The End is Nigh?

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America, American Liberty, BBC, bbc bbc, Boris Johnson, Christianity, Christianity and Islam, Civilisation, Coffee, Defend the modern world, Facebook, Islam, Islamisation, Islamisation of London, london, Mayor, mayor mayor, mayor of London, Multiculturalism, muslim mayor of london, Muslims, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, sadiq, sadiq khan, sadiq mayor, Twitter

The news that Sadiq Khan (the Muslim son of a Pakistani bus driver) has been elected Mayor of London hasn’t exactly gone down well with the British people. Here is a representative reaction cropped from the comment section of a popular right-wing newspaper:

“Bye Bye London. It was nice knowing you. Can’t believe what’s happening to this country.”

Here’s another – “We’re doomed. This is the end. We knew it was coming. Shame on those who did nothing to stop it. I used to love visiting London as a kid. I won’t bother doing that now. Tragic.”

And here’s one more – “Hardly surprising. There are no English people left in London. It’s part of Pakistan now. Used to be such a lovely city.”

It would be easy – and conventional – to label such responses hysterical and exaggeratedly doomly. That is exactly how they are being framed by the liberal press. But are they really an overreaction? The answer is complex.

As Mayor of London, Mr Khan will have very little political power. The position of Mayor is almost entirely bureaucratic, with the functions of the office largely confined to issues like transport, museum fees, rubbish disposal and recycling. Despite that, few positions are more symbolic than the Mayoralty of our Capital.

When the man or woman who replaces Barack Obama visits London, he or she will be required to meet with Khan as a matter of tradition. There is no way around it. For the President to refuse this meeting would be loudly condemned by both ends of the spectrum of political acceptability. And this applies to all foreign leaders who visit the UK, including the premiers of China, France, Israel, Canada and India.

Mr Khan will often be the first living thing a foreign leader will encounter upon visiting the United Kingdom. He is the welcome mat; the red carpet; our best Sunday suit. This is one reason to be worried, for being an official representative of a major nation provides Khan with enormous ‘soft’ power.

Should Donald Trump enter the White House this coming November, he will be expected by his electors to follow through on promises he made over the election season. And most notable among these promises, at least for people of our political persuasion, was the promise to close the borders of the United States to all practitioners of the Muslim faith. While this policy was and is enormously popular with the American public (and the British public, for that matter), it will be very difficult to enact without setting off an organised wave of condemnation from leaders across the world. As to whether this makes any difference to President Trump depends to a large extent on how influential Muslims are in other Western countries. It matters little or nothing if the Sultan of Brunei decries the President from his little, irrelevant fiefdom. But it does matter if a certain Mayor lobbies the UK government to bar the US President from London, a city which hosts a massive proportion of the world’s economic and political get-togethers.

As Mayor, Mr Khan will have high-level access not only to the government, but also to the monarchy. The Queen herself will be expected to meet with Khan on occasion to discuss all manner of topics, ranging from economic matters to the status of foreign leaders. While the Queen, like Mr Khan, occupies a largely ceremonial position, it is nevertheless invested with considerable emotional importance. The Queen’s viewpoint (expressed, for example, in the annual Christmas Day speech) is taken a million times more seriously than the view of a commoner. Will Khan seek to influence the Queen? It isn’t exactly far-fetched to predict that he will.

Finally, we must also consider the effect that a Muslim mayor of London will have on our national-cultural identity. London is the most important site in the British Isles – the place where the economic, political and cultural elites reside and make their decisions. Though citizens of other areas might begrudge the idea, London still leads the way in setting the cultural tone for the rest of the United Kingdom. In what way will having a Muslim mayor change London’s cultural self-concept? Again, we don’t know, but this must be considered.

I do not personally believe the election of Sadiq Khan means Britain has succumbed to Islam. It is simply a sign that London’s British identity is slipping further into the multicultural gunge. I’d love to suggest a way of halting this decline, but I’m not entirely sure there is one.

D, LDN.

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Knowledge and Ignorance.

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Boris Johnson, Defend the modern world, Emma West, English Defence League, Islamophobia, Knowledge and Ignorance, london, Orwell, Oyster card, Pakistanis, race, racism, Subway, TFL, Trains, Transport for London, Tube, Underground

I witnessed a slight altercation at the weekend. A brief argument in a tube station between a drunk female native and a believer led to the native stating that he (the believer) ‘shouldn’t even be here’ (‘here’ being a larger area than he perhaps appreciated). Although I generally disapprove of loutish behaviour in public, I must say I quietly approved of this case.

After all, the believer wasn’t alone and the girl was. He backed down and she didn’t. What’s more, he seemed genuinely offended, as if her comment (more of a bark really) challenged something very important in his self-concept. He was also undoubtedly the guilty party, having barged in front of her as she queued at the oyster machine.

Afterwards, the Muslims topped up their cards at a separate machine and then departed, waiting until they were at the turnstiles before having a go back. Their chosen rejoinder was ‘ignorant bitch’ and it fell largely on disinterested ears.

Still, as weak as it was, let’s address the comment here and identify its error.

Nothing in modern life is more infuriating to the logical mind than the misuse (and misunderstanding) of the word ‘ignorance’. We are constantly told (by the press and by minorities) that an offensive opinion is always based on it and that racism in particular is motored by this misdeed alone.

You think intelligence has a genetic cause? Then you’re ignorant. You think Black people commit more violent crime than Whites? You’re ignorant. You think that Muslim terrorists are basing their actions on the Qur’an? You’re ignorant.

The irony here is obvious. Knowledge is now Ignorance (just as Orwell prophesised it would be in a totalitarian state) and Ignorance is now knowledge.

There is a lot to object to in racism, but it is rarely, if ever, caused by the practitioner not knowing something. There is no magical fact that can turn a racist into an egalitarian. It’s crazy even to consider it.

And as concerns Islam, ignorance (of the real kind) is the only reason they are still allowed to live here.

D, LDN.

Boris Johnson is not a Politician.

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America 911, American Liberty, BNP EDLNF, Boris Johnson, Boris Johnson immigration, Boris Johnson Prime Minister, Christianity, Civilisation, Defend the modern world, Immigration, Islam, Telegraph

It is by now broadly accepted that the Conservative Party has become hugely unpopular in Britain and – as things stand – will probably lose the next general election to Ed Miliband’s Labour Party.

As to why the Tories are struggling, everyone has their own theory. Mine is that David Cameron is not a conservative at all and that this by itself provides ample explanation for his failures at the ballot box. In America, to be sure, Cameron would almost certainly be (or be compared to) a Democrat. His programme of moral liberalism, light-touch welfare reform, and open door immigration would not clear a single Town Hall meeting, let alone national campaign. His voter base has been consistently exasperated, driven into the arms of fringe elements on the centre and distant Right.

But with that said, all is not yet considered lost for the party of Churchill. The Conservatives have an ace in their pack. His name? Alexander ‘Boris’ De Pfeffel Johnson.

It’s true to say that no politician in Britain is held in greater affection than the current mayor of London. His rehearsed stupidity and uncensored poshness, his giggle-inducing persona, honed on chat-shows and panel games has transformed man into myth; an archetype we might call the cuddly anachronism.

Reflecting this goodwill, most national polls suggest that if Johnson, and not Cameron, was leader of the party, the Conservatives would be gliding to a sure majority in 2015, leaving even UKIP choking in its dust.

But is Johnson actually a Conservative? This is an important question to ask, especially given the name of the party he may one day represent.

My own view is that not only is Johnson barely a conservative, he is barely a politician at all. I don’t believe his muffled, engineered-to-be-endearing patriotism has any root in personal sincerity or a coherent worldview. His shape-shifting position on immigration alone, from opposing it – to (more recently) supporting it, speaks volumes. He has also modified his views (many times) on UKIP, Islam and Iraq with the same speed and apparent ease.

But don’t take my word for it; The wonderful journalist Sonia Purnell has performed an invaluable service in documenting the artificiality of Johnson’s presentation and the failings of the man behind it:

“Many in and outside the Conservative party have started talking about “when” and “how” Johnson will become prime minister, rather than “if”…” She wrote “The startling omission in all this outburst of Boris-mania, however, is whether he “should” be considered as a prime minister at all. Before we get too carried away by the cult of personality, it may be worth glancing at his track record. Any whiff of scepticism – well-founded or not – over the zipwire show (at the 2012 Olympics) should be judged in the context of Johnson’s extraordinary record as a performer. Those wonderfully spontaneous bumbling speeches, such as the Conservative party conference one that so baffled Arnold Schwarzenegger, are meticulously planned. Former staff reveal how the pauses, the non sequiturs, the rambling tangents are studiously prepared; the most successful jokes and “off-the-cuff” Boris-isms are rehearsed and recycled.” – (italics added).

Why should the office of prime minister be considered so cheap as to be open to this deception? Boris is an act; a lie sold to the public of a great country. He must always be considered in this context before any other.

D, LDN.

Dyzgenicz: Wat Is Britain Loosing?

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Africa, BBC, Boris Johnson, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, Dysgenics, Eugenics, Flynn Effect, Gordon Gekko, Idiocracy, Intelligence quotient, Johnson, Margaret Thatcher, Mayor, Multiculturalism, No to Turkey in the EU, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Wall Street

Have you ever seen the film ‘Idiocracy’? I haven’t, but I’m well-acquainted with its subject.

From what I’ve read about it, the plot of the film takes place in a (we hope) distant dystopian future, after the effects of the downward selection currently in progress has matured and taken over American society. To put the idea simply, because (in the film, as in reality) less intelligent people have reproduced more than the intelligent, society has become an ‘Idiocracy’, dominated by feral dullards, up to and including the President.

The scientific name for this process is ‘Dysgenics’, which (as any amateur etymologist will see) is the counterprocess to ‘Eugenics’. Dysgenics is the trend by which the intelligent fail to reproduce in sufficient numbers, or else are saturated by the greater fertility of the stupid.

But why am I mentioning this here?

Well, a few months ago, Boris Johnson, the mop-headed Mayor of my city, attracted a great deal of controversy by suggesting that some people are too stupid to get ahead in life.

In a speech to the Margaret Thatcher Centre, Johnson speculated that ‘natural differences’ in cognitive ability mean that economic equality is a dangerous pipe dream not to be pursued by politicians.

As you would expect, the Guardian and other liberal papers quickly poured aggressive scorn on this idea, with Johnson even being compared to Gordon Gekko, the ruthless elitist from the movie ‘Wall Street’.

Johnson is of course correct to say that differences in ability exist and that these differences will usually oppose any attempt to impose ‘equality’. Where he is wrong is to think that politicians can ever get away with pointing this out.

Dysgenics is an open secret among the educated. Prospect magazine ran a terrifying story last year which claimed that (in contravention of the Flynn Effect) the average British IQ was going down.

As strange as this would seem to science, it would surprise very few people who converse with contemporary youth. Public literacy (a good test of intelligence) has never been in more dire straits, and little is being done to address the problem. In the title of this post, I have used what has fast become the standard social-network spelling of ‘losing’. The word ‘lose’ is now ‘loose’, whereas ‘loose’ is now ‘lose’ (or sometimes even ‘looce’). A similar mutation has afflicted the word ‘ridiculous’, which is almost always now spelt ‘rediculous’.

This is isn’t a small concern. When language degrades, cultures usually aren’t far behind.

Boris Johnson deserves credit for his bravery in speaking up on this, but his candor will likely go wasted on a public too afraid of dangerous ideas, and ignorant of the costs of ignoring them.

D, LDN.

Christopher Lane’s Culture Shock (and America’s Problem).

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African American, Australia, Boris Johnson, Christopher Lane, london, Melbourne, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, South London, Sydney, United States, Wollongong

I live in a house-share with 8 other people, 5 of whom are Australian (two from Sydney, two from Melbourne and the other from the wonderfully named city of Wollongong). They came to London, so they say, to experience a city with ‘a bit more Jazz’, by which I think they mean a city more diverse, risky and ‘American’ than those of their homeland. They now wish they hadn’t.

A great many people in England – usually folk with a conservative bent – are massively envious of those living down under, and so would view Aussies who migrate to Britain with confusion. Australia might not have the political relevance, economic power or cultural importance of somewhere like the UK, but as a trade for this, its natives tend to enjoy isolated, post-historical, low-risk lives, comparatively safe from minorities, Islam, pollution and crime. One can sense the pleasures of this existence by noting the number of Australians who spend all day online mocking the poor denizens of London and New York with something like the following:

“Man, I’m so glad I live in Australia. All you poor Pom bastards getting mugged left, right and centre – and here I am relaxing on the beach…”

Trolling of this kind is not uniquely Australian of course. Canadians and New Zealanders are pretty adept at it as well. But it’s Australians who have turned the habit into a well perfected craft.

One can’t dislike Aussies for doing this. I am – just as they presume – jealous of the social peace Australia enjoys. (I’m also jealous of the fact that the future demographics of Australia do not condemn its population to civil war and Islamic takeover).

But while differences between Oz and Britain are great, none compare with the growing divide between Australia and the United States.

While both are technically part of the ‘Western’ World, the US and Australia are becoming ever more foreign to each other with the advance of social trends. On specific issues like crime, they are at opposite ends of the global development scale. The murder rate in the United States is almost 5 times that of Australia (1.0/100,000 in Aus – 4.8/100,000 in the US) and a similar disparity exists in the rate of rape and robbery.

With this in mind, the strong emotion unleashed by the murder of Christopher Lane makes more sense.

In case you haven’t read about it, Mr. Lane was a 22 year-old Australian athlete staying in America with his girlfriend when he was shot dead by a group of mainly African-American youths. The assailants are said to have picked Mr. Lane at random and committed the crime simply because they were ‘bored’. Race has not yet been dismissed as a motivating factor.

Beneath every tribute video to Mr. Lane on YouTube, a stream of comments (by both Aussies and Americans) angrily discuss the social implications of the incident, often veering into explicitly racist language. While that’s a shame, one cannot deny that there is a racial problem worth talking about here.

Responding to the Lane killing, John Mcwhorter over at Time magazine wrote the following:

“The numbers don’t lie: young black men do commit about 50% of the murders in the US. We don’t yet know whether the attack on Lane was racially motivated, nor can we know whether the three black boys who attacked a white boy on a Florida school bus recently would not have done the same to a black kid. (Critics took Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to task for not condemning the violence.) But hardly  uncommon are cases such as the two black guys who doused a white 13 year old with gasoline and lit him on fire saying “You get what you deserve, white boy” (Kansas City, Mo.) or 20 black kids who beat up young Michael Owens on his porch “for Trayvon” (Mobile, Ala).”

It’s worth pausing on the statistic cited in this extract. ‘50% of murders’ committed by African Americans. FIFTY PER CENT.  Remember that African-Americans currently make up no more than 12% of the American population. For that community to enjoy a 50% market share on homicide is frankly bewildering.

In the same week I learned of Mr. Lane’s fate, I was browsing through a disturbing book entitled ‘White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Race Riots to America’ by Colin Flaherty. This volume details the increasing regularity and brutality of Black-on-White crime in the United States. Here’s an excerpt: 

“Racial violence is back. In hundreds of episodes in more than 80 cities since 2010, groups of black people are roaming the streets of America — assaulting, intimidating, stalking, threatening, vandalizing, stealing, shooting, stabbing, even raping and killing. Cities big and small. Expected and unexpected.

But local media and public officials are silent. Crime is color blind… Race is not important… We talk about everything except black mob violence and lawlessness. That is Taboo. Result: Few know about it. Fewer still are talking about it. Today it is at epidemic levels at almost every city in the country.”

To conclude, the Australian reaction to Mr. Lane’s murder is no surprise. The present situation in America is not one any other civilized country would recognize as their own. Americans are going to have to make a choice. Either continue down this route and become more and more unrecognizable to other Western countries, or make a stand and remain in the top category of development. The latter is no longer something to take for granted.

D, LDN