Tuesday 26 August 2014

Home-grown horror [updated]

“The Duke of Wellington famously said that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the
playing-fields of Eton: and if that is the case, then the advance of the Islamic State was
begun in the nice, tolerant, liberal academies of Britain and other parts of western Europe.”

Mary Kenny, - 'Isis will never be defeated until Western societies
stand up for their own values,'
– IRISH INDEPENDENT

Many folk otherwise supportive of allowing peaceful people to cross borders freely (a policy well-articulated here) argue this policy can’t survive Muslim immigration; they argue the policy is untenable since Muslims constitute an objective threat, to whom western borders must be irrevocably closed. But as many Britons are slowly realising, especially after the jihadi killer of journalist James Foley was revealed as a comfortably-off Briton from Maida Vale, the threat comes not from Muslim immigration: the threat is homegrown.

And as Daniel Murray points out in the Spectator, “This is not even the first beheading of an American journalist to have been arranged by a British man from London.” Daniel Pearl was the first to so suffer, at the hands of a north London-born graduate of a private school and the London School of Economics.

Locally-born too were the suicide bombers of the London Tube, the killers in cold blood of drummer Lee Rigby, and the bomber of Glasgow airport – a registered doctor born and raised in Aylesbury.

The threat they point to is not at the borders; it is being nurtured within. And not just a threat at home. 

4,000 people from Britain are thought to have gone to train or fight in Afghanistan. Estimates of the number of British citizens who have gone to fight in Syria and Iraq range from just over 500 to 1,500 …  significantly higher than the number of Muslims currently serving in Britain’s armed forces….. But it is now obvious that whether we like it or not, this is Britain’s problem…
    The country that brought liberty to much of the world is now exporting terrorism to large parts of it.

Britain needs to look to itself, and address this problem, if there are not to be many more videos like this week’s.

The old excuses don’t work.

For decades, we have been told that Islamic terror is the result of ignorance and poverty. Give them welfare, education, comfortable lives and you’ll dry the bog of hatred. Well, that’s not quite true…. [the] British citizen, … who beheaded the American journalist, came from an elegant Maida Vale home and a life of comfort.

And he left his life of comfort to kill, murder, and wage jihad.

The cause of these homegrown killers? As Ben Caspit explained in an open letter to the UK Foreign Secretary, you would have to be deaf, blind and dumb not to know.

If you are indeed familiar with the UK, and take the occasional walk in London and try to walk through the neighbourhoods and boroughs that Islamists have occupied in recent years, and try to understand what they are preaching to their congregations in those same mosques that are springing up like mushrooms after the rain, you really shouldn’t be surprised…. Thirty minutes of surfing the Internet, Mr. Foreign Secretary, will reveal to you the horrifying worlds that are flourishing in your backyard.
    You’ll see religious preachers, seeped in hatred for everything Western, for everything Jewish, for everything Christian, for everything that does not identify with them.
    You’ll see fury in the streets, violence toward everyone who comes to demand the freedom to live as they wish. I especially recommend a video of an ostensibly moderate Muslim preaching his creed to a congregation of seemingly moderate Muslims and, after they have all finished defining themselves “moderate Muslims” he asks all those who support the Islamic laws of punishment – in which women are stoned to death for adultery, for example – to raise their arms. All the hundreds of men present raise their arms as one. And these are moderates.

Some of these born and bred Britons will simply be psychologically susceptible to the nastiness of a violent religion. But what else are they hearing? Where are the voices proclaiming the virtues of reason, individualism and liberty?  Where today will they hear these values proclaimed proudly and unashamedly? Where will they learn of thee superiority of reason over religion, of freedom over tyranny?

When Britain was exporting liberty to much of the known world, these values were unapologetically front and centre. These were the values that built western civilisation. These were values absorbed by immigrants and locally-born alike. People  moved to Britain and the west because of these values.

What happened?

In a word: multiculturalism.

Multiculturalism taught that the values of civilisation and those of barbarism were equal.

It taught that liberty and slavery were simply different choices.

It taught that if any culture should be shamed it should be western culture. That the west is responsible for all the world’s horrors, and the rest of the world simply a victim. This is the perversion now taught and promulgated in schools, in universities and in learned commentaries peddled by perfumed academics for the consumption of the self-anointed.

So for all the decades that we’ve been told that Islamic terror is the result of ignorance and poverty, leading westerners have been silent about the superiority of  western health, wealth and freedom over a stone-age theocracy in which beheadings, clitorectomies, slavery and crucifixions still play a part.

If leading westerners are apologetic about the values of their own culture, especially when the contrast is so stark, then why in hell would others take them seriously? Why wouldn’t they wonder if there isn’t something to be learned from the stone age?

What, then, can we do? asks Daniel Hannan.

Well, for a start, we can stop taking these losers at their own estimation. Let's treat them, not as soldiers, but as common criminals. Instead of making documentaries about powerful, shadowy terrorist networks, let's laugh at the pitiable numpties who end up in our courts. Let's mock their underpants bombs and their half Jafaican slang and their attempts to set fire to glass and steel airports by driving into them and their tendency to blow themselves up in error. Let's scour away any sense that they represent a threat to the state – the illicit thrill of which is what attracts alienated young men trawling the web from their bedrooms.
    At the same time, let's stop teaching the children of immigrants to despise the British state. Let's stop deriding and traducing our values. Let's stop presenting our history as a hateful chronicle of racism and exploitation. Let's be proud of our achievements – not least the defence of liberty in two world wars in which, respectively, 400,000 and nearly a million Muslims served in British uniforms.
    The best way to defeat a bad idea is with a better one. Few ideas are as wretched as the theocracy favoured by IS; few as attractive as
Anglosphere freedom.
    I'm not saying that patriotism alone will finish the jihadis. Like the urban guerrillas in the 1970s, they must be treated primarily as a security problem rather than a political one. But what ultimately did for the Red Army Faction and all the rest was the fall of the Berlin Wall and the almost universal realisation that revolutionary socialism was no alternative to Western democracy.
    It comes down, in the end, to self-belief. Not theirs; ours.

Do you have it?

Because a war of ideas is more preferable to the other kind. And even that other kind amounts in the end to ideas.

Wars are not won just by military hardware or political re-arrangements [points out Mary Kenny]. They are won by ideas. They are won by men and women who have convictions and values which give them the impetus to pursue victory…
    There's nothing wrong with tolerance and a universalist outlook: these are good things. But if a host society is craven and defeatist about its own history and traditions, then it is asking for trouble. Western societies must uphold the achievements based on our values, and do so with fortitude…
    Isis will not be defeated by drones, military action or even politics alone, but by ideas and leaders who really and truly believe in their own values and traditions. After James Foley was beheaded, it was triumphantly announced that: "The sword is mightier than the pen."
    But ideas, and the conviction to carry them, are still stronger than all else.

UPDATE:

“Let's mock their underpants bombs and their half Jafaican slang and their attempts to set fire to glass and steel airports by driving into them and their tendency to blow themselves up in error…”

22 comments:

paul scott said...

While overseas [ Thailand ] I meet many people from UK and North and West Europe.
Mostly men over 40 years . My wife will discuss unknown things with the other man’s Wife.
Our conversations can last some time , and eventually the subject of politics and society comes up.
And then soon enough again an underlying need to talk about Islam terrorism will emerge.
The men I see are not fat rednecks in the bars but ordinary working men, who have left their home Country for a better life. They will complain that Western Society has lost its way, and that they feel powerless to change things,
and then of course we get back to the business of money, and how hard it is to hold it
.

Scott said...

Hopefully you now understand how wrong it was to promote a naïve open immigration policy based on the assumption that anyone who wants to move here must be hard working and decent.

Peter Cresswell said...

@Scott: You do realise what the words "locally born" mean, don't you? Maybe read those opening paragraphs again, huh.

Scott said...

@Peter: The main point of the opening paragraphs, and the article in general, is that liberal immigration policy is naïve and stupid.

The fact that an Islamic radical (who is clearly of Arabic descent) was born & raised in London just emphasises how entrenched England's politically correct immigration problem is. Where do you think this radicalism stems from? Immigrants from the Middle East. Incredible that the ideology you subscribe to blinds you to the obvious.

Mr Lineberry said...

This is a tricky one for me; I really am in two minds about it.

Half a century ago the smartypants clever dick liberal elitists were prepared to ignore Enoch Powell and others who predicted this with almost pin point accuracy, and unleashed a mindboggling level of abuse (ie: the points raised were ignored as everybody outdid everyone else saying "I am not a f**king a***hole" to the general public)

A while back in NZ I was unfairly accused of racism, promoting slavery, and lots of other nonsense by similar sorts of wankers risibly claiming to be both objective and libertarian (presumably in the same way Pol Pot was a freedom fighter)

Just a couple of weeks back an ACT party candidate quit in a sanctimonious "look! I am not a f***ing a***hole! see what a nice person I am?" - I understand his motives are to get a promotion at work - backed up by numerous ex-Libz 'usual suspects' - one of whom is my local ACT candidate (causing me to give 2 ticks to Peter Dunne as a lark haha!)

The point I am making is - because the urge for "look at me! I am not a f***ing a***hole! I am a good person!" is so strong by the so called liberals, I would be delighted if there was jihad and blood flowing in the streets - because it would serve them right!

On the other hand I am against brutal murder and all for preserving human life. It really is a tough one.

Peter Cresswell said...

The main point of the opening paragraphs, @Scott and @MrLineberry, is the exact opposite of that you are trying to make. The source of someone's ideas is not their skin colour -- as you and Mr Powell seemed to think. The source of their ideas is their own thinking -- or, in the absence thereof, in the ideas they pick up from the culture. If locally-born Britons are picking up anti-human ideas from the culture, the problem then is not their skin colour, it is the culture.
That is the point of the remaining paragraphs.
They are not so obtuse that you can misunderstand them ...

Mr Lineberry said...

I was agreeing with that Peter, if you read what I wrote.

You said there was a movement of abandoning of western civilisation, the suggestion it is akin to barbarism, that liberty and slavery were choices etc etc

I was saying it was smartypants 'liberals' and 'progressives' who did that, [in schools, Parliaments, the media] and (apart from them being wrong) it would serve them right if they were victims of terrorist attacks.

I was also saying that if anyone stood up to promote western culture and civilisation they will be foot tripped very quickly by a chorus of "that is racist, but I am not" from these same people; I also gave a recent example with the ACT party.

Every lunatic Imam in Britain would jump on that with a "Mr Blogs who writes for the Guardian says that is racist - so here is further evidence it is just an attack on Islam" - just as every Greenie has jumped on ACT candidate problems as evidence of virulent racism on the libertarian right of politics.

There are two problems as I see it, and have always seen it -

1. You cannot somehow bomb these Islamic ideas out of people (as Obama will find out by the end of the week), anymore than you could bomb the Vietcong into surrender.

2. You cannot 'reason' with these people either.

The notion you can all hold hands, have a group hug, and hear about the great benefits of Hayek, or Beethoven, or Da Vinci, or Salk or Ed Hilary - and that results in a billion people saying "gosh how silly we have been up until now" - is kinda naïve.

Afterall it hasn't worked with socialists has it?

My solution would be to remove all band aids and let events take their course; I say - just let it happen.

Everyone thought Churchill was talking rubbish in the 1930s; events such as the Nuremburg rally, or Nazi annexation of various places, were viewed by the man in the street with boredom.....

.... until bombs started falling on London in 1940 and then the penny dropped; then he realised the enormous threat he was under and did something about it.

Maybe that's how it will be again.

Scott said...

Islam is a backwards ideology passed on through the generations in Middle East. The source of Islamic radicalism in the UK is the Arab population they allowed to immigrate there.

It's not an ideology that suddenly appears in white families with no outside influence. To argue against the ethnic component of Islam because 'skin colour doesn't cause ideas' is a disingenuous, ridiculous, head in the sand argument.

Richard Wiig said...

Yep, it's certainly not about skin colour, it's about ideas. When you have open immigration that imports Muslims who hate Western culture, you are importing hostile ideas. It's hard enough to get Westerners to adopt the ideas of liberty, but somehow it doesn't make it harder when you import people who are actively hostile to liberty? Western society should be selfishly defended from these savages, not given up to the completely out of touch with reality idea that political rights are intrinsic.

Peter Cresswell said...

@Richard, you are completely off base. It is not the *immigrants* who have embraced hostile ideas, it is their children.

This is the difference that makes the difference -- the difference you and your fellow commenters ignore.

These are kids who have grown up with western multiculticulturalism telling them all cultures were equal, including the stone-age barbarism their parents moved away from. Their parents moved to the west because they knew this was not so.

The problem is not immigration. The problem is multiculturalism -- and western silence about the values that made the west great.

Mr Lineberry said...

Is that the case though Peter?

Often the 'parents' are having to work hard to put food on the table, and they keep their head down (knowing they are not all that popular with the neighbours), but did they ever reject Islam? ever reject lunacy?
Most immigrants move to a new country to get a job and more money - not because they are refugees, they are escaping poverty not Islamic extremism.

I suspect it is the Islamic version of the "Good German" - the ones who claimed to have no idea what was going on (yeah, right!).

An example would be Kim Dotcon; where it was not acceptable for Kim Dotcon's parents to be Nazis ("oh no we are good Germans and didn't know a thing about it") it is okay for him, due to the passage of time, to parade anti Semitism in recent weeks, and buy a copy of Mein Kampf, and wear Nazi insignia.

Or take the UK Labour party - all the nonsense about "the past has nothing to do with us - we are NewLabour" has been replaced with moving almost as far to the left as Benn and Foot 30 years ago, and by the very same people who not too long ago looked people in the eye and fought elections as NewLabour.

There was probably a strong element of pragmatism - especially by those born abroad - whereas their children who are natural born citizens can do whatever they like.

Richard Wiig said...

I disagree, Peter. I think most critics are well aware that it is the next generation that has enthusiastically adopted the more militant form of Jihad, but that doesn't mean that their parents didn't impart Islamic values over Western values to their children, or that their parents rejected Islam. Large numbers of these parents do bring Islamic values with them. The rise of honour killings, of forced marriage, of female genital mutilation, and other things, in the West is testament to that. That the parents are not militant jihadists is understandable. They are older, less idealistic, more inclined to comfort, than to agitating for Islam.

I agree with what you've said about Multiculturalism, that Multiculturalism paves the way for evil and disarms Westerners of their cultural assertiveness. It needs to be defeated, but I think that is a separate issue from the one of open-immigration. If Liberty is to be kept, it can only be kept by selfishly defending it. Opening the borders to large numbers of liberty haters can only lead ultimately to the loss of liberty. I think it's essential to set high standards for the right to immigrate. That doesn't shut the doors to anyone who values freedom, who abides by live and let live. It should be becoming more obvious to you now that we are in a war, that this war is growing, and that large numbers of the enemy are settling behind enemy lines. The future isn't looking good.

Scott said...

You're wasting your time Richard. Peter has shown an absurd ideological blind spot on this issue and will not be reasoned with.

Obviously you don't get multiculturalism without immigration, yet somehow we are supposed to believe the problem is not immigration.

You can take an Arab out of a theocracy but you can seldom take out the backwards dogma once they have been indoctrinated. They in turn indoctrinate their children regardless of what country they are born in. Moral of the story: If you don't want Islamic ghettos, then immigration policy needs to be tight.

Richard Wiig said...

Scott, I think that many libertarians are driven more by a hatred of government than they are by a love of liberty. There is also a problem with this intrinsic view of rights.

Anonymous said...

In the West not only do you have what you are trained to call "multiculturalism", you also have a cult of violence and death. You worship it. Apart from sending Western weapons to every place on the planet, you are also responsible for training torturers and death squads (the School of the Americas comes to mind) and exporting them all over. You dispatch resources and money to create dissent and seed civil conflict (the so called Arab Spring comes to mind as does the Orange Revolution). You send your "contractors" and mercenaries to do violent acts in other lands upon other people who you neither know nor care about. YOu send military to do the same stuff. Your entertainment media is saturated with violence and the glories in it (whether games, TV, movies, DVDs and the like). Your authorities and owners speak in terms of violence (war on poverty, war on illiteracy, war on drugs, drink-driving task-force, targeted action, war on terror, blah, yah, yah, yah de-fkn-yah) and you accept this as normal without comment. Your propaganda services see to it that you get plenty of programming presented in emotional terms of conflict and you accept the idea that "something has got to be done about it" and somehow that justifies your property and your wealth being taken by your owners so they can interfere in the affairs of individuals in other lands. It is incredible how you guys don't seem to notice it at all. Perhaps that's because you are all so saturated in it that it is invisible to you.

Radicalised Islamics- Young people tend to be very passionate about their interests, energetically so. They have an innate sense of wanting to achieve and to act to do things. They tend towards idealism and have a strong sense of justice in many instances. They are quick to accept causes and lack the experience to temper their emotions and passions. The progeny of immigrants receive an upbringing where they know they are different to the people around them (their parents have come from a different locale, have a different religion, speak a different language, dress different, have different values and cultural norms) and you will see a certain sense of separateness evolve. The parents and relatives have a non-Western view of what is going on in the old country, a different national mythology to the official mythology being spouted forth by the Western media, an actual experience of the place. Obviously the parents, relatives, their friends and associates are going to communicate some of that with their children. Mix in the Western cult of violence and death which the children are immersed in and can't escape from. Now all it takes are a few instances of Western governments and institutions exporting actual violence onto the old-country and a few instances wherein it is demonstrated that West have lied or done criminal acts and evil. Now it is all on.

You need to realise that in large part you are contributors to the problem. Your acquiescence is causal.


Amit

Richard Wiig said...

Why don't you head off to the Islamic State, Amit. Seem's like the right place for you to be.

Anonymous said...

Richard Wiig

Why don't you take a deep breath and calm down? Pack your emotional ninnyism away and make an honest attempt to reason in a logical and truthfull fashion. That would be a measurable improvement in your behaviour and, no doubt about it, do you considerable good. How about it?

Amit

Richard Wiig said...

I am very calm, Amit. I don't think there is any point in debating you. You clearly do not like the West. You think it is too violent a culture, and you blame the West for Muslims following the teachings and example of their prophet. There really isn't anything I can say to that, other than if you don't like the West, then leave the West, if in fact you are in the West. That Islam is responsible for its own evil and that it is wrong, even evil, to pass the buck, is not open to debate from me.

Terry said...

For the same reason that it is right to have a transitionary tax policy that ends with voluntary taxation, I submit that it is right to have a transitionary immigration policy that ends with open immigration. In both cases a transitionary policy is necessary to avoid what is a very sick patient being fatally poisoned by the detoxification process.

The Tomahawk Kid said...

I understand the point both you and Richard are making - and I think they are both correct.
It was the immigration that allowed the ideas into the country to fester in the first place. And then western multi-culturalism and political correctness that has allowed it flourish and destroy the things that made the west great.
I take both of your points as valid. - thank you

Richard Wiig said...

Something doesn't ring true in calling it homegrown horror. It is really Islam grown horror. Islam transcends national boundaries and considers itself to be a nation in its own right.

Peter Cresswell said...

Which makes the post's point even more telling. To paraphrase Victor Hugo, one can resist the invasion of armies [which in essence is your argument, that martial force at border crossings is sufficient]; but one can not resist the invasion of ideas.

Simple point, really.

Q: So how do you fight ideas?
A: With better ideas.

Hard to do however if you're either remaining silent about what your ideas are, or focussing instead only on your armies and your border crossings.