The Dishonesty of The New York Times

by Fjordman

The New York Times claimed in January 2015 that it is false that there are no-go-zones in some urban areas in Western Europe dominated by certain immigrant groups. The American newspaper highlighted myself, alongside writers such as Steve Emerson and Daniel Pipes, for spreading this alleged falsehood. This was published shortly after Islamic terrorists had massacred the staff of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

Fox News issued an unusual on-air apology for allowing its anchors and guests to repeat the suggestion that there are Muslim-only “no-go zones” in European countries such as Britain and France, areas that are not under the control of the state and are ruled according to sharia law.

According to the NYT, after the term attracted new attention Daniel Pipes “added an update to his original 2006 post to share the credit for it with an anti-Islamist Norwegian blogger who wrote under the pen name Fjordman. That blogger, whose work was cited 111 times in the manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik — the Islamophobic terrorist behind the deadly attacks in Oslo in 2011 — claimed in a post on his blog in 2006 that those underprivileged areas of France were ‘Muslim no-go zones where anything representing a Western institution (post office truck, firemen, even mail order delivery firms) was routinely ambushed with Molotov cocktails.’”

Just to remind people: Breivik was initially diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and declared insane by the first forensic psychiatrists who studied him. This conclusion was overturned following intense media and political pressure, but there are still many people who suspect that the initial diagnosis was correct.

Furthermore, Breivik stated repeatedly in plain words during the trial against him in Oslo in 2012 that he wanted to create a media-led “witch-hunt” against moderate conservatives and peaceful critics of Islam. He was very pleased that the mass media and the political elites gave him exactly such a witch-hunt.

In early 2014 ABB sent a letter in English from prison to various Western media outlets. In it declared that he is a Nazi, not an anti-Islamist. He said that he had quoted some Islam-critics specifically in order to harm them in the public eye.

Anders Behring Breivik may well be insane. He greatly admired Jihadist terrorists, and modeled his imaginary terror network “Knights Templar” on the Islamic terrorists of al-Qaida. ABB expressed a willingness to cooperate directly with Islamic terrorists in order to kill as many non-Muslim Europeans as possible. He quoted Islam-critical writers in order to harm them, and was very pleased with the result.

All of this is reduced by The New York Times to Breivik’s being an “Islamophobic terrorist.”

Evil allegations that I had personally murdered 77 human beings in cold blood were made in print and online by the writer Eric Pfanner in The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune on September 4, 2011. He then claimed that I am identical to the mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik. This was a full month after I had gone public, when my real identity and name were easily available on the Internet. The paper just barely managed to wriggle out of an expensive libel action by publishing a small technical “correction” to this article days later. They never issued a real apology.

This was, according to the American lawyers I consulted about the issue, enough to wash their hands of the stain of falsely identifying a recognizable individual as a mass murderer to millions of people worldwide. The editors were simply too lazy or too dishonest to use an Internet search engine for a few seconds. That must have too much research for one of the most quoted newspapers in the entire world, “America’s newspaper of record”.

The New York Times publishes false accusations against me to international readers, and then accuses me of spreading falsehoods — when I have been telling the truth.

Regarding the subject of “no-go zones,” this is largely a question of semantics. If you say that there are some areas where even the police are afraid to go, where the country’s normal, secular laws barely apply, then it is indisputable that such areas now exist in several Western European countries. France is one of the hardest-hit, because it has a very large population of Arab and African immigrants, including millions of Muslims.

As the excellent writer Soeren Kern commented at Gatestone Institute, “The problem of no-go zones is well documented, but multiculturalists and their politically correct supporters vehemently deny that they exist. Some are now engaged in a concerted campaign to discredit and even silence those who draw attention to the issue.”

What the Charlie Hebdo massacre brutally demonstrated is that the French state has now lost effective control over its territory. This Jihadist attack in the country’s capital city was carried out by militant Muslims who were already known to the police. They hit a target that was also known to be a potential terror target. Despite this, the authorities were unable to prevent a big terror attack in one of Europe’s largest cities. The simple truth is that there are just too many militant Muslims already within the country’s borders for the authorities to control all of them. French authorities have not lost control over a few suburbs. They have lost control over the destiny of the entire country. Sadly, this situation is not limited to France.

In the autumn of 2014 the Swedish police themselves estimated that there are 55 areas in which they are no longer able to uphold law and order. While writing about this subject in October 2014, the journalist Per Gudmundson used the headline “55 ‘no go’-zones in Sweden.” The country also experiences shocking levels of violence against ambulance personnel in some suburbs. Swedish ambulance personnel want gas masks and bulletproof vests to protect their staff against escalating attacks, similar to equipment used by staff working in war zones.

Malmö is Sweden’s third-largest city. In July 2015 the local police there publicly asked for help because they could no longer control the situation. Malmö has experienced thirty explosions this year. In just one week, there were three hand grenade incidents. “I am not surprised anymore,” Erica Eliasson, a mother out with her toddler told the Swedish news agency, TT. “Something seems to happen every day. It is worrying because this is obviously escalating. I’m wondering whether the police are doing enough because I do not notice more police now than before.” In the first seven months of 2015, Malmö suffered, on average, a detonation a week. “We have a situation that is serious,” says the Malmö police chief Stefan Sintéus. “It seems that most of the attacks are focused on buildings and vehicles,” says Sintéus. “But it is wrong to say of me that there is no risk to members of the public.”

Malmö has a well-deserved reputation for violence between different immigrant groups. The police’s national unit working with protection against bombs has advised people to be on the lookout for unexploded hand grenades, which are believed to be spread throughout the city.

I have been writing about the problems in Sweden and the rest of Europe for many years. They are unfortunately very real. It is dishonest for Western mass media such as The New York Times to claim otherwise. Especially since these problems are largely caused by the immigration policies that many Western mass media support.

For a complete archive of Fjordman’s writings, see the multi-index listing in the Fjordman Files.