No, I’m not quitting blogging (the hiatus has been down to some personal matters), but I am throwing up my hands in despair.
In the past, I’ve been deeply worried about the fact that resistance to Islamic imperialism was being infiltrated by worrying forces. I felt despair when Wilders decided to make common cause with Le Pen and Strache. I still share those concerns – but I find that I cannot condemn people from taking that part any longer.
I’m worried about what might be found at the fringes of fringe movements – but just look at what the mainstream does right out in the open. Following the slaughter of Charlie Hebdo, what was the response? Gary Trudeau deciding the blame the murdered for their deaths, and the rancid Glenn Greenwald deciding that the appropriate response to a string of anti-Semitic murders is to republish the vilest anti-Semitic cartoons.
This is like seeing “simple Sambo” or “Jim Crow” cartoons published in response to lynching or the murder of Dr King. And this is the mainstream.
Take the recent shooting in Garland. Let us grant for the moment and for the sake of the argument, that Pamela Geller is the bigot and crank her attackers make out. The question then arises: isn’t it a shame and a disgrace that only a bigot and a crank is willing to defy violent censorship? That the entire “moderate, liberal” mainstream ducks the elementary responsibility of solidarity, the one that certain puffball atheists proclaim loudly and then run away from when it gets rough?
I’ve had a furious disagreement with Bosch Fawstin in the past, but he has shown more courage and principle in this affair than any mainstream cartoonist or writer I can think of.
If the mainstream is like this, how can I in good conscience argue against those principally under threat making whatever compromises they see fit?
I don’t think that for every hundred words slamming the Garland contest I have found one that condemns the would-be murderers. The line is that opinion is a sign of bigotry, but murder is not. Have you ever heard any of those wailing about Islamophobia show the slightest concern for Islam’s victims?
There are assaults on Jews all over Europe, at the hands not of neo-Nazis, but Muslim fanatics. And the only response from all those boundlessly tolerant people is to explain that this is all justified – sorry “understandable because of Israel”. The most defence they can expect is a line or two deploring it, followed by several pages of excuses. So how can I blame European Jews for joining PEGIDA? And not just Jews – we have attacks on Germany’s Yezidi community by Muslim jihadis, something that the mainstream studiously ignores. It is not hard to find calls for the deaths of Hindus and Christians, either. And PEGIDA is one of the few groups demanding that infidel refugees fleeing ISIS and the rest of the Islamic world be granted refuge in Germany/
In Britain there is FGM and honour killings and mass rape covered up out of fears that opposing Islamic rape is racist. So how can I blame Anne Marie Waters for joining UKIP?
How can I blame anyone from siding with Putin when, for all that he is a sinister tyrant, he seems the only major world leader who gives a damn about the slaughter of Middle East Christians?
How can I blame Wilders for his alliances when all he wants is the day when he can live freely, without twenty-four hour armed guard in his own country?
I know all the objections – I’ve made them all before myself – but I find a feeling of total helplessness descends. Take those Jews joining PEGIDA – how can I blame them, especially when their presence may counteract the influence of genuine fascists?
I’ll continue to argue against many of these positions but I cannot blame, even slightly, people for taking them.
