The Joy of Jail: Free Speech and other White Toxins

In Jewish folklore, a Golem is a monster that escapes the control of the magician who created it. The politician George Galloway is a bit like that. Inspired by ideologies associated with Jews, such as leftist politics and anti-racism, he’s become one of Britain’s greatest champions of Islam and opponents of Israel.

I think he’s an unbalanced egomaniac myself, but would I want him beaten up or jailed for his opinions? Not in the slightest: I think he makes British politics more entertaining and interesting. But then I’m not a Jewish activist:

OPINION: I’d rather George Galloway was in prison

… A man who craves celebrity and attention, Galloway is rarely out of the news, which is what accounts for his name being recognized well beyond the boundaries of the United Kingdom. Typical of Galloway’s recent publicity stunts was his appearance on a reality TV show wearing a red leotard and impersonating a purring cat.

Galloway remained in the limelight in late August, but not in the type of way he’d normally envision. While posing for photographs with admirers on a street in west London, he was approached and beaten by 39-year-old Neil Masterson. By the time Masterson was apprehended by the police, he had left Galloway with severe bruising on his face and head, and a couple of broken ribs. It was a nasty beating, but not a fatal one, and Galloway was discharged from hospital the following day.

I will readily admit that, like many Jews, my reaction to the news was one of unbridled joy, tempered by the guilty realization that, in a democracy, violence is rightly frowned upon as a means of dealing with one’s political opponents. However distasteful someone’s views — and Galloway’s views are, without question, highly distasteful — there are legal and constitutional channels available to challenge them. …

But it was the latest Galloway scandal that was probably uppermost in Neil Masterson’s mind when he spotted him and landed a series of punches and kicks. In early August, with Israel’s Operation Protective Edge against Hamas in full swing, Galloway delivered a speech in Bradford in which he declared the city to be an “Israel-Free Zone.”

“We don’t want any Israeli services,” Galloway ranted. “We don’t want any Israeli academics coming to the university or the college. We don’t even want any Israeli tourists to come to Bradford, even if any of them had thought of doing so. We reject this illegal, barbarous, savage state that calls itself Israel. And you have to do the same.”

Jewish leaders rightly dubbed this tirade as hate speech. Galloway was even questioned by police, as there is no First Amendment in the U.K. that protects racist or anti-Semitic invective. But as of yet, no charges have been brought against him.

For anyone who cares about democracy, seeing Galloway behind bars would be a far more satisfactory outcome than seeing him writhing around on a London sidewalk, cowering beneath the blows of his assailant. The MP’s incarceration is an outcome, moreover, that is still worth pursuing.

Ben Cohen is the Shillman Analyst for JNS.org and a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, Commentary, Haaretz, and other publications. His book, Some Of My Best Friends: A Journey Through Twenty-First Century Antisemitism (Edition Critic, 2014), is now available through Amazon. (OPINION: I’d rather George Galloway was in prison, Jewish News, 4th September 2014)

Although this piece was written for a Jewish community newspaper, Mr. Cohen clearly has access to the elite media as platform to express his hostility toward free speech. His views therefore matter. And whereas the left championed free speech when they were marginalized, Cohen is part of a movement by the now triumphant and very mainstream left to penalize speech that conflicts with the current multi-cultural anti-White zeitgeist.

Free speech was created by White Christian males and used as foundations of the modern West. But that group is now demonized and despised, blamed for racism, sexism, homophobia and all manner of other societal ills. The organized Jewish community has led the campaign of demonization, and there can be little doubt that they hate free speech:

The Hate Crimes Prevention Bill: Why Do Jewish Organizations Support It?

… Why are Jewish organizations so committed to this drive to abolish free speech? Sadly, such an attitude is entirely within the Jewish tradition. Jewish groups have a long history of powerful controls over group members, ranging from regulations on economic behavior and charity toward other Jews, to regulating behavior likely to give rise to anti-Semitism or likely to damage other interests of the group.

One aspect of this is that there was little history of free speech within traditional Jewish societies. Historically, Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky point out, rabbis and other elite members of the Ashkenazi and Sephardic communities had extraordinary power over other Jews — literally the power of life and death. And they were highly intolerant. Jews accused of heretical religious views were beaten or murdered. Their books were burned or buried in cemeteries. When a heretic died, his body was beaten by a special burial committee, placed in a cart filled with dung, and deposited outside the Jewish cemetery.

This repressive tradition continues. Notwithstanding the image of freely tolerating dissent within the Jewish community (“Two Jews, three opinions), John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt have shown that on important issues like Israel, Jewish dissenters are marginalized and there is strong pressure to limit disagreement. Jews can criticize Israel but only out of public view. Mearsheimer and Walt note that pro-Israel activism is dominated by “hard-line Zionists, Orthodox, and neoconservative circles”. As has happened so often in Jewish history, the most committed Jews have determined the direction of the Jewish community, with the result that the leadership of pro-Israel organizations tends to be more radical than the rest of the American Jewish community. (Kevin MacDonald, The Hate Crimes Prevention Bill: Why Do Jewish Organizations Support It?, VDare, 11th May, 2009)

The triumph of the left extends to an abhorrence of the traditional culture of the West. Here’s one Viv Groskop in the Guardian deploring the popularity of a TV show that promotes nostalgia for the past:

Downton Abbey’s class nostalgia is another toxic British export: The period drama is the latest conservative cultural product to peddle our outdated national stereotypes to foreign audiences

… it isn’t wholly hyperbole that Downton is one of the most successful TV series ever. You can watch the show in Persian, Russian and Korean, and it has an estimated global audience of 160 million. On a cycling trip to Angkor Wat, in Cambodia, the actor Jim Carter, who plays the butler, was greeted by a throng of tourists screaming “Mr Carson!”.

The series did well abroad immediately and, as series five starts in the UK on Sunday, the upward curve of viewers shows no sign of flattening. The US in particular has taken the series to heart: Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman, Tom Hanks and Katy Perry are all fans, while Michelle Obama requested early previews of the last series. Should you wish, you can buy Downton Abbey wine, soap and jewellery.

Yet Downton is just the latest in a long line of conservative cultural phenomena that get lapped up internationally and end up representing Brand Britain, whether we like it or not. From Merchant Ivory and Jeeves and Wooster to Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill via royal baby fever, our best-known cultural exports are painfully reinforcing “olde worlde” class stereotypes.

And let’s not kid ourselves that what we’re broadcasting to the world here is great drama. What we’re actually exporting is nostalgia, an unhealthy obsession with class, and a peculiarly dusty form of conservatism. It turns out that people can’t get enough of these things. … (Downton Abbey’s class nostalgia is another toxic British export, The Guardian, 17th September 2014)

In short, what the world likes about Britain is its Whiteness and its White traditions and history. Those are very unhealthy things to export. What about some non-toxic vibrancy instead?

Gang which murdered teenage rapper and sliced off friend’s nose in row over YouTube video is jailed for 107 years

Four gang members who murdered a teenage rapper and left his friend severely disfigured after they had been mocked on a YouTube video have been jailed for a total of 107 years. Mohammed Hussain, 22, Rubel Miah, 19, his brother Javed Miah, 21, and Fahim Khan, 20, drove around Bedford [in southern England] in a hired white Range Rover armed with knives and meat cleavers. Their victim, aspiring rapper Isaac Stone, 19, was chased and trapped by the gang, before being punched, kicked and stabbed repeatedly, with a wound which penetrated his left lung proving fatal. …

Isaac’s mother Yvette Lendore said: ‘Everybody loved Isaac and Isaac loved everybody. He was no angel but he was not a horrible or vindictive person. He used to play for Bedford Town [a soccer team], which is where he got the name Dynamic because he was so quick. Then he got into his music and just loved it. I am not going to lie, it is not all positive things in that music but some people take the words literally but they are just lyrics.’ She said he was the first pupil to be made a prefect at Harrowden Middle School and that between 800 and 900 people turned up at his funeral. (Gang which murdered teenage rapper and sliced off friend’s nose in row over YouTube video is jailed for 107 years, The Daily Mail, 16th September 2014)

5 replies

Comments are closed.