Posted on 04/09/2017 12:49:42 PM PDT by markomalley
Only a fortnight after a vehicular terrorist attack in Westminster, London, another similar attack took place in Stockholm, Sweden. On one of the city's main shopping streets, a vehicle was once again used as a battering-ram against the bodies of members of the public. As in Nice, France. As in Berlin. As so many times in Israel.
Amid this regular news there is an air of defeatism -- a terrible lack of policy and lack of solutions. How can governments stop people driving trucks into pedestrians? Is it something we must simply get used to, as France's former Prime Minister Manuel Valls and London's Mayor Sadiq Khan have both suggested? Must we come to recognise acts of terror as something like the weather? Or is there anything we can do to limit, if not stop, them? If so, where would we start? One place would be to have a frank public discussion about these matters. Yet, even that is easier said than done.
There is a terrible symmetry to this past week in the West. The week began with the news that the Somali-born author and human-rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali had been forced to cancel a speaking tour in Australia. "Security concerns" were among the given reasons. A notable aspect of this issue, which has been made public, is that one of the venues at which Hirsi Ali was due to speak was contacted last month by something calling itself "'The Council for the Prevention of Islamophobia Incorporated". Nobody appears to know where this "incorporated" organisation comes from, but its purported founder -- Syed Murtaza Hussain -- claimed that the group would bring 5000 protestors to the hall at which Hirsi Ali was scheduled to talk. This threat is reminiscent of the occasion in 2009 when the British peer, Lord Ahmed, threatened to mobilise 10,000 British Muslims to protest at the Houses of Parliament in Westminster if the Dutch politician Geert Wilders were allowed to speak. On that occasion -- as on this one -- the event was cancelled. Promises to mobilise thousands of angry Muslims can have such an effect. But the long-term implications often get lost in the short-term outrage.
Other attacks on Hirsi Ali began, in fact, weeks before her now-cancelled tour had been due to start. On the web, for instance, a widely-watched video was disseminated showing a group of headscarf-covered Australian Muslim women. All were attacking Hirsi Ali and protesting her appearance in the country. Addressing her directly, they complained that, "Your narrative doesn't support our struggles. It erases them."
Like other criticisms of Hirsi Ali, the effort was to portray her as the problem itself rather than the response to a problem. Once again, mixing up (deliberately or otherwise) the arsonist and the firefighter, such groups present a homogenous, agreed-upon opinion -- or "narrative" -- as the only necessary answer to any problems that may or may not exist. Hirsi Ali, according to them, thinks the "wrong" things and says the wrong things. Therefore she must be stopped.
That this type of campaign can succeed -- that speakers can be stopped from speaking in Western democracies because of the implicit or explicit threat of violence -- is a problem our societies need to face. But in the meantime, we also have to face the reality that a shut-down of opinion has on our public policy as well as our public discourse.
What, after all, is the acceptable discourse -- or "narrative" -- on which we can agree to speak about the attacks in Stockholm, Berlin, Nice and elsewhere? Can the discussion be allowed to include the Islamic portion? Can anyone be allowed to say that the attackers act in the name of Islam, or must we continue to present all jihadist terrorists as people suffering from any affliction apart from that one?
In the middle of the week, at a memorial service in Westminster Abbey, the Very Reverend John Hall, Dean of Westminster, said that the UK was "bewildered" after the terrorist attacks of a fortnight earlier. He went on in his sermon to ask:
"What could possibly motivate a man to hire a car and take it from Birmingham to Brighton to London, and then drive it fast at people he had never met, couldn't possibly know, against whom he had no personal grudge, no reason to hate them and then run at the gates of the Palace of Westminster to cause another death? It seems likely that we shall never know."
If it is true that our societies are "bewildered", as the Dean says, might it be because we have not heard a wide-enough range of possible explanations for such outrages -- because we have deliberately cut ourselves off, by choice,- from the warnings of ex-Muslims such as Hirsi Ali? Amid the "narratives" that are acceptable and to be tolerated, perhaps we have failed to listen to the explanations that outline the sheer scale of the religious and societal problem now in front of us?
Of course, for many Muslims, such as those critics of Hirsi Ali in Australia, there is a clear reason why they want to stop her speaking. Were people to hear her, they would realise the vast enormity of the challenge ahead of us and the depth and breadth of its nature. Her audiences would discover the defensive play around the world in which many Muslim organisations are engaged -- a campaign to limit speech precisely in order to protect their own interpretation of their religion and keep out any other.
It is, however, the dissenting, silenced voices such as Hirsi Ali's that are precisely the voices the world needs to hear at present. How tragic that a week that began with a silencing, should end with yet another all-too-predictable terrorist attack -- one which Sweden will do as much to fail at comprehending as Britain did two weeks before her.
Hearing from voices such as that of Hirsi Ali could lift the fog of our "bewilderment" and explain, for instance, what does motivate some people to drive a car or truck into crowds of people going about their lives. There is a whole pile of reasons why Islamists want to stop her explanations from being aired. But why -- when the attacks keep on happening -- do our own societies collude with such sinister people to keep ourselves in the dark?
Because it makes liberals think they are Good People.
The more pushback they get, the Better they are.
It is Virtue-signalling — with human lives as the signals.
There will be no real resistance to Islamic hegemony until people come to grips with the true ideology of Islam.
Like Nazism it must be extirpated.
Their book tells them they must continue jihad until everyone on earth submits to Islam.
There can be no peace until there is only Islam.
Or no Islam.
Mad Mo made it so.
Know Islam, No Peace - No Islam, Know Peace
For those who’s only language is terrorism they will only understand actions in that language
Because the West has surrendered.
David Wood calls it “The New Stockholm Syndrome.”
“...there’s a new kind of Stockholm syndrome that occurs when victims of terror defend the ideology that promotes terrorist attacks.”
It does make some sense: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUWUAvSpnQY
Terrorists?
Like Saudi Arabia and Qatar?
We are paving the way for their long dreamed of direct pipeline to Europe.
Let those A-holes fight for it, if it’s so important.
That is exactly who started and has been paying for the Syrian war and why.
Yeah? I haven’t seen any checks we cashed
What I meant is that the Gulf States and the Saudis have been funding the various factions fighting Assad.
They want Assad out of the way of their pipeline.
They would like us to take Assad out for them.
I hope we don’t.
It’s called the Strategy of Tension, which is domestic policy leveraged off a foreign policy of destabilization and intervention.
It’s not really complicated to understand that you have to frighten the cattle a bit to keep control of the herd. The part that most people can’t grasp is the utterly ruthless calculation at the core of it, that there exists a class of creatures who see human populations as their cattle, to be herded and ultimately led to slaughter, without compunction.
Dude. I’m just talking and pissed about this.
Everyone else thinks it’s some humanitarian $80 million dollar gift...
It’s not really complicated to understand that you have to frighten the cattle a bit to keep control of the herd.
Interesting concept, terrible analogy. With cattle, frightening the herd makes them much harder to control.
With people, it might work, might not. Seems like it would be terribly tricky stuff.
Simple.
Transnational Progressives have weaponized immigration against Western Civilization, and are using it it destroy our cultures and nationality.
Basically they’re using Barbarian Migrations to destroy us, and cloaking themselves in ‘compassion’ and ‘freedom’ to defend themselves from appropriate retaliation.
Do you think for one minute any voter in this country in the 50’s and 60’s would have voted for a person to be president if they didn’t know what he had studied in college, where he had been born, seen his transcripts, etc., etc., etc. No. They would not have. They may have been duped about communism but many weren’t. But to have just any joe blow become president? No.
Mostly the voters had gone to school and learned deductive logic. They had civics and history. They knew and had been told about the Crusades and Muslims.
They were logical and actually quite well educated.
NOT SO TODAY> WE have destroyed our school system, no civics, no history, no art and music—both necessary for math and brain development. I was fortunate. I had 4 years of history in high school and that included Asian and South American, 4 years of science and math. But best of all I was taught to read and figure out logic problems. What an incredible gift.
My god, I am so sorry we have not paid attention to the Alinskys of the world. Now we will pay for the the ignorance apparent in our country, inability to understand Islam and politically correct talk that will tear us apart.
That’s why I qualified it with saying, “a little bit”.
Of course all I know about herding bovines, I learned by watching Rawhide and various Westerns.
In terms of people, if terrorism isn’t people control, what is it?
Strategy of Tension isn’t my invention, BTW. Anyone can look it up.
Lots of people have written about the use of fear to motivate political groups.
I looked up Strategy of Tension particularly, and it seems to be a Marxist theory aimed at the West, first put out as a disinformation campaign by the Soviets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_of_tension
It is very difficult to know just how much these things might be used, as exposure would tend to make them ineffective and to backfire on the users.
Clearly fear is used as a way to promote policies. It can be legitimate or not.
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