[A] recent panel convened at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London to discuss the topic “Is All Modern Art Left Wing?” The formal discussion was dreary and predictable but things turned livelier when it was opened to the floor, and the question of double standards was raised: “Courageous” artists seemed happy to mock Christianity but curiously reluctant to hurl equivalent jibes at Islam. Grayson Perry, the Turner Prize-winning transvestite artist who looks very fetching in his little Disney-princess frocks, reveals that he self-censors when it comes to Muslims because “I don’t want my throat cut.”
But that doesn’t entirely explain it, does it? Earlier this year, Channel 4 in London broadcast a documentary called Undercover Mosque in which various imams up and down the land were caught on tape urging men to beat their wives and toss homosexuals off cliffs. Viewers reported some of the statements to the local constabulary. The West Midlands police then decided to investigate not the fire-breathing clerics but the TV producers. As the coppers saw it, insofar as any “hate crime” had been perpetrated, it lay not in the urgings and injunctions of the imams but in a TV production so culturally insensitive as to reveal the imams’ views to the general public. As The Spectator’s James Forsyth put it, “The reaction of West Midlands police revealed a mindset that views the exposure of a problem as more of a problem than the problem itself.”
Many artists like to present themselves as daring, courageous, cutting-edge, and avant-garde – boldly challenging conventional wisdoms and social norms. In practise this often translates into putrid, worthless, offensive works exhibiting sparse talent and a relentless and mindless socialism. Such artists survive only through public support or a thoroughly duped clientele with more money than brains. What a scam.
Well, okay, that’s the cynical view.
just like to offer a huge congratulations to the people of Austrailia who has finally awaked to the clear and present dangers of neo conservatism. We can all hope that the far righty nightmare will soon be over. BaaaBye Steve.
Actually, John West is veering into an opinion that may become common-sensical: the only reason why a Muslim gets away Scot free with words and acts that obviously count as an HRC violation, if not a full-blown hate crime, is that he and his friends will go after the complainat and/or the HRC bureaucrat afterwards – physically. Mister Warman’s favourite targets won’t.
In a nutshell, the stark dichotomy of treatment, and what a reasonable person would conclude to be the cause of it, shows the practical damage that arbitrarily-applied law is responsible for. All it takes is:
“If they can get away with murder, then why don’t I just go over to them?”
John West: Sometimes you scare the shit out of me. Small wonder the lefties have affirmative head-nodding listeners when they brand any of us on the right as nutjobs.
Bcer,
Widen the scope of your mind and consider all possibilities. Narrow thinking will only restrict opportunities for solutions to problems. I think the say is “Think outside the box”.
If you choose to stay within the confines of your box, frightened and embarrassed, you will always remain a spectator, an innocent by-stander, ineffectual and useless.
Don’t get too excited T Harris, democracies like the US and Australia tend to vote for lefties out of hubris/boredom once in awhile, then, after the taxes become unbearable, the pigs become unbearably blatant at the public trough with their corruption and their useless utopian programs get reviewed on expense and merit, they get their butts kicked out.
Misery, as history has proven, trumps the stupidity of the left eventually.
BCer
there is an old “street” saying
“learn to speak their language if you want to talk to them”
John West is just just speaking the terrorists language. Right or wrong, such language will be noticed, and have an impact, maybe good or maybe bad, but it will impact when enough people say the same thing. Thats how the terrorists work it>
@ ET, 1:17 “Violence hasn’t helped Islamic fascism.”
I wish you were right, but unfortunately, it has: NHS virgin restoration surgery; police investigating Channel 4 instead of the hate-spewing imams; police destroying a mural with a Christian message near a mosque; British teachers refusing to teach the Holocaust for fear of offending Muslims; and on and on and on.
Here in Toronto a Muslim student group expressed outrage — what else do they ever express? — after their university cafeteria offered them Halal food but didn’t go far enough; they still play music in the cafeteria and allow other students to eat pork. Does anybody doubt that pork will be forbidden at that university before too long?
The entire Western world is bending over itself to appease Islamic fascists. Not out of respect, of course, although that’s what they usually say (suggestions that Muslims behave violently when offended usually result in violence). All the media outlets that refused to publish the Khartoons did so because of entirely justified fear, and no other reason.
If their idea of success is the acquisition of power, I think violence has in fact worked very well for them.
Darell: at 8:45 pm. I concur 100%.
In fact, that’s the entire theme of Steyn’s piece: the intimidation of the West thru Islamofascist violence. I am as puzzled as you are with ET’s statement to the contrary.
And you make an astute observation: the cloak of diversity/tolerance hiding mortal fear.
@John West:
I have thought somewhat out of the box regarding this issue, and what I ended up with is that the ideal person to tackle this problem is a knight.
I mean it. A knight, with the right to bear arms and the customary right to go outside of the common law somewhat when confronting genuine outlaws. Expecting a commoner to – literally – risk his or her life by going after domestic Islamo-terrorists is really too much to ask.
The Queen is still Sovereign over Canada, so us Canadians can consider a measure that would be anathema in the United States. I don’t know if it’s is beginning to happen in the U.K., where there are (of course) lots of resident knights and baronets (knights who have inherited the knighthood.)
GYM:
Have you read some of his stuff?
If you don’t like this guy — kill him.
If you don’t like that guy — kill him.
Sooner or later he’s going to run out of people to kill.
t harris, looks like austrailia will be flushed soon. does the water go in the opposite direction in the bowl?. john west, yes nasty action in the future is the only thing that wiil get the attention necessary and actually change the robotic behaviour of these agencies.
Good Gawd. What are the British THINKING?
Of course, they’re not thinking anymore. They’re cowed surrender monkeys to a violent, self-interested, extremist ideology that they have allowed to invade their country without lifting a finger, it seems, because the invasion was all about the celebration of diversity, tolerance, equality, and multiculturalism, the tenets of the new “religion” of the enlightened. Ahem.
Living as though you don’t have enemies is an extremely naive and counter-productive position to take–not to mention fatal.
Our fathers and grandfathers having come home from war, wanting “the best” for their children and grandchildren, wanting to forget their horrendous battle with civilization’s enenmies, coupled with the “death of God” movement, the women’s movement, the hippie movement, the peace movement, and all of the other quiescent movements that declawed and defanged us in the West, ensured that violent, unprincipled, barbaric, and bloodthirsty elements would insinutate themselves and, eventually, override us naive peaceniks.
Like all of the animal kingdom, humans have defensive mechanisms which are designed to protect us from our enemies, the most potent human defence being the judicial use of our brains.
Tragically, thinking, discriminating between right and wrong, and making tactical judgments to preserve our democratic freedoms in the West have been ridiculed and driven out by the barbarians among us, who have made moral relativism the West’s greatest contribution to “world peace” (sic).
What fools! Scripture tells us to always be alert, to be ready to defend the hope that is in us. Most of us in the West couldn’t extricate ourselves from a paper bag to defend our interests now–the interests of freedom, democracy, fairness, equality before the law (not equality of outcomes)–and we are paying a heavy price for our moral and religious torpor.
No, violence hasn’t helped Islamic fascism. It will, in the immediate time period, because one’s first reaction to a violent action is automatic fear and withdrawal.
But over time, such intimidation won’t succeed. The reason is two-fold. First, it requires a great deal of energy on the part of the Agent A (Islamic fascism) to maintain that violence. Think of an animal; can it maintain a state of constant ‘attack mode’ or must it move into a non-attack phase?
Second, those who are attacked will, after that first phase of reactionary fear, begin to fight back.
The examples you are using about a university cafeteria, British accomodation etc, are not actions of violence or reactions due to fear of violence. They are reactions of uncertainty. We, in the West, don’t know how to deal with Otherness in this era of globalization.
We knew how to deal with Otherness during the era of nation-formation when we moved from feudal fiefdoms to aggregates of people defined and merged as a nation. This was achieved by force and rule of law. You, the conquered Welsh, Saxons, whatever, would all live together under the rule of common law.
During the era of colonialism, we dealt with Otherness by reducing the Other to the lowest level of human definition and ruling over them.
The US, as an immigrant country, dealt with Otherness by the tactic of ‘the Melting Pot’, which is similar to the early phase of nation-building that merged small fiefdoms into a larger political/economic unit.
We are now in a phase that is seeing people who have been essentially living in a medieval era mindset (tribalism) moving into highly developed industrial nations. This is comparable to the phase of colonialism – which saw highly developed agricultural societies meet up with nondeveloped economies/social structures.
But this time, THEY are moving into our ‘space’. How do we deal with this? We’ve made a first post WWII reaction of ‘tolerance’, ie, multiculturalism. However, this didn’t assimilate the tribal peoples; it isolated and ghettoized them.
And, the ME nations, the source of this immigration to the West, refused for decades to move out of tribalism and modernize. The tribalism of SA, Iraq, Iran, maintained the tribalism of those in the West.
The US attack on Iraq has been the major cause of enabling the ME to slowly, start to move out of tribalism.
The West has to reject multiculturalism, insist on the value of its own identity as a secular state, and insist on the rejection of tribalism by the ME. We have to insist that accomodation is viable up to a certain limited level; that we cannot and will not give up our culture.
It will take time. But the fall of tribalism is inevitable; you can’t maintain tribalism in populations in the millions. It requires too much energy to repress the population.
Really good comment ET. I hope you are correct.
Your comments make perfect sense to me, ET, thanks.
The only proviso I would make…should any of the more virulent tribal, Islamic-fascist Middle East countries get hold of a sufficent cache of nuclear weapons, they will possess a great amount of energy to repress the population with. The existence of weapons of mass destruction, in my opinion, make the previous socio-political dynamic obsolete.
(That was my best imitation of intellectual-speak…hopefully its not complete gibberish). 😉
It requires too much energy to repress the population
Yes good comment ET. Except, you know, as in martial arts they use the enemy’s energy and the enemy is repressing itself through PC.
But as you say, if we get scared enough that could change. If I were a jihadi consultant, I’d advise them to not scare the west, i.e., to continue the culture jihad until the west is eaten alive from within. Avoid unnecessary drama, in other words.
My other reservation: From reading the Black Book of Communism a couple years ago, the thing that sticks most is the very small number of Bolsheviks required to launch 70 years of terror and mass murder.
Moreoever, I still must dispute your argument about de-tribalization. Islam is surging not shrinking. One need only look at Turkey re-islamizing after 80 years of Kemalism.