Throwing The Holocaust down a memory hole

It took 23 years longer than George Orwell envisaged in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, but his infamous "memory hole" has made its appearance in Big Brother's politically correct realm, formerly known as the United Kingdom. The first two historic events that fell into it were the Holocaust and the Crusades. According to news reports, "some British schools are dropping lessons on the Holocaust and the Crusades, seeking to avoid antagonizing Muslim students."

Orwell's book was called dystopian but, except for some technological fancies, it was a pretty accurate description of a modern Nazi-or-Marxist-style tyranny. The world had experienced both by 1949 when Nineteen Eighty-Four was published: Orwell had to invent or exaggerate nothing. The only futuristic thing about the novel was that it was set in a nightmarish empire that used to be Great Britain. Otherwise, it was a factual portrayal of contemporary totalitarianism.

In Orwell's novel, past events that didn't sit well with Big Brother went into a memory hole, just as they did in Stalin's Russia or Mao's China. Whatever the tyrant deemed politically incorrect -- people, books, phrases, facts -- simply vanished. The ruling party's slogan was: "Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past."

Orwell's prophetic expectation of politically correct tyrannies proliferating throughout the formerly free countries of the Western world is proceeding on schedule; what is unexpected is the ideological force behind them. Most people, Orwell included, expected it to be Marxism-Leninism (or its New Left varieties, Fanonism, Maoism, Pol Potism, etc.) or perhaps some Neo-Nazi revival. Instead, it's turning out to be theocratic Islam.

Islamo-fascism has come out of left field, figuratively as well as literally. Today it's seeping though the body politic of Western-style liberal democracies through the maze of channels prepared by the little red tape worms of the ultra-liberal egalitarian welfare state for their own purposes. Or, to switch from a subterranean metaphor to a lofty one, it would be amusing, if it weren't so tragic, to see the most rigid and intolerant of evil genies flying the friendly skies of moral relativism and tolerance as they set out to drop bombs on us from magic carpets embroidered by Islamic symbols.

One particular explosion is just beginning to reverberate throughout Britain, having been detected by a government-backed study for the Department for Education and Skills. According to the Daily Mail, the study found that some teachers are "dropping courses covering the Holocaust at the earliest opportunity over fears Muslim pupils might express anti-Semitic and anti-Israel reactions in class." Reporter Laura Clark quotes the authors as saying that teachers feared confronting "anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils" and that "in another department, the Holocaust was taught despite anti-Semitic sentiment among some pupils [but] the same department deliberately avoided teaching the Crusades at Key Stage 3 (11- to 14-year-olds) because their balanced treatment of the topic would have challenged what was taught in some local mosques."

John Long, writing in City Journal, quotes the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding saying it is time for England to produce a new flag and adopt a patron saint "not identified with our bloody past and one we can all identify with." This, apparently, is because some British Muslims object to the cross of St. Andrew in the Union Jack, since Crusaders wore the emblem. How do the authorities react to all this? Long writes that a spokesman for the Commission for Racial Equality said the report painted a "worrying picture."

The study that is causing the furor is attempting to be non-judgmental. "Teachers and schools avoid emotive and controversial history for a variety of reasons, some of which are well-intentioned," its authors write. A member of parliament for one of the regions affected has been more outspoken: "I can only describe it as madness," commented Lancaster and Wyre MP Ben Wallace.

If it's madness, there's method in it. As I've had occasion to write several times over the last two decades, when we embraced the idea of non-traditional immigration, we forgot that when groups of distant cultural and political traditions arrive in significant numbers, they may establish their own communities not merely as colourful expressions of ethnic diversity -- festivals or restaurants -- but as separate cultural-political entities. We compounded the problem when we tried to turn this liability into an asset by promoting multiculturalism, and began flirting with the notion that host countries aren't legitimate entities with their own cultures, only political frameworks for various co-existing cultures.

Extending our values to others is one thing, but modifying our values to suit the values of others is a vastly different proposition. It's now populating "Eurabia" with a new type of immigrant, whose goal is not to fit in, but to carve out a niche for his own tribe, language, customs, or religion. It's creating a schizophrenic European Union that instead of building its future is running hither and yon trying to revise its past.

British historian David Irving was jailed recently in Austria for denying the Holocaust. He may yet be jailed in his own country for not denying it enough.

United Kingdom? What is that? It, too, is now down the memory hole, as it deserves.
History records that once-feared nation was sold out by its Islamic prince
after which its once-feared Navy, represented by a chain-smoking mom
and a Press-hungry ditzy leader at sea, was totally, thoroughly emasculated
by ragtags nancys.

Watched the Discovery Channel last night...a program on Jerusalem’s holiest sites. They spent an hour on the Temple Mount, which they insisted on calling whatever it is Muslims call it...memory fails, sorry. Much bootlicking of Muslims, how beautiful it is, etc.. Then five minutes on the Wailing Wall and about the same time on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Imagine. Good Friday, and Jesus gets a scant five minutes after having died on the cross to redeem mankind. That’s the NYTimes/Discovery channel for you.

We seem to have very short memories.

The WTC bombing was a mere 6 years ago. We (particularly our politicians) seem to have forgotten that, also.

Europe and Britain has already been in denial. France is 17% Muslim. Many are so afraid to offend Muslims,that they would rather have peace and hope against hope that Islam doesn’t kill them, then face the militants now. America,under the Dems will get that way too. I fear for our culture as long as people actually ‘would rather be red than dead’ in the old Cold War phrase. Dems love to encourage that feeling because it is not based on realistic thinking or logic. PC efforts are more important to liberals than real national security.

Oh! Clive.

You are such a dreary soul.

So was Orwell. But he was original.

And you are not.

His little message was a warning.

Yours is a turd in the punch bowl.

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