will be ours.'”

Luc Ravel, Archbishop of Strasbourg, recently criticized “the demographic shift in France. Muslims, he said, are having far more children than native French.” (Image source: Peter Potrowl/Wikimedia Commons)

Another Christian leader, while discussing Sudan in particular, touched on what Christians throughout the Muslim world are facing, and why. “The government in Sudan wants to Islamize the whole population and they want to finish off Christianity and other faiths in Sudan,” said Pastor Strong. “We have to put pressure on the government so that the rights of the people to practice their faith openly will be given to them.” To achieve this, he added, they need the support of the “global Church”: “They are in the midst of trials, persecution, hunger — a lot of problems. And yet in the midst of all that, they rejoice. They’re always ready to die, and they testify their faith in every circumstance. They are willing to serve no matter what they have and what they might lose.”

July’s roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes, but is not limited to, the following:

Muslim Slaughter of Christians

Pakistan: On July 24, an Islamic suicide-bomber detonated explosives, killing himself in an area heavily populated by Christians. At least 26 people were murdered. According to human rights activist Bruce Allen, “What the mainstream media is not reporting is that this is the second-largest Christian colony in Pakistan where this blast occurred”—only a mile-and-a-half from where “pastors in Pakistan meet on a monthly basis, where they receive their monthly financial support, where they get together for sharing prayer requests and have some ongoing training centers and things like that.” After explaining how many suicide terror attacks target Christians, he explained how such ongoing terror “puts the Christians at this heightened state of alert, and they have been for some time. We recall last Easter, a time of great celebration, and there’s an attack against Christians in the parks. And that’s what they live with constantly…. [W]e talk about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with people in combat. Well, here you have a whole population of people who that’s what their life is: combat. And so it has psychological, spiritual, and emotional wearing.”

Separately, a Muslim “master” tormented and then murdered his Christian “slave.”Javed Masih, 32, the Christian was, according to the report, “repaying a debt that his family had contracted three years ago…. In reality he was a slave.” After he was accused of stealing a motor bicycle, “the Christian was repeatedly beaten with sticks and other objects. He was taken to the hospital and died from serious torture.” The family sought justice and filed a case with police, but as is usual, the police refused to take the case and the Muslim “master” and his allies threatened the Christian family to withdraw the charge. As the older brother of the slain man explained “We want justice. We are poor and therefore the police refuse to listen to us and record the complaint. Large landowners are threatening serious consequences because we have opposed any compromise. All this is because we are Christians and poor.” The murderer said the slain man committed suicide, a claim the family strongly rejects.

Kenya: Muslim militants linked to the jihadi group Al Shabaab hacked 13 non-Muslims, most of whom were Christian, to death with machetes. “They were slaughtered like chicken using knives…. We suspect there are many bodies that haven’t been recovered,” police said. The incident took place on Sunday, July 9 in a village near Lama. Because the Muslim terrorists were “only targeting male non-Muslims,” local Muslims directed them to Christians. “The Christians were asked to recite the Islamic dogmas, which they could not, hence they were killed,” a local source explained. Another man explained how the militants “were asking the villagers to produce their identification cards and if you were found to be a Christian you would be shot or slaughtered…. Victims have been evacuated to camps where food and security is provided by [the] government and the Kenya Red Cross,” he added. “We are hosting more than 200 people in our church and we expect the number to increase as more families are evacuated from Boni Forest.”

Egypt: Another Christian solider was killed by fellow (Muslim) soldiers once they learned he was a Christian. Joseph Reda Helmy had just completed his military training when he was transferred to Al-Salaam (“peace”), a special forces unit, where three officers killed him. He is at least the sixth Christian soldier to be killed for his faith in recent years. According to the slain man’s father, “his large, strong son had arrived at the camp at 2 p.m. and was dead by 8 p.m.” His cousin, who retrieved the body, said his dead cousin “had bruises on his head, shoulders, neck, back and genitalia, with the worst injuries occurring on his back.” He also learned from eyewitnesses that “the three officers began to harass Helmy because of his Christian faith, and that the marks on his body indicate they kicked him with their boots and hit him with heavy instruments.” As in all of the previous cases where Christian soldiers were killed by their Islamic counterparts, the Egyptian army told relatives that the slain had died of something else, in this instance, an “epileptic seizure.” But even the “doctor who examined the body refused to bow to pressure from those who brought it and reported that the cause of death was not natural.”

Also, of the jihadi slaughter of Christians traveling to a desert monastery in late May, 2017, more details emerged. Speaking from her hospital bed, one of the survivors of the massacre, Mariam Adel, a young mother whose husband and nine of her relatives were killed in the attack, said that after the jihadis opened fire on their bus, they went onboard and “ordered them off the bus and told them to convert to Islam.” “Renounce our faith? Of course not,” Mariam said of the women’s collective reaction. “If we had, they might have let us off the bus and treated us well. But we only want Jesus and we are confident he will not leave us.” The militants responded by robbing the women of their possessions, which they justified doing as properly earned “spoils of war.” A 10-year-old boy whose father was slaughtered said that “They asked my father for identification then told him to recite the Muslim profession of faith. He refused, said he was Christian. They shot him and everyone else with us in the car. Every time they shot someone they would yell ‘God is great,'” or, “Allah is greater.”

Nigeria: At least one Christian student was killed by an Islamic suicide attacker from Boko Haram. “Ambore Gideon Todi, a 21-year-old student at the University of Maiduguri in Borno state, was staying in the Evangelical Church Winning All’s student ministry tent when Boko Haram suicide bombers detonated explosives,” according to a report. “It is believed that he was not the only one affected by the bomb blast,” a fellow student, said “as there were others involved… in their fellowship program…. The authorities did not say anything about their demise till after nine days. We knew of his death because he is from my state.”

Muslim Attacks on Christian Freedom:

Pakistan: Another Christian was arrested for allegedly “blaspheming” against Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. Nadeem Ahmed, a leading figure in the Islamist organization Tehreek e Tahafuz e Islam, filed a complaint against Shahzad Masih, a 16-year-old Christian who worked as a hospital sweeper. The Islamist group then circulated pictures of the youth through their social media platforms with insulting and threatening captions; they also threatened to slaughter him if police were to release him. Police moved the teenager to an unknown location—and even “refused to acknowledge holding the boy, and will not give the family access to him.” Local mosques went on to publicize the incident heavily, prompting outrage among Muslims. They threatened his family with death, causing them to flee into hiding. A spokesman for the Islamist group said that “the judicial system should inflict the worst possible punishment on Shahzad Masih [meaning execution] so that no one will dare commit blasphemy again ever.” According to Wilson Chowdhry, chairman of the British Pakistani Christian Association, “These draconian [blasphemy] laws are being used as a tool for discrimination and forcible conversion every day and the world stays silent. This poor boy will now face a most daunting court case and will lose most of his life in prison; moreover, in the current climate a sentence could lead to his death via judicial or extrajudicial process.”

Ethiopia: A gang of Muslims with machetes violently hacked at a Christian, leaving “the 27-year-old man needing life-saving surgery,” says a report. A “doctor, believing he would die en route to a bigger hospital, operated on his wounds. Although he is still unwell, the surgery stabilised him enough to be taken elsewhere for more specialised treatment.” The Muslim gang that attacked him was reportedly angry at him for publicly evangelizing among Muslims. They first attacked the local church, creating damage to its wall and roof, before traveling to his home where the incident took place.

Iran: Four Muslim converts to Christianity, and accused of promoting it, were sentenced to ten years in prison. The four men were arrested in May during a series of raids on Christian homes by security service agents. The report notes that such harsh sentences are becoming the norm: “Whereas in recent years Christian converts involved in house church activities could expect to receive prison sentences of up to 2 years, sentences of 10 years or more in prison have been handed down in recent cases…. The four men were officially charged with ‘acting against national security,’ a catch-all charge often used by the Iranian government to punish different types of religious and political dissent. The government often uses it against converts instead of the charge of apostasy, according to freedom of religion advocates, in an attempt to avoid international scrutiny.”

Muslim Attacks on Christian Churches

Egypt: After nearly three months of deadly terrorist attacks—including suicide bombing on churches that left nearly 50 Christians dead, followed by the slaughter of nearly 30 Christians traveling to a monastery in the Sinai and ongoing threats and other attacks — many churches suspended their activities and temporarily shut down for most of July. According to a report, “The Evangelical, Coptic Orthodox, and Catholic churches agreed to halt services, conferences, and any church trips to protect their congregations.” Other churches, in Alexandria for instance, remained open, although “with stricter security, including police checks, private church security checks, and metal detectors.”

One open church in Alexandria was targeted by a man who stabbed the guard preventing his entry. According to the report, the man, a 24-year-old male graduate from law school, “attacked the 47-year-old guard with a knife on the neck after the latter questioned his reasons for going into Al-Qiddisain Church in Alexandria.” Video footage of the incident shows “a man wearing earphones with a bag trying to enter the church when he was called back by a guard who asked to check the bag. The man took out a knife and slashed the face of the guard, who recovered quickly to subdue his attacker with the help of others.”

Tanzania: Responding to ongoing and angry Muslim protests, a court ruled that the church building that a Christian congregation had been trying to build for eight years on the semi-autonomous island of Zanzibar must abandon the project. According to the report, “Hard-line Muslims outside Zanzibar City have been fighting construction of the Pentecostal Assemblies of God building since 2009, having demolished the partially built structure twice before then. They claim the party that sold the property to the church was not the rightful owner. Christians believe the court on the overwhelmingly Muslim island acted out of religious bias. A previous court ruling allowed construction to go forward.” The pastor, Amos Lukanula, said that although the congregation is “frustrated and weary … We cannot allow the Muslims to put up a mosque in place of the church.” The congregation first purchased the property in 2004; once they had erected a temporary church, local Muslims pulled it down. Another structure the congregation had spent three years building was again brought down by area Muslims in 2007. When, by 2009, Muslims could not raze the third partially built church—made of stone blocks not easily brought down—they filed a legal complaint prompting a court order to halt construction until the legal dispute could be resolved. The court case has dragged on for over eight years and costs the congregation approximately $100 month.

Iraq: Due to the significant reduction of the Christian population, eight more churches were closed in Baghdad. According to the report, “After the regional Catholic Church authority visited the churches, the Vatican decided that it was best to close the doors for good. While this makes logistical sense, it represents a symbolic defeat for the Church in the capital of Iraq.” “It’s important to recognize,” the report adds, “that ISIS is not solely responsible for this. Christians have faced various forms of persecution and discrimination from a wide variety of perpetrators throughout the past 15 years.”

Muslim Abuse and Rape of Christians

Pakistan: A Muslim man raped a 3-year-old Christian girl, wounding her permanently. According to the report, “One day, when Catherine Bibi [the girl’s mother] and her oldest son, Altaf Masih, 21, were at work and her 10-year-old son, Daud, was looking after his younger sister, a Muslim friend of Altaf, named Muhammed Abbas, came over. The man requested Daud to buy cigarettes for him from a nearby market. When Daud came back from a shop, Abbas kept him waiting outside the house and raped his sister. Abbas finally opened the door for Daud, lit a cigarette and left. When Daud went inside, he found his sister naked, covered in blood and screaming.” Although the rape took place months ago, Catherine, the girl’s mother “says she’s emotionally and financially exhausted as she continues to fight for justice for her daughter, who will never be able to bear children due to severe injuries.” But the mother is determined: “My daughter is innocent of any crime at such a young and vulnerable age she has been subjected to a most brutal and evil attack, from a man with no morals. (Even) if this evil rapist is jailed it will not remove the vile treatment my daughter suffered. I call on prayers from anyone moved by my daughter’s plight. Please pray that she is completely healed and can one day have children which is a natural process designed by God and a real blessing for women.” Police initially refused to investigate the rape until a local lawmaker exerted pressure on the authorities.

Another Christian woman “was beaten and gang-raped in front of her five children by a Muslim man seeking to avenge his family’s ‘honor,’ because the woman’s sister fell in love and fled with the man’s brother,” says a separate report. The Muslim brother and some companions went to the home of the Christian woman, Samrah Badal, demanding news on the fled couple. When the woman refused to speak, “she was stripped naked and dragged out on the streets, where she was [gang] raped in front of her five children.”

Sudan: The Khartoum government issued an order calling on all church schools to begin operating according to the Muslim work week, which treats Friday (mosque day) and Saturday as the weekend, and Sunday as the start of the work week. One report says this move is part of “an ongoing campaign to rid the country of Christianity.” In a letter sent to Christian schools, the Ministry of Education wrote, “In order not to affect the educational process and the ongoing plan, we ask you not to observe Sunday holiday” though Christian schools had been observing it for decades. One Sudanese Christian teacher said, “The government’s decision to abolish Sundays for Christian schools is discrimination against Christians in Sudan.” He is not alone, as the “move prompted widespread outrage and led many Christians in Sudan and around the world to view it as another means of harassment and discrimination against Sudanese Christians.”

Tanzania: Three Christians were arrested for cooking food in the kitchen of their residence during Ramadan. A Christian couple and a female friend were frying fish when police came, informing them that they had “breached the law by cooking food during Ramadan,” said a report. Police also “verbally abused them.” “Today you will know how to fast,” the police told them as they dragged them away. After the intervention of local church leaders, the three were released days later.

Eritrea: In the east African nation considered the tenth worst nation wherein to be Christian, partially because of “Islamic oppression,” 200 Christians—including young children and a baby who “could spend their childhood in a prison cell”—were arrested in a series of random house-to-house raids. According to the Rev. Dr Berhane Asmelash, “People used to be arrested for conducting unauthorised meetings, such as Bible studies or prayers. But this is new for us when they go from house to house. They are arresting people for their beliefs, not for their actions. This is getting worse. Many Christians are in hiding.” “These latest arrests,” continues the report, “have brought fear to the Christian community….. In 2002 Eritrea outlawed many Christian denominations and shut down Evangelical and Pentecostal churches. Christians who refused to renounce their faith were jailed indefinitely without trial. 173 long-term prisoners of faith remain behind bars in brutal conditions. They include many church leaders.”

Mali: According to one report: In July, “Three Christian missionaries … appeared in a video released by coalition of jihadist groups affiliated to Al-Qaeda urging their respective governments to ‘do what they can’ to negotiate their release.” The group, known as Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen—or the “Victory of Islam and Muslims” — said in the video that “No genuine negotiations have begun to rescue your children.” Six foreign hostages, “including three missionaries from Colombia, Switzerland and Australia, are shown begging the international community for help” in the video. One of the hostages is a nun, another an 82-year-old Australian surgeon, Ken Elliott, who said, “This video is to ask various governments, in particular the Australian government and Burkina government, to do what they can to help negotiate my release.” Addressing his family, he added: “I just want to say, again, I love you all and I appreciate all your prayers and all your cares. I look forward to one day being reunited.” The release of the video coincided with French president Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Mali. Macron said “he was pleased that one of his citizens was still alive after being kidnapped by the militant.” He added, “These people are nothing. They are terrorists, thugs and assassins. And we will put all of our energies into eradicating them.”

About this Series

While not all, or even most, Muslims are involved, persecution of Christians by Muslims is growing. The report posits that such Muslim persecution is not random but rather systematic, and takes place irrespective of language, ethnicity, or location.

Raymond Ibrahim is the author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians (published by Regnery with Gatestone Institute, April 2013).

Categories: Europe and Islamic terror, Islam and Christians, Islamic nations, Political correctness
Tags: Europe and Islamic terror, Islam and Christians, Islamic nations, Political correctness

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The Thought Police Strike Again

September 15, 2017

The Thought Police Strike Again, Gatestone Institute, Giulio Meotti, September 15, 2017

How can we pretend that freedom of expression in the West is protected — from fascism, Islamism, anything — when we restrict it in our universities?

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This politically correct nonsense highlights even further the infantilization of our culture — such as the demand for “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings”. It may look like a comedy, but its effect is deadly serious.

Groupthink is a debilitating force. in any civilization. It undermines one’s ability to resist the real enemies of democracy and freedom: it makes us blind to radical Islam and jihadi terrorism, and it gives the impression that our society is a joke.

Instead of being intellectually diverse, universities are trying their utmost to impose homogeneity of thoughts and ideas. So-called “right wing newspapers” are banned from certain universities. Recently, at the City University of London, the student union, devoid of irony, fascistically voted to ban some conservative tabloids in order to “oppose fascism”.

Headlines every day proclaim the new religion: political correctness, cultural vandalism and censorship — not from Islamic emirates such as Saudi Arabia, but in Western cities right here.

The Writers Union of Canada, for instance, recently apologized for a magazine editorial that defended the right of novelists to create characters from backgrounds other than their own.

Just think of that: a writer defending the right to use one’s imagination?! What an insult! At least, to “the new Stalinists” it is.

“In my opinion anyone, anywhere, should be encouraged to imagine other peoples, other cultures, other identities,” Hal Niedzviecki, who was the editor of the union’s magazine, Write, defended freedom in an editorial. The Union then announced that Niedzviecki had resigned.

Another journalist also fell victim to this new religion. Jonathan Kay also recently resigned as editor of the magazine The Walrus. Defending Niedzviecki’s right to use his imagination cost Kay his job.

Their unspeakable crime was, it appears, “cultural appropriation” — one of the new “groupthink” expressions that the theologian Paul Griffiths condemned as “illiberal and totalitarian“. Griffiths, too, had to resign from Duke University after criticizing his colleagues for a “diversity program” that “provides foundational training in understanding historical and institutional racism.”

Every revolution needs to master a new “language” to achieve uniformity of expression and thought. George Orwell, in 1984, called the replacement language “Newspeak”.

Cardiff Metropolitan University, one of the largest in Britain, compiled a list of 34 words that it “encouraged” teachers and students to stop using, and replaced them with “gender-neutral” terms. “Fireman” should be replaced by “firefighter”; “mankind” should be replaced by banned “humanity”, and so on. Princeton University also expunged the word “man” in its various uses, in favor of supposedly more “inclusive” expressions. City University of New York decided to ban “Mr.” and “Mrs.” California State University replaced commercial terms such as “businessman”, “mailman”, “manpower” and “salesman” to avoid that horrendous, forbidden word.

While at it, why not also purge Christianity’s religious language? Some of the most famous theological universities, such as Duke and Vanderbilt, invited professors and staff to use “inclusive” language even when they are referring to God, because the masculine pronouns are “a cornerstone of patriarchy”.

This politically correct nonsense highlights even further the infantilization of our culture — such as the demand for “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings”. It may look like comedy, but its effect is deadly serious. British philosopher Roger Scruton has said that a kind of “moral obesity” is crippling Western culture.

Groupthink is a debilitating force. in any civilization. It undermines one’s ability to resist the real enemies of democracy and freedom: it makes us blind to radical Islam and jihadi terrorism, and it gives the impression that our society is a joke.

That is why Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, whose novel 2084 depicted a dystopian state governed by religious law, said “literature and arts are not playing a big role in this struggle against barbarism”. Those writers are, instead, far too busy implementing political correctness.

Universities in Britain are now even holding workshops to “deal with right wing attitudes in the classroom”. Instead of being intellectually diverse, universities are trying their utmost to impose homogeneity of thoughts and ideas. So-called “right wing newspapers” are banned from certain universities. Recently, the at the City University of London, the student union, devoid of irony, fascistically voted to ban some conservative tabloids in order to “oppose fascism”.

Dozens of personalities, conservative and liberal alike, have been prevented from speaking on many U.S. campuses. This is just a short list: Milo Yiannopoulos, Janet Napolitano, George Will, Condoleezza Rice, Madeleine Albright, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Henry Kissinger, Christine Lagarde, Charles Murray and Jason Riley.

First, students asked to limit freedom of expression to a specific place on campus. Then they started issuing declarations about no rights to free speech. Finally, in a crescendo of hysteria, they ended up throwing firebombs. How can we pretend that freedom of expression in the West is protected — from fascism, Islamism, anything — when we restrict it in our universities?

When the “politically incorrect” commentator and writer Milo Yiannopoulos was due to speak at the University of California, Berkeley on February 1, 2017, a mob of 150 people proceeded to riot, smash and set fires, causing more than $100,000 of damage. (Image source: RT video screenshot)

A few weeks ago, the 2017 Whitney Biennal in New York opened with a protest in front of a painting by the American-born artist Dana Schutz. The picture depicted Emmett Till, a boy lynched by racists in Mississippi in 1955. More than 25 black artists signed an open letter, written by the artist Hannah Black, to the Whitney’s curators and staff, asking that the painting be removed from the Biennial, allegedly because “the painting uses black suffering for “profit and fun'”. Ms. Black also asked that the painting be “destroyed and not entered into any market or museum”.

That request not only aimed at censoring different ideas, but, like the Grand Inquisitor, of destroying the “wrong thought”. The new religion — featuring political correctness, cultural vandalism and censorship — is dismantling the West.

Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.

Categories: "Cultural appropriation", Academia and freedom of speech, Academia and the left, Freedom of thought, Group think, Political correctness
Tags: Academia and freedom of speech, Academia and the left, Cultural appropriation, Freedom of thought, Group think, Political correctness

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The Racist Attacks on America and Trump

August 25, 2017

The Racist Attacks on America and Trump, Front Page Magazine, David Horowitz, August 25, 2017

Let’s start by noticing the obvious. The biggest hate group in America – by a wide margin – is the anti-Trump chorus, which has advanced from calling him “unfit to be president” to accusing him (in the words of CNN’s Ana Navarro) of being “unfit to be human.” In between are malignant accusations that he is a “neo-Nazi,” a “white nationalist” and a “white supremacist” – all revelations about Trump’s character that somehow remained hidden during the thirty years he was a public figure and before he ran against Hillary Clinton. Nor is the hate confined to Trump alone but includes his aides and supporters. Congressman Jerrold Nadler and other House Democrats have even attacked Trump’s policy adviser Stephen Miller as a “white supremacist” for defending a merit-based immigration reform. The attacks from the anti-Trump left also include the charge that America itself is a “white supremacist” country.

In a nation which for eight years was headed by a black president, had two chief law enforcement officers who were black, has recently had two black secretaries of state and three black national security advisers, and has elected more than 10,000 black government officials; in a nation that has been governed for fifty years by statutes that outlaw discrimination by race and whose national culture is saturated with non-white heroes and icons – in such a nation, people who refer to America as “white supremacist” would normally be dismissed as an oddball fringe, members of a fraternity that includes people who think Elvis is still alive and on the moon. Unfortunately, we live in times that are not normal.

Recent events have turned out crowds in the tens of thousands denouncing “neo-Nazis” and “white supremacists” both real and imagined, who number in the hundreds, if that. Yet the outpouring of righteous rage in a veritable orgy of virtue signaling has extended across both ends of the political spectrum, as though Nazism hadn’t been defeated more than seventy years ago, or racial discrimination outlawed for sixty. The ranks of actual neo-Nazis and white supremacists are so minuscule that besides the universally despised David Duke and Richard Spencer there are no figures on this “alt-right” that even informed observers could actually name.

In contrast to the trivial representatives of organized Nazism, there are – to take one obvious example – tens of thousands of members of the American Communist Party, also a defeated totalitarian foe. Yet no one seems alarmed. There have been “Million Man” marches led by black racists Farrakhan and Sharpton, while “white nationalists,” and Klan members can’t attract a sufficient number of supporters to even constitute a “march.” Black Lives Matter is an overtly racist and violent group that is led by avowed communists and has allied itself with Hamas terrorists. It is an organization officially endorsed by the Democratic Party and lavishly funded by tens of millions of dollars contributed by Democratic donors like George Soros. But the self-congratulating denouncers of Nazism and white racism find nothing wrong with them.

On any rational assessment, “white supremacy” as a descriptor of American society or American institutions or a significant segment of the American right is loony toons paranoia. Yet on the political left it is now an article of faith, and also a convenient weapon for disposing political opponents. Its power as a weapon is actually a tribute to America’s success in institutionalizing the principles of diversity and tolerance. It is because America is a truly inclusive society that ~~makes~~ the mere accusation of intolerance is so effective.

Notwithstanding the marginal existence of actual Klansmen and “neo-Nazis” in American culture and institutions, the term “white supremacy” currently turns up 3.7 million references in a Google search – a tribute to its rampant mis-usage. Of these references, 1.2 million are linked specifically – and absurdly – to Donald Trump. The term “white nationalism” turns up 4.2 million references, of which 2.1 million are linked directly to the president. Only a slightly lower number – 1.8 million – link Trump to “Nazi.” The parity of the numbers is easily explained by the fact that in the lexicon of the left they are identical. As a leftwing smear site created by the Southern Poverty Law Center explains, “White nationalist groups espouse white supremacist or white separatist ideologies.”

The malicious charge that Trump and his supporters are white racists is the central meme of a concerted effort to overthrow the Trump presidency before it has run its course – or before it had even gotten started. The accusation is made despite the fact that Republicans who elected Trump also voted for Barack Obama, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Bobby Jindahl, and that Democrats – not Republicans – were the principal resistors to the Civil Rights Acts. Reality aside, just 12 days after Trump’s inauguration Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi was already denouncing Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, as a “white supremacist,” while Rep. Maxine Waters was revving up the call to impeach him with her colleagues not far behind. Six months later, the lead headline at Salon.com, was proclaiming, “White Supremacy Week at the White House.” Not to be outdone, The Week, whose commentators include the Atlantic’s David Frum, and Kerry adviser, Robert Shrum, ran a piece titled, “It’s White Nationalism Week at the White House.” Really.

Obviously the terms “white supremacy and “white nationalism” can’t actually mean what they say. If they did, one would have to conclude that half the country had simply lost its mind and morals. To make sense of the terms one has to understand them as expressions of an ideology that has emerged out of its university incubators to become a dogma of the Democratic Party and progressives generally. This radical perspective, known as “cultural Marxism,” divides society into a white majority that oppresses, and “people of color” who are oppressed, attributing all racial and ethnic disparities to “racism.”

As Wikipedia explains: “The term white supremacy is used in academic studies of racial power to denote a system of structural or societal racism which privileges white people over others, regardless of the presence or the absence of racial hatred.” In other words, actual racism – racist hate by individuals – is not the problem. If eighty percent of corporate executives are white, that is prima facie evidence of what the left calls “institutional racism,” even though there are no racists pulling strings to keep non-white people down. Racism is redefined as defending the invisible system – e.g., the system of standards – that allegedly perpetuates these disparities. But note the hypocrisy. If 95% of the multimillionaires in the National Basketball Association or the National Football League are black, no one regards these as anything but disparities based on merit.

The unexamined premise of the argument that regards white Americans as racists is that statistical disparities are all the result of oppression. But who is oppressed in America? There are an estimated 65 million refugees in the world today fleeing oppression, but not one of them is fleeing oppression in the United States. Why do Haitians and Mexicans risk life and limb to come to America? To be oppressed? They come because in America they have more rights, more privileges and more opportunities than they would in Mexico and Haiti, which have been governed by Hispanics and blacks for a hundred years and more.

The reality that the academic theory of faculty leftists tries futilely to deny is that America is the least racist most tolerant multi-ethnic, multi-racial society in the history of the world. America has outlawed racial supremacies of any kind. The only group oppressed in America are illegal immigrants who cannot defend themselves because they have already put themselves on the wrong side of the law. For everyone else, the law – the civil rights laws – are their protector.

In the end, however, all the spurious outrages over white supremacy and homegrown Nazism, and all the canards about “white nationalism” in the Trump White House are not really about Trump. What they are about is America. More particularly, they are about the left’s ongoing indictment of America for the sins of its past (sins by the way that are shared by every other nation both white and non-white).

To see how the leftist attack actually proceeds – how deeply embedded it is in the liberal mind – one has only to recall the notorious exchange between CNN’s anti-Trump correspondent, Jim Acosta, and Stephen Miller, the president’s chief advisor for policy, over immigration reform. The exchange was triggered by Acosta’s appalled response to Miller’s announcement of a proposed new immigration policy that would privilege English-speaking applicants for American citizenship. Requiring familiarity with English might seem a reasonable way to make assimilation of immigrants easier and to put more opportunity within their reach in a country in which it is the official language. But not to liberals like Acosta. Acosta objected: “This whole notion of … they have to learn English before they get to the United States. Are we just going to bring in people from Great Britain and Australia?”

Miller’s response was this: “Jim, actually, I have to honestly say, I am shocked at your statement that you think that only people from Great Britain and Australia would know English.” Miller’s shock was not hard to understand. According to Wikipedia: “In 2015, there were 54 sovereign states and 27 non-sovereign entities where English was an official language.” In addition, “many country subdivisions have declared English an official language at the local or regional level.” Among these English speaking countries are Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Botswana, Liberia, Belize, India, Fiji, Micronesia – a veritable rainbow of ethnicities and racial identities.

Behind Acosta’s clueless question lay the racial animus characteristic of the left’s attacks on Trump, his policies and supporters. This is the official CNN transcript: “ACOSTA (OFF-MIKE) Sounds like you’re trying to engineer the racial and ethnic flow of people into this country through this policy.” In other words a “flow” of whites; in other words the policy is “white supremacist,” racist. Miller’s response: “Jim, that is one of the most outrageous, insulting, ignorant, and foolish things you have ever said…. “The notion that you think that this is a racist bill is so wrong.” To even think the policy was racist, Acosta had to overlook the fact that non-white English speakers actually outnumber white English speakers globally. Yet the left immediately began charging Miller with being a “white supremacist.”

This embarrassing but revealing moment is what the anti-Trump movement comes down to: the racist accusation that white supremacists, backed by 63 million American voters, have seized control of the American government and need to be overthrown.

But this hateful movement is not really about Trump. It is about America. Beyond that it is about the left’s attack on the democratic societies of the West in general, and specifically their foundations in individual rights rather than group identities. This was evident in the reactions to the major foreign policy address Trump delivered in Poland on July 6. His speech was a full-throated and often eloquent defense of the West and its values, and of America’s role in defeating the Soviet Union and the global Communist empire. In a climactic passage, Trump delivered a paean to the values that had inspired the West’s resistance to the totalitarians left and right, to the values that created western civilization. These were the values – above all that of individual freedom – that the wars against Nazism and Communism had been fought to defend. What Trump said was this:

“We reward brilliance. We strive for excellence, and cherish inspiring works of art that honor God. We treasure the rule of law and protect the right to free speech and free expression. We empower women as pillars of our society and of our success. We put faith and family, not government and bureaucracy, at the center of our lives. And we debate everything. We challenge everything. We seek to know everything so that we can better know ourselves. And above all, we value the dignity of every human life, protect the rights of every person, and share the hope of every soul to live in freedom. That is who we are. Those are the priceless ties that bind us together as nations, as allies, and as a civilization.”

On finishing this tribute, Trump issued a call to the people of the West to rally again to the defense of these values in the face of the new totalitarian threats that confront us: “The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?”

Despite, and more likely because of its reaffirmation of American values, Trump’s speech was immediately attacked by the political left. The common theme of these attacks was once again the left’s race war against Trump and the country he leads. Slate.com, an online publication of the Washington Post ran with this headline: “The White Nationalist Roots of Donald Trump’s Warsaw Speech.” The Bernie Sanders’ left at Salon.comrepeated the accusation: “Trump’s Alt-right Poland Speech: Time to Call His White Nationalist Rhetoric What It Is.” The respected Atlantic Monthly followed with this: “The Racial and Religious Paranoia of Trump’s Warsaw Speech.” For the left, American patriotism is white nationalism.

The Atlantic article was written by Peter Beinart, and began this way: “In his speech in Poland on Thursday, Donald Trump referred 10 times to “the West” and five times to “our civilization.” His white nationalist supporters will understand exactly what he means. It’s important that other Americans do, too.”

The West, Beinart explained, is neither a “geographic term,” nor an ideological category. “The West is a racial and religious term. To be considered Western, a country must be largely Christian (preferably Protestant or Catholic) and largely white.” Whatever else one might think, this was certainly a perverse way of looking at Trump’s description of the West, or at the way the West has traditionally understood itself. Beinart’s attack displayed the racist animus that informs leftwing politics across the board these days, and that shapes its war against the White House and a Western civilization we have all celebrated until now.

The political left is relentless in its commitment to identity politics, which is a not so subtle form of racism. This animus is rooted in a racial and gender collectivism that is antagonistic to the fundamental American idea of individual rights applied universally and without regard to origins – to race, ethnicity or gender. The war to defend this idea is what created Trump’s candidacy and has shaped his political persona.

An American patriotism – which is precisely not about blood and soil, which is the antithesis of racism and collectivism – is what drives Trump and his presidency. If we are loyal to our country we will be loyal to each other; if we have patriotism in our hearts there will be no room for prejudice; we are black and brown and white but we all bleed patriot red. This is the mantra of Trump’s inaugural address; it was the mantra of his announcement of a new strategy to fight the terrorists in Afghanistan; and it is the mantra behind the call to “make America great again.” Patriotism – a specifically American patriotism – is the loyalty that unites us and makes us equal. It is this patriotism with which the political left is at war, and the reason they hate this president and are determined to destroy him.

Categories: "Anti-Fascists", "Hate groups", "Liberals", "White supremacists", Patriotism, Political correctness, Political left, Propaganda, Protesting Trump, Reality vs Narrative, Superiority complex, Trump agenda, Trump and "alt-right", Trump and bigotry, Trump and Nazis, Trump and racism, Trump and White supremacists, Trump on freedom and democracy, Trump's America, Trump's vile dictatorship
Tags: "Anti-Fascists", "Liberals", "White supremacists", Hate groups, Patriotism, Political correctness, Political left, Propaanda., Protesting Trump, Reality vs Narrative, Superiority complex, Trump agenda, Trump and "alt-riht", Trump and bigotry, Trump and Nazis, Trump and racism, Trump and White supremacists, Trump on freedom and democracy, Trump's America, Trump's vile dictatorship

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FGM vs Political Correctness — Which Will Prevail?

June 7, 2017

FGM vs Political Correctness — Which Will Prevail? Clarion Project, Paula Kweskin, June 7, 2017

This picture taken on February 10, 2013 shows a young Indonesian girl crying as doctors perform her circumcision in Bandung. Indonesia, home to the world’s biggest Muslim population, argues that this form of circumcision is largely symbolic, not harmful and should not be seen as mutilation. The United Nations thinks otherwise. In December it passed a resolution banning female genital mutilation (FGM), which extends to the circumcision practiced in Indonesia, home to the world’s biggest Muslim population. ADEK BERRY/AFP/Getty Images)

In February, federal investigators uncovered a Michigan-based network of doctors and others who practice female genital mutilation (FGM) on girls as young as six at medical clinics in the state. FGM is the cutting of a girl’s genitalia with the aim to “purify” her and repress her sexuality. All defendants in the case are members of the Dawoodi Bohra, a religious Muslim group. One of the girls who underwent the procedure was reportedly told that she was going on a “special girls’ trip” to “get the germs out.”

While the victim in this case may find justice in the courtroom, their lives and bodies have been irrevocably changed. Survivors of FGM whom I spoke to for my documentary film Honor Diaries tell of the physical and emotional pain that remains long after the abuse. Sexual intercourse and childbirth become horribly painful and traumatic experiences. Women may have chronic urinary tract infections and are often plagued with depression and other invisible scars.

The World Health Organization estimates at least 200 million women today live with the consequences of FGM. In the United States, 507,000 women are at risk or have undergone the procedure. In the U.S., there is a federal statute against the practice and it is criminalized in several states. However, these laws have not prevented families from mutilating their girls or traveling overseas to undergo the process. All that might change.

The arrest and prosecution of the Michigan perpetrators is a groundbreaking moment for women’s rights activists in the United States and globally. I applaud the federal investigators and prosecutors who took a stand against gender-based violence. It is the first national prosecution of an FGM case and many important questions will be raised during the course of the investigation and trial.

Already, defendants attempted (and failed) to receive bond by using their religious freedom as a defense. Defendants asserted the practice should not be classified as FGM, but rather as a religious practice. U.S. Magistrate Elizabeth Stafford denied bond stating that religion would not be used “as a shield” in the case. However, it is likely that as the case continues, religious freedom will be argued again.

I am concerned for the maelstrom which may ensue when the case goes to trial. At that moment, will women’s rights be asserted or will they be diluted in favor of political correctness? In the past, I’ve witnessed the disintegration of women’s rights in favor of political correctness: my film Honor Diaries was censored (in Michigan, actually) when certain groups deemed it “Islamophobic” for bringing up FGM, forced marriage and honor killings. Instead of focusing on the inherent misogyny of these practices, my film was vilified for having difficult conversations about cultural and religious practices.

The first federal FGM case will raise challenging questions. There is a simple metric we can use to evaluate competing claims: culture is no excuse for abuse. No religion or culture should be the impetus for hurting, mutilating or abusing anyone, and our children should be protected. For too long, FGM has been practiced under the radar in the United States. The arrest and prosecution of these individuals is a step in the right direction, but the true test will come at trial: will we allow our political correctness to coax us into complacency? Or will we use this moment to assert our loftiest convictions: that all people are equal and should be treated as such, regardless of their religion and culture? My hope for all women and girls is that we will stand for equality.

Categories: Female genital mutilation in U.S., Islam and girls, Political correctness
Tags: Female genital mutilation in U.S., Islam and girls, Political correctness

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Fred Fleitz: ‘We May Have Generations of Radical Islamists in the U.K. Unless the British Government Wakes Up’

June 5, 2017

Fred Fleitz: ‘We May Have Generations of Radical Islamists in the U.K. Unless the British Government Wakes Up’, Breitbart, John Hayward, June 5, 2017

ODD ANDERSEN/AFP/Getty

“I think 9/11 was a wake-up call. You could just see how Republicans and Democrats in Washington were working together against the threat. Now we’re challenged by political correctness, and people who are in denial, and don’t want to the let the government take the steps it has to take to go after radical Islam,” Fleitz reflected.

“Whenever there’s a radical Islamic terrorist attack, we get these lectures about Islamophobia from our leaders, leaders in the U.K. I think that is really hobbling the ability of our government to go after this threat, and that’s unfortunate. I hope what happened in London will be a wake-up call, but I’m worried in a few weeks we’ll be lectured about Islamophobia again,” he said.

***************************

Senior Vice President for Policy and Programs Fred Fleitz of the Center for Security Policy joined SiriusXM host Joel Pollak on Monday’s Breitbart News Daily to talk about the London Bridge terror attack.

Pollak began by asking if the London Bridge attack would finally provide the wake-up call needed for those who underestimate or downplay the dangers of radical Islamic terrorism.

“A lot of people who were in denial almost say the right thing after these events. They sort of can’t help themselves,” Fleitz replied.

“But what really concerns me is that yes, it’s right we have to improve security – we need better outreach, we need better intelligence – but there’s something they’re not talking about in the U.K. that really needs to be focused on: the role that the failure to assimilate British Muslims has created the situation,” he said. “There are communities where British Muslims are deliberately not assimilating, are being taught to hate British society, and this is incubating radicalism. There’s actually a parallel system of sharia law courts in the U.K. that operate.”

“We may have generations of radical Islamists in the U.K., until the British government wakes up and stops the situation,” he warned.

Pollak pointed out that the United States has unassimilated religious communities with their own internal systems of government that live peaceably alongside their neighbors, such as the Amish and Jewish communities in upstate New York.

“It’s certainly true there are some communities in the United States that have not assimilated,” Fleitz agreed. “I’m not concerned about Amish or Jewish communities, but I will tell you that there are enclaves of Muslim communities in Michigan and Minnesota that concern me. We know that in Minnesota there’s a rising rate of measles because the community has not assimilated into the rest of the community, and is not vaccinating their children. This is wrong. This is a big problem.”

“The problem with these Muslim communities is that it is making them susceptible to this radical worldview that wants to destroy modern society, create a global caliphate, and impose sharia law on everyone on Earth,” Fleitz contended. “These other communities aren’t trying to do that. They’re peaceful religious communities.”

“Also, when we have immigrants coming to a country from another country, I think they need to learn the practices and laws of the country where they’re coming to, the country that is accepting them and serving as a refuge for them. I think when people come to their new home country, they should understand and learn about the laws of this new country. That’s not happening in the U.K.,” he said.

Pollak offered the converse observation that some of the worst terrorist murderers, such as the San Bernardino jihadis, appear to be fairly well-assimilated.

“We can have homegrown radical Islamist terrorists – and I don’t really think they’re homegrown, I think they’re inspired or directed by foreign Islamist terrorist organizations – but it’s this ideology of hate that either is being communicated to them over the Internet, or is being passed on to members of separated communities in the U.K. It’s the ideology we have to confront, and I think this problem is worse in these separate communities,” Fleitz said.

Fleitz argued that measures to hinder the ability of extremists to recruit and coordinate with the Internet should be explored, with due regard for civil liberties, but he is more concerned about “radical clerics and radical mosques who are promoting this type of hate and ideology firsthand.”

“I also want to stop these ISIS videos that we know homegrown radical Islamist terrorists are taking in, and it’s playing a role in radicalizing them,” he added.

“I think 9/11 was a wake-up call. You could just see how Republicans and Democrats in Washington were working together against the threat. Now we’re challenged by political correctness, and people who are in denial, and don’t want to the let the government take the steps it has to take to go after radical Islam,” Fleitz reflected.

“Whenever there’s a radical Islamic terrorist attack, we get these lectures about Islamophobia from our leaders, leaders in the U.K. I think that is really hobbling the ability of our government to go after this threat, and that’s unfortunate. I hope what happened in London will be a wake-up call, but I’m worried in a few weeks we’ll be lectured about Islamophobia again,” he said.

“Anyone who raises concerns about radical Islam seems to be tarred and feathered as an Islamophobe in this country. I’ll let the people who peddle this term give a better explanation, but that’s my experience,” he replied when Pollak asked for a precise definition of “Islamophobia.”

Categories: Formerly Great Britain, Islamic refugees, Islamic terrorism, Islamists in America, Islamists in Britain, Islamophobia, Political correctness
Tags: Formerly Great Britain, Islamic refugees, Islamic terrorism, Islamists in America, Islamists in Britain, Islamophobia, Political correctness

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Defending Our Police Officers

March 25, 2017

Defending Our Police Officers, PJ Media, David Solway, March 24, 2017

Police officers leave flowers on Westminster Bridge Aftermath of terror attack outside parliament, London, UK – 24 Mar 2017 (Rex Features via AP Images)

When the fire alarm was pulled by a cohort of rowdy student demonstrators prior to my wife’s anti-feminist talk at the University of Toronto in March 2013, she was hustled for her protection into a nearby patrol car. I appreciated the sympathetic police officer who stood guard beside me at the car door. When I muttered that I would destroy anyone who laid a finger on Janice, he replied: “I’m with you, bro.”

I recall, too, an event at St. Paul University in Ottawa where a masked rabble, calling itself the Revolutionary Student Movement — Marxists in the making — disrupted a talk by journalist and author Cathy Young. When I suggested to the police officers present that the paddy wagon should be called in and the protestors arrested, the officers were plainly uncomfortable, one of whom confessed that they had no authority to do so. A good man, he shrugged his shoulders and gave me a rueful look. I later met one of this honorable cadre of officers at a conservative conference, who told me he often felt ashamed of his superiors and resented some of the orders he was compelled to follow.

Of course, there were, and are, bad apples among ordinary cops, but I have always respected the orchard. Indeed, some of my best students were to be found in the Police Tech classes I regularly taught. Their interests were not strictly academic or distinctively intellectual, but they were diligent, reliable and unfailingly courteous — in this regard, they formed an ideal body of students and citizens who took their responsibilities seriously. Regrettably, one cannot say the same for the general run of their compromised and politically correct superiors, who will often order their subordinates to “stand down” during protests, street demonstrations and riots.

Clearly, it is in the leadership where the general rot sets in, that is, where career and perquisites tend to take precedence over duty and conscience. We have seen many instances of reprehensible conduct on the part of higher authority, of which the most outrageous in Canada was the Caledonia scandal in which the police, under orders from former OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino, allowed “First Nations” vandals to rampage for years over a land dispute — giving them “space to destroy,” as in the Baltimore riots. Authorities like LAPD Police Chief Charlie Beck or Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy preventing police from carrying out their prescribed duties in enforcing immigration orders, or Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker announcing he will defy Trump’s cut in Planned Parenthood funding also spring immediately to mind. The roster of civic and political disreputables doesn’t end there.

While it is heartening to see President Trump offer his respect and support for the nation’s police officers who carry out their lawful mandate, even when it goes against the individual’s grain, it is equally distressing to note the lawless disobedience of many in the top echelons who refuse to accept his presidential orders. In the law enforcement community, this is the point at which the police unions, where they exist, should step in to enable their members to perform both their lawful and morally legitimate duties, whether by wielding the strike option or work-to-rule policy. Canadian policemen are on the whole better off than their American colleagues, but they too are frequently countermanded by the police bureaucracy and forced to act against their moral judgement or are cruelly harassed on the flimsiest of grounds. In such instances officers may have recourse to the courts, though such an expedient may be hazardous to their employment prospects and service record.

But not always. In a case that lasted for 12 years, a certain Sgt. Peter Merrifield of the fabled Mounties has just won a major decision against his superintendent, who persecuted him mercilessly for running for a Conservative Party nomination. The RCMP, reports the National Post, “has been dogged for years by accusations of a toxic internal culture rife with bullying and harassment.” One can readily detect how senior officials, generally of a left-liberal stamp, are influenced by political considerations, to the detriment of their subalterns. Merrifield is now advocating for RCMP unionization.

Obviously, in the present ideological milieu, it’s not good for one’s reputation or bank balance to praise or come to the defense of rank-and-file policemen, as I can attest from personal experience. For example, an article I wrote, inter alia defending policemen and ordinary citizens who found themselves under attack by thugs like Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin, appeared in one of Canada’s literary journals. It was very quickly scrubbed and de-archived. The editor wrote a blogpology in which I was, in effect, branded as a systemic racist, and my métier as a published author in this country soon crashed and burned.

Policemen Darren Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo, as well as neighborhood-watch civilian George Zimmerman, whom I had in mind in the offending article, were all eventually vindicated, but progressivist sympathy is almost instinctively extended, often on racial grounds, to criminal perpetrators. As Heather Mac Donald writes in City Journal, “On the left, it is only acceptable to speak about the loss of a black life if a police officer is responsible. But police shootings, overwhelmingly triggered by violently resisting suspects, cause a minute fraction of black homicide deaths.” To imply as I did that Wilson, Pantaleo and Zimmerman had reason and justice on their side leads, in our left-oriented, “social justice” climate of identity politics, to social and professional ostracism — my case is by no means unique — and far worse to on-and-off duty policemen. According to reports, 64 police officers were shot and ambushed in the U.S. in 2016 in a veritable war on cops.

Ordinary policemen, who daily put their lives on the line to ensure public security, are getting a raw deal. Often handcuffed by their politically appointed superiors and the object of much public odium and media calumny, they run the double threat of violence and misprision. “Our officers, deputies and troopers believe the political leadership of this country abandoned them,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions at the National Association of Attorneys General Annual Winter Meeting; “Their morale has suffered.”

I think back to my Police Tech students and wonder about the life they have chosen for themselves. Canada is a more temperate country than the U.S., but they run real risks and receive little in the way of gratitude or respect for a service most of us are not willing to perform.

“I’m with you, bro,” as the officer standing beside me said, protecting my wife from possible assault. It’s time we returned the favor.

Categories: Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, Law enforcement, Lawlessness, Political correctness, Politicization, Racism
Tags: Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, Law enforcement, Lawlessness, Political correctness, Politicization, Racism

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Man who interrogated 9/11 mastermind says terrorists use political correctness to ‘spread their jihadi message’

December 22, 2016

Man who interrogated 9/11 mastermind says terrorists use political correctness to ‘spread their jihadi message’, Fox News, December 22, 2016

(Video at the link — DM)

One of the men who interrogated 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad told Fox News’ “The Kelly File” Wednesday that political correctness “started that chain” that led to Monday night’s truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market.

“[It] was political correctness and their unwillingness to get this person out of their country who had no business being there because he didn’t have the right paperwork to prove who he was,” said Dr. James Mitchell, referring to Anis Amri.

German authorities Wednesday named Amri as the suspect in the attack, which killed 12 people and injured 48 others, touching off a continent-wide manhunt.

Mitchell said that he and Mohammed, commonly known as KSM, had discussed the damaging potential of smaller, “lone-wolf”-style attacks more than a decade ago. Mitchell noted that Mohammed had been particularly struck by the terror caused by the 2002 D.C. sniper attacks.

“For him, what surprised him was how much paralysis it caused given how few deaths were involved, few from his perspective,” Mitchell told host Sandra Smith. “And what he said to me was our civil liberties and our openness and our willingness to be responsive to other peoples’ cultures … were weaknesses and flaws that his God, Allah, had put into the American culture so that we could be defeated.”

Mitchell added that Mohammed believed that the easiest way to win what he called “the long battle to take over the world with Sharia law” was through “through immigration and by outbreeding non-Muslims.”

“He said that like-minded jihadi brothers would immigrate to Western democracies and to the United States, they would wrap themselves in our civil liberties for protection,” Mitchell said, “they would support themselves in our welfare systems while they spread their jihadi message, and then, when the time was right, they would rise up and attack.”

In response to the terror threat, Mitchell called for the U.S. to restrict immigration from countries that promote terrorism, adopting President-elect Donald Trump’s proposal from the recent election campaign.

“I hope there’s gonna be change,” Mitchell said of Trump’s election, “because here’s the way political correctness works for a guy like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: It allows them to operate in our midst without being challenged.

Categories: Anis Amri, Christmas market attack, Political correctness
Tags: Anis Amri, Christmas market attack, Political correctness

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Cartoons and Video of the Day

December 10, 2016

H/t Conservative Tree House

obama-yapping-blah-blah-blah-speech-sad-hill-news2

H/t Vermont Loon Watch

democrat-plan

H/t Vermont Loon Watch

fraudsters

pc-agabn

facst-dont-matter

govt-center

clear

taiwan-hypocrisy

Categories: "Fake news", Democrats, Donald Trump, Humor, Israel, Obama, Political correctness
Tags: Democrats, Donald Trump, Humor, Israel, Obama, Political correctness

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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.

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The 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
Tags: 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

Comments: 2 Comments

Gulag, Western Style

November 23, 2016

Gulag, Western Style, PJ Media, David Solway, November 22, 2016

newspeak

In the last analysis, this system of subjugation looks to be even more effective than the cruder techniques of its tyrannical counterparts. In the absence of public awareness and concerted pushback, we will have sold our birthright for a mess of political potage.

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There are various ways of quashing social and political dissent, some more effective than others. The “Soviet method” practiced in stringently repressive regimes—torture, imprisonment, the ever-expanding Gulag, summary execution—works extremely well in the shorter historical timeframe, until a people rise up in revolt or such demonic societies collapse from their own internal contradictions. Of course, the truly Stygian regimes, closed to the world, indifferent to economic pressures, and under the heavy boot of unbroken military control, such as North Korea, may persist indefinitely or until defeated in war. But generally speaking, the tried-and-true methods of political oppression are sufficient to the task of keeping a population in a state of enslavement for a prolonged historical period.

In the sphere of the liberal West, however, there are other means of subjection to the will of increasingly centralized governments. Because they tend to function gradually and under the radar, these tactics are enormously efficient in their deadening effects, going unrecognized until it is often too late to mount significant resistance. They operate through a process of curricular distortions, social pressure and incremental legislation targeting speech habits, facets of normal behavior, assumptions of what counts as morally legitimate, and financial and job security.

A useful technique for anaesthetizing the individual citizen and rendering him compliant is the erasure of authentic historical knowledge. We’ve remarked the success of this approach in the U.S. with the “history from below” or “people’s history” movement, associated with Howard Zinn, and the foregrounding of a bowdlerized version of Islamic history in American schools. Canada is no different. Eric McGeer, author of Words of Valediction and Remembrance: Canadian Epitaphs of the Second World War, writes: “In my last years of high school teaching I was increasingly infuriated and disgusted at the portrayal of Canada in the history textbooks assigned for use in our courses. There was no sense of gratitude in the textbooks, no empathy with the people of the past or an attempt to see them in their own terms, no sense of the effort people made to create one of the few truly liveable societies on earth. You would have thought that this country was nothing more than a racist, bigoted, this or that-phobic hotbed. My first lesson involved taking the book and dropping it into the waste paper basket and advising the students to do the same.” (personal communication). The study of history, McGeer concludes, is nothing now but a progressive morality tale and a mechanism of social engineering. Sounds a lot like Title IX. Pride in one’s nation, its accomplishments and sacrifices, is contra-indicated. There is more than one way of burning the flag.

The center-right consensus that has characterized Western nations has been under attack for some considerable time as nation after nation in the once liberal West gravitates progressively leftward. Robert Conquest’s Second of his Three Laws of Politics states that “any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.” The consequence of Conquest’s Law is, inevitably, what Robert Michels in Political Parties called “The Iron Law of Oligarchy,” which formulates how democratic institutions tend to succumb to the rule of an elite—in our day, a progressivist camarilla that controls government policy and media outlets, and harnesses the energies of dissenting associations and cabals. In many countries, the democratic process has become or is on the road to becoming a mere formality.

The oligarchic agenda can be detected in the disastrous nationalization of the health care system; the decadence of an academy which indoctrinates rather than educates; the rise of destructive feminism and the feminization of the culture; the transgendering of everyday life—in Canada, for example, Bill C-16 has been tabled, making “gender expression” a prohibited ground of discrimination and potentially mandating non-binary pronouns such as zhi or hir, as is already the case in New York City where astronomical fines are levied for contravention; the special status ascribed to the incursions of anti-democratic Islam; the “abolition of the family,” as Marx and Engels urged in The Communist Manifesto; and the regulatory strangling of the free market economy and the conjoint attrition of the middle class. Additionally, the leftist project is materially facilitated by the growing prevalence of kangaroo courts run by committed activists of every conceivable stripe and in which no provision whatsoever is made to assist those too often falsely accused of discrimination or being in violation of some obscure code or policy of sanctioned conduct. The judgments handed down against those who have offended the sensibilities of favored identity groups will often involve harshly punitive forms of retribution that may cost a defendant his employment and his livelihood.

A Romanian friend who suffered through Nicolae Ceaușescu’s dictatorship in his home country tells me that in many ways the situation in the “freedom loving” West is actually worse. In Romania, as in the Soviet Union and the rest of the Eastern Bloc, most people knew that the regime was founded on lies and that the media were corrupt, time-serving institutions. Here, on the contrary, people tend to believe that the government is relatively, if not entirely, trustworthy, that the judiciary is impartial, and that the media actually report the news. Citizens are therefore susceptible to mission creep and are piecemeal deceived into a condition of indenture to socialist governance, an activist judiciary, a disinformative, hireling press corps, and left-wing institutions. People will vote massively for the Liberal Party in Canada and the Democrats in the U.S., not realizing they are voting themselves into bondage, penury and stagnation. The process operates insensibly and takes longer to embed itself into the cultural mainstream, but the result is alarmingly effective and durable. My friend has never read F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom or George Orwell’s 1984, but his layman’s insights and practical experience bear out Hayek’s scholarly analysis and Orwell’s dire warnings.

A totalitarian regime will control its citizens through propaganda, censorship, and outright violence, modes of oppression that are at least publicly demonstrable, evident to most. But knowing that the enchainment of the spirit is ultimately more reliable than the enchainment of the flesh, a democratic polity veering towards oligarchy will focus on propaganda and censorship as well, but in a far more subtle form. It will function mainly through public shaming rituals, social ostracism, rigid speech codes, Orwellian disinformation, and legal or quasi-legal assault. It does not need to depend on physical violence.

Fear of social rejection, the lure of groupthink, the pestilence of political correctness controlling what one may say and think, public apathy, historical ignorance, and especially the Damoclean sword of selective hiring, job dismissal, and financial reprisal go a long way to subdue a people to the will of its masters and consign them to a Gulag that may be less observable a such, but one that is nonetheless socially and economically crippling to individuals, families and businesses.

In the last analysis, this system of subjugation looks to be even more effective than the cruder techniques of its tyrannical counterparts. In the absence of public awareness and concerted pushback, we will have sold our birthright for a mess of political potage.

Categories: Academia, Censorship, Control of the people, Democracy, Dissent, Freedom, Gulags, Media, Multiculturalism, Political correctness, Serfdom, social media
Tags: Academia, Censorship, Control of the people, Democracy, Dissent, Freedom, Gulags, Media, Multiculturalism, Political correctness, Serfdom, social media

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