Pat Condell lays down some unpleasant truths for the Eurocrats who, in order to fight fascism, are instituting fascism across their continent. No wonder Europeans are repudiating their ostensible leaders. For more on the mushrooming rape epidemic in Europe, see Jim Goad’s disturbing essay in Taki Mag.

Kudos to our good friends at Urban Infidel and The Silent Majority No More for doing the job our nation’s gatekeepers have so conspicuously forsaken, as well as Glenn Beck for highlighting a story that’s been kept hidden from the American public. Even as a  white English convert to Islam wreaks havoc across international borders, the moral degeneracy of an elite class which has planted a culture completely alien, and resolutely hostile, to the fundamental precepts of western civilization firmly in our soil. It’s time we started to listen to the Cassandras of our culture, instead of allowing politically correct, morally and intellectually bankrupt solons in the media, academe and popular culture to dictate how we discuss matters of life and death.

We need to wake up

Once again, the words of Enoch Powell appear prescient, although perhaps in not quite the way the late British parliamentarian and classicist intended. In the same week that Swedes have been besieged by aggrieved jihadists imported by their own government, Londoners experienced yet another subsidiary benefit of multiculturalism. This time, in the form of a Nigerian convert to Islam ritualistically slaughtering a member of the British Army.

Drummer Lee Rigby, of the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, was methodically  dismembered by an adherent to the Religion of Peace as he walked to his barracks yesterday. The loving father, who had served in Afghanistan, was the latest victim of an alien ideology which has already killed or attempted to kill hundreds, if not thousands, of Britons on their own soil. The perpetrators of this particular atrocity-which echoed an earlier attempt to murder and behead a British soldier in the streets of London-were emulating their countrymen in Nigeria, where Boko Haram, which in Hausa translates to “Western education is a sin,”has turned the northern portion of the country into a charnel house, slaughtering Christians,  security forces, women, and anyone else who does not submit to the imperatives of sharia. The Nigerian government has responded ambiguously, besieging three northern states even as it releases detained members of the ultra-violent, Islamic terror network.

How the UK will respond to this atrocity remains to be seen, although the signals emanating from the ruling class-which is in large measure culpable for this sort of barbarity-are not encouraging. The widely ridiculed British security apparatus responded with undue alacrity. The ahistorical, insipid pabulum put forward by the current empty suit occupying 10 Downing Street was to be expected. Mr. Cameron was simply following the example of our President, who won’t let  the premeditated vivisection of a British citizen sully the good name of Islam. Better not to mention it at all. Of course, most of the large media organs-with a few notable exceptions-sedulously elided the unpleasant fact that these Muslim youths grounded their butchery in Koranic injunctions. The current mayor of London, who once distinguished himself from his Islamophile predecessor, “Red” Ken Livingstone, issued a similar appeal to his constituents not to form a hasty, negative opinion of the perpetrator’s religion simply because of the actions of a few misguided Muslim jihadists who had just assassinated an infidel in the name of Islam.

After all, this is just an isolated incident, most likely the work of a lone wolf-or wolves-which won’t be repeated in the future. It’s not like London is the European hub for pan-Islamic, jihadist terror,  to the point of earning its own delightful sobriquet reflecting the dramatically altered demographics of this international capital of commerce. Despite the feigned expressions of shock and disbelief by the usual suspects, the biography of the soldier of allah seen in video footage is anything but surprising. A follower of the protean jihadist movement known as Al-Muhajiroun, which serves as a finishing school of sorts for would-be Islamic terrorists, he spent recent months exhorting his fellow Muslims to join the Syrian jihad, which I’m sure would have met with the approval of Secretary of State Kerry and much of Congress.

Although we don’t know what precipitated his conversion to Islam, the opportunities presented to him in this new England are ubiquitous. In addition to numerous mosques-both of the mega and storefront variety-Islamic bookshops whose offerings range from Mein Kampf to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; there is the Islamic community itself, where anti-Semitism and hatred of the West proliferates, at least according to British Muslims. There are even committed jihadists willing to instruct young pupils in the tenets of Islam. That is why the words of Cameron, Johnson, and the worse than useless talking heads in the media ring so hollow today.

The message sent by this jihadist’s ostensible mentor, Anjem Choudary, reveals more than any of the lies or willful delusions being promoted by the usual suspects. His testimony to the character of the bestial creature who disemboweled Lee Rigby is illuminating in its own warped way. Islam is a peaceful religion, and Muslims are without sin, because submission is peace and killing infidels is not sinful. According to this belief system, what took place yesterday is commendable and should be emulated, just as the deeds of Mohammed-the model for all proper conduct and behavior-should serve as a model for true Muslims.

In some respects, the philosophy of apocalyptic, jihadist Islam is in perfect harmony with that espoused by the unreconstructed, revolutionary left, which has aided its rise throughout the West. Both are governed by situational ethics, where the ends-if achieved-are justified by the means. Specific actions are judged to be right only insofar as they facilitate a certain outcome. The growth of Islam and sharia in the case of the former, the ideal collectivist state for the latter. Both buttress each other, but the foundation stone is the left, which has constructed the meta-narrative that there are no reasons to oppose mass immigration from the third world-or the customs and beliefs these newcomers hew to-which aren’t invidious and racist in origin, and that the thoughts and feelings of the majority of Europeans and Americans constitute a form of mass psychosis.

That is why western European cities are being sacked for the first time since the end of World War II, and why the president will not even utter the name of the religion which is responsible for the atrocity committed yesterday in Woolwich. If diversity is our strength, then any action-or even statement-which might diminish public support for this grand experiment of our political leadership is forbidden; or “haram,” if you will. The loving, caring family of Lee Rigby is experiencing a torment that defies description, yet the government of Great Britain refuses to look reality in the eye and identify the killer by its rightful name. In this respect, there is some truth to the words of the orc who murdered and desecrated the body of that courageous serviceman. David Cameron and Boris Johnson-Labour, the Tories, and the Liberal Democrats-do not care about English people.

That much is obvious.

Dogmatism and obfuscation mark virtually any media discussion of the subject of immigration-a pattern which holds true both domestically and abroad-but Sky News managed to conduct a good interview of Nigel Farage, standard bearer for the UK Independence Party, nonetheless. The Week provides a brief summary of what caused  two caring English foster parents to have the child they had cared for ripped from their arms by a Labour council that George Orwell would have had difficulty  imagining.

For those of you who believe this to be an anomalous event, you obviously haven’t been paying attention. Six years ago the government of the United Kingdom attempted to criminalize blaspheming Islam, and although unsuccessful-by a single vote-it’s hard to believe that this issue won’t reappear once the process of strip-mining Great Britain is closer to completion. The Farage interview is illustrative of the fact that not every individual wants to embrace the brave new world charted by our current statesmen, who have decided in their infinite wisdom to elect a new people.

The global jihad against speech-aided and abetted by our enemedia-was the primary subject of discussion at the SION conference this past Tuesday, and the panels assembled represented the full spectrum of thought and action that is being suppressed as a result of the collaboration between government officials-both elected and unelected-intent on “managing” our ever-diminishing pool of  liberty, the custodians of the fifth estate, and the presumptive caliphate which is using them as its ideological cat’s paw. The mobs overwhelming embassies in North Africa and the Middle East and slaughtering American citizens represent the physical violence that most associate with the term jihad, yet there is another more potent element of jihadist doctrine which involves employing coercive means more subtle than car bombs, rocket propelled-grenades, and Kalashnikovs.

The most powerful and efficacious weapon against jihadist ideology is, in fact, the truth. Which is why the vanguards of Islam and their accomplices go to such great lengths in order to suppress the means through which the truth is disseminated. That was the main theme of the second panel of the Stop Islamization of Nations Congress, which comprised men and women from England-until recently, one of the most resilient bastions of free expression on the planet-and Australia, a much younger parliamentary democracy whose citizens find themselves caught beneath a resurgent Islamic tidal wave facilitated by its leaders abandonment of sound immigration policy.

Debbie Robinson, of the Q Society, gave us a detailed overview of the parlous situation Australians find themselves in due to the proliferation of Muslim immigrants faithful to the Koran now living on a continent built upon British common law. The most recent  manifestation of this danger can be found in Muslim Brotherhood acolytes calling for the summary execution of the filmmaker who, in their eyes, committed blasphemy, exploiting the very freedom which they could never hope to enjoy in one of the many despotic Muslim nations from which they emigrated.

However, the question of sharia law’s application in Australia is not one of recent vintage, despite the befuddled media coverage of jihadi demonstrations in that nation’s capital this week. In fact, it is a question which has become so embedded within national discourse that a former Chief Justice of Australia has publicly rejected the notion that sharia law can coexist with the laws of his country. You need look no further than the scourging  a convert to Wahabbism received at the hands of his masked attackers to realize that this isn’t a theoretical debate for Australians. Is it really that far-fetched to conceive of a day when the punishment meted out to a member of the Burns’ Gang in the drama The Proposition might befall the unfortunate recipient of justice from a sharia court?

That question is even more pertinent to the men who came to New York City from England, which some would characterize as Ground Zero in the war between Islamic supremacism and Western societal norms.

Kevin Carroll of the English Defense League-seen above-described some of the battles in this titanic struggle. Currently running for sheriff in a newly created constituency, Mr. Carroll and other members of the EDL have been subjected not only to physical attacks-some so violent as to require hospitalization-by crypto-fascist, Marxist goon squads and their Islamist accomplices, but have been persecuted by the English authorities, which view those exercising their rights to assemble lawfully and express support for the United Kingdom as posing more of an exigent threat than those organizing terror plots in what is now the hub of pan-Islamic nationalism and jihad within Europe.

The extent to which the inherent rights exercised by Englishmen and women have been curtailed in the name of insulating Islam and its practitioners from any substantive criticism was brought home by Tommy Robinson, the founder and leader of the English Defense League. A life-long resident of town of Luton in the county of Bedfordshire, England,  Robinson embodies the selfless patriotism and commitment to family that were once hallmarks of the English working class. Unfortunately, today he represents a besieged minority under attack on the streets, in the courtroom, and in the yellow press for defending what the intelligentsia consider antiquated notions of Englishness. Instead of resisting the Islamists and their leftist shock troops who are threatening the lives of Robinson and his family, the British police have instructed him to remove himself from Luton-his childhood home-lest he antagonize the Muslim supremacists behind  one of England’s numerous, unofficial Sharia law zones.

The skewed priorities of UK law enforcement-which view the EDL as posing a more exigent threat than the intellectual progeny of Bin Laden did not come as a surprise. What did strike me though was Tommy Robinson’s almost apologetic defense of the gifts he brings to bear in this struggle against Islamic nationalism and its infection of contemporary Europe. He made the inexorable point that, unlike the rest of the continent, Great Britain-with a few notable exceptions-does not have any towering intellectuals or courageous political leaders to rally public opinion on behalf of the Enlightenment values which are now imperiled. The political class within the UK is effectively neutered, spinelessness being virtually a prerequisite for public office, as Tommy and his cousin Kevin Carroll pointed out during their speeches.

The same can be said of most British pseudo-intellectuals, who are equally culpable for the disastrous cultural and spiritual degradation of contemporary Great Britain. The political extermination Northern Irish classicist, poet and parliamentarian Enoch Powell experienced at the hands of England’s opinion-shapers for daring to question the status quo is one of the main reasons why the fight against Islamist ideology is being led by men like Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carroll, although I don’t believe either man has to qualify the vitally important elements of courage and honesty in identifying the problems facing Britain they both bring to this task. After all, the battle over whether sharia law and Islamic doctrine should prevail over the values of the Magna Carta and the Glorious Revolution will be decided in the streets and the homes of ordinary Britons, not intellectual salons in London.

That said, the address delivered by George Igler, the creator of the Discourse Institute, outlined the intellectual argument against the UK’s increasingly restrictive view of individual liberty. At least, that liberty not enjoyed by Islamic ideologues. The son of parents who experienced the absence of liberty firsthand behind the Iron Curtain of Communist Hungary, Igler recognizes the inherent tenuousness of liberties that most Westerners have taken for granted for centuries. His speech focused upon the ways in which British bureaucrats and politicians had distorted the relationship between man and state, pointing out that our sufferance of government is tied exclusively to the protection of inalienable-and non government-derived-rights. This compact has been abrogated by a state that now views its function as maintaining stability in inter-communal relations, which means that some groups, e.g. Muslim immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bosnia-as well as their offspring-are given protection from the critical speech of groups like the EDL. This fundamental negation of rights illustrates why conferences like the Stop Islamization of Nations Congress are so urgent at this moment in time.

They, along with the Discourse Institute, wouldn’t be necessary if the “free” press exercised its right to dissent from political and religious orthodoxy, rather than attempting to hunt down individuals who blasphemed Islam or to blacken the name of patriotic citizens who want to ensure that their children enjoy the same freedoms they once did. But the fact remains that we are not only facing an aggressive, resurgent political Islam, but a much greater threat posed by those who would do away with our patrimony from England, and ultimately, Greece, in order to placate the sensitivities of an ideology with whom no mutual reciprocity exists and which, according to its holy book-none can be achieved.

In Part III of our report, we’ll be examining how the threat of Islamic jihad is experienced by those in the continent from which the armies of Mohammed first emerged.

Last night I had the pleasure of attending the latest installment in the Half King’s weekly reading series. It’s only fitting that the guest of honor that evening was the intrepid English-born, Mexico City-based journalist Ioan Grillo, since the bar is owned by renowned  journalist and documentarian Sebastian Junger. Junger  is probably best known for his reporting from war zones, specifically Afghanistan, and there is a plaque in the bar honoring his former collaborator on the film Restrepo, the late English photojournalist Tim Hetherington. Mr. Grillo was there in order to share some anecdotes and observations related to his newly released book, El Narco, an in-depth analysis of the sociological and political reasons behind the rise of what he described as a “parallel state” built upon drug-financed and cartel-derived institutions inside of Mexico. 

His talk was particularly timely, given a report just published in the Los Angeles Times which examines the connection between international banking institutions and  those seeking to launder money from illicit sources within Mexico. The systemic nature of the narco problem, its global scope, and the duration of the fight against its symptoms-if not causes-was vividly illustrated by Grillo, who in an hour-long discussion ranged from the impact of drugs on his birthplace of Brighton, England, to the wholly ineffectual attempt to impound heroin being trafficked over the Mexican-American border through Operation Intercept, to the thirteen individuals that were intimately involved in this book, including five who contributed materially to its creation who were killed during or after the writing of El Narco. 

Although the industry of trafficking drugs into the United States from Mexico has existed since Congress effectively prohibited the distribution and production of a wide range of heretofore legal opiates with the Harrison Act, the transformation of this somewhat lucrative trade in contraband into an over thirty billion dollar per annum “insurgencia,” a noun fraught with meaning, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has learned, is a story that requires a more holistic explanation, which Ioan Grillo attempts to provide in El Narco. Rather than focusing simply upon the horrific, heart-rending atrocities that we associate with Mexico from American media reports, Grillo digs deeper into what he describes as the “machinery of murder” by interviewing those who participate in it directly. He traces the arc of the “low intensity war” that has erupted in the decade since he’s been reporting from Mexico and which escalated with the 2006 decision by President Felipe Calderon to wage war against the cartels, a decision which has led to the loss of over 45,000 lives in the ensuing years.

Some of the more interesting things that the author discussed included the intimate link between Colombia, where much of the drugs that come into this country are produced, and Mexico, through which most of our illegal narcotics are smuggled. Not only is there practical cooperation between narcos in both countries, there has also been a wholesale Mexicanization of the most conspicuous aspects of the Colombian narco culture; from the endemic corruption of political parties on the take of cartels, to the ostentatious display of wealth by drug barons, to the advent of the sicario-a Colombian derivation of a Latin word for assassin that Mexicans know all too well-to the development of paramilitary wings of cartels posing as vigilantes, such as Matas Zetas, i.e. the “Zetas killers.”  

The day-to-day lives of journalists in Mexico-and what they do and do not report-was another interesting subject that was addressed at some length. While the cartels have no problem with Grillo reporting on the idosyncracies of cartel members-such as the young assassin who also loves his Sony Playstation-identifying those responsible for specific murders is verboten and often punished by death, which is why domestic journalists often ommit the names of the cartels culpable for specific crimes-even when their identities are widely known.

The recommendations Grillo makes seem sensible enough, especially the concept of reconsidering the unrealistic nature of current interdiction efforts, exemplified by the unironic motto of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime: A Drug-Free World. He also recommended a consolidation of the currently fragmented federal police system, which includes over 2,000 different-and often rivalrous-police forces by his estimation. Whatever the solutions are, I think Ioan Grillo’s book-which includes some startling photographs of the real victims of El Narco-is a good place to start the conversation.

The debt crisis currently afflicting the developed world, particularly Western European nations like Greece and Italy, has been the top news story for much of this year. However, even as we debate whether Greece should remain part of the European Union, or whether Silvio Berlusconi should be forced to resign, you might recall that just last year one of the most widely covered subjects was Prime Minister Nicholas Sarkozy’s decision to deport thousands of Gypsies living in France. Notwithstanding the overwrought and inapt comparisons to policies pursued by Nazi Germany, the repatriation of these individuals did raise the intriguing question of whether multiculturalism and open borders had been rejected by those Europeans upon whom these dogmas had been forced over the past half century. 

I bring this up today because I recently read an essay published in Taki Mag by Gavin McInnes which reexamines the issue of Gyspy culture from a distinctly negative perspective, but which can be applied more generally to many of the unwelcome changes that Europeans and Americans are forced to accept under the rubric of multiculturalism. The notion that we should uncritically embrace every exotic, imported cultural practice or custom-and that we should modify our laws and beliefs in doing so-is an attitude that prevails among elite opinion. The insanity of this philosophy is vividly illustrated in a piece  by New York Times columnist John Tierney, explored in some detail in Bill McGowan’s illuminating work Gray Lady Down, which tries to dispassionately weigh the pros and cons of female genital mutilation.

Whether it’s the fetishization of migrants from the Balkans encamped outside of large European cities, or the indulgent attitude our media displays towards unassimilable Muslim refugees from Somalia, the fact remains that the chasm which exists between the public and its ostensible leaders is vast. Kudos to Gavin McInnes for pointing out an unspoken, yet ineluctable, truth in this regard.

One of those most inexplicable aspects of immigration policy in developed, Western nations is the tendency to give refuge to people who want to eradicate-or utterly transform-our way of life. While the media in this country often highlight the unresolved issues that stem from our shared border with Mexico, it rarely if ever discloses the fact that many migrants entering the country illegally are not Latin Americans, let alone Mexicans. The number of  aliens from state sponsors of terror-or merely Arab-Muslim nations where anti-Americanism and Islamic extremism are rife-crossing our border is increasing. What’s more, even the immigrants who come to this country legally pose grave risks to Americans, especially when they retain the same deep-rooted values that made their countries of origin so hellish they were forced to flee to the United States.

Unfortunately, the September 11th massacres, the July 7th bombings launched by British Muslims against London, and every subsequent attempt-successful or failed-at obliterating markers of Western culture or annihilating non-Muslims inside of the West has been met with a collective shrug by those ensconced in power, who continue to extol the virtues of open borders and espouse multiculturalist dogma. And while the efficacy and constitutionality of Anwar al-Awlaki’s assassination is debated throughout the blogsophere, no one asks why his parents-born in a country where antipathy towards Americans and Western norms is nearly universal-were allowed to immigrate to the United States in the first place. Only in certain quarters, which up to this point have not influenced immigration policymaking, is the notion that some immigrants might not be potential Americans even suggested.

To find concrete examples illustrating the insanity following this policy to its logical conclusion produces, you need not look very far. In Australia, an Algerian-born illegal alien was recently spared trial for conspiring to murder scores of Australian civilians. In the United Kingdom, yet another Islamic terrorist has been granted virtual immunity for his crimes by the British legal system. The generous freedoms afforded to defendents in our culture’s criminal justice systems, in concert with the decadent multiculturalism that has prevented the assimilation of foreigners, combines to undermine the fundamental structure of our society. The solution, of course, is to prevent this conflict from occurring in the first place, i.e. imposing rational, sensible immigration reforms. However, that is unlikely to occur so long as the ruling class in the United States, Europe and elsewhere are possessed by mania that prizes diversity and multiculturalism over the lives and values of their ostensible countrymen.

The Stranger within my gate,
He may be true or kind,
But he does not talk my talk–
I cannot feel his mind.
I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,
But not the soul behind.

The men of my own stock,
They may do ill or well,
But they tell the lies I am wanted to,
They are used to the lies I tell;
And we do not need interpreters
When we go to buy or sell.

The Stranger within my gates,
He may be evil or good,
But I cannot tell what powers control–
What reasons sway his mood;
Nor when the Gods of his far-off land
Shall repossess his blood.

The men of my own stock,
Bitter bad they may be,
But, at least, they hear the things I hear,
And see the things I see;
And whatever I think of them and their likes
They think of the likes of me.

This was my father’s belief
And this is also mine:
Let the corn be all one sheaf–
And the grapes be all one vine,
Ere our children’s teeth are set on edge
By bitter bread and wine.

- Rudyard Kipling

“The Stranger” speaks to the difficulty of living with foreigners in one’s own land.  It is not the stranger that is rejected, but where he is — “within my gates”.

Where the men in Kipling’s time thought the differences between peoples were immutably tied to their blood, in our own time we take a more nuanced view.  Culture is separate from genetics.  The danger of becoming a stranger in one’s own country remains, even if  our understanding of the underlying cause of this incompatibility changes.

The poem has been interpreted by Neo-Nazis as a testament to their beliefs.  Kevin Morris, a more moderate critic, while acknowledging Kipling as a man of his time, also shows him to be a man who denounced Naziism and had great respect for foreign peoples. “The Stranger” does not condemn the foreigner as intrinsically bad, but that his differences from those around him make regular interaction uncomfortable.  A society lacking commonality of language, social understanding and behavior is a miserable thing.

The heart of the poem remains true beyond the vicissitudes of history — A country must remain united as one people to prosper.  We must be careful in who we allow within our gates.  Where before we thought this tied to blood, we now acknowledge that it is culture that more truly makes the man — blood is only a useful metaphor.

Foreign influences have their place.  Any farmer will tell you that the careful mixing of seed stocks lead to a better harvest.  But this mixing must be carefully controlled, “ere our children’s teeth are set on edge, by bitter bread and wine.  ”

One of the most trenchant social observers and luminous writers in the English language is Theodore Dalrymple, the nom de plume of British doctor and essayist Anthony Daniels. Formerly a prison physician and psychiatrist who spent his time diagnosing the symptoms of cultural decay, Dalrymple now devotes his career to addressing the diseases that gave rise to these symptoms. In light of the unrestrained, premeditated chaos enveloping London, Manchester, Birmingham, as well as many other English urban centers, I thought it appropriate to bring up an essay he wrote two years ago. Although one need not be prescient in order to have foreseen the mindless barbarity of the riots currently engulfing England, as history tells us, the observations he made in this piece are remarkably astute in pinpointing the problems that have led almost ineluctably to the current, post-modern calamity playing out on TV screens across the globe.

Years of fostering an entitlement mentality, along with the past two and half decades of unfettered immigration, have combined to form a toxic environment that has now consumed the economic epicenter of the United Kingdom. The 2009 piece brilliantly dissects how these two forces have irrevocably altered British life. And now, thanks to the Daily News, we have a new column by Mr. Daniels which expresses his thoughts on the current terrorism directed against the productive, law-abiding  sector of English society.

Whether or not you agree with its conclusions-and it’s hard to escape the fact that many of his predictions about the unraveling social fabric, and its roots in misguided cultural policies, have been born out by events like the London riots-you have to acknowledge whence he derived his insights. Namely, years of communication with and treatment of young men and women who came from the dysfunctional families and morally impoverished backgrounds that have given rise to the flames devouring Albion. We ignore the thoughts of Theodore Dalrymple at our own peril.