For the past ten days I’ve been reporting on a sporadic email conversation that I’ve been having with a British journalist, which culminated on Wednesday in a debate over whether I had been “robbed of my humanity” by my political views.
This morning saw what will probably be our final exchange of emails. The journalist sent a brief message in response to my latest email; the text of what he said is below (in italicized block quotes) followed by my response.
Thanks again for your reply. My sheen of politeness did slip. I’m afraid I’m rather emotional about this. I know too many mothers and fathers; sisters and brothers; friends and survivors.
Well, then we have something in common: I know a lot of the families of victims, too.
I know any number of people who lost friends and family in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
I know an Indonesian woman whose lost eight family members when a Catholic church was barricaded with the congregation inside and burned to the ground by a Muslim mob.
I know an Egyptian woman whose husband was killed by a Muslim mob attacking a Coptic church.
I know a man whose Pakistani cousin was shot dead for his “blasphemy” by Islamic zealots.
I could continue, but it would be tedious. Suffice it to say that a hundred times as many people as Breivik killed are slaughtered every year by Muslims acting in the name of their prophet and their god. I am not making these statistics up; they are on the public record.
You will find yourself unable to claim any moral high ground when discussing these issues with me, just because you happen to know the families of some of Breivik’s victims.
The number of victims of Islamic torture, maiming, rape, and slaughter increases by hundreds every day. Their souls cry out for redress, for justice, for recognition of what has been done to them in the name of a so-called “religion”.
But you and your fellow respectable mainstream journalists decline to acknowledge what has been done to them in the past, what is happening to them now, and what will happen to more of them in the future.
You prefer to concentrate on easy targets, on sitting ducks, on people like me and Fjordman, just because we do our best to warn people of the dangers of Islamization and Islamic law.
You risk nothing by coming after us. We will not hire gunmen to cut you down in the street nor incite a mob to burn down your home.
If you tackle Islam, you may get your throat slit. If you tackle “Islamophobes”, you may win a Pulitzer Prize.
So it’s not hard to choose your topic, is it?
Because of what we do, some of us are fired from our jobs and hounded into seclusion. Some of us are driven from our countries; others are attacked in the street. Some are even killed for doing it.
The Danish historian and journalist Lars Hedegaard narrowly escaped assassination on February 5, less than a month ago. Did you hear about that? No? Not surprising — since your fellow mainstream “journalists” failed to cover it.
Why is it that you prefer to waste Fjordman’s time, and mine, and your own, by pestering us about our “involvement” in the Breivik massacre, when you could be informing the world that someone attempted to kill a peaceful Danish journalist just because of what he chose to write about?
Lars Hedegaard is one of your own, a fellow writer seeking after truth, who now must live in hiding, protected by armed state security, simply because of what he says and believes in.
Why do you persist in badgering Fjordman and me, who are nothing, who are inconsequential in the larger scheme of things, when you could be reporting about Lars Hedegaard?
You could begin with him and work your way up to tackle the single greatest threat that Western Civilization has ever faced. That would be a worthwhile use of your talents, skills, and time. Yet you choose instead to go haring off after inconsequential chimaeras.
As Christopher Marlowe’s Mephistophilis said:
O Faustus! leave these frivolous demands,
Which strike a terror to my fainting soul.
Well put, Baron but these soulless purveyors of ill-gotten words are without character and thus, cannot attain to that higher plane of thought which has its place in the pantheon of the worlds great thinkers and writers. You have probably spilled too much ink on this worthless liberal bag of wind. So, refresh your mind on the things that matter and we will go on enjoying your clear thoughts and writings.
A fitting response to one of my cowardly fellow countryman, who does not have the wit to look at this subject with an open mind but only through the lens of his own conditioning. I have nothing but contempt for this journalist, but I have the satisfaction of knowing that in the years to come, he will get to understand the real Islam and in truth he deserves it!
BB – You have shown great patience in debating this foolish, childlike simpleton. I wonder how old he is? I wonder if he knows just how much he DOESN’T know? It always saddens me when the apparent cream of Britain’s educated adolescents exhibit such a totally conformist mindset. If he is a Humanist, then surely he should care about all humans, regardless of their skin colour or political ideology. Humanists object to black, brown, yellow, white, left-wing or right-wing people being murdered/raped/oppressed by any person of any colour or any political ideology – hence our unease over Islam. Racist journalists without a scrap of humanity in their souls only object when black, brown, yellow,white, left-wing or right-wing people are murdered/raped/oppressed by right-wing white Europeans. There is no humanity in that my young journalist friend, just politically driven racism.
Cowardice isn’t the only possible explanation for this. So many people seem to be in a dreamworld, even now, more than a decade after 9/11. When I try to inform my friends and family about what I know of Islam, it doesn’t seem to get much of a response. They nod, they may frown, but it seems to have no real impact, as if it’s something far away that doesn’t really have anything to do with them or their future. When I sent a packet of Jihad-related information to a friend I met in 1966, he sent me a Christmas card with a note thanking me for the info on “Islamophobia”.
When Michelle Bachmann and a small group of Republicans sent the Congress a warning about the Muslim Brotherhood INSIDE the American government, including evidence of Huma Abedin’s close connections with the Brotherhood, John McCain made a blistering attack on Bachmann’s group for impugning…a woman of spotless virtue. Was this about chivalry? Is John McCain a coward? I don’t think so. But like so many Americans he seems to be asleep.
And if 9/11 wasn’t enough to wake them up, then I have to question whether there is anything that will.
A sad but true example of why it is useless to engage the other side. Those who treasure this blog and such other excellent sites (Belmont Club being another one of my favorites) generally make themselves familiar with the arguments and facts on all sides of a question. But the “fundamentalists” of the Left (I love to tweak them by calling them that) generally only read their own side and resort to character attacks on those who have the, to them disagreeable practice of citing data.
It is still worth having debates and discussions with those in the middle but your letter demonstrates the futility of dialogue with the “politically correct.”
Socialists actually believe that they can cure all the ills of society if we, the cynical far right would just trust them, they KNOW the answers, if they can just set up their ‘committees of public safety’ or is it a ‘supreme soviets’ these days?, places where the great and the good (the Jimmy Savilles of this world) can discuss the issues to the benefit of all mankind. Then all things can be dealt with, and if a ‘White Sea Canal’ needs digging, then the required resources can be identified, relocated and transported out to work, but this time don’t forget the shovels and pickaxes….
Lets see 227 kilometers, 25,000 deaths, thats only 110 deaths per km, one every 30′ that is if if Anne Applebaum is correct!
The canal is not really used now, it is too shallow….
Somewhere back in our archives of 12,000 posts sits a post I wrote in deep sorrow about the families of those killed in the tube and bus bombings of 7/7. This felllow’s countrymen. I spoke about the many families waiting for a loved one who’d never come home again. I couldn’t get those images out of my mind: the empty chair, the now-useless clothing, the detritus left behind by innocent people. They were slaughtered by murderers who loved death more than life. These deaths can be laid at the doors of venal politicians who stuffed so many hostile immigrants into the country in order to retain power and line their own pockets.
This past 7/7 I looked long and hard for any official memorial services for the dead but I couldn’t find anything. Perhaps there *were* some, but if so the legacy press failed to have any obvious headlines or stories about how the survivors were managing.
Those were his countrymen, yet he mourns for Norwegians? What about the English families? Doesn’t their sorrow measure up to his exquisite standards? Obviously not. So he ‘lets slip’ his politesse because of this misplaced suffering …and then blames your inhumanity and craven Fjordman’s lack of courage for his understandable social failure. Is that his story??
If it weren’t for people like you, he’d have been able to retain what I’m sure is his natural, bred-in-the-bone graciousness. If you could just see the error of your ways and put on the sackcloth and ashes he has at the ready, why then his suffering would be allieviated.
I knew it would turn out to be your fault. Didn’t you? Aren’t you tired of this script? I sure wish they’d write something different for a change.
What really creeps me out is that Tommy Robinson was railroaded into prison for essentially nothing and spent a long, long time in solitary where people were allowed to spit on him and where prison officials kept his mail and refused to let him have his money to buy things to keep warm. Meanwhile, this callow jornolist went about his daily life without giving Tommy’s suffering – REAL suffering – even a passing thought.
Well, Tommy’s out of gaol now but this man is still in the strait-jacket he donned on entering the dirty business that sent him trawling after you, hoping to pick up a few scandalous morsels to sell in the grimy market where he has chosen to ply his trade.
I weep for England, for what she was and what she’s come to.
Stay on the Socratic queries.
They’re on target.
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The MSM live in a psychic bubble.
The only way that they’ll ever pop it is from the inside…
Because its foundation is inside their heads.
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You’re also witnessing the Balkanization of news/ history/ reality.
The MSM has a phalanx of Winston Smiths shunting unconforming reality down the memory hole — before the events are even memories!
It’s shocking how much important news is filtered in this manner by the Western elites.
I believe that we are reliving the social dynamics that did in countless dynasties/ empires.
It’s a sort of psychic parasitism — whereby a massively narcissistic ‘leader’ focuses all upon climbing the greasy pole — with scant regard for administration.
This is what was happening as this or that Roman Emperor rose and died — some times in less than one-hundred days. The edifice was built for an Augustus… not an empty seat.
As a matter of fact Dymphna my wife is heavily involved with a charity that helps the survivors and their families and she was disgusted as was I at the lack of publicity by the media despite their best attempts to make people remember and appreciate the suffering these terrorists had inflicted. There was a memorial service, with a choir cannot say more as I don’t want to inflict pain on those who have helped since day one. You know the reasons why. Anyway I became an anti-Jihadist after 9/11 and after 7/7, well that was the end of any sympathy or empathy for the enemy.
For me they are the enemy and anything I can do to hurt these bastards is justified by their own actions.
Bin the prat. It is not worth the effort.
Seneca III.
I have friends who can’t accept the threat of islam. They have some in built factor that they believe we have some guilt of the effects of the British Empire. They believe that what is happening now is our fault. They take it as some kind of reparation because of our past. I despair….
Ben.
My wife and friends all make fun of me as if I am crazy.Not a day passes without a comment on my ‘crazy’ views. The only one who doesn’t laugh at me is my father but he fought in Yemen in the 60’s and he used to tell people then of the threat of Islam. People used to look at him as if he was just a mad racist but I fear that he and I will be having the last laugh…………I giggle to myself all the time actually. How dumb are most people!
@kloutlichter – so do your wife and friends also think Winston Churchill was a mad racist? For he had a lot to write about Islam. Possibly even more than about Nazism or Communism. Back in Churchill’s time, the Koran was not compared to Mein Kampf – it was the other way round. Mein Kampf was described by Churchill as being the “New Koran of faith and war. So does your family think the man once voted the “Greatest Briton of all time” is crazy? If so, then surely they’d be following in the footsteps of those who thought Churchill was crazy when he criticised Chamberlain, after he returned from Munich with a scrap of paper in 1938 to proclaim “Peace in our time” – to cheering crowds. Churchill was thought back then to be a pretty crazy guy – yet who turned out right in the end? Does your wife and friends really want to risk going against the sober assessment of the Islamic faith by one of the world’s greatest analysts of global affairs?
@greeninfidel,
Indeed – I would recommend to everyone that they read Winston Churchill’s “The Gathering Storm” – they will be, sadly, unsurprised at the many, many similarities between what Churchill wrote about the run-up to WWII and what we are all experiencing today.
I particularly recommend p. 80 (in the American edition) where Churchill describes the moral and intellectual failings of his political colleagues at the time.
Churchill was a crazy mixed-up guy, that’s why he was NOT
elected in 1946. He made too many callous moves in WW2 and
many people sussed that he had a secondary agenda.
& yet 6 years’ later, he returned to Downing Street… meanwhile, his replacement gave the Soviet Union the Rolls-Royce Nene, hence paving the way for the Soviets’ own jet-engined fighters, while bowing to the Soviets’ other requests – such as excluding Polish soldiers in the Victory parade (while all other nations fighting alongside Britain were represented).
Whatever Churchill’s faults, at least no-one could accuse him of being a dhimmi.
If only this gentleman would let his “sheen of politeness” towards the doctrines and history of Islam slip for a moment, & start doing his job.
I must point out that people like the Baron, who do this reporter’s job for him and write about Islamic doctrines and practices, are writing descriptive articles based on facts. And they do so because of their basic humanity.
Does this “reporter” dispute the facts regarding the multiple acts of persecution and violence committed every day by Muslims against non-Muslims? If he does deny those facts, then he is living in a virtual reality, and he needs to ask himself just who wrote the software currently running between his ears.
If he agrees with those facts about Islamic doctrines and practices, then why does he not report them?
I put it to this reporter that if he stops the PC-approved “sheen of politness” towards Islamic doctrines and practices which is currently running as part of his own “operating system”, and looks honestly and fearlessly at the contents of the Koran and hadith, and the way Islamic doctrines inspire discrimination, persecution and murder against “infidels” all around the world, every single day – perhaps then, he might be able to regain his humanity.
If he doesn’t, then he will remain frozen in intellectual and spiritual bondage.
Having just lost my bottle at an acquaintance (leftist) who really thought that “free speech” was attempting to stop me seeing Geert Wilders… I would like to observe something in these communications.
The left has a caricature of what we are – and that is all we are. In our interactions we do not behave as their mental caricature does, so they become confused.
This person (not worth of the title “Journalist”) was looking for some frothing anti-islamic drivel to publish so he could stand back and point out the “irrational far-right mind that opposes multi-culture/Islam/Socialism”.
When you did not react the correct way he became confused and tried emotive arguments to make you emotive (frothing) but that failed. So now he pins the “I’m personally involved” (like the “attempted rape” survivor – who had an ugly guy offer her a drink) claims they have superior arguments on the basis of a claimed or imagined connection to the issue.
If you are connected to the issue you are not a journalist – you are an activist.
And this is a polite reprint of a redacted post – the mentality of the left is this:
Screw you white man. No matter what the facts are, no matter what the circumstances are – just screw you whitey. Just screw off and die, white man.
As I’ve said many times before, I think it’s a mistake to assume that any given instance of Islamophiliac (and Islamophobophobic) obtuseness, such as consistently exhibited by Baron’s correspondant, is due to some nefariously willful (and hence effectively seditious) “cultural Marxism”. Occam’s razor ought to be applied, and first assume a sincerely starry-eyed and benighted PC MC is the primary psychological motivator. With PC MC (unlike with hardcore Leftism), the problem is not evil, but a sincere and relatively intelligent goodness warped, where the resultant ideology and policies reflect a semi-conscious error; not malevolence. One must not let the grievously injurious effects of the error lead one to impute an evil will where is only sincerely starry eyed confusion.
One good metaphor, I think, for Baron’s correspondant (and for millions of other Westerners more or less like him), is that of a useful instrument simply pointed in the wrong direction or applied in the wrong place. Imagine a perfectly functioning vacuum cleaner, efficiently plugged in, turned on, then applied to a rug on which one has carefully set out a thousand delicate and priceless photographic slides. The fault is not in the vacuum cleaner’s effectiveness; it’s running fine. Nor is the fault in the rug which needs to be cleaned. The fault is in applying the vacuum cleaner to a specific rug not ready for cleaning.
Or to vary the metaphor, consider a firearm which is in perfect working order, and would be most useful in preventing a murderous rapist from destroying your child; but which, when pointed in the wrong direction, would destroy yourself or the innocent bystander merely coming to assist you.
In these metaphorical scenarios, the PC MC idiot is not the user of the instrument, but the instrument itself.
Simply put: Baron’s correspondant is a good guy, pointing his sincerely starry-eyed concern in precisely the wrong direction.
P.S.: Why this wrong orientation has come about, and why it is obtusely maintained in the face of daily burgeoning data contraindicating it, is a more complex problem. Many in the Counter-Jihad seem to have an impulse to simplify this problem by imputing a nefarious cabal afoot: this would not be, I insist, Occam’s razor aptly applied; but rather the brute hacking of the Gordian knot. While Occam’s razor is useful and its principle of valuing simplicity over complexity is sound, there is such a thing as the opposite error that reaches impetuously for a false simplicity in order to avoid an unavoidable complexity. In our current predicament regarding the Problem of the Problem (the latter being Islam and the former being our Western myopia of it), this error could have reckless and dangerous consequences.