True France, True Europe: A Survey of Mercury, Venus and Marr

If you had to pick one man and one woman to represent the spirit of France, a good choice would be Voltaire (1694-1778) and the film-star Brigitte Bardot (born 1934). They stand for brains and beauty, wit and style, irony and compassion.

First consider Voltaire, that icon of free speech and the unfettered mind. He was like the god Mercury, sharp-witted messenger of the gods, wing-footed and roaming the universe. Liberals and neo-conservatives have invoked his name again and again since the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris.

Raging Fanaticism

But if Voltaire were alive and writing today, those same liberals and neo-cons would be clamouring for his head. This is because he did something forbidden in the modern West: he noticed racial patterns.

All of the other peoples have committed crimes, the Jews are the only ones who have boasted about committing them. They are, all of them, born with raging fanaticism in their hearts, just as the Bretons and the Germans are born with blond hair. I would not be in the least bit surprised if this nation some day became deadly to the human race. (Letters of Memmius to Cicero, 1771)

It is commonly said that the abhorrence in which the Jews held other nations proceeded from their horror of idolatry; but it is much more likely that the manner in which they at the first exterminated some of the tribes of Canaan, and the hatred which the neighboring nations conceived for them, were the cause of this invincible aversion. As they knew no nations but their neighbors, they thought that in abhorring them they detested the whole earth, and thus accustomed themselves to be the enemies of all men. (Philosophical Dictionary, 1764)

Can you imagine how the freedom-loving neo-conservatives would react to passages like that? But the neo-cons would be wise to consider what he said about “raging fanaticism.” The murdered liberals at Charlie Hebdo could have learnt something from Voltaire too. Their cartoons were crudely obscene. Voltaire could be obscene with style:

Were the Jewish Ladies Intimate with Goats?

You assert that your mothers had no commerce with he-goats, nor your fathers with she-goats. But pray, gentlemen, why are you the only people upon earth whose laws have forbidden such commerce? Would any legislator ever have thought of promulgating this extraordinary law if the offence had not been common? (Philosophical Dictionary, entry for “Jews,” Vol. 6)

Charlie Hebdo did not genuinely believe in free speech, because the magazine sacked a writer who made a mild comment that plugged into a stereotype about Jews. What would it have done to Voltaire? This is his summary of Jewish history:

This people, after their captivity at Babylon, had no other alphabet than the Chaldæan; they were not famed for any art, any manufacture whatsoever; and even in the time of Solomon they were obliged to pay dear for foreign artisans. … Their stay in Babylon and in Alexandria, during which individuals might instruct themselves, formed the people to no art save that of usury. … In short, we find in them only an ignorant and barbarous people, who have long united the most sordid avarice with the most detestable superstition and the most invincible hatred for every people by whom they are tolerated and enriched. Still, we ought not to burn them. (Philosophical Dictionary, Vol. 6)

If Voltaire were alive and writing today, the “Je Suis Charlie” crowd would want him prosecuted and imprisoned for what modern French law calls incitation à la haine raciale – “incitement to racial hatred.”

That would certainly happen to Mercury because it’s already happened to Venus, a.k.a. Brigitte Bardot. After her career as a stunningly beautiful film-star, Bardot became a campaigner against cruelty to animals. Like Voltaire, she noticed racial patterns in this kind of behaviour and like Voltaire she wrote about them. That’s why she’s been convicted five times of thought-crime:

In her 1999 book Le Carré de Pluton (“Pluto’s Square”), Bardot criticizes the procedure used in the ritual slaughter of sheep during the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. Additionally, in a section in the book entitled, “Open Letter to My Lost France”, Bardot writes that “my country, France, my homeland, my land is again invaded by an overpopulation of foreigners, especially Muslims”. For this comment, a French court fined her 30,000 francs in June 2000. She had been fined in 1997 for the original publication of this open letter in Le Figaro and again in 1998 for making similar remarks. In her 2003 book, Un cri dans le silence (“A Scream in the Silence”), she warned of an “Islamicization of France”, and said of Muslim immigration: “Over the last twenty years, we have given in to a subterranean, dangerous, and uncontrolled infiltration, which not only resists adjusting to our laws and customs but which will, as the years pass, attempt to impose its own.” (Brigitte Bardot in Wikipedia)

So the French state persecutes a patriotic Frenchwoman who speaks against the destruction of her homeland. Note that Bardot’s present husband, Bernard d’Ormale, is a “former adviser of the Front National, the main far right party in France, known for its nationalist and conservative beliefs.” The Front National has also been persecuted by the French state for its views.

But what did Charlie Hebdo, that symbol of freedom, think of the party? Simple: it wanted the Front National banned and organized a petition to that end (for this and more background to the Hebdo affair, see the excellent summary posted at Those Who Can See).

The Will of the State

So that’s a brief survey of Mercury and Venus in France. Now let’s cross the channel and look at Marr’s behaviour in Britain. I’m talking about Andrew Marr, a prominent British liberal who has worked as political editor for the BBC and who regularly appears on television and radio. In 1999, following the publication of the dishonest and totalitarian Lawrence Enquiry, Marr addressed the horrors of White racism. How was Britain to extirpate them? He first recommended “widespread and vigorous miscegenation” and “more taxes” to “regenerate inner-city ghettos.” Then he revealed the true liberal attitude to free speech:

And the final answer, frankly, is the vigorous use of state power to coerce and repress. It may be my Presbyterian background, but I firmly believe that repression can be a great, civilising instrument for good. Stamp hard on certain ‘natural’ beliefs for long enough and you can almost kill them off. The police are first in line to be burdened further, but a new Race Relations Act will impose the will of the state on millions of other lives too. (Poor? Stupid? Racist? Then don’t listen to a pampered white liberal like me, The Guardian, 28th February 1999)

You can’t accuse Marr of hiding his Stalinist tendencies. As Lytton Strachey nearly said, he believes in free speech, within limits; that is to say, in the free speech of those with whom he agrees. Liberal horror at the Hebdo massacre is deeply hypocritical. If the target had been someone they disagreed with, they would have objected only to the means, not to the end of censorship.

But liberals like Marr are not confined to the BBC or Labour party. Today they’re also found among so-called conservatives. Boris Johnson, the part-Jewish, part-Turkish Tory mayor of London, is another hypocrite and double-thinker. After the Hebdo massacre, he spoke up firmly for “enlightenment and freedom.” He also said this:

Boris Johnson reacts to Paris atrocity: ‘We are all Jews today’

Boris Johnson has spoken of his sadness at the suffering of the French Jewish community and declared “we are all Jews today”. …

“People must be in a state of absolute anguish after what they saw in the supermarket in Paris, he told the Jewish News. “I’ve been reading about the state of morale of the community there and about the level of immigration – I feel very sad about it. Nous sommes tous juif aujoud’hui [sic] (we’re all Jews today).”

Johnson said that, though there was no intelligence of an imminent terror threat to London or the capital’s Jews, the “particular” risks of terrorism against Jewish targets were “constantly part of our assessments”. He said: “[We’ll do] everything we can to protect every community. We’re working flat out to monitor the guys who mean us harm.” …

He said he “absolutely” understood heightened fears of British Jews about anti-Semitism and called for “vigilance. We come down like a tonne of bricks on any sign of anti-Semitism or hate speech. We work closely with the CST [Community Security Trust] to fight it.” … Paying tribute to the “heroic” actions of [the Muslim] supermarket worker Lassana Bathily [who protected many Jewish customers], Johnson said: “he showed the spirit and humanity that people need to see now. He represented the spirit of the not just the overwhelming majority of people but also the overwhelming majority of Muslims.”

Leaders of the Board of deputies, Jewish leadership council and London Jewish Forum were among members of the Jewish community joining the hastily-arranged rally, organised by the French Embassy. The Campaign against Antisemitism also joined the crowds – and urged supporters to do the same. A spokesman said: “When it is unsafe to speak your mind in the press, uphold society’s laws or be Jewish, history tells us that freedom itself is at stake.” … (Boris Johnson reacts to Paris atrocity: ‘We are all Jews today’, Jewish News, January 12, 2015)

Look at the double-think revealed in that article. On the one hand, the Jewish Community Security Trust helps the British authorities to “come down like a tonne of bricks on any sign of anti-Semitism or hate speech.” On the other hand, a spokesman for the Campaign against Antisemitism thinks that “freedom itself is at stake” when “it is unsafe to speak your mind in the press.”

Israel is your home

The same double-think is at work all over Europe. In December 2014 the Times of Israel reported that a Swedish politician had made a bigoted and unacceptable claim:

A far-right Swedish leader has caused an uproar in his country after saying people who identify as Jews cannot be seen as true Swedes. Björn Söder, party secretary of the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats party and also deputy speaker of parliament, told newspaper Dagens Nyheter there were some groups in Swedish society who were citizens but belonged to other nations — namely Jews and Sami. … Söder’s remarks have angered many in the country. Prime Minister Stefan Löfven said he found the statements “very, very scary,” the Guardian reported. Löfven has called the Swedish Democrats “neo-fascist.” Jewish leaders have also lashed out at Söder. The president of the Council of Swedish Jewish Communities, Lena Posner Körösi, told the Guardian: “I am appalled that Sweden’s third largest party can express itself in this way about Jews and other minorities.”

Jewish leaders have also lashed out at Söder. The president of the Council of Swedish Jewish Communities, Lena Posner Körösi, told the Guardian: “I am appalled that Sweden’s third largest party can express itself in this way about Jews and other minorities.” She said the comments reminded her of “1930s Germany.” Willy Silberstein, chairman of the Swedish Committee Against Anti-Semitism, said “I am Jewish and born in Sweden. I am just as much Swedish as Björn Söder,” according to Swedish English news website The Local. (Swedish far-right leader: Jews are not true Swedes, The Times of Israel, 18th December 2014)

But there’s someone who goes much further than Björn Söder and thinks that Jews are not true members of any European nation. After the Hebdo massacre and the four murders in the kosher supermarket in Paris, this is how Israel reacted:

Israeli officials are now hoping for a further increase in immigration from France, which accounted for the largest number of immigrants to Israel last year – 7,000, according to the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency. In this spirit, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday night: “I want to tell every Jew in France and in Europe that Israel is your home.”

While Mr Netanyahu was less strident today, saying “any Jew who wants to immigrate will be met with open arms”, Daniel Ben-Simon, a former member of the Knesset from the Labor party, said the damage was done.

“The tragedy is a tragedy for France and you can’t single out Jews as a sect,” he said. “You can’t exploit any incident, tragic as it may be, to promote immigration. There are things that are not kosher.” (Paris attacks: French Israelis urge relations to emigrate to escape anti-Semitism, The Independent, 11th January 2015)

There you have it: according to the Israeli prime minister, there are no Jewish Europeans, only Jews in Europe, because Israel is their true home. And sure enough: the victims of the supermarket murders were buried in Israel, not in France.

But I admire Benjamin Netanyahu for doing his job and promoting the interests of his own people. I wish so-called mainstream politicians and journalists in Western nations would do the same. They don’t. Instead, they lie and deceive. The journalist Max Hastings is another pseudo-conservative who promotes liberal fantasies about Muslims. He reacted to the Hebdo massacre by condemning the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and calling for more surveillance by the state. But he wasn’t honest about the causes of the “terror threat”:

On Thursday, the director general of MI5, Andrew Parker, made a rare speech, warning it was almost inevitable that an attack in this country would get through sooner or later. ‘Although we and our partners try our utmost, we know that we cannot hope to stop everything,’ he said.

The price of living in an open society, with the precious freedoms we take for granted, is that all of us, great and small, are vulnerable to attackers consumed by hatred for our culture, its values, and manifest superiority to those from which they come.

Globalisation places a disturbing number of such people in our midst, rather than far away in Somalia or Iran. The good news is that although Islamic fanatics can cause us pain and grief, they pose no existential threat as did Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Soviet Union. … What can we do to protect ourselves against them? It is pointless to focus on tightening border controls, desirable though this is for other reasons. Most terrorists who launch attacks in the West prove to be citizens of the nations they seek to injure, some of them born here.

In truth, Assange and Snowden have damaged the security of each and every one of us, by alerting the jihadis and Al Qaeda, our mortal enemies, to the scale and reach of electronic eavesdropping. … The vast majority of Muslims in this country are decent and loyal citizens who utterly reject association with such horrors as those which have taken place in Paris. … (MAX HASTINGS: Why the liberals who defended traitors like Snowden and Assange should look at this photo and admit: We were deluded fools, The Daily Mail, 10th January 2015)

Like Nick Cohen, Max Hastings didn’t mention immigration once, let alone name it as a direct cause of Muslim terrorism in the West. Instead, he used the weasel-word “globalisation.” Why are there Pakistanis and Somalis all over the Western world? According to Hastings, it’s not by the treachery of our hostile elite and its collaborators, but because of “globalisation.”

Mark and Moshe

Hastings’ deceit and dishonesty are also found in a much more famous and influential journalist: the neo-con Mark Steyn. As you would expect, Steyn has been writing and talking extensively about the Hebdo massacre. He’s been stressing two themes: the suffering of Jews and the corruption of our political elite. Here are examples:

I can’t claim to have known Georges Wolinski, the 80-year-old cartoonist among the dead on Wednesday, but I met him briefly, a few years ago. Via Laura Rosen Cohen, I learn of the strange, circular journey of his life and death. His father was a Polish Jew who fled to Tunisia to lead a life free of pogroms. Georges was born there in 1934. Two years later, his dad was murdered, and the family moved again, this time to France.

And on Wednesday, like his father, the son was killed.

Wolinski père fled Jew-hate in Europe to be murdered in the Muslim world.

Wolinski fils fled Jew-hate in the Muslim world to be murdered in Europe, by Muslims. (#JeSuisCharlie – But You’re Not, Steyn Online, 9th January 2015)

And what did all these grandees [European ministers] decide [in their meeting after the Hebdo massacre]? Well, like the lads of the cyber-caliphate, they’re all about the Internet – that’s to say, “while safeguarding that it remains, in scrupulous observance of fundamental freedoms, a forum for free expression”, they’re going to lean on Internet providers “to create the conditions of a swift reporting of material that aims to incite hatred and terror and the condition of its removing”.

Ah. So to honor the memory of all those cartoonists who died for free speech they’re going to police free speech ever more rigorously. This is already a culture in which a Yorkshireman can be arrested for posting a video of him dumping a Koran in the toilet, and in which the useless totalitarian twerps of the Scottish Police openly threaten the citizenry that they’re under constant surveillance. What’s more likely under the new security regime? That they’ll be cracking down on ISIS recruiters and firebreathing imams? Or just creating makework schemes for Constable McPlod to chastise the multiculturally insensitive? (Allahu Hackbar!, Steyn Online, 12th January 2015)

Heavens. I’m sure the Jewish community in all European nations will be up in arms and cease its generous donations to the politicians responsible for the surveillance state and the destruction of free speech. Or possibly not. Here is something from November 2013 that Steyn is not pouring sarcasm on:

European Jewish Congress Calls on EU to Set Up State Surveillance of “Intolerant” Citizens

In a move described by a leading civil rights group as a “dark day for European democracy,” Moshe Kantor, President of the European Jewish Congress (ECJ) and former president of Poland, Aleksander Kwasniewski (real name Stoltzman), have called on the European Union to establish national surveillance units to monitor citizens of all 27 EU member states suspected of “intolerance.”

The two EJC leaders made the call at a “European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation” (ECTR) submission to the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE).

These “special administrative units,” the report says, “should preferably operate within the Ministry of Justice.”

“There is no need to be tolerant to the intolerant,” it states, especially “as far as freedom of expression is concerned.”

… Further, the draft statute goes on to say that “defamatory comments made in public and aimed against a group … with a view to … slandering the group, holding it to ridicule or subjecting it to the false charges” may be considered ‘group libel’ and, therefore, may be treated like acts of intolerance” as well as hate crimes.

Conspicuously absent, however, is any mention of balancing this with freedom of speech. (European Jewish Congress Calls on EU to Set Up State Surveillance of “Intolerant” Citizens, The New Observer, 9^th November 2013)

When will Mark Steyn name the most important enemies of free speech and most important facilitators of mass immigration from Muslim nations? Never, I assume. That would mean being honest about the causes he pretends to believe in.

Sinister Neo-Con

But there was an honest Jewish writer who should be honoured for long ago warning what Muslims and other non-Whites were doing to the West. By the time of his death in March 2013, Larry Auster had been condemning mass immigration and liberal race-politics for over twenty years. Auster was a true defender of European civilization. As such, he saw Mark Steyn for what he is: an enemy of European civilization:

The worst of Steyn, redux

Posted at year’s end one year ago was my discussion of Mark Steyn’s explicit call for the destruction of Europe at the hands of Muslims (followed by a must-read discussion by VFR [View from the Right] readers). Steyn wrote:

Some of us think an Islamic Europe will be easier for America to deal with than the present Europe of cynical, wily, duplicitous pseudo-allies. But getting there is certain to be messy, and violent. Until the shape of the new Europe begins to emerge, there’s no point picking fights with the terminally ill.

From which I concluded:

… Steyn is not just a guy using a “trick” to gain personal success. On top of his relatively innocent, con-man aspect, there is his sinister, neocon aspect, in which he fools people into thinking that he’s standing up for the West, when in fact he’s doing just the opposite. (“The worst of Steyn, redux,” View From the Right, 4th January 2007)

Steyn is shocked, shocked, that mass non-Western immigration has been going on in this establishment

… We see here the phoniness and emptiness of Steyn. He, perhaps the most widely published “conservative” columnist in the world, has NEVER discussed immigration AT ALL, even in the mild passing way that is done by all manner of conservative columnists. But now suddenly wanting to talk about the issue after having been totally silent about it all these years, he complains that no one can talk about it because of the racism charge! What right has he to make this complaint, given that he had ample opportunity to discuss the issue and avoided it like the plague? For example, he wrote innumerable articles about the Muslim threat in the West without once mentioning the fact that it was by Muslim immigration that Muslims had entered the West and were still entering it. You would think from reading Steyn that Muslim had sprung out of the ground. (“Steyn is shocked, shocked, that mass non-Western immigration has been going on in this establishment,” View From the Right, June 3, 2009)

When Larry Auster died, he and his ideas were ignored by the mainstream media in which Mark Steyn continues to flourish. But honest ideas about Islam did appear in the mainstream media after the Hebdo massacre:

Anjem Choudary on the Charlie Hebdo attacks: ‘Muslims do not believe in the concept of freedom of expression’

After yesterday’s Paris shooting, in which four journalists on satirical publication Charlie Hebdo were killed, Muslim activist Anjem Choudary has written an open letter entitled ‘People Know The Consequences’. In the letter, which was published by USA Today, Choudary says: “Contrary to popular misconception, Islam does not mean peace but rather means submission to the commands of Allah alone. Therefore, Muslims do not believe in the concept of freedom of expression, as their speech and actions are determined by divine revelation and not based on people’s desires.”

He adds: “Although Muslims may not agree about the idea of freedom of expression, even non-Muslims who espouse it say it comes with responsibilities. In an increasingly unstable and insecure world, the potential consequences of insulting the Messenger Muhammad are known to Muslims and non-Muslims alike.”

The post asks: “Why did France allow the tabloid to provoke Muslims?” and Choudary adds: “Western governments are content to sacrifice liberties and freedoms when being complicit to torture and rendition — or when restricting the freedom of movement of Muslims, under the guise of protecting national security.” (Anjem Choudary on the Charlie Hebdo attacks: ‘Muslims do not believe in the concept of freedom of expression’, The Independent, 8th January 2015)

Choudary nails the hypocrisy of Western liberals and the “Je Suis Charlie” crowd. They represent appeasement and surrender to Islam and other Third World invaders. Mark Steyn and Max Hastings represent neo-con posturing and deceit.

It’s Voltaire and Brigitte Bardot who represent the true spirit not just of France but of Europe as a whole. And that spirit is growing stronger. I predicted a year ago in “Moshe is Monitoring You” that big changes would soon took place in Europe. I think I was right. Moshe Kantor has a lot more people to monitor now.