Tuesday 24 April 2012

Mea Culpa


I’m guilty, I confess it; I am a fellow traveller of Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian mass murder, now on trial in Oslo.  Surely you must have noticed the association, even if you’ve only descended occasionally to the realm of the Imp; surely you must have noticed that I swing to the right?  I stand accused along with the likes of Melanie Philips, Mark Steyn and James Delingpole.  

The thing is, you see, if you strip away Breivik’s more outlandish rhetoric there is little to separate his views from mine, or the views of conservative critics in general, and that includes those in the mainstream press.  I have repeatedly condemned mass immigration, multiculturalism, cultural Marxism, Islamic extremism (not Islam as a religion, I have to stress) and political correctness.  I’ve condemned so many other fashionable notions that have served to undermine some of our most cherished institutions, served to undermine our sense of who we are and where we belong.  Breivik’s bêtes noires are my bêtes noires and, as Voltaire wrote, “those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”

Yes, there is little to separate Breivik’s views from those of right-wing ideologues like myself.  It must be true; it says so in latest issue of the New Statesman, and the New Statesman is always right or left or whatever.  They have me and others of my kidney bang to rights!  In expressing a view I deal in misinformation and distortion; in expressing a view I give encouragement to those who deal in death. 

In this respect I am totally unlike Mhedi Hasan, the magazine’s Senior Political Editor.  I’m not a Muslim, you see; I’m a kafaar, an atheist and a disbeliever, a person of no-intelligence; I am cattle.  Let me be completely fair, least I be accused of taking his words ‘out of context’.  This is the context;

The kaffar, the disbelievers, the atheists who remain deaf and stubborn to the teachings of Islam, the rational message of the Quran; they are described in the Quran as, quote, “a people of no intelligence”, Allah describes them as; not of no morality, not as people of no belief – people of “no intelligence” – because they’re incapable of the intellectual effort it requires to shake off those blind prejudices, to shake off those easy assumptions about this world, about the existence of God. In this respect, the Quran describes the atheists as “cattle”, as cattle of those who grow the crops and do not stop and wonder about this world.

Actually, he’s wrong.  Speaking for myself, I do stop and wonder about this world.  I stop and wonder particularly about the New Statesman; I wonder what its Fabian founders would have made of this view; I wonder what George Bernard Shaw would have made of it, given that he frequently attacked religion.  No matter; Mehdi has spoken.  I am cattle; I live my life like an animal. 

The New Statesman has spoken also, drawing a continuum between right wing reflections and mass murder.  I wrote not so long ago condemning the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory in particular and political correctness in general (American Disease, 17 January).  Now - would you believe it? -Mad Anders embraces a similar denunciation in his rambling Mad Manifesto!  So, yes, we of the right are guilty for all of his delusions.  I write; he acts; it’s as simple as that; it’s as simple as the New Statesman.

So, if you are in the habit of coming this way do be careful least I infect you with right wing rabies.  I might write soon expressing my contempt for paedophiles, wife beaters and knuckle-headed New Statesman editorial writers and columnists.  I expect that shall be the spur for another Anders to act, brooding away in some bedsit in lonely and paranoid isolation.  I expect the Old Bill to call on me at some point in the future, arrested as a perpetuator of absurdities.   

After that the rest will be silence, or only the word according to the New Statesman will descend upon you.  In the meantime I shall leave all of you unreflective cattle with the particular words of Mhedi, straight from the horse’s mouth, or whatever other animal he has a preference for.



24 comments:

  1. yeah, just this morning i read an article here in Australia saying something similar; it's certainly unfair - if Breivik's actions bring shame on the right wing, then those of Soviet Russia bring shame on the left. The only danger comes from neither side, but from extremism of any form.

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    1. Hey, Adam, is it really you, Adam from Wikipedia? It's been such a long time! Anyway, your point about extremism is well made.

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    2. hi, Ana - yes, it's me indeed! The novel you helped me with is finished, being released in September!

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    3. That's great, Adam. Please do give me the details, title, publisher and so on.

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    4. Thanks, Ana - I would send you a comp copy, but they cost quite a bit to produce, and there'll be so few sold that I'm going to be greedy and just give you the details - it's coming out from coeur de lion - http://keithstevenson.com/CDLblog/

      There'll be an announcement there as September approaches; I should warn you, though, that I took such liberties with history in it that you might end up changing your view, evinced elsewhere here, that no book should be burnt.

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    5. Thank you, Adam, but I would only be too delighted to add to your royalties. I'm sure it will be highly entertaining, whatever liberties you take. :-)

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  2. SS Love the picture SS , The brother wars were destructive to western civilization. Religion is the bane of humanity.

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  3. Thought-Criminal on so many levels: what ought to be your punishment, I wonder?

    See this? http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/04/military-islam-training/

    We're in Wonderland.

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    1. Calvin, alas, our Wonderland is far madder than the original! Thanks for the link.

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  4. All I have to say is: bring it on, Ana!

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  5. “A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”

    G.K. Chesterton.

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    1. Good quote, Nobby. I came across one recently by Einstein that has a particular resonance - "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."

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  6. Ana the illusions about right wing thought are pandemic, a product of the mess mass immigration has caused, and Mhedi Hasan seems to at least have mastered the non sequitur in amorphous reasoning, while your thinking will forever elude those of his ilk. The rhetoric about cattle reveals once again the analogy between Islam and the Nazis: Goebbels used the image of rats for the Jews, reverse the image and there you have the narcissist proselytiser evading themselves ad nauseam.

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  7. I have fought an on-off battle since July for saying essentially what you have written, only to be accused of supporting Breivik's actions rather than his political views.

    Ho hum... whet else did I expect? I'd love to have seen your post on MyT, there'd be a lot of noses out of joint - I guess I'll have to settle for a link...

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  8. I’m a kafaar, an atheist and a disbeliever

    No, you're a little devil, Ana - far from an unbeliever. ;-)

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  9. It's the rare Leftist who ever occupies the high ground. They're usually to be found in the swamp.

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  10. So if you're so like-minded then you'd act similarly to him i.e. mass murder a number of school-children all because of your right wing beliefs? I don't know if that's exactly what you're saying and I realise you warn people in coming close in that you may 'infect' those who do with your right wing tendencies, but for somebody who spends a majority of her time celebrating what a proper education she's had, your estimation of what's acceptable to say is ridiculously far off. Before you start drawing comparisons to people like Breivik, take some time to think about what people who lost their children and friends in his shooting would feel upon reading this, like myself for example. I think what you've said is incredibly insensitive and unnecessary, and not to mention, stupid.

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    1. Stupid – now there’s a word! An observation of Einstein’s immediately comes to mind: the difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits!

      I thought for a moment that I would save you some embarrassment, Thomas Flanagan, and not published your comment, which confirms the truth of Einstein’s words. You clearly have absolutely no conception of the meaning of satire. Do you possess a dictionary? Go on; look it up.

      Everyone else understands what I’m driving at here and I really don’t see why I should try and educate you when your powers of comprehension are clearly quite limited. Oh – what the hell – the point is one can express opposition to things like mass immigration and multiculturalism without going off the rails like Mad Anders. In drawing parallels and making links the New Statesman is attempting to silence debate by association, by associating perfectly reasonable arguments with the worst forms of crazy extremism. Do you understand? Is that managing to penetrate the thick cloud which covers the little intelligence you have? I doubt it somehow.

      Incidentally I do not spend the ‘majority’ of my time celebrating my education; only when it is appropriate to do so. Now trot along, Thomas Flannigan; there’s a good chap. :-)

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