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America 911, American Liberty, anti-Semitism, BBC, Beheading video, Christianity, Counter-Jihad, Cultural Marxism, Decapitation, Defend the modern world, Facebook, Google Videos, Graphic violence, Iraq, Islamophobia, Kenneth Bigley, Multiculturalism, No to Turkey in the EU, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Tony Blair
This week, Facebook and British Prime Minister David Cameron have been facing off over the online sharing of decapitation videos. Although it initially cited freedom of speech and the right to document reality, the Social-Networking giant has since relented and many such videos have now been removed.
I have never watched a beheading video. My curiosity in this regard is tightly restrained by my squeamishness. There is also (I imagine) a moral discomfort in watching a man perish in this way from the comfort of a swing-chair.
The closest I’ve ever come to breaching this self-prohibition was in my freshman year at University. I was drunk one evening and (for no sensible reason) typed the words ‘Eugene Armstrong’ into Google Videos. With a click, the search returned about twenty duplicates of the same upload, each with the same thumbnail image (Mr Armstrong kneeled and bound, his face staring down the barrel of a fixed camera. Five heartless goons standing behind him). At this point, I snapped the laptop shut and went to bed. Call me cowardly, but I don’t want that kind of process imprinted on my psyche.
Although decapitation might not be (strictly-speaking) the ‘worst’ way to die, there is surely nothing more gruesome in appearance. Symbolically and actually, it is the greatest indignity to (and violation of) the body one can imagine.
In the years following the invasion of Iraq, people in the West quickly got used to the same nightmarish sequence. First, a Western aid worker went missing; then a video of the captive (clad in Guantanomo orange) reading a statement was released; then either Tony Blair or George Bush said in a press conferance “We don’t negotiate with terrorists…” – and then finally (a few days later ) another video….
Kenneth (Ken) Bigley was perhaps the most famous case of this kind in Britain. A Liverpudlian contract worker (and loving father), Bigley was controversially shown on the Six O’ Clock news pleading tearfully for Tony Blair to intervene and satisfy the demands of his captors. No such help came of course, and a final, gruesome tape was inevitably put out a few days later. A New York Times reporter describes its contents thus –
“Mr. Bigley pleads for his life, saying, ‘I’m a simple man, I want to live, I want my government’s help,’…. One of the masked men then reads a statement in Arabic accusing Mr. Blair of failing to free female prisoners before pulling out a large knife and cutting off Mr. Bigley’s head. The killer then holds the bloody head up in front of the camera.”
If the recourse of our enemies to the mutilation of civilians says anything at all, it is this: That they inhabit a completely alien moral universe. It is one we’d do well to keep alien too.
We demean ourselves by consuming the record of these crimes. It’s better to reflect on them and what they mean.
D,LDN.
Defend the Modern World 
I agree – there is no need to watch these videos and it would be disturbing (for well-adjusted people) to do so. It’s enough to know what these people are doing and what they represent: as you say, a morally alien universe.
Sadly, as you know, it’s a universe sanctioned by the Qur’an. I was just reading it directly at random (rather than through one of the many links to its unsavoury parts) and indeed there is hatred yet again – try this for size: http://quran.com/72
The only possible counterargument to our position regarding the videos, I would think, is that our people are going to have to “toughen up” and get used to such sights, because of what might come in the future. I don’t find that point entirely persuasive though – not at this point, at any rate.
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Yes, a lot of people say that it toughens the mind or the resolve to watch those things, but like you, I find the idea unappealing. There are often photos on other blogs that I see by accident (of executions, stonings etc..). Generally, I find shock tactics are overrated.
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Dear D,
I have been reading your excellent blog posts and understand your feelings about the Islamization of Europe and your feelings about Muslims. I believe it is ridiculous for anyone to say that they are opposed to Islam — not Muslims. After all, Islam is just a set of ideas and beliefs. If there is no one to act them out or follow them, then it poses no harm. Muslims on the other hand are people and not only are capable of committing these crimes — they ARE committing them. You know this and I have to assume most of Europe knows this too. So tell me, honestly, if you (meaning Europeans as a group) are so aware of the dangers of Islam an Muslims and Arabs, and you so wish something would be done to stop it, why are you (Europeans in general) so opposed to the very existence of Israel – a country which like your countries can absolutely prove its historical right to that land and its history on that land going back thousands of years prior to Islam? And why do you think that if Israel were to be defeated and taken over by violent Muslims, you Europeans would be safer than you are right now?
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I don’t believe Europe would be safer if Israel was ever defeated. Israel is an important part of our collective security in the West.
There is of course anti-Semitism in Europe, but it’s far from universal. Much of it derives indirectly from anti-Americanism. Continental Europeans look down on Americans intellectually, and see Jews as allies of cultural Americanisation (globalization). As the Islamisation of parts of Europe increases (with all the social problems this will impose) I expect Europeans to become more sympathetic to Israel’s situation.
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