Some Words Against “Abortion”

Tags

Abortion, politics, Pro-Choice, Pro-Life, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, supreme court, trump

I don’t like the term ‘abortion’. Given the nature of what it refers to, I find the word insufficiently reverential, serious, dramatic.

Alas, alternatives are hard to come by. “Pregnancy termination” bases itself on pro-choice logic by making the mere fact of pregnancy, the symptomatic experience of the mother, the sole consideration, and not the developing life that creates our emotion and dissent. Abbreviations like ‘termination’ are also worthless; like ‘abortion’ they make something hotly unpleasant appear coldly practical, or even worse, lukewarmly everyday.

Abortion should not be called simple ‘murder’, either, even though it is, in practice, a kind of murder – the robbing of a living being of its future and potential, usually for no justifiable reason. However accurate, the word is regarded in this context as hyperbolic and manipulative; and we must be careful of using terms which allow for the cartoonification of a very serious argument.

So what to call it then? I really don’t know, and it is worthwhile reflecting on why.

We struggle to name a procedure like this, to integrate it into language to everyone’s satisfaction, primarily because the practice is so thoroughly unusual; a surreal cooperation of barbarism and modernity, riddled with all the contradictions that entails – messy but hygienic; brutal but honed to an art-form; horrific but anaesthetisingly common.

Still, we will call it here ‘abortion’, as technical and emotionless as that term is, for that is what most people know it by.

With the passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Saturday evening, America’s abortion debate, overshadowed in recent years by the extravaganza of race politics, is set for a dramatic revival. This is no bad thing, for America, for children – and also for Donald Trump, who stands to benefit from it significantly, I believe, provided he stands by his guns.

Trump’s performance over the last four years has left a lot to be desired, at least in this Ausländer’s irrelevant opinion; but on abortion, perhaps more than anything else, the president has been admirably solid, even coherent. The so-called “heartbeat bill” which prompted widespread un-righteous panic and handsome business for Handmaid’s Tale costume manufacturers, was a bold gesture in favour of the unborn, quite unlike any proposal in recent times (a period, don’t forget, that includes the allegedly ‘theocratic’ or Christian Nationalist regime of George W. Bush). The bill proposed – and still proposes – to contract the window in which an abortion can be performed, making it unlawful beyond the moment a developing child shows a pulse. (Though this precise point was chosen for symbolic reasons, it is a powerful and appropriate point at which to grant human rights.)

My late father, an Anglican rector, was rarely positive about Donald Trump, being embarrassed by the president’s sleaze, the accusations of past infidelities, involvement with a porn star, repeated marriages, and so forth. But I recall him praising the then Republican nominee for arguing powerfully against late-term abortions, so important was this principle to him and his interpretation of Christianity. I do not echo him now out of filial loyalty. My pro-life instincts are the result of private reflection, as well as the amazing weakness of the pro-‘choice’ argument.

The reader will know what I mean. Whenever the Roe v. Wade ruling is up for debate in the United States, or when, more rarely, the issue makes an appearance in British and European politics, a section of the left mobilises to deploy some of the worst arguments that can possibly be thought of.

“No uterus,” begins a popular meme pulled from the sitcom Friends, “no opinion!”

“Keep government out of my vagina!” screeches another.

“My body, my choice!”

And so on.

None of them can withstand even the slightest interrogative pressure, and are typically shared in the cause of mere female self-interest, rootless ideological conformity, or else male sexual strategy (“What a terrific point, m’lady. Those conservatives, unlike myself, are pathetic virgins”).

Of the cited examples, undoubtedly the most popular is the slogan “My body, my choice”; a petulant tantrum that adorns t-shirts, mugs and handbags across the United States. Very briefly, the problem with this phrase is that hardly anyone in the pro-life movement cares what a woman does with her body, as long as there isn’t another body to consider inside of it. When that second factor is absent, we care little if she bakes her temple of flesh into a birthday cake or bends it into a party balloon. 

When the talking-points mentioned fail, as they are sure to fail, defenders of abortion then resort to a tried-and-tested false dichotomy: abortion is a contest between religion and secularism. 

This works well enough in America, where advocates of faith and atheism are happy to make sport of any cause. But this is unfortunate, and destructive to the spirit of the debate as it exists separately from them. The author is not religious, and nor are the thousands if not millions of people who oppose abortion on purely moral grounds. Yes, the vastest horde of the pro-life movement still takes as its symbol the Cross of Jesus. But that says nothing of whether the practice can be justified under any other symbol or under none at all. 

In the opinion of this author, abortion, as we must describe the ghastly procedure, has only two proper indications. When a woman becomes pregnant through rape, a termination requires no other justification and must remain legal and safe. Secondly, when the health of the mother is gravely at risk, it is rightfully her choice whether she risks it further. 

But outside of these circumstances, I see no excuse for it; at least no morally satisfying excuse.

Good luck to whoever is nominated to take up this noble struggle. It is important beyond itself.

David

Advertisement

Aristocrats and Peasants: The War Between the Genders

Tags

aristocracy, balance of power, female privilege, Feminism, French Revolution, gender

The slogan “The future is female” probably isn’t supposed to be embittering or chauvinistic. A pep talk in miniature, the sentiment is most often used to motivate young girls at nobody’s particular expense. All can use it in this way. The words emblazon shirts for boys as well as girls, men as well as women. They are, like ‘black lives matter’, open to amazing flexibility of meaning if challenged, which they are only rarely.

But now, with all that is happening and all that has happened, the slogan is increasingly taken as a taunt, a trumpet-blast of conquest, backed not only by dreamy aspiration, but cold, hard fact.

It is considerably better, I am quite sure, to be a woman than a man these days; certainly in the West, but perhaps even elsewhere, for the same dynamics and the same model generally apply.

I am surprised to have come to this conclusion. For much of my adolescence the dogma of female disadvantage seemed fairly watertight; women are physically weaker,  after all, which we must remember is a profound handicap, and so all the claims of feminism were made correct in that light; even if women didn’t obviously seem to be a class of victims, I knew they could become one at short notice, whenever the male temper changed. But that I now recognise as a major fallacy.

It is true that men ultimately have a veto on human destiny. If tomorrow we collectively decide to reimpose a patriarchy, nothing can possibly prevent us. The ‘kick-ass woman’ able to defeat men at their own game is a corporate fancy designed to sell pink running shoes. Men are stronger, more dynamic, and so on.

Nonetheless, this says nothing about quality of life or immediate power. It is true only theoretically; true in the same way the working classes can seize the means of production. True but unlikely, then, for much stands in their way.

The working classes are physically and numerically stronger than the capitalists. It isn’t science fiction to imagine ragged-trousered hordes trashing the headquarters of Barclays or Morgan Chase. But it is profoundly unlikely that they ever will; because society, with its guns and its norms and its trained manpower, stands against them, forbiddingly, menacingly.

In much the same way, natural male advantage is trapped in the imagination of radicals; outside of such space, even the mention of it is condemned as evil and terroristic. Theoretical power cannot feed a starving man, or prevent a family of hard-working proletarians from being thrown out of their houses, and nor can it lend consolation to the immiserated men of our current era. The theoretical (as a general rule) is immediately useless.

Men are handicapped today by several key social factors – most obviously the universal bias that exists in favour of the fairer sex. You, the reader, will have this bias. Most people do. We see women as more precious, more valuable and fundamentally worthier of our tenderness, restraint and generosity than men.

Evolutionary psychology makes this easily understandable. In a pure state of nature, it requires only one male to impregnate a hundred females, and so individual men are naturally considered less important than women.

But this is the inherited logic of a state of nature that no longer strictly exists. We are not living in the same jungle as our ancestors, with the same struggle for life day by day. Our societies are no longer even coherent; all kinds exist around us, friendly and hostile, and yet the instinct will not disappear any time soon.

To make matters worse – for men at least – fewer and fewer cultural objections to the exploitation of this instinct by young women are tolerated within liberal society. If a woman plays to this advantage for the purpose of manipulating others, for money or influence or fame or power, it is considered vulgar and bigoted to object, or even to notice it is happening.

Men are everywhere staying quiet, allowing taboos to harden around the discussion of very important imbalances, which in turn tempts more and more young women to take advantage of them, just as men would in the same position.

It must be understood that the charge of ‘misogyny’ today too often functions as a neutraliser of protest or even notice-taking of the runaway development of female privilege. The increasing gap between the genders is precisely the opposite of what polite society insists. And the toll on men is mounting.

Today it is increasingly easy to succeed as an ordinary woman, and increasingly impossible for an ordinary man. While feminists like to argue that the male elite, who invariably and necessarily work harder and with greater dynamism than the female elite, crowd them out at the pinnacle of meritocracy, even a small step down from that elite reveals the majority of men trapped below the majority of women.

Men have degenerated – though no-one’s fault but our own – into a peasant gender, while women have become aristocratic. Men must justify themselves, their portion of space and oxygen, with high intellectual achievement and / or crushing manual labour, or else be counted as worthless. Women, meanwhile, are self-justifying; and more than that, entitled to the protection, gallantry and subservience of the peasants.

One might point out, as feminists are wont to do, that women are markedly underrepresented in the governments of Western nations; but this, too, is fallacious. The whole meaning of the aristocracy in the modern sense is based on a distinction from the actively ruling class. Aristocrats sometimes govern, but only if they wish to. And they usually do not. Lord Byron quite understandably preferred his opium pipe and mistresses to the drudgery of parliament. The aristocrats of the ancien regime, similarly, tended to choose apolitical luxury over needless, bloody partisanship. Government is a job like any other, performed out of a lack of something. When nothing is lacking, what is there to be gained?

The new aristocrats have no war to fight. Indeed, quite like the aristocracy of old, the only time they engage themselves politically is for the defence of aristocratic privileges. The very last thing young women desire is an outbreak of sexual Bolshevism, a rebellion of the peasants, the men.

And that is no longer out of the question. The internet-enabled conversion by young women of sexual power into social, financial and political power is creating the necessary conditions for a future breakdown in relations between the genders.

Already we see the politics of younger generations greatly effected by the processes described. It is taken almost as a given that men at the radical extremes of ideology are motivated at least in part by gender resentment. Uncountable tired-out routines by liberal comedians play upon the theme of right-wing and conservative men having sexually unsatisfying lives, or of them suffering from ‘male fragility’; angry virgins, fragile men, stupid losers. The liberal men who join such accusations, who strive to make clear their lack of anxiety regarding female ’empowerment’, are indirectly boasting of having a relatively satisfying life, as part of a male elite, differentiated from the peasant majority. This is essentially slave-caste chauvinism (field over house) dressed up as moral sentiment.

In the new gender model, men who are not part of the male elite, but who nonetheless wish to enjoy privileges (access to media, publishing, general political and social viability) must stress their good behaviour and adjust to a modern, acceptably castrated type of maleness (the ‘soyboy’ / corporatised ‘nerd’ archetypes, for example).

What is most interesting for those of us who care about political matters is how much the gender breakdown confuses both left and right tendencies. The paleo-right are increasingly divided according to priorities. Here, male interest goes up against ethno-nationalism, with the former creating a pan-racial brotherhood of male solidarity that undermines the goals of the latter. On the left, the militantly castrated ‘woke’ left are falling out with men who wish to see male complaints taken more seriously, and who ultimately shift to the right when they find they cannot have a voice on any non-conservative platform.

This last point is especially noteworthy. Even the most conformist young Zoomer wishing to make a name for himself on the left of politics (in journalism or visual media, say) will likely find himself frustrated purely on gender grounds. Media work is an easy, desirable, aristocratic form of labour, eagerly sought out by women. A peasant may find very few opportunities left after his young female competitors have had their fill.

The liberal Zoomer mentioned may find openings only on the right, and his sympathies, nurtured by resentment, will travel with him.

This really cannot be stressed enough. The de-platforming of men by liberal media and society will drive more and more of them to the right, and when aristocrats begin to take over even those publications, to the far-right.

De-platforming authentic representatives of male interest is an incredibly stupid move. It will accelerate social breakdown and bring the prospect of gender conflict ever closer.

I will close by making clear I do not put the blame for this development on women, especially not on women from older generations, to whom the points made may seem absurd given their own life experiences. This is something effecting mostly younger people. And even in these generations, women are only taking advantage of a situation we have all allowed to come into being.

David

Why the Alt-Right is Too Alt for Me

Tags

2016, 4chan, alt-right, America, American Liberty, anime, anti-Semitism, BBC, Blog, blog blog blog, Christopher Caldwell, Civilisation, Coffee, dark enlightenment, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, DTMW, dtmw dtmw, Facebook, frog, Internet, internet internet, Japan, milo, modern world, Multiculturalism, Music, Muslim, Muslims, No to Turkey in the EU, pepe, pepe the frog, political, politics, race, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, subcultures, Twitter

Internet subcultures are so often exaggerated in scale and importance by the mainstream – offline – media that most reasonable folk tend instinctively to dismiss reports of their influence as hyperbole. Such was the case when Hillary Clinton devoted almost an entire speech to warning America of the insidious agenda of the ‘alt-right’, an internet coalition of racists, misogynists and Islamophobes allegedly in cahoots with the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump.

Strangely, and unlike so many cyber phenomena reported in the media, the tribe to which Ms Clinton referred is notable for being very real, or at least very widespread. Though there is no single agenda or set of principles agreed upon by the alt-right, there is certainly a general Weltanschauung strong and clear enough to gravitate like-minded people towards it. This worldview is well-described in the following YouTube comment taken from under a video of the Clinton speech: “We (the alt-right) are anti neo-libs. That is the only reason we are alternative. Neo-libs/cons have been the conservative mainstream since 9/11. We are a backlash against that. Neo-cons are not real right.”

By ‘neo-libs’ and ‘neo-cons’ (Neoliberals and Neoconservatives) the commenter is likely referring to a consensus known elsewhere as the ‘New World Order’, the 1%, or (vaguely) as ‘Zionism’.

Rumours of a ‘New World Order’ have gained currency on the right-wing fringe in recent years

These labels, although having little to do with each other in fact, are used as synonyms for the force that is actively shrinking the world into a liberal, multi-racial, multi-cultural free-trade zone, in yet another word – the force and ideology of globalisation.

The idea that conservatives should be pro-globalisation is actually a very recent one. Traditionally, as the alt-right notes, right-wing political thinkers have been strongly nativist and culturally protectionist. The shift in conservative thought, beginning during the Reagan-Thatcher era, to laissez faire globalism is attributed retrospectively to the influence of non-native forces, often (predictably) to that of the Jews (sometimes referred to in euphemism as ‘capitalists’/’big business’/’bankers’/’the banks’).

The alt-right wishes to return the conservative movement to where it was before that transition; before economics became more important as a right-wing principle than blood, soil and culture; that is, before paleo became neo.

The alt-right has no single birthplace, but there are nevertheless a few websites and forums indelibly associated with it. Prime among these sites is the Japanese-cultural forum 4chan and in particular the /pol/ (politically incorrect) messageboard. Here, a right-wing political consensus has become entrenched, often (but not always) expressed with dark humour, that has subsequently bled out into the wider internet universe, evidenced by the broad use of memes like Pepe the Frog as well as words and phrases like ‘degenerate’ and ‘dindu-nuffin’ (the latter invention being used to refer sarcastically to African-American criminality).

The English-language messageboard 4chan is commonly associated with the alt-right

The alt-right is connected to, but distinct from, the ‘Dark Enlightenment’ phenomenon I have written about previously. Unlike the latter, the alt-right is more realistic and less philosophical. While the Dark Enlightenment recommends absurd initiatives like the abolition of democracy and the return of divinely-appointed’ Kings, the alt-right prefers to concern itself with more achievable and substantial ideas, such as the abolition of third-world (non-white) immigration, building an opposition to political Islam and degrading the influence of certain varieties of feminism. This down-to-earth-ness is a large part of the reason the alt-right, unlike the Dark Enlightenment, has become a force to be reckoned with.

I have no idea whether this site would or should be considered part of the alt-right blogosphere. I only know that it has never been so described – and certainly not by me. I am, in my estimation, far too moderate, too much of a bleeding heart, to integrate smoothly into that crowd.

Though I recognise that races exist, I have never been a racist or a racial nationalist. Though I accept that certain varieties of feminism have inflicted great damage upon Western civilisation, I am not opposed to the idea of sexual equality, nor dismissive of the disadvantages women still face around the world on account of their being female. Though I recognise that he has joined the right side of the Syrian civil war and made constructive and wise comments about the bombing of Libya, I do not support or make excuses for the authoritarian, anti-democratic administration of Vladimir Putin. And so on…  The alt-right is simply too alt for me.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is beloved by many on the alt-right

Is the movement as dangerous as Hillary Clinton is making out? The answer depends almost entirely on who is asking the question. If you’re a white, Christian, heterosexual male resident in the Western World, then the risk this movement presents to you is minimal. If, however, you are Jewish, homosexual, black, south Asian or atheist, I would be very cautious about taking the movement to heart.

There are decidedly ugly currents within the alt-right that are not adequately represented by its spokespeople. Milo Yiannopoulos, a Jewish-Greek homosexual, may well be regarded as the crown prince of the movement at present, but it does not follow that the general masses huddled under its banner agree with his lifestyle or look kindly upon his ethnicity. On the contrary, more often than not, the alt-right foot-soldier is loudly hostile to both Jews and homosexuality. If you require evidence of that, just spend an hour or two browsing the /pol/ board on 4chan yourself.

Anti-Semitism in particular runs through the alt-right like colours run through a stick of seaside rock. It is both below and behind it, providing a vital support to the worldview espoused by its adherents. The West is being taken over by foreign elements, they agree, because a hostile elite is conspiring against the natives. One need not refer to the hostile elite explicitly. Innuendo will do. Innuendo did the job in the thirties, too (sorry, Godwin).

A variant of the anti-Semitic ‘happy merchant’ meme

I do admit that the alt-right is correct on some very important issues. On Islam, for example, the movement is reliably clear-headed and refreshingly consistent. On the virtues of a Trump administration, too, the movement is providing a much-needed counter-force to the almost universally anti-Trump mainstream media. The problem is the movement doesn’t seem to possess any kind of intellectual brake. It swerves habitually all over the place, sometimes finding itself on a main road and sometimes blindly ploughing through a field. This youthful unpredictability might make hopping on-board an attractive prospect for political thrill-seekers, but not for anyone else.

I suppose, if we must manufacture labels for ourselves, I am more of an alt-liberal than an alt-rightist. And I am not alone in that. There must be millions of people like me, scattered around the political spectrum, living unhappily in temporary ideological accommodation. It is high time we had a real home to go to.

D, LDN

Milo Yiannopoulos: The Good and the Bad

Tags

America, American Liberty, analysis, BBC, breitbart, catholic, Christianity and Islam, Civilisation, Coffee, Conservatism, Conservative, Defend the modern world, DTMW, EU, Facebook, gay, greek, homosexuality, Immigration, Internet, Iran, Iraq, ISIS, Islam, Islamism, Jewish, migration, milo, milo yiannopoulos, milo yiannopoulos orlando, Multiculturalism, neil degrasse tyson stupid, orlando, politics, politics politics, right-wing left-wing, trump, trump support, tyson, United States, War, writing

Few stars are rising faster at the moment than that of conservative writer/broadcaster Milo Yiannopoulos. Virtually unknown just three years ago, the Greco-British journalist, 32, is now fast approaching the kind of iconoclastic status attained by such writers as Gore Vidal and HL Mencken (both of whom expended considerably more time and effort to achieve it).

What can explain this success?

Well – for one thing, Yiannopoulos is a quite formidable debater, and it is for this talent that he is primarily known. Type in ‘Milo Yiannopolous’ into YouTube and many of the videos returned to you will have titles containing words like ‘destroys’, ‘eviscerates’, ‘owns’ and so on… These are not exaggerations. Yiannopoulos has a unique way of making the people he engages seem naive, foolish and weak-minded. He is even – I have found – able to achieve this effect when the other person is in the right; and there is surely no greater testament to a debater’s skill than that.

Yiannopoulos is not merely good with words, he is good with emotions, presenting his side of any argument in a relaxed, self-assured and matter-of-fact style that naturally makes the arguments of the other side seem less certain, more bizarre and fundamentally weaker. In this sense he reminds me in speech of Mark Steyn in print. Both put to use the same rhetorical trick – the insinuation – quite deliberate – that they know they are right. Both treat contrary points of view as amusing, forgivable, even charming eccentricities. Yiannopoulos and Steyn are not trying to make the other side look stupid, so they have us believe, they are trying are help them understand reality – and by arguing this way, they do make them look stupid. There is surely no better way of wounding an intellectual’s reputation than to sympathise with his failures and politely excuse his errors.

Yiannopoulos’s writing, though less spectacular than his debating, still passes with ease any quality test for the journalistic mainstream. Here is a representative excerpt from an article taking down the goodwill-bloated ‘astrophysicist’ Neil Degrasse Tyson:

“Neil deGrasse Tyson is a philistine with no love of learning except for popularisations and oversimplifications that serve his political purposes… (He) constantly situates himself in the big brain league, but he has done nothing in his life to demonstrate that he belongs there — and a lot to suggest he doesn’t…. (He) claims to have been “mentored” by Carl Sagan, for instance. Yet it appears this “mentorship” boils down to little more than a couple of traded letters. If Tyson thinks that qualifies as mentorship, I wonder what he’d call my nocturnal liaisons with other men who share his skin colour. Adoption?… As dumb as Tyson is, his fans are even more preposterously thick, which is probably to be expected given that they’re all liberals. But the extent to which they hoover up and retweet his contradictory and brainless provocations is matched only by the hilarity of the occasional social justice car crash, in which the politics of grievance that Tyson likes to encourage comes back to bite him.”

But neither Yiannopoulos’s skill in writing or debating can fully explain his meteoric ascent. Beyond the mechanics of his profession, Yiannopoulos is himself remarkable. For one thing, he is gay. Indeed, if homosexuality can be graded, he is very gay; audaciously, flamboyantly so. He is also Greek, Jewish and Catholic. This exotic quality, brim-full of apparent contradiction (Gay, Jewish, Catholic, Conservative – are not words used to being in each other’s company), has combined with Yiannopoulos’s oratorical (and occasionally bitchy) style to produce a ready-made object of media fascination. Yiannopoulos gets ratings up in a way no other public commentator has since the death of Christopher Hitchens, a person with whom the journalist bears many important similarities.

Like Hitchens, Yiannopoulos expresses with intelligence arguments traditionally expressed with stupidity. Though I do sympathise with many right-wing concepts, it is nevertheless a fact of politics that the conservative side of the political spectrum attracts more dullards than the liberal side. Many – perhaps the majority – of those inclined to oppose Islam, for example, do so in a crude, yobbish style that puts off the discerning classes and fails to excite anyone else.

Yiannopoulos is successful precisely because he refines gut-sentiments into intelligent arguments. People watch Yiannopoulos debate Islam on television and scream ‘That’s what I think!” or “That’s what I’ve always said!”. He articulates feelings many desperately want to – but cannot – put into words.

So, that’s the good. Now for the bad.

Despite the considerable talents I have described, Yiannopoulos is not without his faults. He has, for one thing, consistently demonstrated a worrying lack of intellectual discipline; a tendency to seek controversy (for its own sake) over positive political impact. On twitter the writer has repeatedly engaged in pointless arguments with entirely apolitical pop-cultural figures, most recently Leslie Jones, the simple-minded comedienne and star of the much-maligned 2016 Ghostbusters remake. After a brief back and forth over various trifles, Milo made a joke implying that Jones (who is admittedly unfeminine looking) is actually a man. This comment then led to Yiannopoulos’s twitter account being deleted by the administrators of the site – (he is still banned).

Was this necessary? Did it serve a purpose? I don’t think so.

Like this author, Yiannopoulos is an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump’s 2016 bid for the US Presidency and has written countless articles explaining this support, most of which have been reasoned and compelling. But on this matter, too, he has a tendency to drift into inexplicable weirdness. Yiannopoulos often refers to Mr Trump in a sexualised voice as ‘Daddy’ and once stated that the “trashier” the Republican nominee becomes the more he loves him.

Now, I have no moral objection to any of this, but surely such unseriousness runs the risk of undoing the good work the journalist has done elsewhere. Once again I ask, is it necessary? Does it serve a purpose? Does Milo wish to be a neo-Orwellian truth-teller or a contestant on Celebrity Big Brother? Christopher Hitchens or Pete Burns? One cannot combine the two aspirations indefinitely.

The atheist Voltaire once remarked that the only prayer he had ever offered was ‘O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous’. I can well imagine Islamists and Leftists offering this same plea to the Almighty in view of current political circumstances. On the issue of Islam – as on many others – we are so far in the right that a misstep on our part is probably the best the opposition can hope for. Milo and others would do well to bear this in mind.

On balance, I am of the opinion that Milo Yiannopoulos can be a very effective soldier for the anti-Islamist cause. His oratorical skill, humour and minority-status make him a very difficult target for the Left to hit with their favoured weaponry. They cannot possibly call Milo, a gay man of partially Jewish descent, irrational or paranoid for worrying about the advance of ISIS. They cannot possibly accuse him of being a Nazi, a White nationalist, or a possessor of ‘privilege’ (the Left’s favourite buzzword of the moment). Milo’s exotic qualities form a wall of confusion around his arguments, giving them a better chance of being considered for what they mean rather than as an extension of who formed them.

And while there are those who will object outright to the inclusion of an actively gay man in the conservative movement, one must strive to remember that the threat of Islam is so broad that it will necessarily require an equally broad coalition to prevent its success.

If you find the right’s embrace of Yiannopoulos strange, you’ll be even more surprised by what the future holds.

D, LDN.

Trump, Kelly and the Corporate Right.

Tags

America, America 911, American Liberty, Barack Obama, Civilisation, CNN, could trump win, Culture, Defend the modern world, Fox News, Glenn Beck, kelly, megyn, megyn kelly, megyn kelly blood, No to Turkey in the EU, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, the apprentice, trump

They say you know you’re onto something when your opponents begin to lie. Donald Trump will be more keenly aware of this than anyone right now.

As you’ll be aware, during the first Republican debate, the Billionaire became embroiled in a battle of emotions with the aggressive Fox anchor Megyn Kelly (who was co-hosting the debate). After Kelly asked Trump a stupidly personal, off-topic question about the candidate’s views on women, Trump responded with a witty one-liner which sent the audience into hysterics. To this, Kelly’s reaction was one of visible annoyance, if not rage. Later in the day, when asked about the exchange, Trump mentioned the anger apparent on Kelly’s face, adding that he could see “blood coming out of her eyes, out of her ears, out of her wherever…” before moving quickly onto a different point. Having nothing better to beat Trump with, the media then collectively agreed to a fraud of deliberate misunderstanding. The “wherever” in Trump’s statement was portrayed as “obviously” referring to Megyn Kelly’s vagina, making the otherwise innocent comment a lewd reference to the presenter’s menstruating cycle.

This is old news for America now. The public was not fooled at the time, and they are not fooled now. But it is worth dwelling on in order to take the temperature of the American mood regarding Mr Trump, and also to reflect on what the scandal says about the American right-wing.

Fox News (with the possible exception of Sean Hannity) would appear determined to end Trump’s campaign. It is obvious who they prefer and wish to succeed, and that is Ted Cruz (not a bad choice, but inferior, in my opinion, to Trump). Never prone to subtlety, the behaviour of the Fox hosts during the debate was childish, manipulative and insulting to the independence of their audience. They went for Trump with a naked bloodlust, a rabid determination and yes, with blood (metaphorically) pouring from their eyes.

It is an obvious but frequently overlooked fact that the corporate right-wing is very different to the intellectual right wing. While the latter operates for primarily ideological motivations, the former does so for money and ratings. This could be the reason why the Fox News gang went for Trump, a man who is so confidently right-wing that the corporate right-wing can only lose by his success.

Fox News thrives best during Democratic administrations. That’s when the conservative population is most angry and in search of a voice sympathetic to their mood. When a Republican is in office, the Fox Network can prosper only by moving to the right of the President (a relatively easy manoeuvre in the Bush eras).

But if we take Donald at his word, a Trump administration would follow through on every policy the Fox audience endorses.

What would Fox do then?

D, LDN

Nobody’s Fool: Appreciating Ann.

Tags

Adios America, America, America 911, American Liberty, Ann, Ann Coulter, Ann Coulter Fox News, Barack Obama, BBC, Britain First, Christianity and Islam, Coffee, Counterjihad, Defend the modern world, Fox News, How to talk to a liberal, Immigration, Mexico, Multiculturalism, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Rihanna Muslim, United States

Conservative pundits in America are frequently the subject of international ridicule. Judged to be theatrically insincere, eccentric and overdosed on faith, they rarely find an audience outside of their land of origin. Glenn Beck and his style have few fans in French or German conservative circles. Sean Hannity is not a household name in Finnish or Scottish right-wing society, and so on.

I can appreciate the reasons for this. American discourse is unusually brash and provocative, often quite deliberately so. Even if it were attempted, I doubt a weak-tea BBC Newsnight-kind of discussion would attract much attention there. American media is about viewers and advertising. A viewership on the scale required by sponsors can only be earned with fireworks, red cloth and bulls.

But this doesn’t mean that some American conservatives do not have real talent underlying their cable news methodology. One pundit in particular deserves a far more cosmopolitan – or any rate more international – audience than she seems at present to attract.

Despite acres of print arguing otherwise, Ann Coulter is not a ‘joke’ or a ‘novelty act’. She is admittedly a woman, and a blonde, long-legged one at that. I don’t doubt that some of her fanbase are motivated by apolitical factors. But I am not one of them.

I read Ms Coulter’s columns for their dark humour and cutting insight. She is gifted with a rapier wit, Adderall-sharp mind and her knowledge of the gut-workings of the Washington machine is unparalleled. Let me illustrate this with some well-known quotations:

“Muslims are the only people who make feminists seem laid-back.”

“Since Adam ate the apple and let evil into the world, deranged individuals have existed. Most of the time they can’t be locked up until it’s too late. It’s not against the law to be crazy — in some jurisdictions it actually makes you more viable as a candidate for public office.”

“Liberals have managed to eliminate the idea of manly honour. Instead, all they have is womanly indignation.”

“One hundred percent of terrorist attacks on commercial airlines based in America for 20 years have been committed by Muslims. When there is a 100 percent chance, it ceases to be a profile. It’s called a ‘description of the suspect.'”

Some stuffy types might call this tone populist or dumbed-down, but that’s really quite unfair. It is actually the appropriate tone to use when discussing any kind of absurdity. When reality itself becomes self-satirical, mad to the point of losing insight, then the most accurate descriptions of it can only be phrased in comic language.

Humour is also a good means of getting a point across. Where would the anti-Islamisation movement be without the black comedy of Mark Steyn, for example? Some facts are so dark that one must one dust them in irony or laughter to make them palatable.

We are living in a world of beheadings, gays thrown from rooftops, forcible limb amputations and organised political rape. Most people would impulsively avoid knowing about these things. It’s all just too grim and defies too many human assumptions.

But we can’t ignore them. To put our fingertips in our ear canals only guarantees our destruction. The screams have to be heard. And I applaud and value people like Coulter for providing realism with the consolation of wit.

D, LDN.

The Fertility of Chaos.

Tags

American Liberty, Arab demography, Armour, Armoured Infantry, Britain First, Britain First Facebook, Christianity, Christianity and Islam, Civilisation, Counter-Jihad, Defend the modern world, Demography, Demography is destiny, EU, EU v, Facebook, Future demographics of the World, Iranians, Iraqis, Modern Armour, Skyrim, White Genocide, Who said

In ‘The Myth of the Muslim Tide’, Canadian author Doug Sanders noted that birth rates in some Muslim countries have started to decline and are projected to sink to European levels in the future, later making use of this fact to pour cold water on the arguments of writers like Mark Steyn, Pat Buchanan et al, who propose that Muslims will triumphantly outbreed Europeans both in and outside Europe.

And having researched the examples cited by Sanders, I’ve accepted that in more advanced – that is to say more liberal – Muslim countries, the fertility rate is slowly but noticeably lowering. In Iran for example, the birth rate will go sub-replacement by 2030; in Tunisia, that transition will occur in 2040, and so on…

I fail to be consoled by this for many reasons, but chief among them is the reproductive dynamism of the exceptions to Sanders rule. Syria, Afghanistan, the West Bank and Gaza, Sudan, Yemen and Iraq, all have birth rates that are rising to near sub-Saharan levels.

All of those countries, it won’t have escaped your notice, are also war-torn and have been in a state of chaos for much of the 21st century. Demographers are (or should be) aware of this trend. I’m all but certain that Islamists are.

Chaos is highly fertile. When societies collapse, breeding is accelerated. Unemployment leaves people with little else to achieve beyond the primitive urges of procreation. People procreate out of boredom and in order to achieve some semblance of happiness in a situation otherwise devoid of it. They may also be motivated to serve political ends by boosting the number of their tribal or religious clan.

In the West Bank and Gaza, fertility rates are 5 or 6 children per woman. This is known in Israel as the ‘demographic time-bomb’ – a weapon of Palestinian nationalism that, they fear, will ultimately force a compromise over land.

As a concern, this has relevance for Europe too. In the future dystopia I have warned of, a riot-torn multicultural Europe may provide all the chaos necessary for an acceleration of the Islamist project.

One has to wonder if Islamists are aiming for a state of chaos across the Middle East with demography in mind. Perhaps they oppose civilisation for its effects on their long-term numbers. Bin Laden himself memorably spoke of Indonesia and Pakistan as the great ‘human resource’ for Sunni Islam. Comments like that ought to chill the blood of the shrinking peoples of Europe.

People are just as powerful as missiles if they are wearing explosives. The crude stockpiling of death-ready faith-zombies is a crude yet intelligent strategy, and one that may prove decisive in a future dominated by lawlessness.

D, LDN.

Maajid Nawaz’s Striptease Should Surprise Nobody.

Tags

BBC, Britain First, Christianity and Islam, Civilisation, Counter-Jihad, Cultural Marxism, Defend the modern world, ED, EDL, Facebook, Liberal, Maajid, Maajid Nawaz, Maajid Nawaz striptease, Multiculturalism, Nawaz, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census

For many years now, the Pakistani Muslim commentator Maajid Nawaz has been advanced in the media as a model of Islamic reform. Once a crazed Islamist and member of the terroristic faction Hizb-ut-Tahrir, Nawaz suddenly lurched into ‘moderation’ in 2007, having become ‘disillusioned’ with both the means and ends of the Islamist project. His confessional ‘Radical: My Journey Out of Islamic Extremism’ was roundly commended by the Liberal media, and Nawaz is now a paid-up candidate for the Liberal Democrat Party.

Given this reputation, one can imagine the surprise in Liberal circles when yesterdays news broke and was promptly shared around the internet. In case you haven’t heard, a video has been released showing Nawaz – now a self-described ‘Feminist’- enjoying a striptease, during which he violates conventions by groping the woman performing the tease, eventually following her out of the booth to continue the harassment.

Getting a strip-tease is nothing illegal, but it’s fair to say that real ‘feminists’ are not altogether keen on the practice. We are thus prompted to wonder whether this was merely an aberration or in fact a revealing reversion to religious type. My guess is the latter.

Despite his warm words and political gestures in favour of civilisation, Nawaz remains a believing Sunni Muslim. Since his religion anti-sexual, he shuns access to the tact and subtlety that come as the reward of a modern imagination. He is sexually unpredictable for this reason. You cannot shake off the neurosis of faith by changing political direction.

Toxic beliefs, whether or not they are watered down, always find a way of exposing themselves. Moderate Muslims are useless to the counter-jihad cause, for latent within them are all the evils they claim to have overcome. 

To call yourself a Muslim, moderate, liberal or orthodox, you must believe certain things. Prime among them is faith in the divine authorship of the Qur’an and its infallibility. This means you stand by passages describing women as secondary to men. There is no way around that. The passages are very clear and cannot be explained away as poetry or metaphor. To be a Muslim, you also have to believe that the conduct of the Prophet is noble, moral and worth emulating. This includes numerous practices deemed to be immoral and unlawful in modern Western society.

The source of Muslim dysfunction is therefore innate in the system of belief itself, in its articles of faith and the conduct of its holy figures.

While Ex-Muslims have the potential to be our best friends,’moderate’ Muslims like Nawaz fail to recognise the source of the problem and must be rejected for that reason.

D, LDN.

Family Guy and the Acceptable Racism of the Left.

Tags

America 911, American Liberty, anti-Semitism, Barack Obama, Civilisation, Coffee, Counterjihad, Cultural Marxism, Defend the modern world, Family Guy, london, Minority racism, Seth Macfarlane

Liberals are smart, kindly and open-minded; Conservatives are dumb, nasty and closed minded. Such is convention in even the most professedly informed circles of opinion. So sure are these principles considered in fact, that they lend themselves sufficiently to a grading system: The more Conservative you are, the more stupid and closed minded; the more Liberal you are, the more intelligent…

Nobody is confused about where this dichotomy derives from. It was born on University campuses in the Sixties, when Left-Wing professors added a compulsory Liberalism module to all academic degrees. Since that decade, almost every graduate, having emerged through an intellectual car-wash of politicised education, has self-identified as firmly on the Left. By this same process, the Right (and the thinking associated with it) has become associated with those not clever enough to attend University; the sub-professional class, or – if you prefer – the 95 percent.

But how accurate are these assumptions today? To find out, let’s use the favourite measure of the Left – Racism.

It is undoubtedly true that those who are consciously racist most often identify as ‘right-wing’, and those who consider themselves non or anti-racist, align as Left-wing. This, however says nothing about that sizable group of people who are racist without being conscious of the fact.

Racism, lest we forget, is not all about pointed hoods, Roman salutes and burning crosses. Before it becomes anything political, Racism is merely a mindset, a tendency of thought. A racist is someone who judges people according to categories too broad to be reliably accurate. He or she might believe (for example) that all Blacks are criminals, that Jews are greedy, that Hispanics are lazy, Arabs are violent, Russians are alcoholics etc… The specific error involved here is generalisation, and it lies behind every other vice of the political mind from misandry to misogyny, ageism to disablism…

To investigate the levels of unconscious bigotry in the liberal community, perhaps no better example can be found to work with than the satirical cartoon ‘Family Guy’. Despite airing on the FOX network, Family Guy is an unmistakably liberal creation, loudly opposed to religious belief, guns and ‘rednecks’, degrading to male sexuality and conservative politics, and as its unifying principle – hostile toward the values of the family. The lead writer and creator of Family Guy Seth Macfarlane also has an active political life outside of entertainment, playing a leading role in organised Atheism, Democratic advocacy and Gay rights.

As is typical of Liberal presumption, Macfarlane seems to believe that these political credentials provide him with a pass on all matters otherwise covered by political correctness. As a result, his long-running show, whilst always nominally leaning Leftward, draws from an open sewer of caricature against every group imaginable.

Hispanic characters in Family Guy are typically of suspicious origin, illiterate in English, and employed as menial labour. Blacks are smooth, handsome but stupid dolts permanently relegated to second-standing. Asians are uptight, slant-eyed freaks who cannot speak properry.

But of all its grotesque liberties, the representation of Jews on Family Guy is perhaps most worthy of note. Consider the analysis of Mark Pinsky writing in the Jewish Daily Forward:

“Anti-Semitism is a serious charge” he writes “…made too quickly and too often. But as someone who has followed (Family Guy creator Seth) MacFarlane’s career, I think it is well past time to call him out.”

In Pinsky’s words the show ” reinforces classic, anti-Semitic stereotypes: greedy, cheap, cowardly, whiny, averse to physical labor, and in control of Hollywood.”

The main Jewish character in Family Guy – Mort Goldman – (an accountant, naturally) -is usually portrayed as weak, shy, unmanly, and qualified only in numbers. Many other Jewish characters are wheeled on to add emphasis to this concept.

My point here – it should be clarified – is not to complain about FG’s lack of Political Correctness. In fact, I completely support its unfettered exercise of freedom of speech. My point is rather a question: Why can Liberals say these things, and not anyone else?

Why, for example, can Macfarlane mock the disabled (through the wheelchair-bound character – Joe) without attracting a whiff of public outrage, but a Conservative, or even Centrist comedian trying the same would be hounded to the grave? Why – to put the question simply – does Liberalism provide an exemption from Political Correctness? Indeed, if Political Correctness really is only a benign ‘institutionalised politeness’ (as Stewart Lee eloquently argued) then why are exemptions from it made at all?

The outdated British comedian Jim Davidson (whose live act is filled with jokes about Gay, Irish and Black people) was interviewed last year on BBC Newsnight. When asked why he was condemned by modern comics as being out-of-date, he said his mistake was not to play the ‘irony’ card. When asked to explain further, he described the attitude as “I can’t be racist cos’ I went to University”.

I have no affection for Mr Davidson’s act, but his description of the Liberal attitude is pin-point accurate. And until the Left addresses its own bigotry in this regard, its attacks on others will rightly be deemed hypocrisy.

D, LDN