Losing the Plot

Robert Spencer points out with dismay what many others have also noticed about yesterday’s essay by Melanie Phillips.

Ms. Phillips starts off on a high note, with a robust protest at the banning of Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer from the UK:

By banning from the country as extremists the American anti-jihadis Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, the Home Secretary Teresa May has not only made herself look ridiculous but has sent the enemies of the United Kingdom the message that they have it on the run.

But then she feels compelled to emphasize her distaste for Mr. Spencer’s choice of British allies:

I do not support the approach taken by either Geller or Spencer to the problem of Islamic extremism. Both have endorsed groups such as the EDL and others which at best do not deal with the thuggish elements in their ranks and at worst are truly racist or xenophobic.

And then there’s this:

The result has been a serious blow to the credibility of these two writers, with particular damage being done to Spencer whose scholarship in itself is scrupulous. It has also split the defence against Islamic extremism, and handed a potent propaganda weapon to those who seek falsely to portray as bigoted extremists all who are engaged in the defence of the west against the Islamic jihad

[…]

Personally, I believe the EDL is not a respectable platform to join. [emphasis added]

“It has also split the defence against Islamic extremism”??

Ms. Phillips has evidently failed to realize that if it weren’t for the English Defence League, she and all the other oh-so-posh Brits who oppose Islamic extremism could easily fit in a single double-decker bus without even needing to use the upper deck.

I mean, doesn’t she see what’s going on in her own country?

Until the EDL came along, there were no more than a handful of people doing what she does. Now there are thousands and thousands, but they… have bad manners!

They say “fink” instead of “think”!

EEEEWWWW!

And today most of the dedicated Counterjihad activists in Britain are from — EEEEWWWW! — the working class!

What’s a well-born, Oxbridge-educated highly cultured opinion writer to do?

Defeating Islam is all very well — but in alliance with the working class? NEVER!

We’d rather succumb to the scimitar than compromise our flawless, painstakingly-acquired vowels.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

I don’t want to be too hard on Melanie Phillips; much of her essay is right on the money, pointing out the low-life jihadi dregs that the Home Office see fit to invite into Britain even as they keep out a respectable scholar such as Robert Spencer.

But the rejection of the EDL and its working-class allies is a huge, fatal error.

Britain’s chances of survival as a white Christian Western nation are dodgy at best. Does she think her country can survive at all if it rejects the majority of its own citizens — who just happen to wear unfashionable clothes, lack any higher education, enjoy their tipple, and use profanity when they speak?

She concludes her essay by asking rhetorically: “Has Britain now totally lost the plot?”

Ms. Phillips, I believe you are the one whom the plot has eluded. If you reject the help of the EDL and the working class, your descent into dhimmitude, slavery, and death will be swift indeed.

Never underestimate the power of English snobbery. Hoisting oneself above the common ruck is an active, ongoing process. It takes precedence over every other type of activity — even self-preservation.

37 thoughts on “Losing the Plot

  1. Well. Its the Chamberlain episode all over again, now is it? Lets face it. Most of the Brits never realized what was going on in that era. They refused to read and understand Mein Kampf. And it was only until Winston the Great ( this warmongering nazi-fobic drunk 🙂 came in and straightened things out for them. To bad that insight came at the expence of millions of good man and women.

    Some people just wont learn the lessons that history gave us. They wont read and dont understand the concept of jihad.

    I think it’s about time the counter jihadi’s stop noticing the opinions of twits like Melanie . Either you are with us, or you are against us!

    Melanie has lost it for sure now. Question is. Did she ever had it? And who wants to know?

    Melanie should write an essay that goes by the title: Winston the Great on islam and all the things i still dont understand.

  2. You say ‘doesn’t Melanie Phillips know what’s happening in her own country’.
    You are missing the point here, MP takes the standard Jewish position that
    the only things that are permissible are those which satisfy Jews. She doesn’t regard Britain as her country, go east and south and you might find her little country.

  3. much of her essay is right on the money.

    Does that matter if the core of her essay is rotten? She chose the safe path in staying within her class strictures…instead of her feet being bound, it is her mind that is wrapped and warped by the silken cords of ‘belonging’. Thus is she reduced to limping along with these high-minded admonishments to those like Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, who are doing the real work of pushing back against the attempted take-over by Islam.

    I thought of Ms. Phillips often while Tommy Robinson served out his time in solitary as a political prisoner. Because that’s what he was, and she is intelligent enough to know that, but not courageous enough to ever say a word in his favor,..

    Things have been so comfortably arranged that she could sail through all those months and never have to say a word about the erosion of the rule of law that was going on right under her nose. But since the law was being broken over the head of Tommy Robinson she could turn away. He was so far down the food chain as to be beneath her notice. He might as well not have existed at all.

    The chattering classes in the West are fatally compromised by their need to stay within the pale, avoiding having their skirts soiled by brushing up against the unwashed. Unlike Tommy or Spencer & Geller, these folks haven’t the courage of their convictions -or rather, they’re willing to abridge those convictions if the person in question doesn’t meet their social standards.

    • It is all very well for the so-called “elites” to sit in their comfortable neighborhoods and look down their noses at the British working classes. This does not preclude them from being, no doubt, well paid guests on forums such as the BBC Question Time or columnists in the MSM. But for all their pontifications and scribblings, it was not them who coerced the British police to finally start investigating the persistent rape of our vulnerable young girls or to highlight the horrors of FGM to which so many of our young women are subjected. They have not been to Woolwich to show their respect for our slaughtered young soldier, Drummer Lee Rigby. Their nauseous disdain for the common people of England demeans them. We will not forget.

    • I wonder if the nature of middle class Americans has something to do with Spencer and Geller willing to rub shoulders with the working class. That isnt to say that American society is totally classless, but it seems to me that Americans generally are rather convivial, rubbing shoulders across class much more frequently and commonly, until you get to the elites of course.

      There could be an issue of some ignorance involved with regards to Americans in a foreign culture as well though. I dont buy that too much in this case. It certainly can be an issue, in general.

  4. Baron,

    Some English people become even more snobbish when they migrate to the “colonies”.

    I’m not British and I don’t have an opinion in regard to the EDL, these are general comments.

    Everywhere in the West, the working class is on the front line, so they are probably much better informed about Islam than the inhabitants of the outer leafy, middle class suburbs.

    I’ve also noticed a considerable degree of intellectual snobbery from Islam’s academic apologists—the easy assumption of the moral high ground and the attempts to ‘ psychologise’ opposition to the ideology. The possibility that people with only a high school education might have valid justifications for their opinions is ignored.
    The working class is treated with disdain by “intellectuals” on both sides of the conflict.

  5. What always disappoints me is the way that when the EDL is condemned by people of a certain status in UK society, they never – ever – actually deal with things that Tommy Robinson has actually said, or issues that they actually try to deal with.

    It’s just intellectual cowardice coupled with a snobbishness that speaks only to THEIR character – no one else’s.

  6. As I wrote in a commentcomment on Atlas Shrugs, I think a big reason for Melanie Philips distancing herself from the EDL is that they are seen by most people in England, rightly or wrongly, as a pariah. Only last weekend in London, a friend who knows I’m a supporter of UKIP, told me, in an argument against UKIP, “I saw a photo of a member of UKIP shaking hands with a member of the EDL”. He spoke as if this was the knockout blow, meaning that UKIP are the bad guys, without a shadow of a doubt.

    Hence, could this not be Melanie Phillips simply covering her tracks? Nonetheless, Melanie is someone who’s taken more than her fair share of stick for flying the flag for unfashionable causes, and she has unreservedly defended Pamela and Robert’s right to enter Britain… hence are aggressive posts titled “with friends like these…” from Pamela Geller justified? Or could they be pouring fuel on a fire to make yet another split in the counterjihad that much more likely? It would hardly be the first, following on from the likes of Pamela’s attack on the Baron and this very website…

  7. As for Melanie’s piece – did anyone else notice that it had only appeared on Melanie Philips’ blog, and not at her usual venue – the Daily Mail? And that there are almost NO commentaries, let alone comments pages open on the subject, at any British paper? (apart from the Daily Express)

  8. The word counterjihad has only recently come to my attention as an odd word to use for an activity in opposition to jihad. Shouldn’t anti-jihad be used instead? Wouldn’t counter-jihad mean a jihad in response to and opposing a preceding jihad. Take for example the words counter-revolution and counter-reformation. The former means a revolution in response to and opposing another revolution. The latter means a reformation to undo another. Certainly we are not conducting jihad; that is the activity we are trying to stop.

    • William —

      “Counterjihad” was modeled deliberately and consciously on the word “counterterrorism”, which is the preferred term for those who decline to acknowledge jihad or Islam as the force behind “terror”.

      It has been a very effective replacement word so far, so much so that even our enemies use it — a sign that it was chosen well.

      “Terror” and “terrorism” are in the process of being scrubbed from the dhimmi lexicon, to be replaced by “violent extremism”, “workplace violence”, “man-caused disasters”, and whatever other euphemisms our PC masters concoct. Presumably “counterterrorism” will eventually have to be retired, too.

      But “Counterjihad” will remain.

  9. Rubbing elbows with the masses may be the only thing that saves them in revolutionary times. They may need a commoner to vouch for them in order to keep their heads.

  10. Excellent commentary on Melanie Philips article.

    It’s a shame, because Im pretty sure, Melanie Philips has argued in favor of European Christian peoples and their culture, the term cultural confidence comes to mind. The EDL is the expression of cultural confidence amongst European Christendom…sticking up for themselves.

    One wonders if she would likewise demonize Bibi, Likudites, not to mention Lieberman and the Israeli Nationalists….in this manner. Well, one really doesnt wonder. There is always Jewish tribal loyalty to consider, besides English class snobbery, in this case. Though as I said, Im pretty sure, Ive heard Melanie Philips defend the rights of European Christendom to exist and defend itself, as a moral good….so.

    My 2 cents.

  11. Melanie Philips’ adheres to the politics of Britain’s narrow and elite establishment that despises the British working/underclass.

    While the British Establishment conspire with Sheik Islam the working class are sacrafised as Jihad fodder.

  12. Methinks Ms. Phillips would do well to reacquaint herself with a certain poem by Rudyard Kipling: “Tommy Atkins”.

    We aren’t no thin red ‘eroes, nor we aren’t no blackguards too,
    But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
    An’ if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints,
    Why, single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints;
    While it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, fall be’ind”,
    But it’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind,
    There’s trouble in the wind, my boys, there’s trouble in the wind,
    O it’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind.

    You talk o’ better food for us, an’ schools, an’ fires, an’ all:
    We’ll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
    Don’t mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
    The Widow’s Uniform is not the soldier-man’s disgrace.
    For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
    But it’s “Saviour of ‘is country” when the guns begin to shoot;
    An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
    An’ Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool — you bet that Tommy sees!

    • Tommy Atkins is today a dimwitted, brainwashed coward. Forget it, there will be no resistance. Islam can get its people to kill themselves for the cause. We English will not even VOTE against the forces that are destroying us. The Taliban strap bombs to their bodies. We do not even dare to post blog comments under our own names. Is it any wonder they despise us?

    • These two historic Tommy resemble patriotic spirits in poetry. This particularly apropos poem appears suitably adaptable for marching tempo or melody for the EDL.

  13. via BareNakedIslam by way of newshopper.co.uk: EDL Woolwich march banned by Met Police


    A PLANNED march to Woolwich tomorrow (June 29) by far-right group the EDL has been banned by police – but its leader has vowed to visit anyway.

    The group had planned to end an Armed Forces Day march – billed as a charity walk – in Woolwich where Drummer Lee Rigby was killed in May.

    But the police have announced new conditions imposed on the event.

    A Met spokeswoman said: “Yesterday, Thursday, June 27 we advised them of conditions which we have imposed on the procession and also on the proposed assembly in Woolwich.

    “The Section 12 (3) notice under the Public Order Act 1986 imposes a route on the proposed procession of EDL members and supporters starting at Hyde Park Corner and ending at Old Palace Yard.

    “The condition has been imposed due to concerns that the procession may result in serious public disorder and serious disruption to the life of the community.”

    They added: “Breach of the conditions is a criminal offence, and anyone breaching them may find themselves liable to arrest.”

  14. If anything gets done in UK about the problems of Islam it will be because of the EDL not because of gentille writers in the MSM. The EDL has been demonised by all sources but what do those sources expect a grass roots reaction to the biggest threat to the UK since 1066 to look like?

    It is a shock when the romantic picture of working-class revolutionaries as portrayed by left agitprop turns out to be somewhat more down to earth. But these are the guys n’ gals who are out there on the receiving end of UAF thuggery making the points and making a difference. And the pinks and the reds hate them because they show that the real HATE and the REAL BIGOTRY lies in the left establishment. Pamela and Robert too were prepared to take the missiles and the taunts, where are you Ms Phillips, safely ensconced in the ineffective pink elements of the MSM, scared that someone might call you a racist or a fascist? You are playing the game by the very rules that the left invented to keep you in line, rules which the EDL have bent up very badly but without violence. If you are going to force me to make a choice, I would choose the EDL because they have shown real ‘savvy’ and a lot of restraint.

  15. I’m usually on the side of Melanie Phillips (it was her book “the World turned upside down” that made a conservative out of me), but I’m afraid this time, her argument took the Blues Brothers’ mobile approach: “reached the Daley Plaza and then completely fell apart”.

    And, not only her, but also Douglas Murray – an exponent of anti-islamopandering – that also has a not-so-rosy approach to the EDL.

  16. I agree that it is shocking although not suprising that Pamella and Robert were denied visas. However, while I support Tommy Robinson in his campaign I have to say his record is unfortunate to say the least. It is a millstone which drags him down in the public estimation. Until quite recently the EDF contained open racists and anti-semites. Tommy has gone to great lengths to eradicate and remove such views but they still taint the organisation in the public eye. His own history as a prominent member of a hooligan firm does not inspire confidence. That maybe one reason Melanie Phillips finds it so hard to offer any support.

  17. Quote:
    Both have endorsed groups such as the EDL and others which at best do not deal with the thuggish elements in their ranks and at worst are truly racist or xenophobic.
    end

    This is just a clever way of saying nothing.
    She doesn’t have the conscience or the courage to understand that confrontation and strength are necessary here.
    And as for Robert Spencer, his approach is so rational that I’m sure that most Brits are half eaten with envy that they could not have produced it in their own intellectual communities before.
    Spencer is doing the work of Harvard and Cambridge combined, because Harvard and Cambridge have abandoned their nation in their thoughts completely.

  18. The Baron’s analysis is right on the money. Given the current events in Britain, beginning with the heinous murder of Rigby, the government’s response to it, and now the banning of Spencer and Geller, we can see how deep the roots of this problem really is.

    If Ms Phillips believes a problem so entrenched in British society and in the government can be resolved by a handful of intellectual elites then she does not understand the extent of the problem, a problem so large that only a massive uprising of working-class indigenous Brits can save Britain. It is their country after all. The ultimate solution lies with the people.

  19. I generally like Melanie, but I have noted that she occasionally drifts off into space. This was one one such time.

    Appearing on panel shows rattling on about Islam is all very well, but talking heads on TV are not going to stop the creeping Sharia in the U.K. The intimidation by extremist Muslims that takes the form of actual violence or threatened violence in the streets (recall the Muslim Peer who promised to turn out 10,000 Muslims to oppose Geert Widers’ trip to Britain) can only really be countered by a pushback in the streets (read Steyn’s “America Alone”). If the police are not prepared to do it, then the citizens need to mobilize and make their presence known. Melanie should be thanking the EDL for having the moxie to do what she and her chattering class friends are afraid to do or consider beneath them. Maybe the EDL does contain an element of soccer hooligans looking for a punch up, but I haven’t heard that any of them have beheaded Muslims in the streets or blown up buses. Meanwhile the British police lock up 85 year old women who say rude things outside mosques.

    When are the British toffs going to wake up to the fact that their laws repressing freedom of expression are the main contributors to the rise of such groups as the EDL and parties like UKIP?

    And thank you for an excellent retort to Phillips’ classist faux pas.

  20. Don’t be too harsh on Melanie, she has fought a lonely battle in Britain for a long time now. Yes she is a toff, if she wasn’t she would never have got to her current status.
    [redacted]

  21. People like Phillips can talk a good game, but when action is required – sorry I’ve got another book to write! A friend said he could not link to my Facebook page because I said there that I had been on an EDL demo’, and so many of his friends were left wing! He thinks of himself as a free-thinker! I’m off Facebook now anyway, after the data-mining they helped with.

  22. I suggest we draft a bill preventing US troops from saving those Brit [persons whose intelligence I deride] again. Thanks to God King George was defeated or we former colonists would be suffering the same fate already.

    • I’m not so sure. Canada may be in somewhat better shape than we are. Though Oz is sinking with the stones of p.c. tied ’round its neck.

      We do have the Seond Amendment, though which they have not got. And Britain might have gotten rid of slavery more quickly than we managed to. Of course they foisted it off on VA in the first place, since this was a commercial undertaking and they wanted tobacco. Perhaps the Brit excision of slavery would have been even more brutal. Ireland, anyone?

    • You can get off your high horse any time you like. America charged – PLENTY – for fighting with the Brits during WWII. I’m tired of hearing ignorant yanks bleating about how they crossed the Atlantic to help out the Brits during the war – but they never mention the invoice for services rendered.

      Britain was the ONLY country to stand up to the Nazis from day one until the day Hitler topped himself.

  23. “s ducain on June 28, 2013 at 6:41 pm said:
    You say ‘doesn’t Melanie Phillips know what’s happening in her own country’.
    You are missing the point here, MP takes the standard Jewish position that
    the only things that are permissible are those which satisfy Jews. She doesn’t regard Britain as her country, go east and south and you might find her little country.”

    Oh for heavens sake! Pamela Geller is Jewish and David Cameron is Christian.

  24. It’s not just Melanie Phillips or the leftist elite in this country. The conservative elite suffers the same disease–elitism over accomplishment. I should theoretically belong to the elite with my income and education, but along the way of life I associated with a lot of so-called lower classes, and for a time belonged to them. If anyone is going to save this country or any other from Islam or socialism it is the combined efforts of red-necks, low-information voters, blue-collar, or what ever you wish to call them. They may not be able to parse the subtleties of the great writers or understand the double-speak of politicians, but they have clear ideas of what is right and wrong and act on them. Come the intifada and I will want some big, fat, coarse-speaking, tattooed guy on my side rather than a pansy-a***** intellectual.

    I have friends and acquaintances that are elitist and I find it painful to hear them when they disparage people who supposedly haven’t become knowledgeable on the issues. They forget that they way their world works is not the way most people’s world works, nor are all people capable of the kinds of thinking they do. It’s the values underneath it all that count, not the rationalizations to support them.

    Don’t dis the common man/woman, they may be the only thing between you and a scimitar.

    • I’m a big fat tattooed ex-welder who can curse and swear with the best of them. I also have a degree in linguistics and philosophy. Will I do? 😉

  25. I have to say I am disappointed with Melanie Phillip’s latest effort. She claims that she is not going to engage in ad hominem attacks, yet labels people who take her to task for what she said as hysterical and ignorant. She claims she did not call the EDL racist or neo-Nazi, yet claims that she only meant to say that one should not associate with racists and neo-Nazis – a rather confused and unimpressive article, I have to say.

    Nowhere does she deal with what Tommy Robinson actually has to say. Of course it’s hilarious watching Geller get on her high horse about this, given her track record (claiming the EDL had gone over to the dark side, attacking blogs like this one for defending them, etc.) What a hypocrite!

    Might I suggest that Tommy Robinson would have been better to cut all ties with Geller after her attack on the EDL (and on any bloggers who defended them) because associating himself with her has brought him nothing but trouble.

    • I’m afraid we have to take our allies where we find them. I’m not sure that holding grudges for past bad behavior is the way to go if we really want to defeat the enemy.

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