O que é a Nova Direita

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Javier Ruiz Portella: O que é a Nova Direita

 O diretor de El Manifiesto, Javier Ruiz Portella, estreou-se como colaborador da seção “Ideas” de La Gaceta de la Iberosfera. O artigo abaixo foi a primeira entrega dele. Confira!

Corria o ano de 1968. Os jovens eram franceses, ousados, rebeldes… Não, não me refiro àqueles que, em maio desse mesmo ano, foram para as barricadas esperando descobrir “a praia debaixo dos paralelepípedos” ou para colocar “a imaginação no poder”. Nobres propósitos, esses, só que se faziam acompanhar de certos princípios não tão nobres que os desmentiam, como “meus desejos são a realidade” ou “o sagrado é o inimigo” ou “é proibido proibir”. Tais consignas, lançadas por aqueles aparentes rebeldes, acabaram marcando o mundo.

Uma breve revisão da história

Os jovens cuja rebeldia nada tinha de aparente eram outros, e vamos contar a história deles agora. Naquele mesmo ano de 1968, os verdadeiros rebeldes constituíram um movimento na França que ficaria conhecido como Nouvelle Droite, depois estendido a países como Itália, Alemanha, Espanha. [1]

Rebeldes naquele tempo, eles continuam sendo rebeldes até hoje. Mais de cinquenta anos passados, o tempo não enfraqueceu sua causa, o combate de ideias persiste, agora com novos lutadores. Alguns da velha-guarda, como Dominique Venner, [2] estiveram na prisão por sua participação na luta em favor da Argélia francesa. Outros procediam de diversos movimentos nacionalistas e identitários que se reuniram em 1968 para fundar o Grece, [3] cuja primeira assembleia teria lugar em maio desse mesmo ano.

Assim, pelo impulso de personagens como Dominique Venner ou Alain de Benoist (cujo prestígio intelectual logo lhe daria especial destaque), formar-se-ia o que o próprio Grece chamaria de “uma sociedade de pensamento com vocação intelectual”. Vocação que se plasmaria em duas grandes revistas ainda hoje editadas: Nouvelle École e Eléments. Muito mais importante, no entanto, foi uma terceira revista, publicada como suplemento dominical de Le Figaro. Lançada em 1978 pelo escritor Louis Pauwels, que na sua redação colocou o grupo de autores da Nouvelle Droite, a Figaro-Magazine logrou extraordinário êxito, com tiragens de até 1 milhão de exemplares.

Isso significava a saída das catacumbas, lugar onde costumam estar enclausuradas as publicações antissistêmicas. É claro que o sistema não gostou dessa história, então os seus periódicos de esquerda (Le Monde, Le Nouvel Observateur, Le Canard Enchaîné…) lançaram feroz campanha de demonização em 1979. Por conseguinte, vieram as habituais calúnias sobre racismo, fascismo, xenofobia e quejandas denúncias. Depois, foi a vez das “sanções” financeiras, com as grandes empresas do Sistema ameaçando cancelar as verbas de publicidade consignadas a Le Figaro. Diante disso, a direção do periódico viu-se obrigada a descontinuar a linha crítica, e a Nouvelle Droite perdeu os meios capazes de dar maior repercussão às suas mensagens na sociedade.

O pensamento da Nova Direita

Se uma só palavra pudesse resumir o pensamento da Nova Direita, seria a palavra “Identidade”. Não qualquer identidade, mas sim a identidade coletiva, comunitária, orgânica. A identidade afirmante de que só arraigados no justo, no belo e no verdadeiro os homens podem existir; apenas com base no que decantou a História e a Tradição pode o sentido desenvolver-se plenamente em todo o mundo.

Isso é exatamente o contrário do que preconiza a modernidade e, sobretudo, a pós-modernidade.  Essa é a antítese do que pretende o individualismo atomista que tão bem expressavam aqueles moços do Maio de 68. Depois de terem proclamado que “é perigoso ser herdeiro”, decretaram “o estado de felicidade permanente” a fim de poder “gozar aqui e agora”, convencidos como estavam de que só “meus desejos são a realidade”, pois “Deus sou eu” e “o Estado é cada um de nós mesmos” e assim por diante.

Preparavam-se aí os atuais delírios do vigilismo (wokismo), todo esse sem-sentido de dizer que a Natureza não é nada, como também a Tradição, pois cada um é o que deseja ser: uma mulher nascida homem, um homem nascido mulher. Nada há fora do desejo (mas, se houver, será coercitivo, repressivo: destruamo-lo!). Tudo é líquido, tudo flui, nada se impõe, tudo é insubstancial.

Foi então que começaram os nossos males? Não. A partir daí eles se exacerbaram, mas sua origem vem de muito mais longe. A pós-modernidade leva ao extremo tanto o atomismo individualista quanto a perda de substância de um mundo que, desde há um par de séculos ― com o triunfo do pensamento ilustrado ― começou a ignorar tudo quanto tivesse o cheiro de alguma coisa firme, substancial, sagrada.

Condensada em sua essência, essa é a impugnação que a Nova Direita lança contra o espírito que marca os nossos tempos. Esta é uma impugnação de fundo, de raiz, não apenas deste ou daquele aspecto ou questão. Ela alcança, igualmente, outras questões intimamente ligadas às anteriores. Como a impugnação do capitalismo, que é colocado na picota, não pelas ânsias igualitárias próprias do socialismo, mas pela desmesurada cobiça que domina todos ― os trabalhadores, as classes médias e os próprios capitalistas ― submetendo-os ao império da produção, da mercadoria e do consumo.

E, na picota com o capitalismo, está o liberalismo, seus dois grandes componentes, o individualismo atomista, que acabamos de ver, e o igualitarismo. Este é um chamariz, uma forma aparentemente interessante de tratar os desiguais como iguais que escamoteia as profundas desigualdades entre os homens, cujos conflitos só se aplacam graças à riqueza gerada pelos enormes progressos da Técnica.

Mudar o mundo

Do que acima vai dito decorre consequência óbvia. O que a Nova Direita faz não é impugnar tais ou quais políticas, criticar este ou aquele governo, um ou outro partido. Críticas devem ser feitas, claro. E já se fazem, de forma até demolidora. Porém, a crítica da Nova Direita tem outro objetivo.

A vitória em algumas eleições, a mudança de governo, o triunfo, por exemplo, do Vox na Espanha ou do Rassemblement National na França ou do Fratelli d’Italia ou de Orban na Hungria, isso tudo marca avanços importantes, indispensáveis. Ocorre que o essencial não está aí.

O que está em questão não é mudar o governo X ou Y. Trata-se, antes, de mudar o mundo.

E mudá-lo significa transformar a visão do mundo que rege nossa existência, modificar o imaginário, a sensibilidade, os sentimentos e valores que articulam nossa concepção do mundo, nossa escala do bom, do justo e do belo. Na escala sendo usada hoje, nada é sagrado, só importa o econômico, nela o belo vai sendo substituído pelo feio ― haja vista o caso da “arte” contemporânea ou de tantos de nossos edifícios.

Isso implica, obviamente, uma transformação revolucionária. Ao mesmo tempo, porém, essa mudança radical é, paradoxalmente, uma mudança conservadora. Diferentemente do que se passou nas grandes revoluções como a francesa ou a bolchevique, não se pretende aqui abrir páginas em branco na História para escrevê-las com sangue, rios de sangue. A nossa “revolução conservadora” ― perdoem o oxímoro ― quer, ao contrário disso, arraigar-se na História, conservar o que nela se depositou, manter vivo o essencial de nossa tradição e civilização.

Então, como se trata de mudar mentalidades, nestas estará o foco de sua ação. Por isso a Nova Direita não disputa eleição e não desenvolve as suas atividades no âmbito da política propriamente dita.

A sua atuação tem lugar no campo a que se dá, por tal razão, o nome de “Metapolítica”.

Basta ler as publicações da Nova Direita (Éléments, Krisis ou Nouvelle École na França; El Manifiesto na Espanha), basta ver los programas da TV-Libertés, ler os livros de Éditions de La Nouvelle Librairie, ou considerar os temas abordados no Colóquio que, com assistência massiva, o Institut Iliade organiza a cada ano. Quem o fizer não encontrará nada parecido com proclamações, panfletos, programas eleitorais, discursos de propaganda. Deparar-se-lhe-ão, em vez disso, reflexões filosóficas, políticas ou artísticas, bem assim análises sobre o que está em jogo em questões candentes como a guerra da Otan contra a Rússia, a “Grande Substituição” (a grande invasão migratória na Europa), as aberrações da “arte” contemporânea, os delírios vigilistas ou as violações que perpetra a ditadura do politicamente correto contra a liberdade de expressão.

A Nova Direita abraça a liberdade de expressão com toda a sua alma, essa mesma Nova Direita que os adversários chamam de retrógrada e fascista. Uma das formas como defende a liberdade de expressão consiste em abrir as suas publicações a intelectuais de grande prestígio, mas não pertencentes à sua família de pensamento. Citamos, por exemplo, Silvain Tessson, Alain Finkielkraut, Éric Zemmour, Michel Onfray e Marcel Gauchet, entre outros.

A Nova Direita é realmente de direita?

Há duas direitas: a liberal e a conservadora, mas a nenhuma dessas pertence a Nova Direita.

As diferenças entre ambas são hoje mínimas; mas não era assim em outros tempos, quando o liberalismo (veja-se o exemplo de nossas guerras carlistas) opunha-se frontalmente ao conservadorismo daqueles que, na reação contra ele, receberam o nome de “reacionários”.

Com nenhuma de ambas as direitas se identifica aquela que, por isso mesmo, é chamada de “nova”. Já ficou suficientemente clara sua oposição à direita liberal. Quanto à conservadora, a Nova Direita comparte, sim, algo de seu espírito, na suposição ― cada vez menos provável ― de que os atuais conservadores seguem conservando certo apego a coisas como tradição, hierarquia e autoridade (que não se deve confundir com arbitrariedade).

Duas coisas, entretanto, não permitem assimilar a Nova Direita ao espírito conservador ou reacionário. Em primeiro lugar, o seu questionamento muito revolucionário da atual ordem do mundo. A tal ponto chega a sua crítica, que alguns são levados a perguntar se não seria legítimo assimilar sua denúncia dos desmandos capitalistas à denúncia que faz a própria esquerda revolucionária. Não. Semelhante assimilação seria ilegítima, pois equivaleria a ignorar que ambos os questionamentos partem de perspectivas diversas e contrárias, assim como são os seus objetivos.

Em segundo lugar, a consideração de que o fundamento do mundo está no transmundo de um Além sobrenatural, e isto nenhum espírito reacionário que se tenha por sério e verdadeiro poderia ignorar. Para o autêntico pensamento conservador, Deus não está morto nem pode morrer.

E para a Nova Direita?

A Nova Direita e o divino

Ai! por que tardas? e aqueles, filhos dos deuses, / Vivem ainda, ó dia! como nas profundas da terra, / Solitários, lá baixo, enquanto aqui uma primavera eterna / Passa como sonho, sem que ninguém a cante, sobre as cabeças dormentes? (HÖLDERLIN ― O arquipélago)

Voltamos a deparar aqui uma dessas dualidades, um desses “abraços de contrários” (como o da “revolução” que é, ao mesmo tempo, “conservação”) que, longe de nos lançar na obscuridade, abre para nós as portas do sentido e da significação.

Para a Nova Direita — profundamente moderna, como é na realidade ― o mundo deixa de ter seu fundamento em qualquer transmundo sobrenatural. Também para ela, “Deus está morto”. Ao mesmo tempo, porém ― profundamente antimoderna, como também é ― a Nova Direita considera indispensável que “o divino” retome o seu lugar no mundo. Se não fosse assim estaríamos incorrendo na condenação de que nos advertiu Heidegger ao dizer que “só um deus pode nos salvar”. [4]

Porém, que deus? Que alento sagrado? Que ordem divina?

A resposta parece evidente. Esta ordem divina é a do cultus deorum de nossas origens gregas e romanas. Os deuses que o cristianismo derrotou “continuam vivendo ― dizia Hölderlin ― nas profundas da terra”. Entretanto, “ninguém os canta”, aditava. Cantar nossos antigos deuses, reivindicar essas divindades que na essência, dizia Dominique Venner, são «com frequência, transposições das forças da natureza e da vida”, é o que faz a Nova Direita ao reivindicar uma transcendência que, ao mesmo tempo, é imanência, ou seja, assunto deste mundo, do único mundo existente, não de nenhum Além ― e esta é a sua divergência fundamental com o cristianismo.[5]

Como é possível ― perguntará o leitor surpreso ― que um pensamento tão elaborado como esse possa acreditar em Zeus, Apolo, Afrodite, Poseidão, Atena e todos os demais? Nosso leitor equivoca-se. Não se trata de “acreditar”, trata-se de significar, de simbolizar. “Para se pagão ― escreve Alain de Benoist — não é preciso ‘acreditar’ em Júpiter ou Odin (o que não é, não obstante, mais ridículo do que acreditar em Javé)”. Em outras palavras, não é a existência real, efetiva dos deuses o que proclama a Nova Direita. Ninguém acha que Zeus, agitando seu feixe de raios, lance-os sobre a terra; que Afrodite tenha surgido como espuma das águas de Chipre; ou que um furioso Poseidão rompa a terra com o seu tridente e provoque terremotos, afundamentos e naufrágios. Isso tudo são mitos. Todo o paganismo vive infundido no mítico. Ocorre que um mito ― como os mitos cristãos, inclusive ― é coisa tremendamente séria. Fundamental, mesmo.

Que os deuses existam algures fora do espírito humano, no alto do monte Olimpo ou noutro lugar qualquer, é tão pouco credível como a existência do Deus da Bíblia no alto dos seus céus.

E, não obstante, os deuses da Grécia, de Roma e de outros povos europeus são afirmados, reivindicados como um culto ― nisso consistia o paganismo: num culto ― pelo qual a Nova Direita expressa vivas simpatias. Como é que pode?

Como é possível ser pagão, perguntava Alain de Benoist num famoso livro tendo esse pergunta por título. Se isso é possível, é porque uma coisa é a crença em Deus ou em deuses; e, outra, o sentimento, a aura do sagrado na sociedade que o celebra e lhe rende culto. Só se pode ser pagão; ou, mais amplamente, só pode renascer hoje o valor do sagrado ― da religião que for ― no caso de verificada uma ou outra de duas condições: que os mitos sejam reconhecidos como mitos ou que a existência ― mítica ou real ― do divino fique a flutuar, impronunciada, nas águas do indeterminado.

O não crente ou o crente, tomando os mitos como mitos ou como a realidade mais real de todo o real, o que não se pode fazer ― se quisermos “nos salvar”, diria Heidegger ― é o que faz o nosso tempo: encurralar “o divino”, excluir o “sagrado”, apagar essa luz que, entre esplendores e sombras, significa e faz vibrar todo o insondável, todo o esplendoroso mistério de  nossa existência de homens destinados à vida. O mesmo é dizer que estão destinados à morte.

Sim, eu sei, é difícil, complexo enfocar as coisas nesses termos. Talvez seja até impossível, dada a inércia e o peso do social.[6] Em todo caso, a questão é tão complexa e apaixonante como, por exemplo, a que coloca Miguel Ángel Quintana Paz quando, distinguindo entre o Cristianismo e a Cristandade, reivindica o renascer desta última, ou seja, o ressurgimento de princípios sagrados ― “intangíveis”, “substanciais”, dizíamos antes ― que presidam o mundo, sendo por outra parte indiferente a que se creia (ou não) no corpo de dogmas da Igreja, na verdade efetiva dos relatos bíblicos e na intervenção divina nos assuntos de homens absolvidos ou condenados, premiados ou castigados por toda a eternidade.

NOTAS:

[1] Na Espanha, a Nova Direita esteve representada nos anos oitentas e noventas pelas revistas Punto y Coma e Hespérides, dirigidas respectivamente por Isidro Palacios e José Javier Esparza. Desde 2004, a publicação que mais amplamente expressa o espírito da Nova Direita é El Manifiesto. Dirigida por este que vos escreve, é desde 2007 um periódico digital de publicação diária.

[2] No dia 21 de maio de 2023, transcorreu o décimo aniversário da imolação de Dominique Venner na Catedral de Notre Dame de Paris. Não foi um suicídio qualquer. “Dou-me a morte ― deixou escrito ― a fim de despertar as consciências adormecidas. […] Sublevo-me contra os venenos da alma e os desejos individuais que destroem as nossas âncoras identitárias.”

[3] “Grecia”, em francês. Acrônimo de “Groupement de recherche et d’études pour la civilisation européenne” (Grupo de Pesquisa e Estudos para a Civilização Europeia).

[4] Heidegger e Nietzsche (nesta ordem de importância) são os dois principais filósofos cuja influência, explicitamente reconhecida por Alain de Benoist, anima o conjunto da Nova Direita.

[5] Apesar das profundas divergências filosóficas que separam a Nova Direita do Cristianismo (o histórico, não aquele do Concílio Vaticano II), as relações entre ambos são profundamente amistosas. Isto é lógico, se se pensa que, no nosso dessacralizado mundo, ambos estão no mesmo lado da barricada e aí resistem a ataques semelhantes.

[6] Eu tratei de complexidades e dificuldades, além de muitos outros pontos que não cabia abordar em El abismo democrático (Ediciones Insólitas, Madrid, 2019). Considerando outro aspecto desse ensaio, a versão francesa foi intitulada N’y a-t-il qu’un dieu pour nous sauver? [Só um deus pode nos salvar?] ― Éditions de la Nouvelle Librairie, Paris, 2021.

 

____________________

 

Fonte: La Gaceta de la Iberosfera | Autor: Javier Ruiz Portella | Data de publicação: 28 de maio de 2023 | Título original: ¿La Nueva Derecha? ¿Y esto qué es? | Versão brasilesa: Chauke Stephan Filho.

 

How Can Leftists Be Mutants if They Are More Intelligent than Conservatives?

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I’ve become quite well known for arguing that leftists are “mutants;” that they are higher in mutational load than conservatives. Leftists, in general though not always, are, in my view, the descendants of those who would have died under the harsh Darwinian conditions of high child mortality that were prevalent until around 1800. However, it is perfectly possible that I am wrong. Unlike the Woke ideologues who have taken over Western universities, I am open to the possibility that I may be wrong, because I am interested in the empirical truth. A recent article in Aporia Magazine has raised the possibility that my theory might be incorrect, but I don’t think it is. The nub of the issue is that intelligent people, in Western societies, tend to be left-wing and intelligence is associated with low mutational load.

Dr Noah Carl and Dr Bo Winegard, both “cancelled” academics, have highlighted a fundamental problem with the theory that I, and, more technically, a young scholar called Joseph Bronski, have espoused [Can mutation load explain the rise of leftism?, By Noah Carl and Bo Winegard, Aporia Magazine, April 26, 2024].

As I explain my book Breeding the Human Herd: Eugenics, Dysgenics and the Future of the Species, my argument is that under harsh Darwinian conditions of 50% child mortality,  there was selection for physical health, mental health, conservatism, pro-sociality, and religiousness. We were selecting for that the latter two traits because they were under conditions of harsh group-selection – we were battling other groups – and the group which is high in positive and negative ethnocentrism tends to triumph according to computer models. Conservatism involves being fundamentally oriented toward group values, especially obedience to authority, ingroup loyalty and the sanctity of tradition and order. Religion promotes these as the will of God and also makes people more pro-social, as God is sitting on their shoulder, and reduces anxiety by giving people a sense of eternal meaning. Hence, all of these traits became bundled together – pleiotropically related – into a “fitness factor.” The genetic component of conservatism may be about 60%, demonstrating that it is an adaptation.

Every generation, high child mortality was purging mutant genes from the population, keeping it genetically fit. With the breakdown of harsh Darwinian selection, due to the Industrial Revolution and its advancements it medicine, we would expect a massive build-up of mutation and we would expect it to be associated with a deviation from the pre-industrial norm of conservatism and traditional religiosity involving the collective worship of a moral god.

Consistent with this, liberalism is associated with a number of markers of mutational load. Liberal males are less muscular and they are shorter while liberal males and females have less attractive and less symmetrical faces. These traits imply that, being genetically sick, they have fewer bio-energetic resources left over to accrue muscle, reach their phenotypic maximum height and maintain a symmetrical phenotype. Atheists are more likely to be left-handed, which implies, among other problems, a particularly asymmetrical brain. Leftists and atheists are higher in mental illness, atheists are less likely to recover from cancer, atheists and liberals are less fertile and they are lower in pro-social personality traits. Also, as Bronski has shown, liberals have older fathers. Paternal age is an accepted marker of mutational load. Older males are more likely to have de novo mutations on their sperm [Evidence for a Paternal Age Effect on Leftism, By Joseph Bronski, Open Psych, 2023]. 

My argument is that, across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there was, due to relaxed selection, a build-up of mutational load and, thus, a build-up favoring leftism. Eventually, a “tipping point” was reached—an experiment indicated that 20% of a group is enough for this to happen [Experimental evidence for tipping points in social convention, By D. Centola et al., Science, 2018]. Western societies tipped over very quickly, focussing on the liberal values of equality and harm avoidance; individualistic values that, in essence, put the individual over the good of the group.

It is here that the point made by Carl and Winegard becomes germane. Intelligence is also a marker of low mutational load. We were selecting for intelligence up until the Industrial Revolution, as I observe in Breeding the Human Herd. Carl and Winegard observe that, even today, intelligence is genetically correlated with mental and physical health. Yet it is also genetically predicts leftism: carrying alleles that are associated with very high education levels—and thus with high intelligence—and it predicts being left-wing. Not only that but there is evidence that intelligent people have changed, within their own lifetimes, from being left-wing to right-wing: So, this being the case, how can the change to a leftist society be mainly or even partly genetic in origin?

A possible reason for the broader anomaly may be that intelligence is associated with social conformity; it is associated with norm-mapping and the effortful control necessary to force yourself to believe that which it is socially useful to believe. Once you have adopt socially useful values, you attain social status by competitively signalling your conformity to these social norms. In a conservative society, this may signal runaway purity-signalling, until eventually, illegitimacy is so unacceptable that illegitimate children are put up for adoption. In a liberal society, this runaway concern with equality and harm avoidance leads us to Wokeness. It is the more intelligent who tend to direct the culture, helping to explain why intelligence is so central to this process. Consistent with this, in right-wing societies, that have not yet tipped over, intelligence is associated with conservatism [Political orientations, intelligence and education, By H. Rindermann et al, Intelligence, 2012]. Intelligence, when combined with mental illness, which it sometimes will be, will weaponize mental illness and selfishness: such people will be restless Machiavellians, pushing things in an ever more left-wing direction.

But, of course, what this means is that intelligence has a paradoxical relationship with other markers of mutational load. When mutational load builds-up and makes the environment left-wing, intelligent people will become the vanguard of the new dispensation, despite, ironically, being relatively low in mutational load. The result – and my research has shown that this happening – is a selection event among the more intelligent. Among the more intelligent, the big predictor of fertility is religiousness and conservatism, as I have shown in my co-authored book The Past is a Future Country: The Coming Conservative Demographic Revolution.

Intelligent people seem to be more environmentally sensitive, which makes sense because solving cognitive problems involves rising above your instincts, so you should be lower in “instinct.” This means that you are more reliant on being placed on an evolutionarily adaptive road map of life, where you are told to have children and behave in an adaptive way—and, in general, behave in a way that matches your evolved predispositions—the ecology which you are evolved to. If you are placed on a maladaptive road map – which Wokeness places you on – then your intelligence (your marker of low mutational load) will be your un-doing, unless it goes together with genetic conservatism, which makes you resistant to Wokeness.

In addition, the long documented weak negative relationship between religiousness and intelligence would be explicable by the fact that religiousness is an instinct (hence it increases at times of stress and mortality salience), intelligent people are lower in instinct and we are in an evolutionary mismatch of low mortality salience in which are instincts are less likely to be induced. Likewise, ethnocentrism increases at times of stress and mortality salience, implying that it is an instinct and that it is less likely to be induced, in easy conditions, in more intelligent people [Terror Management in a Multicultural Society: Effects of Mortality Salience on Attitudes to Multiculturalism Are Moderated by National Identification and Self-Esteem Among Native Dutch People, By M Sin & S. Koole, Frontiers in Psychology, 2018]. Intelligence, in summary, presents a paradox in terms of the mutational load model of our leftward shift, but it is a paradox that can be solved.

Some basic principles for the national struggle

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August 1947—Kristallnacht in the UK in response to Jewish anti-British terrorism in Palestine to the sergeants hanged in Palestine affair

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This photo does not show a shop window in Berlin, Leipzig or Treuchtlingen after the night of November 9, 1938, but was taken in Liverpool in August 1947.

Few people remember it, but in the summer of 1947, a terrible heat wave swept across Europe, not quite as intense as that of 2003, but spread over a substantially longer period.

But it’s not the only event that’s been almost completely forgotten about this summer, or, when it’s mentioned again, we are presented with a rather suspicious introduction, already heard elsewhere, every time it comes to excuse or exonerate the same old “international community”, in this case, that’s what we get:

In 1947 a washed-out summer had followed a harsh winter, and Britain was in the grip of recession as it struggled to restart its economy after the Second World War. On the August bank holiday weekend, the weather in Manchester had turned hot and stuffy. Trade in the shops was poor, rationing was in full swing and many workers had opted to stay in the city for the long weekend.

The only original aspect of this introduction is to add a meteorological touch to explain anti-Semitism. Only then, having skewed our reading, do we begin to broach the subject:

In cinema queues and on street corners, one topic dominated the conversation: the murder of two British army sergeants by Irgun paramilitaries in Mandate Palestine. The Irgun was one of several Zionist groups fighting a guerrilla war to force British troops out of the territory and establish the state of Israel. It had kidnapped the two sergeants in retaliation for death sentences passed on three of its own fighters. The three men were executed by British forces on 29 July, and two days later the bodies of the soldiers were discovered amid the trees of a eucalyptus grove near Netanya. They had been hanged and the ground beneath them booby-trapped with a landmine.


As the front page of this newspaper shows, it’s not the far right that’s turning up the heat against a backdrop of economic crisis and rationing. Also noteworthy on the right is the reference to the heatwave and drought in Europe.

It was just one incident of many in a vicious conflict. Militants had bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem a year previously, and even set off small bombs in London. But the “sergeants affair”, as it came to be known, caused public outrage in mainland Britain.

On 1 August, a Friday, the Daily Express reported the story on its front page, prominently displaying a photograph of the bodies which, it promised its readers, would be a “picture that will shock the world”. British Jewish leaders condemned the killings, but more lurid details followed in the next day’s papers. That weekend, as Walter Lever, a working-class Jewish resident of Manchester recalled, “There was nothing to do but walk the streets . . . discussing the newspaper,” the story of the hanged sergeants “taking precedence over the week’s murders and rapes”.

There were already signs that a backlash was imminent. In Birkenhead, near Liverpool, slaughterhouse workers had refused to process any more meat for Jewish consumption until the attacks on British soldiers in Palestine stopped. Around Merseyside, the anger was starting to spill on to the streets as crowds of angry young men gathered in Jewish areas.

On Sunday afternoon the trouble reached Manchester. Small groups of men began breaking the windows of shops in Cheetham Hill, an area just north of the city centre which had been home to a Jewish community since the early 19th century. The pubs closed early that day because there was a shortage of beer, and by the evening the mob’s numbers had swelled to several hundred. Most were on foot but others drove through the area, throwing bricks from moving cars.

Soon the streets were covered in broken glass and stones and the crowd moved on to bigger targets, tearing down the canopy of the Great Synagogue on Cheetham Hill Road and surrounding a Jewish wedding party at the Assembly Hall. They shouted abuse at the terrified guests until one in the morning.

The next day, Lever said, “Cheetham Hill Road looked much as it had looked seven years before, when the German bombers had pounded the city for 12 hours. All premises belonging to Jews for the length of a mile down the street had gaping windows and the pavements were littered with glass.”

By the end of the bank holiday weekend, anti-Jewish riots had also taken place in Glasgow and Liverpool. There were minor disturbances, too, in Bristol, Hull, London and Warrington, as well as scores of attacks on Jewish property across the country. A solicitor in Liverpool and a Glasgow shopkeeper were beaten up. Nobody was killed, but this was the most widespread anti-Jewish violence the UK had ever seen. In Salford, the day after a crowd of several thousand had thrown stones at shop windows, signs appeared that read: “Hold your fire. These premises are British.”

Arsonists in West Derby set fire to a wooden synagogue; workers at Canada Dock in Liverpool returned from the holidays to find “Death to all Jews” painted above the entrance. And in Eccles, a former sergeant major named John Regan was fined £15 for telling a crowd of 700: “Hitler was right. Exterminate every Jew – every man, woman and child. What are you afraid of? There’s only a handful of police.”

As for the events in Palestine in 1947, some might argue that a people oppressed on a land from which it has been robbed has a legitimate right to resort to armed struggle, including terrorism, to oust the colonial power, but more likely, nothing will be uttered, I guess it would be deemed more suitable to forget this period altogether and avoid unfortunate parallels with the present situation in the region. (Yet, the startling Bristol Mirror headline Jewish terrorists urge total war on Britain could be seen as still relevant today – only, adding the US).

To conclude, the outbreak of simultaneous unrest in several British cities in 1947 shows that it’s not necessary for the political regime in power to organize, instigate or condone it. Clearly, Clement Attlee’s government had nothing to do with it, but on the contrary, it also shows that the direct responsibility of the National Socialist hierarchy at the highest level is not automatically evident in the Kristallnacht of 1938 either. It has to be proven.

Editor’s note: The 1947 riots are well known among British nationalists. This is a 2015 article by :

Commemorating British Casualties of Jewish Terrorism, 1944–1948

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Normally, a gathering of British nationalists in central London, proudly bearing English banners and Union Flags, would be met with a horde of screaming demonstrators bussed in from far and wide. But no disturbance took place last weekend when such a group of patriots assembled near Trafalgar Square and the reason is not hard to discern. For such interference would have meant drawing attention to a historic episode the British government and the Jewish community leaders would most likely wish forgotten — the killing of 784 British police officers, servicemen, Crown servants and civilian staff by Jewish terrorists in the Palestine Mandate crisis between 1944–48.

So that is why, although every broadcast and print outlet and every political party was circulated with a press release, there was a total media blackout.  It was a far cry from the anti-Shomrim demonstration against the establishment of a sectarian Jewish police force a month ago.

All par for the course. The British government’s attempt to “forget” the sacrifice of these servicemen and dump them down the memory hole is very reminiscent of another similarly embarrassing episode, the murderous Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in 1967.

The British servicemen and police were a peacekeeping force serving in what was known as the British Palestine Mandate enclave just after the war. This Mandate was agreed as part of the Balfour Declaration and it was due to elapse in May, 1948.

It was a time of great tension. The Arabs were beginning to realize that the promises and assurances they had been given at Balfour counted for nothing and their homeland was being given away. The Jewish settlers were being reinforced by the illegal immigration of thousands of Jews from war-devastated Europe and reinforced by armaments from the Soviet Union and financial support from the USA.

Holding the line between them were young British servicemen and police, many of whom had come straight from the war in Europe and had taken part in the liberation of such camps as Bergen-Belsen, only to find themselves shot at and blown up by Jewish terrorists. Their deaths left a lasting bitterness among the veterans and their families.

The deaths included the hanging by piano wire of two 20-year-old British Army sergeants, Mervyn Paice and Clifford Martin, who in 1947 were kidnapped by Irgun and held hostage for three weeks. Their bodies were left hanging in a eucalyptus grove and were booby trapped with land mines.

Also the 100 British Army personnel, Crown servants and civilians who were murdered by means of a huge bomb planted by the Irgun in the basement of the King David Hotel, Jerusalem in July 1946.  Another 28 British soldiers died in the bombing of the Haifa Cairo train.

It is not widely known that the terrorism spread to Britain. Last weekend’s  wreath-laying ceremony near Trafalgar Square took place at the site of the British Colonies Club, which was bombed by members of the Irgun terrorist group on 7th March 1947 when numerous people were injured and maimed.

In Britain, another victim was Rex Farran, brother of the intended target, Captain Roy Farran DSO, MC — an SAS anti-terrorism specialist. Rex opened a parcel bomb addressed to “R. Farran” at the Farran family home in Staffordshire. A total of 20 letter bombs were sent in mainland  Britain.

Many attacks took place while the war was still going.  These include the murder of Lord Moyne, Secretary of State for the Colonies, and his British Army driver, Corporal Fuller, on 6th November 1944 while British forces were still fighting in France. The hand-gun assassinations were carried out in Cairo by the Stern Gang.

It was the same terrorists, from the Irgun and Stern Gang, who collaborated on a  massacre of at least 100 Arab civilian villagers at the village of Deir Yassin, on 10th April 1948.

As with the murder of the two young sergeants, the Deir Yassin operation was organised by Menachem Begin, later a prime minister of Israel. He also received a Nobel Peace Prize.

On May 19, 1947 the British government protested to the United States against American fund-raising drives for Palestine terrorist groups. The complaint referred to a “Letter to the Terrorists of Palestine” by playwright and screenwriter Ben Hecht, American League for a Free Palestine co-chairman, first published in the New York Post on May 15. The ad said, “We are out to raise millions for you.” This letter included the infamous phrase that every time British soldiers were shot or blown up “the Jews of America make a little holiday in their hearts.” During that period Hecht wrote under a pseudonym to avoid the British boycott of his work in effect until the early 1950s.
Hecht also wrote a Broadway play to raise money. In  A Flag is Born, the role of a Holocaust survivor was played by Marlon Brando. The London Evening Standard called it “the most virulent anti-British play ever staged in the United States.” However, Jewish syndicated columnist Walter Winchell, whose column appeared in over 2000 newspapers worldwide, said it was “worth seeing, worth hearing, and worth remembering. … It will wring your heart and eyes dry. … Bring at least 11 handkerchiefs.”
The deaths of British servicemen and the murderous ingratitude of the Jewish community caused a huge shock in post-war Britain. It is not widely known that the two young sergeants affair led to the last widespread anti-Jewish riots in Britain. Shop windows were smashed across Britain but especially in Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester.

Despite the anger among the British, up until 2001 there was no memorial and it was only after 60 years that the Ministry of Defence agreed that the conflict merited its own campaign medal.

The Forgotten British Heroes meeting at Trafalgar Square heard a demand from Peter Rushton of Heritage & Destiny Magazine that one of the men responsible for the London bombing be brought to justice.

Today Robert Misrahi is one of those peculiarly French creations — the popular TV philosopher. The Sorbonne-trained academic enjoys a

reputation as a media figure and a professor of ethical philosophy.  But back in 1947 he was part of the Irgun gang which planted the bomb in the Colonies Club. He has never even been questioned over his part in the bombing.

Another of the culprits responsible for the King David Hotel went onto to enjoy a long life in Britain and boasted freely about her exploits without fear of any legal impediment.

Miriam Abramoff lived openly in the London suburbs and was giving interviews about her infamous past as recently as 2012. She died last year at the age of 88. She frequently returned to Israel and always took tea at the King David Hotel “It is so beautiful there now” she said.

Veteran nationalist Martin Webster was one of the organisers of the Forgotten British Heroes campaign. He was scathing about how they are not even allowed to take their place among all the other units of the British armed services to lay their wreaths at The Cenotaph in Whitehall on Remembrance Sunday:

No explanation for this exceptional ban on brave men and women at the national ceremony of remembrance has ever been given by official sources — but all know the ban has been imposed at the behest of the Jewish community’s sundry lobby organisations and their billionaire backers who donated millions of pounds every year to the main political parties.

The Establishment and the Jews can’t wait until the remnant of these brave men who served in Palestine (and their Old Comrades Associations) have died-off and no longer represent an ‘embarrassment’!

After the commemoration, the Israeli Ambassador in London, Daniel Taub, received a letter from the Campaign recollecting the details of the above Zionist atrocities. It makes several rather pointed demands given the highly successful history of Jewish post-WWII activism: that Israel pay compensation to the victims of Zionist terrorism and their families, build a ‘Museum of Zionist Terrorism’ in Jerusalem and institute courses about Zionist terrorism in Israel’s schools as a warning to future generations.

The letter is signed by Martin Webster, Richard Edmonds, Jeremy Turner, Lady Michèle Renouf, and Peter Rushton.

Hate Watchdogs Need Glasses

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HATE WATCHDOGS NEED GLASSES

Too bad the Jewish students being harassed on campuses don’t have the Proud Boys around to protect them. They can thank the Anti-Defamation League’s Jonathan Greenblatt for making that impossible.

Greenblatt could see right through the Proud Boys’ stated mission of supporting Western Civilization. Ha! Mere camouflage for “a right-wing extremist group with a violent agenda.”

Similarly, the Southern Poverty Law Center alerted liberals that the Proud Boys were “extremist” and “white nationalist.”

Wikipedia’s entry on the group is a 20,000-word libel. (Apparently, the group “us[ed] ‘Western chauvinism’ as euphemism for the white genocide conspiracy theory” — just like Wikipedia uses “The Free Encyclopedia” as a euphemism for “left-wing bile.”)

There is literally nothing about “white nationalism” or “white genocide” in anything the Proud Boys said about themselves. Or “right-wing,” for that matter, unless prizing Western culture is now the exclusive province of the right wing.

How about these statements: “Zionists don’t deserve to live,” “Go back to Poland!” “Burn Tel Aviv” — all said recently by protesters at Columbia University. Or how about a Palestinian flag and the words “FINAL SOLUTION” at George Washington University?

I guess the ADL and SPLC didn’t see that coming, despite their exquisitely sensitive antennae for “hate.”

Arguably, these hate watchdogs took their eye off the ball by labeling conservatives “white nationalists” merely for admiring the West, opposing mass immigration, defending the police, writing books about IQ, attacking feminism, hating identity politics or warning of Islamic terrorism.

It sure seems like conservatives weren’t the biggest threat after all, eh, Jonathan?

In fact, now that the Biden administration is proposing to import Palestinians living in Gaza as “refugees,” could The New York Times, SPLC and ADL ease up on calling Peter Brimelow a “white nationalist” and “racist” solely because his website, VDare.com, opposes mass Third World immigration?

While I’m thrilled that more than 10 people are finally expressing disgust at left-wing psychotics, where were they when much, much, much, much, much worse was being done to conservative speakers on college campuses?

Say, where’s Mitt Romney? Shouldn’t he be explaining that the anti-Israel agitators simply oppose genocide? That’s what they say, anyway, just as “antifa” said it was “anti-fascist.” Thus, on Aug. 15, 2017, in the middle of years-long violent antifa attacks on conservatives, Romney proclaimed: “[Antifa] opposes racism and bigotry. Morally different universes.”

How conservatives expressly define themselves is always a fake-out, whereas what antifa says about itself may not be questioned.

In February 2017, antifa nearly burned the University of California, Berkeley, to the ground to protest a Milo Yiannopoulos speech. You might say Milo was asking for it by being funny. (Leftists are cool with boring conservatives.)

Well, then how about Charles Murray, Heather Mac Donald, David Horowitz and Ben Shapiro? They are among the country’s smartest and most influential conservatives.

A month after the Milo conflagration, Murray was hounded off the stage by protesters at Middlebury College in Vermont. As Murray and his faculty interlocutor were trying to leave, the mob physically attacked them, then jumped on their car and tried to flip it. The professor had to be hospitalized, having sustained whiplash and a concussion.

No students were suspended or expelled. To the contrary, Middlebury promised to cancel any future speakers who might provoke leftist ire.

SPLC on Murray: “White nationalist.”

The following month, Mac Donald was forced to give her speech at California’s Claremont McKenna College livestreamed to an empty room after 250 protesters blocked students from entering the building. The protesters called Mac Donald an “anti-black fascist” who promoted “blatant anti-Blackness and white supremacy.”

In a preview of what was to come for anyone paying attention, the protesters not only chanted anti-police slogans, but also “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Mac Donald’s book “The War on Cops” has absolutely nothing to do with Palestine.

That, too, didn’t set off any alarm bells at the ADL or SPLC — much less with donors, Wall Streeters or the media.

The Hamas cheerleading squads on campus today are despicable, but CNN spent a full segment last week interviewing a Jewish student because the protesters had splashed his brother with water. Conservative speakers would be thrilled if the worst they had to fear was water-splashing, ugly words and unauthorized camping.

Shapiro saw his scheduled speeches canceled by one college administration after another — California State University Los Angeles, Gonzaga University, Grand Canyon University, DePaul University.

Horowitz was shouted down at the University of Houston by pro-Palestinian activists shouting “Free, free, free Palestine” and “Racists off our campus.” (Everybody’s a “racist” to liberals. It’s like calling conservatives “poopy-heads.”)

ADL on Horowitz: “extremist,” “Islamophobe.” SPLC on Horowitz: “anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-black.”

In November 2019, thousands of antifa tried to prevent me from speaking at UC Berkeley. They failed for only one reason: The Proud Boys were there. Ditto with speeches I gave in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. Antifa came, but so did the Proud Boys. Order was maintained.

This is why the Proud Boys had to be made Public Enemy No. 1: They protected conservatives from violent leftists.

If the only thing you know about the Proud Boys is that they were at the Jan. 6 riot, you’ve been lied to. Yes, absolutely, a few dozen Proud Boys were there. This was an organization with 30,000 members. More Methodists attacked the Capitol, but they weren’t forced to disband. They weren’t a threat, you see, to the left’s shock troops.

It is now perfectly obvious that journalists, donors, Wall Street and ordinary liberals have been scammed by the ADL and the SPLC, spinning fantasies of evil conservatives, all while college leftists were marinating in pure evil, coddled and petted by college administrators, only to erupt into genocide-supporting lunatics after Oct. 7.

Polite liberals and head-in-the-sand conservatives never imagined these civilization destroyers would come for them. Is it too late to bring the Proud Boys back?

     COPYRIGHT 2024 ANN COULTER

The Meaning of “Knife”: Salman Rushdie Pumps His Ego and Helps the Islamic War on Free Speech

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Barack Obama was the affirmative-action president. Salman Rushdie is the affirmative-action literary giant. Like Obama, Rushdie didn’t get to the top of his profession thanks to the depth of his talent and power of his intellect. No, he got there thanks to the color of his skin and the leftism of his politics.

Separated by an ocean, united by Islam

And just as Obama harmed Blacks and worsened race relations in America, so Rushdie has harmed the cause he claims to hold most dear: freedom of speech and of the artistic imagination. Still, look on the bright side. Rushdie is now one of the most famous writers in the world, feted by his fellow leftists everywhere from America to the Antipodes. He’s just published a new book with a simple title and pretentious subtitle: Knife: Meditations on an Attempted Murder. It was written in response to the knife attack launched on him in 2022 by one of the countless Third-World savages whom leftists like Rushdie have imported into the West since the Second World War.

Simplicity and pretension: The cover of Salman Rushdie’s Knife

He was lucky to survive. But the odds were always far better for him than they were for the Glaswegian shopkeeper Asad Shah, who was attacked by another Third-World savage in 2016. Like Rushdie, Shah was accused of blaspheming against Islam. Unlike Rushdie, Shah wasn’t immediately helped by a friendly crowd when the savage began stabbing. That’s why Rushdie is alive and Shah is dead. But the living Rushdie has never acknowledged the dead Shah or explored the disturbing parallels between those two knife-attacks separated by the Atlantic and united by Islam. Part of the reason for Rushdie’s silence on Shah may be that Rushdie has no desire to share the limelight. I’ve never been impressed by the depth of Rushdie’s literary talent, but I have always been impressed by the size of his ego.

Asad Shah and his heroic murderer Tanveer Ahmed (image from BBC)

Knife is another vehicle for Rushdie’s ego and another opportunity for White and Jewish leftists to shower him with praise. And yes, I agree with some of the praise. Rushdie has responded with courage and humor to a near-fatal assault and months of painful treatment in hospital. But his writing hasn’t gotten any better and his analysis of art and Islamic pathologies hasn’t got any less pretentious or any more honest. The literary critic Erica Wagner said that “Knife is a tour-de-force, in which the great novelist takes his brutal near-murder and spins it into a majestic essay on art, pain and love.” She also described how Rushdie tries to understand his would-be assassin, a Lebanese migrant called Hadi Matar:

About two-thirds of the way through Knife, Rushdie conducts his own imaginary interview with this assailant, “my would-be Assassin, the Asinine man who made Assumptions about me, and with whom I had a near-lethal Assignation” – Rushdie’s wordplay never fails him — and attempts to conceive of the young man’s motives. (“Review: Salman Rushdie’s memoir is horrific, upsetting – and a masterpiece,” The Daily Telegraph, 15th April 2024)

In fact, Rushdie’s wordplay never fails to be adolescent. And Matar’s “motives” really aren’t as complex or mysterious as Rushdie tries to pretend. In The Satanic Verses, the character based on the Prophet Muhammad bears another piece of Rushdie’s adolescent wordplay. He’s called Mahound. Get it? Rushdie resurrected a medieval European version of Muhammad’s name to associate Muhammad with dogs, which are of course unclean animals in Muslim eyes (Mahound has also been regularly used by Christians to vilify Muhammad as the founder of a false religion). Elsewhere in The Satanic Verses, there are prostitutes named after Mahound’s wives. One of those wives is dead and the prostitute named after her incites “necrophilia” in her clients, “who forbade her to make any movements.” Rushdie was mocking and subverting Islam. Orthodox Muslims have responded to the mockery and subversion in entirely healthy and predictable fashion: by trying to kill him.

The evils of Islam

It’s entirely healthy from the point of view of Islam, that is. Orthodox Muslims believe in being feared, not in being loved or admired for their tolerance. Whereas Christianity in the West tolerates abominations like Piss Christ (1987) and continues to decay and dwindle, Islam in the West responds with violence to abominations like The Satanic Verses and continues to grow in size, power, and influence. There was a very simple way of avoiding this problem, but for obvious reasons Rushdie and his supporters refuse to mention it. Non-White Muslims should never have been allowed to colonize the West. As it is, not only have Muslims been allowed to colonize the West: they’re being heavily subsidized to breed and to deepen the roots of their evil religion.

And I think “evil” is a fair description of Islam. Take this horrible story from fourteen years ago:

My mum has always had a special place in her family because she was the first girl to live beyond childhood. Five of her sisters died as babies or toddlers. It was not until many years later that anyone worked out why so many children died and three boys were born deaf. Today there is no doubt among us that this tragedy occurred because my grandparents were first cousins. …

My family is not unique. In the UK more than 50 per cent of British Pakistanis marry their cousins – in Bradford that figure is 75 per cent – and across the country the practice is on the rise and also common among East African, Middle-Eastern and Bangladeshi communities.

Back when my grandparents were having children, the medical facts were not established. But today in Britain alone there are more than 70 scientific studies on the subject. We know the children of first cousins are ten times more likely to be born with recessive genetic disorders which can include infant mortality, deafness and blindness.

We know British Pakistanis constitute 1.5 per cent of the population, yet a third of all children born in this country with rare recessive genetic diseases come from this community. Despite overwhelming evidence, in the time I spent filming Dispatches: When Cousins Marry, I felt as if I was breaking a taboo rather than addressing a reality. Pakistanis have been marrying cousins for generations. …

Throughout I had to remind myself that this is a health story – nothing more. It is not about religion or cultural identity. It is about avoidable suffering such at that experienced by Saeeda and Jalil Akhtar, whom I met in Bradford. They are first cousins and have six children, three with the genetic disease mucolipidosis type IV. This stops the body getting rid of waste properly and affects brain functions controlling vision and movement.

Mohsin, their second eldest, is 17 and blind. He wanders aimless and helpless, often crying in frustration. His sisters Hina, 13, and Zainab, 11, have the same condition. They live in almost complete darkness. Saeeda is worn down from years of round-the-clock care. She spoon-feeds them, dresses them and fears for them. Neither she nor her husband can quite accept that their familial link is the cause of this pain.

This is a major public health issue that has huge implications for other services. The cost to the NHS is many millions of pounds. On average, a children’s hospital will see 20 to 30 recessive gene disorders a decade, but one hospital in Bradford has seen 165, while British Pakistani children are three times more likely to have learning difficulties, with care costing about £75,000 a year per child. However during this investigation we found no efforts to introduce any national awareness-raising campaign. Why? (“The greatest taboo: One woman lifts the lid on on the tragic genetic consequences of when first cousins marry,” The Daily Mail, 23rd August 2010)

The answer to the question is simple. Why? Because leftists would much rather allow children to suffer horrifically than criticize a doubly sacred minority: brown-skinned Muslims. Leftism collaborates with the evil of Islam. For further examples, take Asad Shah again. If Rushdie had, per impossibile, tamed his egomania in Knife and written about Shah’s murder, he would have had to begin the story with the death-sentence imposed in Pakistan on a Christian woman called Asia Bibi. Her conviction for blasphemy against Islam was grossly and blatantly unfair, but it was enthusiastically supported by mainstream Muslim groups in Pakistan.

A mainstream mosque in Maryland honors the hero-martyr Mumtaz Qadri

When a Muslim politician called Salmaan Taseer began to campaign on Asia Bibi’s behalf, one of Taseer’s bodyguards expressed his disapproval by machine-gunning Taseer to death. The bodyguard, Mumtaz Qadri, then peacefully surrendered to the authorities and calmly accepted his subsequent execution for murder. His photo later appeared on a poster issued by a mainstream mosque in Maryland, USA. Pakistani colonists in America were celebrating the anniversary of his death and hailing him as a ghazi-shahid, a hero-martyr.

Headchopping for Muhammad

Are Salman Rushdie and his leftist admirers disturbed that Muslims in America are celebrating Mumtaz Qadri, a murderer for Muhammad and dedicated enemy of free speech? They should be. After all, it’s certain that Qadri would just as happily have machine-gunned Salman Rushdie as he machine-gunned Salmaan Taseer. But Rushdie and his fellow leftists have ignored the mosque in Maryland. They don’t want to face the true scale of the disaster they’ve inflicted on the West. That’s also why Rushdie and his fellow leftists have ignored the murder of Asad Shah in Glasgow, which was carried out in direct imitation of Mumtaz Qadri by a Pakistani migrant called Tanveer Ahmed. That murder earnt Ahmed the title of ghazi, “hero,” but Britain no longer has the death-penalty, so he didn’t go on to become a shahid, “martyr,” too.

Many other Muslims in Britain would be very happy to earn the title of ghazi. That’s why a schoolteacher who worked in the Yorkshire town of Batley is still in hiding. He showed his religious-studies class some satirical cartoons of Muhammad in 2021 and roused the wrath of local “Islamists,” as conservatives and libertarians dishonestly call them. They’re not Islamists: they’re mainstream Muslims. And the death-threats they issued to the teacher were entirely believable. After all, a teacher called Samuel Patey had recently been beheaded by an “Islamist” in France after he was falsely accused of showing blasphemous cartoons of Muhammad to one of his classes. Libertarians and conservatives blame such murders not on Muslim migration but on “liberal cowardice.” We’ve got to act robustly in defense of free speech and stop treating Muslims like children. But a decadent Western state that allows mass migration by Third-World savages is never going to act robustly against them.

To ask is to answer

And what if, per impossibile, Britain did begin to “act robustly”? Suppose the state had responded to the death-threats in Batley by hunting down and jailing those who had issued or inspired them. Would that have pacified or inflamed the situation? Would the “Islamists” have been cowed or emboldened by this infidel persecution? Would those sent to jail have seen the error of their ways and ended their sentences as staunch supporters of free speech? Merely to ask the questions is to answer them. There are only two kinds of “robust action” that will solve the worsening Third-World pathologies in the West, including the Muslim war on free speech. The first is an immediate and permanent end to Third-World migration into the West. The second is the deportation of all non-Whites now resident on Western soil back to their homelands.

But leftists and their libertarian allies can’t admit the truth. That’s why they’ll turn Knife into a best-seller. It offers them comforting fantasy rather than uncomfortable reality. And note that Rushdie can’t even be realistic about the central fact of the book: the vicious attempt on his own life. He indulges in adolescent wordplay about “my would-be Assassin, the Asinine man who made Assumptions about me, and with whom I had a near-lethal Assignation.” But an “assignation” is agreed by both parties. Rushdie didn’t agree to that meeting with a Third-World savage. It was imposed on him against his will. Just as Third-World migration has been imposed on ordinary Whites against their will by the hostile elites of Western nations. Unlike Salman Rushdie, countless ordinary Whites have not survived their one-sided “assignations” with Third-World savages. I wrote about one of those ordinary Whites in an earlier article about Rushdie and his “asinine assassin.” In the same month as the attempted murder of Rushdie, an 87-year-old grandfather called Thomas O’Halloran was murdered in a “shocking act of unprovoked violence” whilst riding his “mobility scooter in broad daylight.” A Black career criminal called Lee Byer is due to go on trial for the murder.

A choice between truth and lies

Leftists ignored the actual murder of Thomas O’Halloran, but wailed in shock and horror about the attempted murder of Salman Rushdie. And now, in April 2024, they’re heaping praise on Rushdie’s Knife and ignoring the murder of another White grandfather by another Third-World savage. A so-called asylum-seeker called Ahmed Alid has just been found guilty of murdering 70-year-old Terence Carney in October 2023. Like Hadi Matar, Salman Rushdie’s would-be assassin, Alid used a knife. Unlike Matar, he was successful in slaying an infidel for Islam.

Two Third-World savages imported by leftists: Hadi Matar and Ahmed Alid

But there will be no close analysis of Terence Carney’s murder by leftists like Salman Rushdie. That’s why I can reach a simple conclusion. I don’t know the meaning of life but I do know the meaning of Knife. Rushdie’s tour-de-force is yet more proof of how leftists never hesitate when given a choice between truth and lies, between reality and fantasy, between facing facts and feeding their own egos. It’s lies, fantasy and ego every time.

Who Watches the Watchers?

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When the Roman poet Juvenal first used the phrase Quis custodiet ipsos custodes in the sixth of his second-century Satires, he was referring playfully to critics of his relationship with his wife. The phrase’s passage to its current status as a political lock-and-guard mechanism came via its misattribution to Plato’s Republic. But the observation of those whose role it is to observe, whether or not they are sanctioned by the state, is itself worthy of observation. Watching needs watching.

The idea is a simple one but it is a central supporting wall in the edifice of any entity that wishes to call itself a democracy; that those who are tasked with regulating the behavior of the citizenry must also be subject to the same level of scrutiny. This safeguard has been exponentially expanded and therefore complicated by the global success of the internet, and the rise of and ease of access to online information has led to the replacement of a culture in which political news and views were accessed solely via reading the newspaper and watching TV. Today, your telephone, even your child’s telephone, can allow you to watch world events unfolding in real time, and this small unit is a portal into a vast labyrinth of opposing political views and opinions. Juvenal’s conundrum (which leads, of course, to an infinite regress) has never been more pertinent than in our cyber-environment. This is an arena in which the watchers are able to do a lot more watching, but are becoming increasingly alarmed that this political voyeurism is reciprocal, and that they are being watched right back.

Watching, and being watched, is rapidly becoming the instinctive human activity which should concern us most. In our cyber world, the ability to watch increases steadily, and it is perfectly suited to the technocratic organization of control in which no one goes unobserved. In Martin Scorsese’s movie Casino, the boss – Sam “Ace” Rothstein, played by Robert de Niro – explains the surveillance system in his Las Vegas casino:

“In Las Vegas everybody’s got to watch everybody else. The players are looking to beat the casino. The dealers are watching the players. The box-men are watching the dealers. The floor-men are watching the box-men. The pit bosses are watching the floor-men. The shift bosses are watching the pit bosses. The casino manager is watching the shift bosses, I’m watching the casino manager, and the eye in the sky is watching us all”.

Rothstein is referring to a central, revolving bank of cameras watching everything that takes place in the casino and monitored from a control room. This is a modern version of English philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, intended to control and secure prisons using the centralized ability to observe all the inmates and guards all the time. Bentham summarizes his design:

“The essence of it consists then, in the centrality of the inspector’s situation, combined with the well-known and most effectual contrivances for seeing without being seen.”

But now this centrality and invisibility are under threat as everyone gets to join in. Modern online observation evokes the “sphere of nature” suggested by French mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal, in which “the center is everywhere, the circumference nowhere”. Anyone can be a watcher now, even of the other watchers.

Watching is a response to the need for security, beginning with physical security. The need to watch and thereby ensure one’s own safety and that of others is what links the soldier on guard duty with the visual entry-phone. Security, however, the making secure of something, is no longer concerned simply with the safety of the person. We hear much about national security, cyber-security, data security. The more security is required, in whatever different forms, the more watching will get done, and there will be more watchers to be watched.

The increasing invasiveness of Western states in the lives of its citizens is undeniable, and Big Brother is watching closely. The surveillance of citizens’ hitherto private lives, much of which now takes place online, seems to be a globalist objective in the West, and this is increasingly reflected in its legislation. Observation is moving away from being a physical transaction and becoming a virtual operation. Policing is shifting from the observation of what is usually accepted as criminality and towards the monitoring of statement and opinion, particularly online. The British police are increasingly criticized for, to use a contemporary phrase, “policing Tweets and not streets”. Definitive figures are hard to come by, but it seems clear that more people are currently being arrested in the UK for comments made on social media than in Russia. And it is not just the written word that is being monitored, but also the spoken.

As any hunter will tell you, hearing is as important as seeing, and so listening is as important as watching, and this certainly applies to the new Scottish Hate Crimes Bill, which was passed by the Scottish Parliament but is having a very hard time of it with those irritating people, the electorate. Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf’s pet project passed into law on April Fool’s Day and means that a household conversation can now be reported by a family member (or anyone else) if they find it to be actually, or even potentially, offensive to themselves or others. A vast network of police patrol points was set up whereby ordinary people could make a complaint about comments either online or at the dinner-table, if families still dine together.

There were 8,000 complaints in the first week, just 0.6% of which have been shown as legitimate, and Police Scotland have admitted this is straining already failing police resources. Scotland has the highest rate of drug deaths in Europe, for example, and a rising crime rate in line with the rest of the UK, and so many feel that watching drug dealers and burglars may be a more worthwhile occupation for the police. Be careful what you watch for.

To allay slightly our Orwellian fears, there are organizations who are watching the state. With some, the clue is in the name, as with London-based Big Brother Watch, who have been monitoring state surveillance in the UK for 15 years. Another meticulous observer is Biased BBC, who have much to observe. These are single-issue watchers, set up precisely to monitor and with watching as their mission statements. It is not quite as obvious, however, that the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the UK’s largest regulator of the finance industry, should be monitoring the employment quotas of private companies in the interests of financial probity, which is supposed to be their remit. A press release outlines their new policy:

The FCA has finalised rules requiring listed companies to report information and disclose against targets on the representation of women and ethnic minorities on their boards and executive management, making it easier for investors to see the diversity of their senior leadership teams.

We might want to challenge the suggestion that investors make their decisions on how much a company’s board of directors resembles a 1980s Benetton ad, but with DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Equality) just as intrusive in the UK as the US, the FCA is just one example of monitored affirmative action among many.

So, sometimes the watchers are themselves watched, and are not reveling in the spotlight. HOPE Not Hate (HnH) is an organization dedicated to exposing Britain’s “far Right”, a movement they invent in its absence, as I wrote about for Occidental Observer here two years ago. This year, HnH have had a gain of function, moving from a wagging finger in the background to a political fist. Within three hours of the publication of their 2024 annual report, British political party Reform UK had de-selected three of their candidates for the upcoming General Election. Once HnH got a taste for this political power at one remove, they kept going.

The watchers, however, are being watched by someone becoming increasingly adept at the art. Tommy Robinson is a leading hate figure on the Left, and divides those on the Right. He has produced a video which makes several allegations about HnH for which they would surely sue if Robinson has got his facts wrong. They started the cycle by devoting a huge slice of their report to denouncing Robinson, as well as gloating about his legal and financial struggles. Now he is watching them right back. So much for the “watchdogs”, as observational and regulatory bodies are often referred to in the UK. How far can they see?

The ability to watch improves as quickly as technology, and the current European drive towards digital identity is panoptical. The entire financial infrastructure of an individual’s life can now be monitored, and implications drawn from it which may not be to the advantage of that person. I saw an early example in Sweden 30 years ago. In Gothenburg, there were two systembolagets, or large government-run liquor stores. Identity must be shown and recorded when purchasing alcohol and, if the amount bought is considered too high for the household in question, social workers are sent to the home address to discuss issues around alcohol with the family or individual concerned. Under “digital identity” measures, there is nothing to stop the great panopticon of state from watching which books you buy, which organizations’ newsletters you receive, or whose lectures you attend. The European Union is building its own Chinese-style social credit system, and the de-banking of individuals and businesses for holding the “wrong” political opinions proceeds apace, at least in the UK.

The arrival of IT also means that American philosopher John Dewey’s classical observation is far more relevant than in the era of paper. Litera scripta manet translates as “That which is written down, remains”. But that was then. Now, paper documentation, shredders and waste-paper bin (or trashcan) fires are antique. Paper can be destroyed, as Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle found out to his cost in 1834 when his servant accidentally burned the first draft of Carlyle’s great work, The French Revolution. There was no backing it up then, but online documentation is not so easy to dispose of.

The state is increasingly out-sourcing its ability to watch its citizens to big-tech companies, and their level of monitoring can be retrospective as well as current. So-called “forensic” examination of a person’s past on social media can be used to bring someone down. When an account is banned by Twitter/X, you can’t start another, but they don’t expunge your Tweets. The account – including my own – is described as “permanently suspended”, but it is more like suspended animation. They keep all your Tweets in case they ever come in useful, in case you become one of those people who, as school-teachers once said of errant pupils, needs watching.

As for supposedly private communications, how can you know whether someone is reading your emails other than the intended recipient? I was advised to change to an encrypted service after being warned by an editor that one well-known email platform was allegedly partly staffed by diligent SJWs who see it as their duty to regulate their company’s service in an unofficial capacity by flagging up what they deem to be “problematic” correspondence, and subsequently closing accounts.

Then there is the natural defense of the reluctantly observed, a prohibition against watching, from the banning of a speaker or film to more subtly technocratic means. Freedom of Information requests (FOIs) made to the UK Government may by their name seem straightforward, but they are fitted with locks and guards to protect certain ethnic minorities from unwanted scrutiny. In June 2023, the reply to FOI reference number 2023 1066 was published on the website of the Office for National Statistics, The query was as follows:

“I would like to request data on violent crime in England and Wales broken down by the ethnicity of the perpetrator from 2016 to the most recent available year”.

The British police are already hobbled by the ludicrously exhaustive amount of documented information that must accompany each arrest, which means that the information requested will almost certainly be available. The response is interesting, and summed up in the first paragraph:

Our publications and data concern crime as it is experienced by the victim, or as it is recorded by police. Unfortunately, we do not, generally, produce statistics or details on the offender.

So, we have a victim-based report focusing on the experience of the person suffering the criminal act. This is not much use to a murder victim, but it is at least an attempt at a procedural approach. But collected data exists “as it is experienced by the victim or as it is recorded by police” [italics added]. As football fans say of referees who they feel have treated their team unfairly, he must be watching a different game to the rest of us.

In the UK, as in many other Western countries, illegal immigrants are watched far less than tax-paying indigenous citizens, and Migration Watch is another self-explanatory name for an organization that does just that. In 2022, their research showed that just 2% of immigrants arriving in the UK held passports. It is estimated that up to 90% of illegal migrants throw their passports into the English Channel, thereby rendering useless a globally recognized method by which people can be monitored. No English person returning from abroad would be allowed into the country without a passport. Do you ever get the feeling you are not being watched?

So, if you are online in any way, you are watching and being watched. For the data-harvesters, the swing of the scythe never stops. A variety of colloquialisms are appropriate for those just logging in: “Watch out”, “watch it”, “watch your step”, “watch what you say”. If you wish to assist someone who requires such a warning, you “watch their back”. And we should heed all of those warnings.

Finally, we should not get too carried away with our newly acquired super power of being able to watch the watchers. Don’t underestimate exactly who it is watching you. The ruling elites don’t have binoculars and your license number jotted down somewhere, they command the most technologically advanced panopticon in history. Don’t be over-confident when it comes to your locks and guards. Those comforted by the security blanket of their VPNs and unregistered phones may be exhibiting the same psychology as very small children who think that by covering their eyes, no one else can see them. So, watch yourselves.