Challenging the Islamic Mind-Trap

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• First published on this blog in February 2016 

In terms of its reputation among non-believers, the past 15 years must rank as some of Islam’s worst. Every since the planes of 9/11 carved into New York glass, the international media has barely missed a beat in making known the faults of Islamic theology, tradition and social policy. The UK Daily Mail, once the grumpy advocate of small government and Victorian morals, is now better defined as The Daily Islamophobe. The Telegraph, Sun, WSJ, NYT and Star have likewise reshuffled their priorities to place a greater and more critical eye on the Islamic World. The result of this is that every Muslim wrong-doing the world over is reported as international news. Every honour killing, beheading, murder-by-explosion, corrective rape or stoning (though all common enough before 9/11) is now given headline treatment. One can only wonder what this has done to the average Muslim mindset.

It is fair to say that most Muslims sincerely believe Islam is the best religion for mankind to universally adopt; that Islam is a better recipe for peace, progress and happiness than its rivals. Indeed, one cannot be an authentic believer unless one believes this. And yet nobody paying any attention to the contemporary situation can possibly come to this conclusion – or indeed sustain this conclusion – without unimaginable contortions of logic and tricks of the mind. The most visible of these tricks has been to blame the ills of Islam on other forces, whether economic, racial or political. ‘True, Saudi Arabia is a barbaric, undeveloped desert, but it would have been very different were it not for the Zionists’. ‘True, illiteracy and incest are Pakistani specialities, but this would not be the case were it not for the wicked Indians’. And so on.

This self-deception, though ludicrously fake, has held out remarkably well. Apostasy rates from Islam are no higher than in the 1990s. Minority faiths (LDS, Scientology etc…) excepted, Islam remains the fastest growing religion in the world. The impression given is that Islam is the perfectly designed mind-trap; that it has inbuilt defences against criticism and failure that cannot be overcome by reason or reality. But this is unduly pessimistic, I believe. Though strong on the outside, Islamic psychology is substantially weaker in its design that its current reputation might suggest. Inflexibility is being mistaken for strength, disorder for complexity.

The psychology of Islamic belief is best understood as a simple loop of deterrence, aversion and reward. When someone criticises Islam (its truth value, historicity or moral nature), a functioning Muslim will at first rationally process and understand the criticism, perhaps even to the point of agreeing with it. After this, in a state of profound unease, the Muslim will think of the Qur’anic verses drummed into his consciousness since infancy. He will think especially of those passages admonishing the ‘unbelievers’ – those who are bound for hellfire and who stray habitually from the ‘right path’. This then creates a feeling of terror and a desperation to obey Allah (who can perceive thoughts, reasoning, and even inclinations). To get rid of this discomfort, the believer admonishes the critic with harsh and even violent words. How dare he question the perfection of the Qur’an! He must have no soul! The aggression towards the critic is for the eyes of Allah and not the critic himself. The greater the aggression, the more relief will be felt by the believer. He is angry at you because you derailed his circular thoughts. You convinced him of something forbidden, something he tries with every fibre of his being not to think about. The force of aggression you unleash in him is proportionate to how convincing he (almost) found your argument; to how close you pushed him to the edge of reason.

Circular thinking is central to Islamic belief

This process also governs how Muslims integrate (or fail to integrate) the contemporary realities of the world. When viewing the chaos of Quranic rule in Syria, the loop described above prevents the processing of the stimuli into moral judgement and understanding. The believer is not ignorant. He knows everything we know. He just has a disorder of thought which allows him to dispose of un-Islamic stimuli as fast as he imbibes it.

How could one disrupt the loop? This is question best answered by those who have been raised in Islam only to discard it at a later stage. Since I am not from a Muslim background, I will have to go from the accounts of others.

As you’ll be aware, testimonies by ex-Muslims are notable among apostatatic statements by their emphasis on the aspect of ‘fear’; fear of Allah, of hellfire, of divine retribution awaiting them should they fail to live a morally perfect life. To understand why this is so characteristic of Islam, one must first appreciate the system by which human beings are said to be judged in Islamic theology.

According to Islamic tradition, a Muslim has two angels beside him at all times – one to the left, another to the right. One of these keeps a record of the good deeds and thoughts the believer performs and has during his earthly tenure, and the other keeps record of the bad. At the day of judgement, the two records are ‘weighed’ to see which is more reflective of the human in question, greatly influencing (but not deciding) whether he is to go to hell or paradise.

In a comparative sense, this is one of the more endearing and just-seeming of Islamic concepts. But a side effect of it is that the believer becomes subject to the divine equivalent of thought policing. As I say, the Kiraman Katibin do not only record your deeds, but your inner reflections. They make note of your intentions, temptations, lusts and transgressions, preserving all of them down to the finest detail. A bad deed is never forgotten or forgiven. There is no equivalent of Catholic confession in which one may wipe the slate clean. You sin and you are stained. Black marks last forever.

Try to imagine the effect this concept would have on your psychology were you to believe in it. You would be unable to enjoy a single private emotion without the fear of upsetting an omniscient authority. And since even temptations are recorded, you would be compelled to avoid any environment or stimuli which might lead you astray. This explains why Muslims are so seemingly afraid of female flesh. A girl in a mini-skirt prompts ‘impure’ thoughts in the believer, which in turn upsets Allah. The recorded acts of aggression against such women (Cologne, Rotherham etc…) are attempts to impress Allah, to make up with him for brief deficiencies of thought control. The believer might have been weak-minded for a moment, but he can still be a soldier of Islam by punishing the kafir in question.

You would also avoid un-Islamic knowledge as a matter of course. This explains why Muslims read little other than Islamic texts, and why they remain ignorant of scientific concepts like evolution and cosmology. The Muslims themselves might be intelligent and academically gifted, but their fear of wrong-thinking deters them from building on these gifts. One might posit this anxiety as the reason for the un-development of the Muslim world as a whole.

Islam, as a mindset, is a permanent state of anxiety, never-ending panic attack, perpetual psychosis. This must be understood by anyone who wishes to break through Islamic psychology to where the captive human is being held. One must treat a Muslim in the same way one would treat a victim of OCD or any comparable neurotic illness. Muslim fanaticism is based in fear. Muslim confidence is fake. Muslims do not like their God. They are afraid of him.

Convincing (or trying to convince) a Muslim that their religion is axiomatically false must necessarily be a perilous operation. If you do not succeed, he will kill you for trying. But it is not impossible. The best approach is not to impose conclusions on the believer, but rather to ask questions. The most developed, rich and powerful parts of the world are those in which Muslim believers are few. Are these enemies of God blessed by something else? Why are so many Muslims killed by other believers? Why are non-Muslim women happier and more secure from domestic violence and rape than Muslim women? Why are so many claims in the Quran provably false? Why do Muslims seem naturally drawn to non-Muslim societies over Muslim ones? Why do Muslim countries fail at science and technological development? Why are non-Muslims so petrified of Muslims in particular (and not, say, Hindus and Sikhs)? Why do Muslim armies fail to win battles against non-Islamic armies? Why are non-Muslims more plentiful than Muslims? And so on.

The more questions one leaves with a Muslim, the more effort he will have to put into diverting them from his rational mind. True, some believers are superhumanly stubborn, but these are far from typical. Many have never been presented with un-Islamic arguments before. A missile shower of reasonable doubts can severely degrade the conviction of a semi-committed believer.

While Islamic psychology cannot be broken in a society which prohibits un-Islamic concepts from being entertained, it can at least be attempted in the Western world, where no form of speech is (officially at least) off-limits. Muslims shouldn’t be written off as hopeless. It costs nothing to try and liberate their minds. You may be surprised by your success.

D, LDN

Thank You & Goodbye

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I began this blog in January, 2013, largely on a whim. I can still remember coming up with the idea as I waited in the rain for a bus in Wimbledon, London (the bus, as is London tradition, was absurdly late.). Since then, ‘Defend the Modern World’ has been visited over half a million times, chiefly by Brits and Americans, but also by thousands of Australians, Africans, Asians and Middle Easterners, too. I am immensely proud of the work that I have done. I hope that it has done some good.

Last week, I received an offer of a teaching position in Europe. When I taught English in northern Spain last year, mainly to small groups of infants, I managed to carry on the blog simultaneously. However, I have come to the conclusion that it will be difficult for me to do the same this time around.

In light of this, and with regret, I am suspending DTMW from this week forward.

The blog will remain online – I have no intentions of deleting it – and I have scheduled a selection of the old posts I am most proud of to be published over the next few Mondays.

To those who have been loyal readers of this blog, I want to say a heartfelt and sincere thank you. Though the quality of my writing has been greatly uneven, you have always been too kind to point out my failings. I do appreciate that.

It is possible I may pick up the blog again sometime in the future, but this is uncertain. I will try to post on occasion – when the news compels me to say something; say, after a terror attack in the UK or US – but the weekly format is just not something I can keep up.

It would, of course, be impossible to adequately sum up the work of three years in a few paragraphs, so I’ll just say this; my sole motivation in writing DTMW has been an uncomplicated loyalty to Western civilisation. It is, to me, the only culture on Earth worth a penny. Nothing else has inspired me. I have not hated anything. I have sought to help protect something I love.

The contest with Islam is not going away any time soon. I do, however, have faith that we will triumph in the end. Even the most fanatical Muslim knows in his heart that the modern world is superior to the mud-huts and mutilations of the Dar-al-Salaam. We need only be loud and proud about this and eventually even the most stubborn will come around.

I wish you all the greatest possible happiness. Thank you once again for your generosity and encouragement.

David (Defend the Modern World)

Letter to the Muslims of Europe.

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*Originally published on this blog in July, 2015

If you (reader) are one of the twenty million devout Muslims currently resident in Europe, I’d like to try explain to you why I believe your beliefs are incompatible with the culture of your adopted home. But more than this, I hope also to persuade you that this view (shared by a growing majority of Europeans) does not emanate from ignorance or racism, and why it may not be a defeat or a humiliation for you to agree with it.

You or your parents probably came to Europe initially for economic reasons, seeking a better life and a more secure future. There is nothing dishonourable or unusual about that. Most non-Muslim migrants make the journey with the same ambitions. The West is very wealthy and safe relative to the rest of the world and so it is only rational to want to join it.

Once here, you or your parents probably planned to exist in a peaceful but separate state to the majority, maintaining your beliefs and traditions quietly in the same way that Orthodox Jews and Eastern Orthodox migrants have done in the past. Increasingly, this doesn’t seem to be possible, if it ever was. And in my view, the reasons for that directly relate to the nature of Islamic belief and the sense of mission that is so inseparable from it.

Unlike Christianity or Judaism, yours is a conquering faith, not a persuading one. Relatively little importance is given to peaceful proselytization in Islam. While there are occasionally stalls set out in front of tube stations or elsewhere in city centres to preach Islamic doctrine, this is an imitation of Christian practice and not something organically ‘Muslim’. Rather, Muslims have historically sought to attain dominion over society by violence, sometimes later permitting religious diversity within that society, but never allowing any symbol to enjoy precedence over the crescent. Their hope, indeed their announced intention, has always been to exalt Islam to a position of cultural dominance and authority. While Christians and Jews have peacefully resided as minorities in many different parts of the world, Muslims have always struggled with the very concept of minority life. Since Allah is supposed to be the only authority to which submission is made, it is seen by most Muslims (and perhaps by you specifically) to be incongruous that a divine authority is subordinate to any non-Islamic regime, whether secular or religious. Minarets are built to tower above all other buildings for grander reasons than amplification. They proclaim symbolically the primacy and authority of Islam over the territory Muslims inhabit. It will simply not do that cathedrals or government buildings are larger or invested with more power and importance. Indeed, it is blasphemous and idolatrous. As Islamists never forget to proclaim before they demolish some priceless artefact – “Nothing and no-one is worthy of veneration except Allah”.

This sense of mission, inherent within Islamic theory, has radically altered human history. The nations of Lebanon, Libya and Syria were once Christian. The territory of what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan was once Buddhist. Persia was once Zoroastrian. That these places are now Muslim is testament to Islam’s conquering urge and military spirit. Islam seeks not only to convert, but to dominate and subdue. It is expansionist by its very nature. It was not designed to be one faith out of many, but to be the one and only faith of all humankind. The Quran itself is not shy of stating this. I would quote the passages urging the subjugation of unbelievers here but this would be so long as to be disruptive to my argument.

Your faith is antagonistic to everything but itself. And since you began settling in Europe back in the 1960s, members of your community have behaved in a way harmonious with that analysis. Just recently in Britain, there has been a wave of serious sexual assault committed by Muslims against exclusively non-Muslim children. Some estimates put the number of girls assaulted by British Pakistanis as high as 200,000. In the town of Rotherham alone, at least 1400 girls are known to have been forced into sexual slavery by Muslim gangs.

And even when it doesn’t lead to assault, your behaviour around women (if you are a man) is infantile and tactless. It would appear customary that upon meeting a woman (Muslim or otherwise, online or in real life) your first words either involve sex or invite a personal relationship that can lead to sex. It might surprise you – it probably has surprised you – but non-Muslim women do not enjoy being asked for their phone number or address by a complete stranger without any preceding conversation. Your lack of charm – indeed, your failure to even understand the idea and purpose of charm – is absolute. To you, women are merely sexual animals, possessing no greater value or agency than cats and dogs. For this reason, perhaps more than any other, I find it difficult to breathe the same air as you.

Then there are the acts of extreme violence. Members of your community blew up the train network in Madrid, Spain and the subway in London, England. Members of your community massacred the staff of a cartoon tabloid in Paris. Members of your community have beheaded European citizens, the most recent case occurring only a month ago. You even hunt your own kind! Hundreds of Muslim women have now been killed in Europe in the name of ‘honour’ – and usually by members of their own family. Every year, thousands of Muslim girls are taken abroad to have their vagina mutilated by a shaving razor and then brought back to lead a miserable, painful existence with the perpetrators.

How could we possibly put up with this? What kind of people would we be if we did?

Face the facts, a growing proportion of the native population of Europe actively despises you, and does so without allowing any distinction for your race, Islamic school or individual contribution to European society. After decades of aggressive dysfunction and sickening crime, people simply hate you. They hate you and they fear you. And it is becoming difficult for even the most committed liberal to propose a reason why they shouldn’t.

There is an obvious – some would say cartoonish – contrast between the Islamic conception of society and the hopes and opinions of the Europeans. We value things you view as Satanic. You value things we regard as barbaric. You put faith before reason. We put reason before faith. You regard women as second-class human beings. We regard the sexes as equal. You view freedom of speech as being limited to secular matters. We believe it should permeate every corner of life and thought.

Even if this weren’t the case, your religious tradition is not the one that we are used to and which has inspired and characterised our manners and rituals over centuries. No European books are dedicated to your God. No statues of your Prophet (even if this were allowed) grace the Piazzas of our cities. Few if any Qur’anic phrases have entered our common parlance. We don’t celebrate your holy days, and have no regard for your heroes and saints.

You might reply that Hindu and Sikh mythologies do not inform our ways either, but then Hindus and Sikhs have proven themselves to be comfortable with that. I have never heard of an act of Hindu terrorism, nor any religiously-motivated outrage committed by a Sikh, Buddhist, Scientologist or Jain organisation. Islam has actively distinguished itself in violence, in readiness to fight and to make war where there is peace.

You are wrong if you take us for fools. We know well enough what the phrases Dar al-Harb and Dar al-Islam mean. We recognise the desire on your part to transfer us from one to the other and by what means. You must have known from the start that a project of this historical magnitude would be resisted with passion and fire. And, please believe me, that passion and fire is already generated in sufficient quantity should we ever be given the excuse to unleash it.

There are people on this (uniquely civilised) continent who would gladly slaughter you like dogs. It is not fantastical anymore to foresee a new Nazi movement emerging in Europe and going on to behave in a Hitlerian fashion. Nobody (save a few lunatics) wishes to go back there. Peace in Europe has been a blessing. Democracy is deserving of all the celebration dedicated to it. But your behaviour is testing the hold of democracy to its white-knuckled limits.

How then can we defuse this bomb? How might we organise a solution that forbids the need for mass violence and the self-destruction of democratic liberalism? This of course is the great question of my generation, and the most important task of the Western World, ahead of the environment, Russia, or any other exaggerated diversion.

That there is – or rather, that you are – an issue in need of resolution can no longer be sensibly denied. We are obliged by everything we hold dear to guarantee that the Islamisation of Europe ceases and that what progress it has already made is reversed. The Western way of life is not just ‘different’ to your own, but a million times superior. We are behaving very rationally by seeking to protect it.

Incidentally, you can deny this last fact as much as you want. It makes no difference to me. Deep down, beneath all the evasions and the layers of self-hypnosis, I’m sure you accept it as much as I do. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t still be here.

And that is the real, embarrassing truth, no? Whatever your friends have scrawled on placards in the past, you don’t ‘hate our way of life’ at all. You are simply jealous of it, and angry that your ancestral lands have failed – and are still failing – to develop in a like fashion.

For an effective and rapid solution to this problem, I propose the following measures – If you are brave, honest and intelligent enough to rid your mind of the numbing circularities of Islamic thinking, a space in the European future can and should be found for you. If not, and if you continue to display the toxic side effects of Islamic belief, then no more kid glove treatment should be forthcoming. If you espouse anti-Semitic, anti-Democratic and anti-Western ideas, you should be arrested and receive criminal records, with all the implications that has for finding employment, pursuing political office and securing tenancy and accommodation. The wearing of the Niqab must be outlawed and repeat offenders deported to a country where it is still the prevailing fashion. All Muslims involved in the mass-rape of British children must hang. Any Mosque preaching violence against Jews, Christians or Homosexuals must be shut down and demolished, and the same with colleges and Islamic faith schools. There must be an end to all immigration from Muslim countries, including from those cultures touted as exceptional (like Tunisia, Turkey or Iran). The culture of the West must be openly celebrated as the supreme culture of the world, and no ‘noble’ savagery must ever be taught as a desirable alternative to our children.

Our foreign policy must also be redesigned to reflect our desire to survive. Turkey should be expelled from NATO and replaced by Armenia. Any sanctions lifted from Iran must be reimposed. Investment in alternatives to Middle Eastern oil, including fracking (in lightly populated areas), fusion technology, nuclear and renewable energy must be radically increased. Western arms should only be exported to regimes which ruthlessly suppress Islamist activity (like Egypt and Jordan) and never to theocratic countries, whether ‘allies’ or not (Saudi, UAE, Kuwait etc…). Needless to say, our support for Israel must be great and unconditional.

In all these efforts, our motivating principle (and final goal) must be that Islam is forever segregated from the Western World.

Finally, reader, I promised at the beginning to tell you why it isn’t a humiliation for you to agree with my arguments… This is for the simple reason that you were a human being long before you were a Muslim, and this will always be the most salient fact about you. You are no more biologically predestined to ignorance and poverty than a Swede or a German. If you wish to become free, you can become free! And if you prefer slavery, well, then there is no defeat in relocating to pursue it, if that is your dream. There can no ‘shame’ in wanting to be where you belong. Nothing is more human.

Whichever condition you choose (and we will make you choose), understand that the West is the homeland of the free, the creative and the happy. A slave will always be foreign here.

D, LDN.

Qur’an-Denial: The Foundational Error of the Appeasers

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*Originally published on this blog in May, 2016

The terror attacks in Brussels, Ivory Coast and Nigeria this past week were (if you’ll tolerate a well-worn paradox) notable for being completely unremarkable. The murders were generic, run-of-the-mill, classical and exactly in step with the history and character of the Islamic religion. As I have said previously, such violence is best understood simply as the Qur’an in action, or Applied Islam, if you prefer. This is what all those elegant Arabic characters materialize into. This is their effect.

There is no ingenious metaphor behind Quranic verses imploring Muslims to kill “unbelievers.” and “strike of their heads”. It isn’t an allegorical way of saying “Try your best in life and be proud of your heritage”. It means exactly what you think it means. Mutilate and murder people if they derive from a different religious tradition.

The Qur’an murdered those people in Belgium, Nigeria and Ivory Coast. Without it’s message, they would still be alive.

But despite that terrible reality, this notorious book of death will remain readily available at your local Waterstones or Walmart for the foreseeable future. Your children, if you have any, will be able to purchase it, read it, learn from it, perhaps even act on it. This is because, for all the chaos and bloodshed at the hands of Muslims the world over, our cultural elite still refuse to recognise that it is the text itself which inspires the carnage. Rejecting this idea as essentially ‘racist’, they offer instead tortuous sociological, economic, psychological explanations more palatable to the liberal mindset and harmonious with liberal, multi-cultural doctrine. The Muslims are killing people because they are ‘disenfranchised’, ‘outcast from the cultural mainstream’, ‘oppressed’, ‘economically deprived’ and so on. They will stick stubbornly to these explanations right up to the point a Salafist knife rests upon their throats.

Prime Minister Cameron has repeatedly claimed that Islam is peaceful

Through this prism of misinterpretation, individual terror attacks are not understood as a call to banish Islam forever from the shores of the free world, but as an opportunity to understand better the mistakes WE have made in our diplomacy with the Muslim world. Simon Jenkins, the eccentric libertarian sore thumb over at the Guardian, argued just a few days ago that the reaction of the West (to Brussels and other comparable acts of terrorism) should be to “alleviate” the “rage that gives rise to acts of terror…”, including by instigating a “wiser foreign policy than most western nations have shown towards the Muslim world over the past decade.”

The cretinous Socialist Worker newspaper struck a similar tone: “Wars launched by the leaders of the US, Britain and France” read this week’s opinion column “have created huge resentment and created the space in which groups such as Isis can grow. These same leaders back the brutal governments that have turned back the tide of the Arab Spring—which offered hope…There is nothing remotely anti-imperialist about the bombings. But the reality is that more repression will mean more attacks.”

This bewildering ignorance is the natural result of Quran-Denial. Without reference to the text demanding violence, Islamic violence inevitably seems free-floating, reactive and mysterious. It is only with reference to the text itself that such violence becomes understandable. Denial of the link between violence and the Qur’an is thus the foundational error of the Western appeasers of Islam.

It is worth noting that we rarely fail to trace the origins of other religious practices. One of the key pillars of Christian practice, for example, is the injunction to loves one’s neighbour, the poor and even one’s enemies. Christian charities are acting upon this sentiment when they do charitable work, launch missions in the third world, or stage interfaith dialogues. Only a very eccentric man indeed would try to claim that such people were not directly motivated by the text of their Holy Book. It stands to reason that they are.

Christians are directly inspired by the New Testament

When critics of Christianity and Judaism, such as Bill Maher, reference the textual origins of what they perceive as Abrahamic ‘homophobia’, Christians and Jews are never allowed to claim the verses in question are metaphors or that they discriminate only against ancient homosexuals.

Only Islam is allowed to stand apart from its own Holy Book. And yet Islam is also the faith most fanatical about the literal inerrancy of its Holy Book.

Let’s look at some of the passages which may have influenced the murders this past week. A Hat-tip is due here to the staff at the invaluable websites ‘Gates of Vienna’ and ‘Religion of Peace’ which compiled some of the following excerpts (as well as many others):

Quran (5:33) “The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement”

Quran (8:59-60) “And let not those who disbelieve suppose that they can outstrip (Allah’s Purpose). Lo! they cannot escape. Make ready for them all thou canst of (armed) force and of horses tethered, that thereby ye may dismay the enemy of Allah and your enemy.”

Qur’an

Quran (9:5) “So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captive and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them.”

Quran (9:14) “Fight against them so that Allah will punish them by your hands and disgrace them and give you victory over them and heal the breasts of a believing people.”

That should be enough to prove my point. We need only use Occam’s Razor (AKA Ockham’s Razor: the formula that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one) to discover the root cause of the carnage afflicting the civilised and developing world. Muslims are killing because their Holy Text implores them to kill. No further discussion is needed.

Dear political elite – Islam is violent because the Qur’an is violent. The Qur’an itself is Europe’s mortal enemy. Drop the mystification and start working on a fightback.

What else is there to say about the Brussels attack? Well, for one thing, it happened in a very beautiful city. I went on holiday to Brussels as a teenager with my family and remember enjoying every minute of the two weeks I spent there. If you haven’t been yourself, please consider it (especially now). The famous cobbled streets, superior booze, laid back mood and architectural grandeur repay the price of travel with generous interest.

Watching the news come in after the explosions this week, I recognised with real sadness parts of the city I had strolled through during that halcyon fortnight. One of the massed news correspondents even stood in front of a complex of buildings I once happily photographed, her sad, elongated face starkly out of sync with the pleasant memories I will try – in spite of everything – to nurture and keep pure and intact.

Brussels

Of course, as well as being a charming city in itself, Brussels is also – for now – the Capital of the European Union. Sadly, even if also inevitably, this fact has discoloured some reactions to the bombings. One couldn’t help but detect a mood of political schadenfreude on the part of the British right-wing press last Tuesday evening. From a propaganda point of view, it must have seemed too good to be true. The EU capital, machine-heart of a despised and oppressive bureaucracy, shattered by the fruit of its own myopic agenda. The heat of the explosions had yet to fade from the air when EU-haters excitedly set about refitting the tragedy to add weight to their case for Brexit. This tasteless enthusiasm, understandable but deeply regrettable, says a lot about how badly the European experiment has poisoned continental relations.

Let’s be clear: Those unlucky souls vanquished in Brussels a few days ago did not die entirely in vain. They are (and should always be remembered as) martyrs in a just war of good vs. evil, modernity vs. darkness. My heart goes out to them, their families and their friends. In their memory, I will conclude by restating my motive in writing this blog: I detest Islam. I detest it with all my soul.

D, LDN

Why are We Letting Anyone In?

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Many in the UK have been outraged (and often simultaneously amused) this past week by the arrival on our shores of a batch of Calais asylum seekers billed as unaccompanied ‘children’, yet who are in appearance seemingly well over the age of 20. As bizarre and brazen (and obvious) as the fraud appears to be, I think this outrage somehow misses the point. The bigger scandal – and the one worth focussing one’s anger on – is that asylum seekers are being allowed into Britain at all.

What obligation does Britain have – legally or morally – to those refugees (if they are indeed refugees) stationed in the safe, democratic nation of France? None is the answer, and no-one can (or has even attempted to) reasonably argue otherwise.

As opponents of asylum fraud are right to consistently point out, a central principle (even if not a law) holds that refugees should settle in the first available safe haven they come across that is willing and able to accommodate them. To illustrate this idea with reference to Syria, a refugee from ISIS-controlled territory who has been accepted into Turkey has no right to demand entry into Greece. A refugee from ISIS-controlled territory who has been accepted into Lebanon has no right to demand entry into Cyprus, and so on. If the purpose of emigration is, as stated, to avoid violence, war or persecution, then only in the first accommodating nation can asylum be rightfully claimed. Should the refugee flee from one safe haven to another, that is called migration and no country is duty bound to facilitate it.

This isn’t a very difficult principle to understand – and, to be sure, most ordinary folk do understand it, which is partly why the Calais Jungle infants have been so poorly and unsympathetically received.

Now, I am an Islamophobe – no doubt about that. I despise the Islamic religion with a white-hot passion. I’m also not over-keen on the adherents of the Islamic religion. Nevertheless, I am, like the reader will be, a moral person, or at the very least someone with a moral sense. We do have an obligation as human beings to ensure that the innocent do not suffer any preventable evil. 

To help the Syrian people, Donald Trump has endorsed a workable and perfectly logical initiative. Allied forces, he says, should carve out a safe-zone in Syria into which the innocent can flee while the conflict burns itself out. This would not be difficult to achieve. Though Assad and ISIS would inevitably object to the idea, both forces have been so degraded that neither is capable of mounting an effective resistance.

Turkey, rich in manpower and arms, must be told to do the work on the ground or face expulsion from NATO. The Gulf States, especially Saudi Arabia, must be made to cough up the money to support the campaign or face a year-long suspension of Western arms sales. This is the solution. Let’s pursue it.

As for the Calais ‘children’, Britain and the West are under no rightful obligation to take in anyone. No asylum seeker, not one, whether from Eritrea, Syria, Afghanistan or the Congo, should be allowed to settle here. And we have every right to expect our government to prevent them from doing so.

D, LDN

Lily Allen’s Shocking Naivety

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I quite like the pop singer Lily Allen. Not her music, you understand, just her. She is roughly the same age as me and I have always found her pleasantly, if also unconventionally, attractive.

Now, with such irrelevant information out of the way, I must say I was stunned, though not surprised, by the news that Allen had been reduced to apologising for her country during a visit to the notorious Calais ‘Jungle’ migrant camp last week.

In case you’ve yet to hear of this incident, Allen, faced with a war-weary Afghan teenager, declared that she was ashamed of Britain for not letting in the teeming hordes currently massed (illegally) on France’s Northern coast, making these remarks through a veil of tears and tear-dampened blonde hair. Later, in conversation with the British press, Allen remarked (presumably seriously) that she would even be prepared to have a refugee stay with her at her personal residence in England.

The UK backlash against Allen’s remarks has been predictably harsh. In the right-leaning papers, critics have lined up to pour cold water on Allen’s dippy sentiments, as well as to explain that the singer knows little to nothing about the realities of the Calais crisis and its multiple backgrounds.

“(Allen) was merely repeating the canards of her arty liberal chums” Zoe Strimpel wrote in the Telegraph “who – despite never venturing outside their own intellectual and social cosmos – are sure that everyone who doesn’t see the world as they do, and especially anyone who voted for Brexit, is a bigoted fool. To reduce the web of direness behind the ongoing migration surge to a simple matter of Western culpability is plainly idiotic. It shows painfully limited understanding of the catalogue of political and human horrors that predated, and indeed motivated, Western intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq…And to weepily lay the situation in Calais purely at Britain’s door was a severe misfiring of sentimentality. Crying in the face of human suffering is one thing. But crying on national TV while telling the audience that their country – merely by trying to control its borders – is cruelly causing the misery of innocents is quite another.”

Personally, I was less struck by Ms Allen’s weak grasp of the political-economic background of the migrant crisis than with her shocking naivety in relation to the religion of Islam and the nature of those currently attempting to force their way into the British Isles. For a young, beautiful Englishwoman such as Allen to offer to take in young (almost always male) Muslim refugees displays a terrifying disregard for her own safety. Can you imagine (do you even need to imagine) what would happen if Allen allowed a 16-20 year old Afghan male to move into her personal residence? True, we cannot say for sure, but I don’t believe it is bigoted of me to speculate that sexual advances would almost be made by the new arrival – and that, should they be rebuffed, sexual violence might well follow.

What will it take for our best and brightest to understand that they are being conned by the lowest elements in the human species? What will it take for Western women to understand that the weeping masses huddled in tents along the French coast are not like the Jews who fled Nazi Germany; that they are rather wolves imitating sheep; devils imitating angels? What will it take?

Several commenters under the articles reporting Allen’s comments in Calais have delighted in speculating the fate that would await her should she follow through on her deranged offer of sanctuary. I don’t believe we should be so cold-hearted. Allen is a good person. She has simply fallen victim to a dangerous lie peddled by a negligent, dishonest media. The blame, should Allen’s words inspire some young girl to expose herself to danger, lies ultimately with them.

D, LDN

Justifying the Extraordinary: Trump and the Debates

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In seven days time the first of four presidential debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will take place in Hempstead, New York State. It is probably fair to say that no such debate has been as hotly anticipated in recent memory as this one now is. The debate marks the biggest test Donald Trump has faced since the launch of his candidacy for the Republican nomination back in 2015. It represents a vital trial of the New Yorker’s presidential character, professionalism and natural wit.

Hillary Clinton, now lagging behind Trump in many national polls, will be placing a lot of her hopes on the debates. Unlike Trump, the Democrat is a natural when it comes to conventional political combat. She – and her team – will be hoping (and expecting) Trump to be suffocated by the polite constraints of traditional procedure and to show his unease by lashing out wildly at Clinton’s character, appearance, dress sense, femininity, etc. Put simply, they hope and expect Trump to suffer a meltdown.

Whilst I would love to say that Clinton’s strategy is unrealistic, I cannot, as it is perfectly feasible. Trump’s Achilles heel, as he has proven time and time again, is his volcanic and unpredictable personality, his tendency to hit back after every real or perceived slight with much greater force and immaturity than is required or appropriate. All Clinton has to do in these contests is provoke that kind of reaction. All she has to do is poke the tiger until it growls.

This is the most obvious and likely strategy for Hillary to pursue, but there are other possibilities open to her. The rabidly pro-Clinton Washington Post made the following suggestions for their preferred candidate: “Take (Trump) up on his word. He said he “regrets” certain things. Invite him to apologize to Judge Gonzalo Curiel or the Gold Star parents of Capt. Humayun Khan… Another tactic is to press him on empty and unintelligible answers. Trump rarely completes a sentence or can articulate any level of detail about his proposals. When Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and CNN’s Dana Bash tag-teamed, forcing Trump to explain what was in his health-care plan, it became patently obvious that he had a whole lot of nothing to offer. She can certainly take a page from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s book (used against Rubio) in pointing out that Trump repeats the same platitudes. Tell us, Donald, what’s your plan to reduce crime in Chicago? Have you ever sat down with law enforcement?… There are oodles of issues (such as the nuclear triad) about which Trump knows nothing. Challenge him to spell out his stance on net neutrality, the South China Sea and student loans. In other cases — the minimum wage, repayment of U.S. debt and immigration, of course — he has been all over the lot. Force him to pick a position and explain why he has said the opposite.”

The first presidential debate will be held at Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York

Trump’s strategy for the debates is less clear at this point in time. When asked about his intended approach, the Republican has wisely dodged the question, explaining that he would prefer to not give anything away to the opposition prior to the event. We can thus only speculate.

I have a inkling that Trump’s strategy will hinge on portraying Clinton, as he has done all through his campaign so far, as ‘crooked’, dishonest, corrupt and in the pocket of the financial elite; an image he will then contrast with his own man-of-the-people persona.

The email scandal will undoubtedly be raised repeatedly, with Trump going off track and questioning Clinton directly about the thousands of inexplicably deleted messages. He will also link these questions to the issue of the Clinton Foundation and its highly suspicious ties to foreign leaders (including foreign and Islamic dictators).

The Clinton Foundation is coming under intense scrutiny for its ties to foreign regimes

This approach will carry Trump some of the way, but not all of it. He will need to have more strings to his bow prepared if he is to the win the debate outright.

To arrive at the best strategy for winning the debates, Trump would do best to look at what has carried him through the process thus far. I would say that, more than anything else, it is his credentials relating to the Islamist threat that have won over the hearts of patriotic American voters (including true liberals and Democrats). His positions on ISIS, Muslim immigration, Syrian refugee policy and other connected issues have been wildly popular with a broad cross-section of American society. Pushing hard on Clinton’s weakness on Islamism will pave the way for a very important ideological touchdown.

It is possible that in the days that remain before the November election there will be another Islamist atrocity somewhere in the world, perhaps even in the Western World*. This will serve as a timely reminder of how extraordinary the problems we (as a civilisation) face really are, and thus how inappropriate it would be to elect an ordinary candidate to solve them.

ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State

The Islamist challenge is so total and grave that all other issues melt under its heat. Trump and his team must realise this fact and base their approach on it. Sure, there are problems with the American economy which require ironing out; sure, illegal immigration from Mexico is undermining American sovereignty and nationhood; sure, the trade deficit with China is growing at an alarming rate.  But none of these issues are new or so extraordinary as to justify the American electorate taking a risk on a provocative and unconventional candidate (and that, undoubtedly, is what Trump is). Trump’s presidency is so unique and strange a prospect that he must build an equally strange and unique context in which it will seem appropriate and necessary. The only way he can achieve this, in my opinion, is with reference to the Islamist threat.

At the debates, Trump must be specific about how he will deal with this extraordinary issue. Soundbites, however popular they may be, should be avoided. It simply isn’t enough to say things like “We need to get tough and we need to get smart.” This is so vague as to be meaningless. Trump must map out a strategy for pulverising Islamism, demolishing it so severely that it will not dare raise its evil head for decades to come.

*Today, as I write, debris is once again being cleaned up from the streets of a Western city. In Manhattan, NYC, two bombs have exploded, injuring almost thirty innocent civilians. Meanwhile, in the peaceful, Scandinavian-American State of Minnesota, eight people have been stabbed at a shopping mall, the attacker allegedly interrogating potential victims as to their religious beliefs prior to attacking them.

These are indeed extraordinary times. They require an extraordinary leader. Next week in New York, Donald Trump would do best not to try and make himself seem ordinary, but rather embrace his uniqueness, tying it to the uniqueness of the times in which we find ourselves.

D, LDN

Why the Alt-Right is Too Alt for Me

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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

Phoney War: Why a French Burkini Ban Would Be Meaningless

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In September, 1939, after the Nazis had triumphantly rolled their tank battalions over the corpse of the Polish defence forces, there began a period now referred to by historians as the ‘phoney war’.

This period – which lasted roughly eight months before terminating dramatically at the Battle of France in 1940 – saw little to no actual military activity in Europe, despite the war being officially underway and there being no diplomatic solution considered feasible by European leaders.

That is not to say that nothing happened. There were, of course, war-like gestures by both sides, such as the digging of trenches, the erection of barbed wire fences and other military deterrents etc… What was missing, what made the war phoney, was the absence of any pro-active initiatives, any real engagement of the enemy, either with policy or force of arms.

In regard to Europe’s confrontation with Islamism, we have been locked in a period of phoney war for over ten years now. In this period, no real battles have been fought, or at least none to any great consequence. Only war-like gestures have been made. Nothing big. Nothing loud. Nothing enough to scare the pigeons.

The burkini ban proposed by the French government last week is one such gesture. Though the ban (which has since been blocked in the French courts) was greeted initially by some in the cultural-defence community as bold and meaningful, I cannot for the life of me think why.

Woman wearing the ‘burkini’ swimsuit in Nice, France

The burkini ban was simply a token move by the French government designed to convince the smaller-skulled among the French public that it cares, that it is willing to do something about the threat of Islamisation.

By itself, the ban would have done nothing at all to improve security, guarantee the secular character of French society, or even liberate the women concerned from their religious obligations. Indeed, it may have even robbed them of liberty, since, given that Muslim women are governed ultimately by their husbands, such women would almost certainly have been ‘advised’ to avoid the beach rather than risk breaking Quranic law.

The ban would contribute nothing. It was nothing – nothing pretending to be something.

To avoid the charge of picking on the French here, it should be noted that many such token gestures have been enacted or proposed by the British and American governments also. I can still recall the fanfare and fake controversy when the Home Office announced that it would be no longer acceptable for Muslim women to wear the veil in their passport photos. Imagine that…

The Niqab – often referred to as the ‘Burka’. No legal restrictions on Muslim dress have been successfully enforced in Western nations.

Whatever explanations they manufacture for their apathy, the truth is that the governments of the West are simply too scared to take any serious action to combat the Islamist threat. And, to be fair, it isn’t difficult to imagine why they would be.

If the reader is on Facebook – and has a representative selection of friends on this site – he/she will have observed with dismay the absurd intensity of the backlash against the burkini initiative these past few days.

Self-defined Liberals, both in France and outside of it, have branded the idea ‘fascist’, ‘totalitarian’, and (of course – drum roll please….) ‘RACIST”. The idea was even said by some to violate the rules of feminism and sexual equality – including, it should be noted, by Muslims themselves, who ordinarily have scant regard for the notion of female empowerment.

In the Independent newspaper columnist Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan went further than most by pressing the accusations of racism and feminist betrayal into one incoherent lump, arguing that French feminism is itself explicitly rooted in “colonialism and imperialism.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” she wrote, “but I thought this was a pretty black and white thing we feminists were agreed on. An article of faith if you will: Thou Shalt Leave Women To Do As They Will With Their Own Bodies. France, often posturing itself as the beacon of feminism because apparently feminism was born of the French Revolution… should surely know this article more than most. And yet, here it is – the French state itself – forcing women to wear or not wear certain clothes! Incredible!…Muslim women are posited always as victims of their dress who require liberation from the French authorities. And here’s the catch: this French desire to liberate Muslim women and the positing of Muslimness as ‘oppositional’ to Frenchness has a long and bloody history (in the colony of Algeria).”

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has spoken in support of the burkini ban

The comment section beneath this article contains numerous criticisms of Khan’s leaky reasoning, but just as many agreeing voices. Khan is, furthermore, in the solid majority within the closed world of the Western press and the activist mainstream it feeds.

In France, Britain and America, protests against the burkini ban have been staged outside French embassies and cultural centres. On the internet, petitions have been drawn up and generously endorsed with signatures from right-thinking undergraduates and bearded Guardianistas.

If this timid, pointless gesture cannot pass into law without triggering such hysteria, one can well understand why our governments are averse to doing anything more profound.

I will not here deal with the specific arguments for and against the burkini ban in France (or elsewhere), since the initiative is too meaningless and tokenistic to merit our consideration. Instead, let us consider (for contrast) a meaningful, serious policy; one with which the governments of the West could take the fight to the Islamist forces threatening our way of life and physical existence. To do this we must necessarily turn away from Europe and look to America.

The Donald Trump speech I referenced last week (which addressed the issue of US foreign policy) advertised many novel and impressive strategies for pushing back against the Islamist ranks. Of these, one stood out to me as particularly commonsensical: namely, the drawing up of an ideological test for prospective migrants to the United States prior to their admission. This brave idea is logical and reasonable not just for the US, but for the entire Western world.

Donald Trump addresses supporters in Ohio

As Trump explained, this would be no different in practice to the tests used (effectively) by many Western nations during the Cold War. As with Communism during the Soviet era, Islam (Trump still insists, for political reasons, on calling it ‘radical Islam’) represents a massive and feasible existential threat to the social and governmental norms of all Western countries. It is only natural, therefore, that the West should take the same precautions now as were put to use then.

What would such an ideological test look like? No-one knows for certain (Trump has the habit of being rather vague). I can only say at this juncture what I think it should look like.

Here are some suggested questions for Trump’s ideological test (and I write these fully in the knowledge that they are too extreme even for Donald Trump’s campaign):

Q1: Do you recognise, understand and accept a causal relationship between the strength of Islam in a country and the backwardness of that country?

Answer required for a pass: Yes.

Q2: Do you recognise, understand and accept that what attracts you to the Western world is the cultural superiority (freedoms, secularism and sophistication, etc.) of the Western world?

Answer required for a pass: Yes.

Q3: Do you recognise, understand and accept that those things you wish to escape by leaving the Muslim world are the natural and inevitable by-products of Islamic culture?

Answer required for a pass: Yes.

Q4: Do you believe women, homosexuals and followers of non-Islamic religions should have the same rights and freedoms as anyone else?

Answer required for a pass: Yes.

And finally: Q5: Do you swear on the Quran to put your commitment to the liberal, bohemian values of the West over and above any commitment you retain to the Muslim faith?

Answer required for a pass: Yes.

While imperfect and incomplete, I think this little questionnaire would go some way in filtering out the more honest Islamists from among the migrant hordes. Lying (a virtue in Islam) is obviously a possibility, but, even in that case, such an interrogation would nevertheless succeed in putting unwelcome thoughts in previously closed minds.

When the phoney war is finally over, and when the competing sides are clearly identified and ready for an honest confrontation, I believe Muslim immigration to Europe and America will be outlawed entirely. But we are not at that stage yet. The war of gesture vs. gesture still has a lot of life left in it – not to mention appeal.

All people, of all backgrounds, are naturally inclined to oppose confrontation and support the status quo. Even during WWII, the British, German and French populations were almost certainly relieved by the break in hostilities offered by the phoney war. They knew deep down that it couldn’t last. They knew deep down what the Nazis were really about. But they wanted space to breathe, to continue life as normal. It is no different now.

Ultimately, of course, the same thing will get us out of our comfortable trenches as got the French and British armies out of theirs in 1940. We will have no choice.

D, LDN

Milo Yiannopoulos: The Good and the Bad

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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.