By Ben Pensant

Every now and then I worry that progressives are going soft. Leftist Mick Hume disputes the view that ordinary people are too stupid to vote; liberal pundit John Harris points out we should listen to why people supported Trump rather than dismiss them as racists; so-called socialists demand Jeremy Corbyn resign simply because he’s about as popular as white dog-shit and less likely to make a comeback. Fortunately, when faced with such madness, all I do is remind myself that Owen Jones and Kerry-Anne Mendoza exist and all my concerns evaporate.

See, Owen and Kerry-Anne prefer the regressive tactic of refusing to entertain an opinion without first checking the privilege of the person expressing it. Because as all students of identity politics know, the value of what someone says is entirely dependent on their gender, ethnicity, sexuality or religion. So when Sunday Times film critic and professional gobshite Camilla Long wrote a 3-star review of acclaimed indie hit Moonlight, Owen and Kerry-Anne deemed Camilla’s opinion invalid because she’s not a gay, black, working-class teenager: a brave move for two of the whitest, most middle-class 30-somethings stealing a living in media today.

That 90% of Camilla’s criticism was actually related to the script, casting and performances was immaterial to Owen and Kerry-Anne, neither of whom appeared to have read beyond the first two paragraphs of her review. And because Camilla didn’t love the film as much as them – instead making a prejudiced and entirely accurate assessment of Moonlight‘s likely audience – she was dismissed by Kerry-Anne as a ‘white woman with privilege’. And a racist, obvs.

Owen was similarly hysterical, framing her critique as indicative of her failure as a human being: ‘Camilla’s review of Moonlight isn’t a review of the film at all. It’s a review of herself and the results aren’t good’. The message to straight white hacks was simple: either A) gush about this movie as much as two people whose understanding of film criticism is flimsier than their faith in St Jezza. Or B) get back in your lane, chalky. As Owen bleated on Sky News after the Orlando massacre just before he stormed out rather than admit that the religious ideology he’s spent his career defending isn’t keen on blokes kissing blokes: ‘You don’t understand because you’re not gay’.

That Owen wrote a book about the working-class despite not being working-class is unimportant. Because anyone can see he had to write that book – it’s not as if actual working-class people are intelligent enough to write one, is it? Hence Owen’s glee at informing Camilla that Moonlight director Barry Jenkins is black and writer Tarell Alvin McCraney is black and gay. A disappointing half measure from Baz, but we’ll let him off this time.

Owen’s rebuke was in response to Camilla’s claim that Moonlight is a film ‘for a non-black, non-gay, non-working-class, chin-stroking, self-regarding, turbo-smug audience’. Which, if you take out the ‘non-gay’ bit is exactly what Owen and Kerry-Anne’s entries say in the Encyclopedia Britannica. I jest, of course: neither would risk upsetting their loyal and uptight fans by appearing in something that celebrates colonialism. Owen saw what happened when he suggested leaving the EU in 2015. He won’t make that mistake again.

But he was on firmer ground this time and shocked even his harshest critics by making the sensible point that regardless of who ends up watching the film the team behind it were documenting their own experiences therefore it is inaccurate to say it was written for the middle-class and turbo-smug. Despite the fact that those crying because a reviewer didn’t like it as much as they did are indeed middle-class and turbo-smug. At which point Camilla summoned her inner SJW and accused Owen of ‘mansplaining’, an attempt to discredit his point which actually discredited hers, a neat trick regularly pulled off by Laurie Penny. It was all very confusing but luckily on the rare occasion Owen talks sense it’s sandwiched between two statements that are utter rubbish and this was no exception. On the plus-side, if Camilla ever fancies coming over to the left she’ll be a perfect fit judging by her Ditum-esque deployment of the most idiotic cri de snowflake around

No such confusion where Canary editor Kerry-Anne was concerned, as her hysterical condemnation of Camilla’s review achieved the impossible and made Owen Jones seem reasonable. Indeed, unlike Owen she eschewed valid points about the talent behind the camera and cut straight to the chase: ‘You’re not imagining it. That review by Camilla Long isn’t just stupid. It’s racist’ she raged, confirming Kerry-Anne’s grasp of what is and isn’t ‘stupid’ hasn’t changed much since her days as a 9/11 truther.

She then accused Camilla of disliking the film because it’s ‘too black and too gay’, cleverly deducing that Canary readers won’t have read the whole review and be aware that her main issues with the film were actually a ropey script and poor casting. But Kerry-Anne has never met an opinion she couldn’t misrepresent and if Camilla is serious about joining the light side she should take note: using powerful phrases like ‘mansplaining’ is a decent start but it takes more than just borrowing words from The Left’s Big Book of Made-Up Terms. Which, by the way, is available from all good vegan coffee-shops and features such classics as ‘Islamophobia’, ‘Misogynoir’ and ‘Gender Pay Gap’.

No, if Camilla wants a transfer she’ll have to learn that the only kind of racism the left tolerates is The Racism Of Low Expectations (and anti-Semitism), not The Racism Of Not Liking A Film As Much As Owen & Kerry-Anne. Which is unfortunate as Camilla would fit in like a glove if she stopped saying what she thinks and started doing what she’s told: she’s posh, she’s educated, she earns a crust writing about something she knows bugger-all about. What’s not to love? The modern left was invented for people like Camilla. Until then she can expect more daggers the next time she dares criticise a film about gay black men. And remember, Camilla has form when it comes to not loving a film as much as Kerry-Anne, as anyone who recalls her disgraceful review of Ken Roach’s masterpiece I, Daniel Bloke knows.

Back then she made similar observations about target audiences, accusing them of getting off on Ken’s ‘povvo safari’. The left retaliated, pointing out that Camilla and Toby Jones – another critic of I, Daniel Bloke – were the last people who should pass comment on a film about poverty and unemployment as they both went to Oxford. The fact that Ken also went to Oxford was irrelevant as most of those screaming for Camilla and Toby’s heads were blissfully unaware that he did.

But as a born-and-bred North-Easterner I can safely say Camilla’s criticisms  – which, like Moonlight, were mainly focused on the script and performances rather than the fact that she hates people from Newcastle as well as black homosexuals – were way off the mark. In fact, the grim world created by Ken was almost as authentic as the one Jimmy Spender brought to vivid life in Crocodile, Pet. And clever casting played a key part in the film’s success too, particularly in contriving to tell the story of the first Byker chippy to sound like a gay grief counsellor who’s spent twenty years living in Islington.

Because the sheer wholesomeness of Daniel renders any criticism of the film’s flat direction, amateurish performances and sledgehammer subtlety null and void. Look at Daniel: he misses his dead wife; he makes toys for the kiddies; he has a black neighbour who he actually gets on with. Indeed, it’s a measure of how realistic the film is that the same liberals who would be horrified if you so much as hinted that some unemployed folk are scroungers and occasionally black people commit crime are happy to laud a film whose only black character is a benefits cheat who sells stolen goods.

Of course, this was no doubt down to ‘colourblind casting’ as an auteur like Loach would never indulge in identity politics, despite the fact that – from his recent whataboutery-fuelled Question Time appearance to that crowd-pleasing BAFTAs speech – he indulges in identity politics every time he opens his mouth. But who can blame him, when his roasting of the government’s ‘callous brutality’ towards refugees received such a response from a roomful of wealthy imbeciles with more spare bedrooms than brain-cells? Plus, Ken’s moment of glory showed what a tolerant bunch the film & TV community are, as until recently many still refused to forgive him for knobbing Wendy Crozier behind Deirdre’s back.

Understandably there was no update on when the rich liberals present will open up their mansions to the refugees they’re desperate to help. But fear not – there are plenty of Byker Walls up and down the country. Ken and co may care about refugees but that doesn’t mean they want them in their bloody homes. Have you seen how some of them eat? No, far better to let people like Daniel deal with the effects of immigration. The same Daniel who principled liberals nationwide pledged solidarity with last year, despite the fact they’ve spent eight months calling people like him uneducated racists.

Still, film discussion long ago ceased to be the preserve of people who enjoy watching films: Owen and Kerry-Anne have appointed themselves the regressive left’s Siskel & Ebert and they’re not gonna let a little thing like knowing fuck all about cinema stop them telling people what to like. Indeed, it takes someone who’s spent their life writing about politics to truly understand popular culture. Because while less-precocious teenagers were dancing in front of the mirror pretending to be Nigel Gallagher, Owen and Kerry-Anne were channelling Benn and Castro, fantasising about selling badges at rallies and stringing up dissidents with barbed wire. That they’d probably shit their tank-tops off if they watched five minutes of a Tarantino film just proves that when it comes to cinema, right and wrong is as easy to define as it is in politics.

However, as Sunday night’s Oscars debacle grimly demonstrated, there’s a long way to go. Because while the Academy’s attempt to make up for last year’s #OscarsSoWhite controversy by patronisingly shoehorning as much black talent into the nominations as possible is commendable – especially giving August Wilson a Best Adapted Screenplay nod despite the fact he’s been dead for twelve years – the pathetic attempt to deny Moonlight its Best Picture Oscar was a stain on an otherwise joyous, life-affirming, utterly superficial event.

Apologists have claimed the climactic mix-up happened because the wrong envelope was handed to crumpled fanny-rat Warren Batty, already somewhat confused that former squeeze and co-presenter Faye Dunaway had been replaced by Annie Walker out of Coronation Street. But a man on a flying horse can see this was a last ditch attempt from Trump to sabotage Moonlight’s success by giving the grand prize to white supremacist propaganda-fest Lulu Land. Which, needless to say, Camilla Long adored. Hmm.

Happily, Hollywood held its nerve and Moonlight rightly triumphed. Whether it actually was the best film of 2016 should only be debated by those weirdo cineastes who enjoy listening to opposing views and wouldn’t know intersectionality if it reported them for eating a Burrito. For the rest of us, if Owen and Kerry-Anne say it was a worthy winner then there’s no reason to disagree. In fact, there’s no reason to see the film at all as their blessing proves it’s the best thing ever and anyone who says otherwise is racist. Instead let’s comfort ourselves with the knowledge that Camilla and Trump awoke on Monday with egg all over their furious, fascist faces.

Now THAT’S the power of cinema.

 

 

 

 

By Ben Pensant

As a resident of Newcastle there’s nowt you can teach me about drunken women I haven’t already learnt while being snapped having a piss behind a bus-stop by a pair of rusty harridans in tight pink training bras screaming ‘put it away, man, I’ve seen bigger chips!’. And as if Geordie women weren’t already responsible for more death, destruction and unwanted pregnancies than Godzilla and Jude Law combined, the city has also become a magnet for the greatest scourge on society since Charles Romley Alder Wright arose for breakfast in 1874 and declared to his wife and butler: ‘Darling, as delicious as this morphine is, it lacks moorishness. Bring me my Penguin Book of Acids at once, Pennyworth!’.

Yes, I’m talking about hen dos. And as grizzled professional feminist Suzanne Moore pointed out in The Guardian last week, the problem with women who indulge this demeaning tradition isn’t just their habit of holding up taxi queues, threatening bus drivers or stabbing gay men in McDonald’s while dressed as Pocahontas. No, the problem is society has forced these women to do it. Which makes Suzanne awfully cross.

Because unless you’re one of those apologists who believe most women get married because they want to and have hen dos for a laugh it’s abundantly clear these unthinking idiots are only getting hitched because the patriarchy told them to. And like most modern feminists Suzanne can’t just say that she personally has no desire to spend time with her pals drinking cocktails, taking funny shaped-tablets and crying. No, she has to tell anyone who does that they’re selling out the sisterhood by having the nerve to enjoy themselves. Who do they think they are? Men?

‘The threat that women’s liberation would destroy the nuclear family has been neutered, matrimony re-packaged as an experience we all must enjoy’ bemoaned Suzanne, stressing that despite all the equality and freedom western women enjoy today they are still being forced into pretending they want to get married. Even the ones who aren’t. Because modern feminism has no time for women who make their own minds up. And you can’t just say that you personally don’t care for the nuclear family and would rather not get married; you have to be committed to ‘destroying’ it so nobody else can. And as ever, it’s those dumb working-class morons who think Naomi Klein designs knickers who are lagging behind. But we can’t expect the subtle nuance and rank hypocrisy of modern feminism to be grasped by dumb witches who’ve never had a month on the sick because a man mentally abused them by holding a door open. Just look at the state of the poor sluts who ruined Suzanne’s seaside stroll.

‘I recently witnessed the opposite of sex. It was in the rain and cold, where bedraggled women, tiaras askew, traded insults with a gang of belching men’. Grim stuff, and the real tragedy was that not one of these women even wanted to be there: ‘No-one’s heart was in the blurred innuendo’ she lamented, scolding ‘the compulsory fun that must be had before some willing victim is offered up to the gods of matrimony. This last night of freedom must be publicly and expensively enjoyed’. Through clever use of words like ‘compulsory’, ‘victim’ and ‘must’ Suzanne summed up the modern malaise in which women are strong-armed into marriage by pig-headed partners, their unthinking friends forced to join them on a weekend break where they all pretend to have fun eating chips in fairy costumes while wishing they were at home watching Andre Dworkin interviews on YouTube.

In fact, the only good thing about a hen do is that inevitably one of the group will kick some bloke in the knackers. But even that tends to be somewhat hollow as a boot to the testicles is all every man deserves for enabling the misogynist society that threatens these uneducated check-out girls with death if they don’t conform. And judging by the yo-yo knickered lushes joylessly draining cocktails every weekend in Newcastle it’s a knocking bet that any misandry points earned from violently assaulting men are cancelled out by the fact that at least one of the others will end the night with two cocks in her mouth.

Hence Suzanne’s diatribe against people who think differently to her: ‘Surely the popularity of the hen do is a sign of how we are regressing?’ she asked, ignoring the implausibly sexist idea that it might just be a sign that lots of women like having a laugh with their mates. She then decried the way hen dos have been ‘sold to women as essential’, illustrating that being a feminists these days in no way stops you from generalizing women as blind consumers who will do pretty much anything if Hello! magazine tells them to.

Because dumb women are literally buying into this heinous cottage industry every week, and you can bet not one of them re-read SCUM Manifesto first to check it was okay with a dead schizophrenic from the 60s (clue: it’s fucking not). As well as crass expenses such as sex-toys and naked gay waiters, Suzanne has no time for the rampant materialism of ‘hotels and flights for those who can afford it, handcuffs and angel-wings for those who can’t’. Brutal stuff, particularly the way her wonky view of hen dos comes straight from Rita, Sue & Bob Too and ignores the fact that most women – even idiotic working-class ones – tend to get through the whole sordid process without an L-plate or flavoured condom in sight.

But like the horror of drunk women being a bit lairy, it’s the handcuffs and angel-wing crowd who really get Suzanne’s goat: ‘It could all be posher and involve a flight, a spa and a row over wedding favours but this is England’ she sneered, her message clear: I’d rather you didn’t go on a hen do at all but if you must then at the very least take in an art gallery.

As she clarified: ‘Yes, I’m here to be the bad fairy, the full feminist killjoy’, just in case anyone mistakenly though she was one of those fun-loving, good fairy feminists we read so much about. Y’know, those sell-outs who believe feminism is about freedom and equality rather than telling stupid women what to think. But Suzanne’s main bugbear is how the rise in hen dos has coincided with a rise in women not relying on deluded media flunkies like her to tell them how oppressed they are.

‘Hen dos didn’t really start here until the mid-80s and really got going in the 90s. This is exactly when feminism became devalued’. As you can see, Suzanne isn’t concerned about the parts of the world where non-Western women have to deal with slightly more oppression than wondering what Germaine Greer would think if she saw you sipping champagne in a Jacuzzi; she’s too busy trying to find someone to hold responsible for her movement’s failure to teach silly women what’s good for them. Because feminism’s decline couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the sneering, hectoring articles like Suzanne’s.

She concluded by re-asserting her maverick status: ‘I am well aware that to question marriage as an institution marks me down as some kind of throwback’. Indeed, though not so much of throwback that she supports the original feminist intentions of achieving empowerment and independence. No, the only kind of empowerment Suzanne appears interested in is empowering other feminists to look down their noses at women who don’t think like her. Which is why she is so out-of-step with prevailing wrong-think, despite the fact that plenty of women in the real world share her disinterest in marriage. They just don’t feel the need to tell everyone else they should share it too. The selfish cows.

Much like those women who get married because they want to. Or rather, because society makes them believe they want to. As Suzanne rages, the institution of marriage is ‘really about the transmission of property’, which is news to everyone who got married because they were in love. But Suzanne’s not here to indulge cod-romantic drivel; she’s here to rail against ‘the re-packaging’ of love, sex and romance as ‘experiences that are compulsory and fairly uniform’, re-iterating for the umpteenth time that the institution of marriage is forced upon women without their consent and all weddings are joyless, identikit affairs designed to prop up the patriarchy.

So agreed New Statesman writer Sarah Ditum, who leapt to Suzanne’s defence on Twitter, deploying familiar feminist tactics like straw-man arguments, ad hominem attacks and ignoring everything her opponent says. Predictably, Suzanne was attacked BTL by self-hating women and privileged white males using boneheaded logical fallacies – such as personal experience – to dispute Suzanne’s theory that women only have hen dos and get married because society makes them.

And it was on these points that Sarah took to social media to defend her colleague, deflecting criticism of Suzanne’s piece with the confidence, composure and smug hysteria of a young Owen Jones batting away criticism of Venezuela. And like Owen when prompted to comment on that socialist utopia today, Sarah deftly avoided awkwardness by abandoning thread when asked a question she couldn’t answer.

So when it was put to Sarah that lots of women have hen dos and get married because they, like, want to, she shot back: ‘Thank you for this amazing insight into the female brain’, discrediting her opponents vile, misogynist and demonstrably true claim by virtue of the fact that he has a cock and balls.

When it was pointed out that this was actually an insight into the normal people Suzanne spent a whole column sneering at, Sarah countered brilliantly: ‘How dare political writing ever do anything but shower the world in validation?’. Brave words from a woman complaining that a column she likes isn’t being showered with validation, and ones that slyly ignore the fact that there’s nothing ‘political’ about arguing that women don’t know their own minds. Indeed, chauvinist icons like Oliver Reed and Josef Fritzl were doing it years ago and no-one called them ‘feminazis’.

Sarah then went for the jugular, pointing out that as a married women she is uniquely placed to speak for the millions of married women who aren’t her: ‘Since I’m married and agreed with the column perhaps you could stop presuming to speak for me’ she blasted one agitator, before deploying razor-sharp sarcasm to burst this mansplaining buffoon’s bubble: ‘No, you carry on, I’m sure that you can speak for married women much better than me, a married women’.

Which crystallised the dignified beauty of identity politics in one glorious sentence. Because everyone is defined by whatever group liberals put them in: you speak for one, you speak for all. That if you asked three different women their thoughts on marriage there’s a good chance you’d get there different answers is of no relevance to Sarah: the feminist angle is all that matters. It’s bad enough self-hating women defying icons like Suzanne but it’s downright micro-aggressive to have bloody men going around disagreeing with educated females too. I’m also fairly certain it’s a hate crime. So well done, trolls: you’re criminals now as well as manspreading mind-rapists.

Luckily, like a latter day Dorothy Parker, Sarah’s barbs just kept on coming: ‘I don’t know why we bother opening our mouths, it’s much easier to wait for a man to tell us what we think’ she scolded. Because in reality it’s easier to wait for Suzanne to tell women what they think. In fact it’s imperative: as she pointed out, most women – especially Brexit-voting ones – can’t be trusted to formulate their own opinions on something as damaging as marriage. And if role models like Suzanne don’t make up their empty minds for them there’s every chance they could end up radicalised by self-hating media Uncle Tanyas like Ella Whelan, Laura Perrins or Bianca Gascoigne.

Not that Sarah is at risk. Because despite agreeing that women only have hen dos and get married because society forces them to, it’s clear that this only applies to those less educated, less middle class, less virtuous than Sarah. And those daft enough to disagree with her about it only have themselves to blame when they are exposed as privileged buffoons for making the simple point that not everyone who gets married does so against their will.

Not that Sarah was arguing against that point. Indeed, she spent most of her Twitter ‘debate’ accusing her opponent of arguing a point he quite literally wasn’t: ‘Your point is you think choice preserves institutions from critique. It’s actually a very bad point’. It certainly is, especially when the person she accused didn’t actually make that point, instead cloaking their reactionary defence of the institution of marriage in the seemingly standard view that most women aren’t idiots. But modern feminism long ago reclaimed hypocrisy as a virtue, hence Sarah happily accusing someone of arguing that the institution of marriage should be protected from critique despite the fact that the person she accused never once mentioned the ‘institution’ and in their own words ‘couldn’t give two shits’ about it. It’s refreshing that while Sarah doesn’t believe in preserving marriage from critique she’ll still happily have a pointless conversation on social media preserving a Guardian column from it.

And with that she was off, ignoring her white male opponent’s request for evidence that he said the institution of marriage should not be critiqued. Because proof is no match for feelings, dammit, and when someone as educated as Sarah has the feeling that a male’s opinion isn’t worth as much as hers because he doesn’t have tits and a fanny then she’s usually right.

Much like modern feminists, who as well as sharing Sarah’s smug, hysterical debating technique, will also happily align with institutions far more dangerous than marriage if there are intersectionality points in it. Hence the exciting events of the last month, in which feminists all over the world struck a blow against misogyny by showing solidarity with religious conservatives who believe women should be covered up unless their bare arms force men to rape them.

So we had the Swedish government, who vowed to stand up to sexist oaf Donald Trump but happily bowed, curtsied and donned hijabs at the behest of the Iranian theocracy. And who could forget the anti-Trump protesters supporting oppressed women by lauding an item of clothing that oppresses women, in particular the German lady whose T-shirt boasted ‘Hijab is Empowerment’? Naturally, she didn’t specify whether the hijab was empowering for the woman forced to wear them or the men who force women to wear them. But here’s hoping her plain-talking sets a precedent for pointless rallies still to come, perhaps even influencing those idiots who invade coastal towns with torn veils, rubber truncheons and inflatable bell-ends. Can you imagine the unbridled joy of stumbling across a hen party in matching purple T-shirts declaring ‘Burqa Is Liberation’, ‘Stoning Is Social Justice’ and ‘FGM Is A Feminist Statement’?

Even Suzanne would raise a glass of cheap fizz to that.

(Photo: Landii)

 

 

By Ben Pensant

Few things warm the hearts of modern liberals more than a self-righteous anti-Brexit diatribe from James O’Brian. Since the EU referendum he has regularly schooled shit-for-brains Leave-voting callers to his LBC show with a cunning blend of wit, knowledge and hysterical over-reaction. And this week was no exception as he took to the airwaves to blame the right-wing media for turning ignorant proles into ignorant proles who beat up immigrants.

Bemoaning the shocking rise in hate crimes since that dark day in June, James offered a lengthy monologue on how this was the fault of the press for normalising racism by writing nasty stories about immigrants. Of course, normalising ugly views is something James knows a lot about as he’s spent every day since we left the EU normalising the idea that Leave-voters were too stupid to know what they were voting for.

More tellingly, James has first hand experience of what goes on at these vile publications having worked at The Daily Xpress for several years. Presumably he spent his time writing the William Lovebite gossip column documenting all the goose-stepping that went on during editorial meetings so he could expose them years later. Indeed, so clever was his subterfuge that there is no record whatsoever of him condemning his employers for whipping up anti-immigrant hatred while he was in receipt of their racist blood money.

Which explains why he targeted those who ‘cheerleaded’ Brexit for the rise in attacks on foreigners, despite the fact that not one newspaper has ever told its readers to attack foreigners. In fact, the only British publication to explicitly encourage violence was The Guardian, who recently produced a video in which a well-spoken journalist celebrated the ‘cathartic’ release she felt when Nazi idiot Frank Spencer was assaulted, supported the use of violence instead of ‘reasoned debate’ and called for an end to ‘the narcissism of good behaviour’. O’Brian occasionally writes for The Guardian too which probably explains why he was far less vocal about an actual instance of a newspaper condoning violence than the imagined incitement of the right-wing press. And by ‘far less vocal’ I mean ‘quieter than JK Rowland’s Twitter feed since being asked if she’d be willing to let the refugees she cares so much about doss in one of her mansions’.

But James isn’t worried about facts and evidence when there’s a narrative to protect. And that narrative – that hate crimes have risen and it’s all because of Brexit and The Daily Fail – is one that really needs protecting as it’s about as robust as Trump’s weave.

‘Hate crime has broken every single record this year’ he lamented, cleverly positioning it as a scourge on society on par with murder, as opposed to a term rendered meaningless by the CPS applying it not just to racist violence or bigoted abuse but opinions we don’t like and funny looks on the bus. Indeed, while there is little to admire in our fascistic police force, one area in which they excel is in their ongoing re-definition of what constitutes a hate crime. So now, if a taxi driver believes a lousy tip was motivated by racism rather than stinginess and reports it to the police it will be logged and added to the stats quicker than you can say ‘if you’re expecting more than 10% with an offensive hula doll on your dashboard forget it’. So when James talks of hate crime breaking more unwanted records than Alan Pardew, he’s actually talking about reports of hate crime. Which as any good leftist knows, is exactly the same thing.

Of course a police officer or a lawyer may tell you otherwise, as would anyone who isn’t too ideologically warped to note that there’s a huge differences between reports and convictions. But the real point isn’t actual hate crime; no-one really cares about immigrants and ethnic minorities being assaulted. No, the priority is our self-worth which is so fragile and paternalistic it needs constant validation. And that means blaming Brexit for a spike in hate crime despite scant evidence that this spike had anything to do with Brexit or even exists. The point isn’t the welfare of immigrants – the point is to feel as morally superior as possible by putting everything from global warming to the decline of Dr Who? down to Britain leaving the EU.

And few are as morally superior as James, who was well ahead of the curve in predicting that post-Brexit the ‘lid would come off’. As he told a sceptical friend: ‘You don’t know what I do for a living. I deal with this every day’. Indeed, few people do know what James does for a living, other than berating people less virtuous than him, contorting his brow into increasingly earnest positions every time an immigrant calls his show, and donning his special BBC specs to present Newsbeat when Kevin has the shits or Emily fancies a night in with a couple of hookers and a box of knives.

Of course, what James does do is tough it out on the frontline, and there’s no war zone more dangerous than talk radio. Quoting his own pre-referendum warning he summed up the descent into hell that started last summer: ‘I said ‘the people bubbling away on social media are gonna start doing it in public now. I hope I’m wrong. But it’s gonna happen’. And then it happened. Overnight. Jo Cox was dead before the vote was cast. It happened’.

Stirring stuff, despite there being no evidence that Thomas Mare read The Scum or The Daily Heil or that either newspaper told their readers to murder MPs. There is evidence Mare had a history of far-right sympathies, anti-social behaviour and buying bomb-making manuals, but these pale into insignificance compared to the after-effects of reading one too many Rob Liddle columns.

James then turned his ire on the hacks themselves and their attempts to deflect blame: ‘If I’d been a cheerleader for it I’d pretend it wasn’t my fault too’ he suggested, and you can be sure that when the police and public start treating genuine hate crimes with scepticism James and every other fearmonger will be happy to admit their complicity. Except they won’t, silly. Because even when the modern left are wrong they’re wrong because they’re right – virtue beats reality any day of the week. And when it comes to complicity, James has nowt on the tory press.

‘You encouraged people to vote to leave the European Union, to punch themselves really hard in the face for several years’. Because the low-information idiots who got us into this mess couldn’t possibly have made their own minds up about the EU without the guidance of Robert Murdoch. But James has to believe that all it takes is a story about round bananas or a photo of a 40-year-old Syrian toddler to convince the public to vote Leave or set fire to a mosque. Because the more powerful and influential bad people like Katie Hopkins are the more powerful and influential good people like James become.

‘Then you realise the upsurge in race-hate crime is down to you as well’ he scolded. And indeed it is, though James shouldn’t let the righties take all of the credit. The scaremongering and alarmism practiced by him and firebrands like OJ ‘Owen’ Jones played its part in misrepresenting the statistics too, as did adding to the fears of immigrants by warning them Britain is over-run with violent racists. ‘Immigrants are living in fear!’ cry the left-wing press, and we should be grateful that James helped embolden that fear by telling immigrants that everyone hates them.

Sadly, most immigrants are sensible enough to ignore the hand wringing of self-righteous shock-jocks, preferring to see the world through their own eyes rather than those of a man who doesn’t know the differences between reports and convictions. Equally, most Brits are tolerant enough to read a Toryraph story about the Rotherham rape gangs without going on an anti-Muslim killing-spree. But as the EU referendum and the election of Trump have shown: what do the majority know?

Because allowing The People to control the narrative is asking for trouble. Let those degenerates have their way and there’d be no hate crime discussion at all. Because despite the tireless work of the CPS, the ACPO and an unholy alliance of anti-free speech activists and brain-damaged academics, the majority are uninterested in going that extra mile. They won’t report the Home Secretary for making a speech about immigration, they’re unlikely to threaten a train driver with arrest for discussing the migrant crisis, and there isn’t a cat in hell’s chance they’ll be so disturbed by a neighbour handing them a leaflet on Brexit that they hide under the settee and dial 999.

All of which are documented examples of the appalling surge in race hate; race hate which didn’t exist pre-referendum, when life in Britain was one long multi-cultural Mardi Gras, all races and creeds co-existing in rainbow-tinted harmony thanks to our membership of the caring, sharing EU. But that was then. We live in a different world now, a world in which newspapers turn people racist and Trump flexes his white supremacist muscles by deporting illegal immigrants, horrifying liberals worldwide despite the fact that every country on the planet does it and notorious white supremacist Barack Obama did it more than any other President in history.

But to maintain the narrative we must focus on deportations and travel bans because otherwise we might have to admit that one of Trump’s most illiberal traits – his dislike of press freedom – is something the British left wholeheartedly approve of. Indeed, Trump would applaud the censorship-via-corporate blackmail tactics of Stop Funding Hate, as outside of the regressive left there is no-one who hates opposing views more than The Donald. And as a wealthy, powerful man he’d go crazy for Section 40’s proposals to stop newspapers from printing true stories about wealthy, powerful men. It’s almost a shame he chose the Republicans as someone as censorious as Trump could have been a fantastic fit for the contemporary left. If only he’d hated Jews instead of Muslims…

Unfortunately he’s had his chips now and won’t be forgiven by the likes of James, much like Brexit voters, right-wing columnists and people who value facts over hysteria. And Mr O’Brian was up to his old tricks again when presenting Newsbeat this week, dismissively introducing Trump-voting Muslim reformer Astra Nomani as someone who has ‘written for Breitbart and The Hill’, despite the fact that she’s a respected journalist who’s worked at The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The New York Times and has never written a word for Breitbart.

But facts are expendable and only Kellyanne Conroy knows this more than James. Hence his deployment of the same misrepresentation he used when discussing hate crimes to gently nudge the Newsbeat audience into pre-judging Astra as someone not worth listening to. Unless James actually knew nothing whatsoever about his guest and was too busy practicing his earnest face and polishing his glasses to do two minutes of research. Let’s just hope the next time James appears on Question Night David Bumblebee doesn’t introduce him as ‘that bloke with the beard who used to pop up on The Ian Titchmarsh Show’.

Because that really would be a hate crime.

 

By Ben Pensant

Like most leftists I was thoroughly disappointed that a federal appeals court refused to re-instate Donald Trump’s travel ban, as it meant I and the useful idiots who would re-tweet Lily Allen’s shopping list if there was a ‘like’ in it had one less thing to moralise about. Not that Lily does her own shopping, mind – she’s a creative for god’s sake. But if you are interested in the contents of her pantry you’re better off asking one of the 45-year-old Syrian children she invited to sleep in her shed. Though when I say ‘invited’ I actually mean they’ve been secretly hiding there since turning up on the Fuck You firebrand’s doorstep and being politely told by her legal team to sling their bastard hooks. Desperate times.

But educationally challenged starlets aside, the oppression of Muslims is the left’s lifeblood. Hence our excitement at the executive order, greeted with delight by all manner of intelligent commentators and Patton Oswalt. Indeed, Oswalt’s inability to deal with Trump’s presidency has earned him a legion of new fans who know him as the little bloke who hates democracy, rather than the fat lesbian out of King Of Queens. But the tears shed by Oswalt and co. could be in vain if the thing they’ve been shedding tears about doesn’t happen. Much like Brexit: it may be a xenophobic disaster that proves what happens when you let bin-men have as much of a say as Interpretive Dance graduates but by god, we’d be lost without it.

No, the travel ban needs to happen NOW, especially as we’ve only just started fabricating horror stories about Somalian migrants flushed down the toilets of 747s above the Atlantic. With the ban in place it gives us another cast-iron excuse to blame the West when oppressed Muslims decide to express their anger at imperialism by joining a group who kidnap and rape children. In a nutshell, to preserve their place at the top of the victimhood league table we must pretend this executive order is, like, the worst thing ever and anyone who disagrees is Mussolini.

So we can’t just say the travel ban is illiberal, unconstitutional and punishes innocent Muslims; we have to say it will make those innocent Muslims become jihadists.

We can’t just say it’s potentially ineffective as countries not on the list have produced more terrorists than those on it; we have to say Muslims are no threat at all, despite the fact we just said the ban could turn them into terrorists overnight.

We can’t just say that no terrorist attack on US soil has been committed by a refugee; we have to say that the travel ban is symptomatic of Trump’s sadistic plan to oppress people fleeing warzones and destroy the Muslim world, a plan somewhat half-arsed as the list includes only seven out of a possible fifty-seven Islamic countries.

And we can’t just say that temporarily banning people from places like Iran penalizes anti-regime allies and activists; we have to pretend that those regimes are progressive utopias, illustrated by the recent rally in Tehran at which tens of thousands toasted the 1979 revolution by burning flags and chanting ‘Death To America!’.

Because the fact that a 90-day ban is infinitely less damaging to Muslim countries than the 26,000 bombs Obama dropped on them in 2016 is irrelevant. As is the fact that the countries on the list were suggested by Obama’s administration, who instigated a similar restriction on Iraqis in 2011. Presumably we were all pre-occupied cheering the Arab Spring and reading Owen Jones articles lauding Venezuela to protest that.

No, these inconvenient facts are best ignored and forgotten, remarkably easy options as most of us were unaware of them in the first place. Like much of the Democrats’ foreign policy, if they happened on Trump’s watch your average protester would shit their privilege out. Hence we must maintain the narrative that the ban isn’t only dangerously indiscriminate; it’s more dangerously indiscriminate than the bombs Obama dropped on Libya.

Thank god several side effects were already in motion before the ban hit the skids, the first of which was the petition to cancel Trump’s state visit to the UK. As we saw over the last few years, there’s nothing middle-class Brits like more than campaigning to silence people who think differently to them. And before you could say ‘Kale Pesto on Rye’, the armchair activists had set the world to rights by opening their iPads and writing their names in a box.

Jeremy Corbyn was one of the first to demand Trump’s visit be cancelled, taking issue with Theresa May’s reluctance to condemn him: ‘If you are neutral in situations of injustice you have taken the side of the oppressor’ he railed, and Corbyn’s certainly no neutral when it comes to oppressors, as demonstrated by his 2014 appearance at an event celebrating 35 years of Iranian oppression.

He then applauded John Bercow, a man so opposed to illiberal leaders visiting parliament he welcomed President Xi Jinping of China, a country whose human rights record makes Trump’s administration look like the Red Cross: ‘We must stand up for our country’s values. Trump’s state visit should not go ahead’. Which British values Jezza was standing up for when he invited hate-preacher Raed Salah for tea in the commons aren’t clear, unless you’re one of those Brits whose values include suicide bombing and believing Jews make bread from the blood of children.

Corbyn’s values are so strong he also seems to have forgotten his objection to the previous, equally ineffective petition to stop Trump visiting the UK. Back then he even offered Trump a tour of Finsbury Park Mosque to show him the peaceful face of Islam. Which is a bit like taking Morrissey to a battery farm to show him the peaceful face of animal slaughter. But Jezza knows the score and if he wants to convince Trump Muslims are a peaceful bunch by taking him somewhere that’s housed more terrorists than the Maze prison then good for him.

Corbynite Billy Bragg was in favour of the ban too, claiming on Question Time that welcoming Trump was ‘normalizing his behaviour’. Bragg failed to explain if that meant Jezza was normalising anti-Semitism when he invited Hamas and Hezbollah to parliament but frankly, why should he? Because in the world of Corbyn and the Sexual Tea songsmith, a temporary travel restriction imposed by a loud-mouthed head of state is infinitely worse than murdering Jewish people.

The reaction on social media was equally celebratory, one bright spark even suggesting that a petition which anyone, anywhere can sign multiple times is ‘arguably more democratic’ than the EU referendum and represents ‘the will of the people’. That’s right, a petition containing 2 million signatures – many of which came from the same email address in South America – is more representative than 17 million voters.

And the reason it’s more legitimate is because the right people signed it, as opposed to all those wrong people who voted Leave. Y’know, those morons who don’t deserve a say because they think differently to us, despite making up the majority of those who got off their arses to vote. To see the right way to react look no further than the Downing Street protest arranged by Owen Jones, a man so disgusted by authoritarian fascists he’s conveniently forgotten his support for authoritarian fascist Hugo Chavez.

And what a triumph it was, with Trump apparently so rattled he demanded the FBI open a file on ‘this Owen Downing wise-ass’. As lefty comic/Keith Moon lookalike Mark Steel mused upon the enormous crowd of cardigan-clad protesters in Brighton: ‘I’m starting to think we might get rid of this fucker’. Presumably ‘this fucker’ is Trump and not some cardigan-clad fucker at the march but hey, it’s great to know Mark has lost none of his hope, optimism and delusions of grandeur. And it’s nice to see him disprove the theory that he’s the only socialist who’s ever said anything intentionally funny.

Similarly, on Friday Owen congratulated himself as news broke that British officials have dropped plans for Trump to address parliament: ‘We are winning and we have them on the run’ he boasted, and with good reason. Because as anyone who’s studied American history knows, one thing guaranteed to terrify the leader of the free world is the prospect of not giving a speech. So until #StopTrump phase two kicks in let’s take pride in convincing ourselves the President is so petrified he’s spent all weekend shitting his ginger wig off.

But we mustn’t become complacent. Because wrong people are everywhere, like ants in jackboots, which is why the domino effect from Trump’s travel ban is necessary to smoke them out. And ‘smoke’ is the operative word judging by the brave souls who recently shut down a talk from professional gobshite Milo Yiannopoulos by setting fire to stuff.

Because at UC Berkeley we saw an attack on free speech – encompassing violence, arson and theft – that quite literally wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for Trump. As was pointed out by numerous middle-class left-wingers who’ve never seen real violence in their lives, Trump’s authoritarianism has literally forced peaceful liberals to punch strangers and loot liquor stores. And the great thing is that when these protest get too out of hand – a fascist cop mis-gendering a non-binary brick thrower; a rioter culturally appropriating Irish nationalism by knee-capping someone – we have brave liberals like George Takei from Lost In Space to re-assure us:

‘If they’ve got black ski masks on and carry crowbars they aren’t peaceful protesters. They’re outside agitators trying to discredit us’ he tweeted, none of which had stopped him defending these outside agitators in the first place. But whether the Berkeley rioters were agent provocateurs planted by Trump or clueless leftists who believe you deal with opposing views by burning stuff, the fact is it wouldn’t have happened if the likes of Milo had kept their mouths shut and voted for Hillary. And as George should know having spent his career defending the galaxy from evil, the four-eyed hipster who punched Rebel reporter Sheila Gunn was clearly Dark Vader in disguise.

But aside from brave attempts to fight fascism with fascism, by far the best consequence of Trump’s travel ban was the Quebec mosque shooting in which six people were killed and 19 injured. Because from Lee Rigby to Jo Cox, there’s nothing regressives love more than blaming acts of murder on anyone but the murderer, and from the second the ban was announced we’ve been praying for an Islamist terror attack to blame on Trump. As it happens fate threw a delicious curveball by giving us a white supremacist suspect and twenty-five Muslim victims. Bingo! Because while alt-right trolls eagerly anticipated the announcement that the killer was a Muslim, we smugly sat back knowing we had all the bases covered; Muslim killer? Blame Trump for radicalising him. White nationalist killer? Blame Trump for incitement. Job done.

Of course it means we now have to wait for the first Islamic terror attack on Trump’s watch but make no mistake, it will be glorious. Because much like the Neo Nazi responsible for killing six Muslims whose names aren’t important, whoever carries out the first Trump-era jihadist act will be completely blameless. As all manner of seasoned politicos, intelligent debaters and Silicon Valley actors have pointed out, all it takes is one funny look at an airport to turn a peaceful Muslim into someone who shoots people in nightclubs. In the chilling words of Kumail Nanjiani:

‘How to make terrorists. 1. Ban everyone from a certain group from entering the country. 2. Wait’. A theory backed up by those stories we regularly hear about Israelis committing terrorist attacks in the sixteen Muslim countries they’re banned from. At least you would hear them, if the media wasn’t controlled by the Zios. Until then we must ignore the flimsy MSM narrative that there is something specific to Islam that compels a minority of Muslims to kill people, as if there were some kind of Islamic bible that explicitly condones killing anyone who hasn’t submitted to Allah.

Because despite all the right-wing whining, there is no equivalence whatsoever between Trump’s ban and the ban on Israelis entering sixteen Muslim countries, and not just because one will only last 90 days while the other will be in existence as long as Muhammad has a hole in his arse. No, it’s different because Israelis aren’t as oppressed as Muslims. Which explains why they’re less likely to react to travel restrictions by decapitating people.

With lack of oppression comes privilege and it’s this privilege that stops Israelis from blowing up mosques in Bangladesh. It’s nothing to do with the fact that they come from virtually the only country in the Middle-East that doesn’t teach its citizens non-Muslims are evil and anyone who disagrees deserves to die.

Inevitably, some whining Rabbi will pipe up that to claim Jews have never been oppressed ignores a little incident involving six million people that occurred last century. But as Ken Livingstone has repeatedly argued – using a unique blend of insight, analysis and fuck-witted misreading of history – Jews can hardly complain about genocide when Hitler supported Zionism. And as Corbyn acquaintances such as brother Piers and the Rev. Stephen Sizer would no doubt agree, it’s fine to talk about the holocaust as long as you remember it didn’t actually happen.

But it’s good to know we have funny-men like Kumail onside, demonstrating their opposition to smearing Muslims as terrorists by suggesting all it takes is a travel ban to turn Muslims into terrorists. And turn them it must; we’ve got four years of this bozo and the only thing guaranteed to make that fly over will be regular acts of Islamic terrorism we can blame on the West.

In the meantime, let’s just enjoy the free virtue-points as Trump’s fascist takeover continues. And if he doesn’t turn out to be the second coming of Voldemort and Len Fairclough? Well, we can always just pretend he is. As notorious Islamophobe and self-hating homosexual Douglas Murray put it: ‘There’s not enough fascism to go around’. And for once, he was right. But with the orange buffoon ensconced in the White House and protest movements silencing opinions they don’t like on a daily basis it’s never been easier to create your own.

Ban that, Drumpf.

 

 

By Ben Pensant

In 2007 Islamophobic Blairite Nick Cohen published What’s Left?, a libellous attack on liberal values that took the bizarre step of using facts and evidence to characterise modern left-wingers as anti-Western apologists-for-terror (as if these were bad things). From Chomsky and Pilger to Galloway and Livingstone, the book smeared liberal voices by repeating things they’d said and done, a tactic that would become all too familiar post-Jezza. It was a hatchet-job, basically, and a text-book example of what happens when progressives commit the cardinal sin of doubting their faultless ideology.

But one of the main criticisms of the book – apart from the fact it was written by a self-hating warmonger  – was that the malaise Cohen described existed only on the far-left fringes and was unlikely to influence mainstream opinion. Which was true back then, as the left were yet to realise the way to keep their ideals relevant was not via charismatic, centrist politicians with broad appeal but drab men in duffel coats fond of eating mung-beans and praising terrorists. Even with Labour in power it was clear that the way forward was to turn them into a fearsome protest party with no clear policies, a leader with the worst approval rating since approval ratings began and a belief that repeatedly putting Diane Abbott on telly will secure votes through her wit, charm and unfettered fuck-wittery.

Happily, a decade on we find ourselves in a gloriously regressive climate: the BBC pay gushing tribute to murderous dictators; newspapers are forced to apologise for calling Islamic honour killings Islamic; and mainstream left-wingers spend the fortnight since Trump’s inauguration honouring folk whose favoured methods of debate include punching people, smashing up property and throwing bricks at coppers.

That’s right: violence is no longer the preserve of hard-as-nails activists like Aaron Bastani – it’s gone mainstream. Because while the left have long been in favour of censoring people they disagree with, they’re now cool with punching them too. And it shows no sign of changing, as this week alone has seen everyone from UFC champions to gay Breitbart editors feel the righteous wrath of the regressives.

Highlights caught on camera include: a brave SJW trying to set a Trump supporter’s hair on fire; a Trump supporter knocked unconscious at Portland International Airport; a Trump supporter pepper sprayed while being interviewed at Berkeley; and my personal favourite, the brave man who punched reporter Sheila Gunn before being defended by female accomplices who warned Gunn to leave before things ‘escalate’. These incidents are nothing special of course – the far-right have been using force against opponents for years. But the difference is that while moderate right wing voices condemn extremism and violence, we on the mainstream left think nothing of defending and encouraging it.

Because as has been repeatedly pointed out by scores of intelligent journalists and Mona Eltahawy, when that protester punched Neo-Nazi arsehole Richard Spencer the other week, he wasn’t just striking a blow against fascism: he was striking a blow for everyone who would rather silence bad ideas than debate them. Because only a coward would try to expose a Nazi by using solid arguments to tear apart his ugly ideology on camera. No, far better to stick it to a Nazi by adopting the tactics of the Nazi.

As ever, first out of the traps to laud the sucker-puncher was Graham ‘One Man Godwins’ Linehan. As a fan of Hamas and Hugo Chavez OMG is totally cool with violence and fascism, just as long as the people behaving violently and fascistic aren’t white or western. Predictably, trolls suggested it was hypocritical for someone who earns a living speaking freely to support using violence to stop people speaking freely. But OMG was having none of it and I’m certain he’d happily to take a knee-capping should any radicalised priest take offence at the blatant Catholiphobia of Father Ted kicking Bishop Brennan up the arse.

He also evoked the Dunkirk spirit by comparing people who disagreed with him to Nazi collaborators, shutting up one nuisance by posting that picture of Captain America punching Hitler that SJWs have been gleefully circulating in lieu of an argument for the last fortnight. Which was perceived as a masterstroke among the historically-illiterate, despite the fact that the Nazis we fought in WW2 were a tiny bit more dangerous than a gang of idiot racists sitting in their mother’s basements wearing Pepe the Frog pyjamas, calling people ‘cucks’ on 4Chan and dreaming about getting spit-roasted by Milo and Ann Coulter. But the principle is identical, hence the spectacle of middle-class comedy writers mentioning young men who gave their lives and limbs for the good of humanity in the same breath as a student who punched someone in the street then ran away like a schoolgirl.

Elsewhere, social media was awash with more people whose jobs involve free speech advocating violence to curb free speech. Guardian columnist and professional Corbynite Abi Wilkinson took a leaf out of her direct action-loving big sister Owen Jones’ book and tweeted ‘Spencer Sucker Puncher 2020′ before bragging about how she and her chums had a good chortle watching the assault footage in the pub. A celebratory night by all accounts, and unconfirmed reports allege that Abi and her gang of tearaways were later ejected from the pub for carrying fake IDs, leaving chewing gum under tables and being reduced to fits of giggles by the condom machine in the ladies’.

Some may find it odd that someone who’s written at length about fascism, the extreme-right and silencing opponents would now support the use of fascistic, extreme-right tactics to silence opponents. But if Abi’s in favour of violence against people who support murderous, authoritarian ideologies that’s up to her. And I’m sure she’ll be happy to be reminded of this if anyone ever gives Diane ‘Mao did more good than harm’ Abbott a bloody good hiding.

Similarly, American firebrand Dan Arel penned an overblown article intellectualising his commitment to violence, which basically amounted to ‘If you punch a Nazi, it’s self defence’. But not before taking to Twitter to accuse anyone who disagreed of enabling white supremacy. Unconcerned that the sucker-puncher had engendered sympathy for an actual white supremacist as opposed to pretend ones on the internet, Dan brilliantly countered claims that condoning violence was somewhat illiberal: ‘I’m not a liberal. I’m a socialist’.

Indeed, and when he says ‘socialist’ he’s not on about the kind, caring, collectivist sort that only exist in the minds of people who’ve never read any history. No, he means he’s an actual socialist, in all its authoritarian, anti-democratic, seizing-power-by-force-and-silencing-opposing-views splendour.

To illustrate this, when it was pointed out that Dan had previously claimed ‘violence is for the ignorant’, ‘resorting to violence is a sign of the weak and uneducated’ and ‘if you need violence to enforce your ideas, your ideas are worthless’ he responded by calmly ignoring the point and calling his opponent a ‘fucking racist apologist’. He then countered more charges of hypocrisy by accusing people of ‘normalising white nationalism’ and shedding ‘fucking tears over a Nazi’, before justifying punching Spencer because he is ‘a literal fucking Nazi you fucking moron’.

Proving categorically that Arel was correct when he said Nazis can’t be defeated with words. Especially not words that sound like they were scribbled by a huffy teenage eco-warrior who’s just discovered Rage Against The Machine and dropped a tin of ethically correct dog-food on his foot.

In a similar vein, non-binary agit-girl Laurie Penny took to Twitter to condemn the police for having the nerve to protect members of the public from privileged berks in V-For-Vendetta masks: ‘Police are massively overreacting. Constant teargas and flashbangs’. I dunno, you can’t even throw bricks and smash up property without getting hassled by the pigs these days. Ignoring the fact that crying, starting riots and punching people because a bad man won an election is practically the dictionary definition of ‘overreacting’, Laurie followed up these despatches with her take on Trump’s vile inauguration address:

‘This is a terrifying speech. The biggest cheer came when he pledged to wipe out ‘Islamic’ terrorism’. It’s comforting to know that the left’s love affair with terrorism has become so passionate they’re now terrified it might end. I’m sure the tourists who hid under sun-loungers while their loved ones were being massacred on a beach in Tunisia would agree that the only thing scarier is a speech from a President pledging to stop it happening again. Let’s just hope none of the music fans who played dead under piles of corpses in the Bataclan heard Trump’s foul words – having a gig disrupted by gun-wielding Islamists is frightening enough but to hear thousands of Americans applaud talk of destroying the ideology that made it happen is shit-your-pants-tastic.

Predictably, a gang of ‘lizard-brained’ Islamophobes took Laurie to task but she deflected the criticism by ignoring most of it. She eventually retorted that anyone who thought she supported Islamic terrorism had ‘misread’ her and the reason she found the speech so scary was because ‘Islamic terrorism was framed as the enemy rather than terrorism in general’. Which can’t be stressed enough, especially when you consider all those reports we hear about radical Anglicans planting bombs, politicised Calvinists shooting up nightclubs and rabid scientologists establishing mediaeval hellholes where children and homosexuals are raped and murdered.

Of course, Laurie and other regressive leftists tend not to acknowledge Islamic terrorism at all (much like Islamic misogyny, Islamic homophobia, Islamic racism or indeed Islamic-anything that might force them to accept that the religion they avoid criticising isn’t too keen on people like them). Hence why the first reaction to any terror attack is to condemn the people who’ve been attacked, as demonstrated by Laurie’s infamous ‘Je ne suis pas Charlie’ tweet, in which she refused to show solidarity with murdered journalists on the grounds that their magazine was waacist.

It’s a measure of how principled Laurie is that she had the confidence to make such comments, despite the fact she’s clearly never read Charlie Hebdo and wouldn’t know real racism if it smashed her designer specs and threw her through Starbucks window. Unlike the oppressed, subjugated, Women’s March co-organiser Linda Sarsour who sadly knows plenty about real-life violence. Indeed, she pre-empted the current liberal thirst for inflicting physical pain back in 2011 when she said of FGM survivor Ayaan Hirsi Ali: ‘She’s askin 4 an a$$ whippin’. I wish I could take their vaginas away – they don’t deserve to be women’.

Echoing her admiration for Sharia Law and Saudi Arabia, it’s clear this modern feminist icon is happy to promote violence against women who’ve experienced more actual oppression than she could shake a giant pink fanny at. And this principled fusion of liberal values and reactionary religion has inspired feminists worldwide, as seen in Hocus Pocus star Kathy Najimy’s plea for women attending the march to wear hijabs in solidarity with their ‘about-to-be disenfranchised Muslim sisters’ who choose to wear them. No word on the millions of already-disenfranchised Muslim sisters who are forced to wear them, of course. But lets just hope Kathy’s LGBT friends followed her lead and showed solidarity with Iranian gays by turning up to the march wearing nooses.

Which would be another fine example of how the fringe beliefs Cohen described have come to dominate left-wing thinking in the present. And what a glorious present it is. Or at least it was, until Trump. Which means now more than ever we need the left to spread the mantra that violence is acceptable and free speech for people with repugnant views is not okay. Okay?

Because there’s never been a better time for art students, civil servants and small coffee-shop owners to unleash their inner fascists and go around chinning people. And as luck would have it, fatalities and brain injuries from single punches are rising rapidly, making the chances of killing a Nazi excitingly realistic. As Dan Arel points out, it’s our duty to punch Nazis and if this means somebody ending up in a morgue then tough titty. That assaulting someone is a rather dangerous criminal act is of no concern to people who live in a middle-class bubble where folk only get ‘bopped’ on the telly.

Because if the only people in danger of dying or spending the rest of their lives in a coma are white supremacists then what’s the problem? And before anyone pipes up, I can assure them the chances of mistaken identity are practically zero. I mean, come on, since when have lefties ever wrongly accused anyone of being a Nazi? And should this liberal-approved savagery result in demos and protests becoming synonymous with life-threatening injuries? Well, they started it. You can’t expect the left to care about the physical and social effects of violence when there are pronouns and Sun-headlines to worry about.

So I hereby urge Abi, OMG and Laurie to utilise the street-fighting skills they honed over years of discussing Chomsky in the BBC canteen and visit Newcastle on a Saturday night to tour the clubs telling everyone what ignorant white supremacists they are for voting Leave. I promise you’ll get the reception you deserve. All together now…

Fight! Fight! Fight!

 

By Ben Pensant

I didn’t think it was possible to feel prouder of my fellow leftists than I did after Dame Merril Streep roasted Donald Trump at the Golden Globes for mocking a disabled journalist whose name she couldn’t remember. But after the horror of President Evil’s inauguration – as frightening as watching thousands of people burn to death on TV according to Canadian columnist Doug Saunders – it would appear that the liberal elite have contrived to go one better with their sterling defence of everyone’s favourite Islamist Lindy Sarsour.

For the uninitiated, Sarsour – co-organiser of last Saturday’s triumphant Women’s March – has spent all week fending off accusations that she’s a pro-Sharia apologist for Saudi Arabia, accusations based on nothing more than lies, insinuations and the fact that she’s a pro-Sharia apologist for Saudi Arabia. In addition, her links to Hamas have been used to smear her as sympathetic to terrorism and antisemitism, claims which aren’t even worth refuting. Because if the last few years have taught us regressives anything it’s that it’s an utter waste of time trying to convince right-wing trolls that there’s nothing more polite and diplomatic than defending a group who shoot protesters, fire rockets at civilians and have a charter calling for the destruction of Jews worldwide.

Thankfully, a raft of liberal actors and writers leapt to her defence over these libellous, vindictive and demonstrably true claims, flat-out ignoring evidence to paint Sarsour as a feminist icon on par with Germaine Grier. Of course, if you thought Grier’s views on transgender folk were objectionable it’s probably best not to ask conservative Muslim Sarsour what she thinks of blokes who wear dresses and cut their penises off, even if some of her devout friends would be happy to perform the surgery. Women transitioning to men, on the other hand, could benefit greatly from an Islamist perspective, as five minutes of listening to the enlightened Sharia view on LGBTQED rights would make them shit their tits off.

In the meantime, Tinseltown’s finest lent Sarsour a helping hand by ignoring the various comments she’s made defending Sharia Law and excusing one of the most oppressive Islamic theocracies on the planet: “Sharia Law is reasonable and once u read into the details it makes a lot of sense. People just know the basics” she tweeted in 2011 and only the most bigoted EDL-supporting nugget would disagree.

Because once you get the basics out of the way – stripping women of legal rights, forcing them to wear veils, stoning them to death – there’s so much more to discover about Sharia. Take the quirky custom of forbidding receipt and payment of interest, which magically cancels out all the stuff that promotes wife-beating, child exploitation and everything else liberals pretend doesn’t exist:

“You’ll know when you’re living under Sharia Law if suddenly all your loans and credit cards become interest-free. Sounds nice, doesn’t it?” Sarsour wrote in 2015, and I’m sure it’s a great comfort to women in Islamic theocracies to know that after they’ve been robbed, sexually assaulted and executed for adultery their families won’t be landed with a hefty Barclaycard bill.

Sarsour’s cheerleaders claim she was being sarcastic when she wrote these pro-Sharia Tweets, and it’s possible as Islamists are renowned for their wacky sense of humour. Indeed, anyone who remembers the Islamic Human Rights Commission naming the Charlie Hebdon staff ‘Islamophobes Of The Year’ months after they were murdered will know all about the offbeat antics of the Khomeinist organisation future PM Jeremy Corbyn says “represents all that’s best in Islam”.

Similarly, the excuses made for Sarsour’s tweets supporting the KSA were that she has also condemned it numerous times. Which indeed she has as it’s virtually law that regressives have to attack Saudi Arabia at least once a day, not for anything silly like their habit of whipping journalists or killing women but because they’re allies of the West. But Sarsour is willing to go that extra mile and defend the Saudi head-choppers if it means letting her religion off the hook.

As she wrote in 2014: “Ten weeks of PAID maternity leave in Saudi Arabia. Yes PAID. And ur worrying about women driving. Puts us to shame”. And luckily 10 weeks is plenty of time for a new mother to recover from the public lashing she received for talking to the taxi driver who took her to hospital when she was in labour. And though caring for a screaming baby while covered in painful bruises may be challenging, at least she didn’t make the rookie mistake of removing her veil as that could mean getting pelted with objects somewhat sturdier than a teddy bear or a bowl of porridge.

But perhaps her most fitting tribute to Islamic regimes in general was her 2015 rebuke to racists who believe women get a raw deal in the Muslim world: “There are Muslim countries who have women presidents for God’s sake. In Saudi Arabia – ur boogeyman Islamic State – women r in parliament”. Indeed they are, putting the KSA streets ahead of those degenerate Western states who think they’re special just because they have female parliamentarians and allow women to drive, wear what they like and go for a walk alone without being attacked, arrested or sentenced to death.

Luckily, a whole host of establishment progressives who either don’t know of Sarsour’s views or simply don’t care took to social media to show that they’re not only totally cool with assaulting people they suspect of being Neo-Nazis, they’re also intensely relaxed about flogging, mutilating and murdering Muslims for such heinous crimes as blasphemy, homosexuality, or allowing themselves to be gang-raped.

Because no-one could possibly say ‘I disagree with Linda’s beliefs but the march wasn’t about her: it was about Trump’ . That would be selling out. No, we have to defend Sarsour to the hilt, by either ignoring her illiberal beliefs – like Belle magazine’s fantastic recent whitewash – or pretending Sharia Law is actually pretty cool and progressive – a’la CNN gobshite Sally Kohen.

The Southern Poverty Lie Centre were one of the first to comment, proving that branding Magic Nawaz and Ayaan Kirstie Ali as ‘anti-Muslim extremists’ wasn’t just a silly one-off: “Islamophobes have been attacking #WomensMarch organiser @lsarsour. We stand with her against this type of hate and bigotry #IMarchWithLinda” they tweeted, confirming once and for all that an organisation which boasts of combatting “hate, intolerance and discrimination” has given up the ghost entirely to join the glorious alliance between regressive left and religious right.

Elsewhere, Hollywood proved that Merril Streep isn’t the only deluded millionaire capable of propagating nonsense in the service of ideology. Step forward brave radical Suzanne Sarandon, taking a break from congratulating herself for campaigning against the only person who could have beaten Trump to laud Sarsour as “a strong voice advocating for women’s rights & understanding what Muslim women face”. Whether those women’s rights include the right not to live under the ‘reasonable’ Sharia doctrine that encourages men to “banish (women) to their couches and beat them” isn’t clear. Though I imagine a veteran like Sarandon has no truck with whining about such trivialities, as actresses from her generation have plenty of experience of couches and abuse and it didn’t do them any harm.

Ridiculous environmentalist Mark Buffalo offered similarly soothing words to Hamas-linked Sarsour: “You are the best of what America is. Multicultural, compassionate, committed, sincere & human. Don’t let anyone get you down” he gushed, echoing his campaign against homophobic bullying by lauding someone with ties to the compassionate fundamentalists who imprison homosexuals and recently executed a general for having sex with another man.

Luminaries from the liberal establishment weighed in too, such as principled conspiracy loon Naomi Cline: “Not this time, trolls. I stand with the incredible & inspiring @lsarsour. In defiance. Indivisable #IMarchWithLinda”. And Sarsour is nothing if not inspirational, inspiring Islamists everywhere to hoodwink privileged writers and thick-as-a-brick celebrities into believing religious extremists are liberal progressives.

But the most passionate defence came from the aforementioned Sally Kohen who coolly advised trolls “Before you attack an entire religion, try understanding it” before penning an exhaustive article that defended Sharia Law on the grounds that it’s not just about punishing women in Muslim countries – it’s about stripping them of their legal rights in liberal democracies too:

“Sharia can also mean what it does in England, where Sharia councils in some places hold sway over things such as marriage and divorce. Yet these councils are ultimately – and rightly – subject to the secular laws of the state”. Cleverly avoiding clarification of what is meant by ‘holding sway’, she sidestepped the issue of forced marriages before applauding the recent government review of Sharia courts, misrepresenting the investigation into these dangerous councils as part of a bold new future of peaceful co-operation between the state and religious fanatics. Or “a potential model for how Sharia can work within the context of secular government and pluralism”.

See? If only Western governments showed more understanding and allowed extremists the legal freedom to do whatever they like the world would be a much nicer place for rich activists whose lives are not impacted any way whatsoever by Sharia Law. Because Kohen isn’t much concerned about the British Muslim women who would rather Shakira didn’t work in any context, nor that it tends to be detrimental to their freedom, health and life expectancy.

She then explained how it’s merely a minority of extremists who interpret Sharia in its most oppressive form, news to the millions of Muslims lucky enough to live – or rather ‘die’ – under this obscure version so uncommon it’s only practiced in over a dozen countries. The true Sharia – all about treating women like princesses instead of punchbags – is about peace and tolerance. Though curiously Kohen was far less eager to excuse it in 2010 when she condemned those who label all followers of Islam as misogynists by pointing out “Feminists know Sharia is not supported by all Muslims”. Clearly the new progressive form of Sharia espoused by Sarsour has come to fruition since then, hence Kohen going from screaming “not all!” to “not bad!” in the space of six years.

Still, despite the army of trolls attacking Kohen for the utter lunacy of her article, she demonstrated strength they could only dream of. Indeed, it was extraordinarily brave of a Jewish lesbian feminist to defend Sharia, bearing in mind if she spent a day living under it she’d be set on fire or thrown off a roof before you can say ‘Islamist jackpot’.

But we need voices like Kohen if we are to survive four years of Trump. And thankfully by the time you read this more coke-addled socialites with an aversion to history books will have stuck their heads above the parapet to defend Sarsour. Here’s hoping they go one step further and prove how right she is by travelling to Saudi Arabia the next time they feel like writing a book, staging a protest or making a film which features swearing, nudity and man-on-man tongue action. I’m sure the KSA boogeymen and their reasonable Sharia will be delighted to add them to the long list of Muslims who gave their lives and limbs for Macca.

Peace be upon them.

 

 

 

By Ben Pensant

They said he was a threat to national security. They said he’d shook hands with more extremists than the doorman at Finsbury Park Mosque. And they said he had a better chance of winning Celebrity Love Island than a general election. They said all of these things and more about Jeremy Corbyn; ugly, spiteful things that could drive a lesser man to despair, drug abuse or the realisation that he’s utterly shit at his job. But there was no way Jezza was gonna take it lying down. And last week he showed just why he’s got the Tories running scared, taking to the airwaves with the ferocity of a peeved country rambler to energize the Labour Party by doing what he does best: whining, fidgeting and changing his mind about two key policies in the space of a day.

Predictably, the MSM didn’t see it that way, instead dwelling on the supposed flaws of his reboot, such as the fact that his wage-cap proposal appears to have been inspired by the penniless socialist utopias whose economies he admires so much. But this was water off a duck’s back for the Dear Leader, who had slyly used his days in hiding to trim his beard, hit the gym and re-invent himself as the muscle-bound Billy Goat of Westminster; a kinder, fiercer creature capable of lasting a whole day without wandering off a cliff, getting his nose stuck in a tin-can or choking to death on a tennis ball.

Of course, the future PM rising to the occasion when the chips are down is nothing new. In fact it’s what we expect from a man who’s approached every major issue of the last year by locking himself in his allotment, curling up into a ball and praying to Allah that he freezes to death before anyone notices he hasn’t dribbled out an empty slogan about inequality for three days. And few would have blamed him, such is the foul abuse he’s received at the hands of the Tory press and their attempts to smear him by reporting stuff he’s said and done.

Thankfully, like seminal ’90s agit-poppers Chumbawamba, when Corbyn gets knocked down he gets back up again. Though unlike them teetotal Jezza has never had a whisky drink, a lager drink or any other bourgeois drink designed to numb the proletariat to the horrors of capitalism by turning them into brain-damaged louts. And speaking of deluded bedsit militants, the delightful folks at The Canary proved they had the Dear Leader’s back earlier this month when they published a scathing article by James Wright which attacked former funny-man Charlie Brooker for making a couple of jokes about the leader of the opposition.

For anyone lucky enough not to have seen Brooker’s annual dose of BBC propaganda Screenwipe – Arsewipe, more like – this year’s was his most shameful yet and Wright took no prisoners in calling out the Croydon bell-end for shamefully targeting Corbyn, reserving particular scorn for a gag Brooker made about Jezza’s failure to tackle anti-Semitism: ‘The quip cements a fabricated smear campaign from media pundits, the pro-Israel lobby, Tory MPs and Blairites who all have one common enemy: Corbyn’ he railed, stopping short of blaming the illuminati, the Reptilian Elite or anyone other than the Dear Leader and his habit of defending and supporting anti-Semites for the way he’s smeared as someone who defends and supports anti-Semites.

‘The mutually adopted theme is to associate Corbyn with anti-Semitism and other forms of discrimination’. And this tactic has clearly worked among Tories and Blairites, brainwashed into linking a principled politician with anti-Semitic people, groups and regimes just because he’s shown solidarity with scores of anti-Semitic people, groups and regimes like Raed Salah, Stephen Sizer, Ibrahim Hewitt, CAGE, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Supreme Leaders of Iran.

Wright also reminded the five people who read his article that Corbyn has spent his career campaigning for LGBT rights. And I’m sure all the Palestinian gays thrown in jail by Hamas – whom Corbyn once stated were ‘dedicated to peace and social justice’ – or hung from cranes in Iran are honoured to have the support of someone so homo-friendly.

But Wright’s main issue with Brooker’s ‘hatchet job’ was that there weren’t enough funnies about Theresa May: ‘Jokes at (her) expense were noticeably absent’ he wrote, despite the fact that there was a gag about May’s cringe-worthy ‘red, white and blue Brexit’ line, something of a miracle considering her unremarkable, head-girl, roll-your-sleeves-up-and-get-the-job-done demeanour makes it virtually impossible to find anything about her interesting enough to write a joke about. Though the same could be said of Jezza yet the likes of (Proper) Charlie still have a pop at the Dear Leader over everything from his admiration for murderous dictators to his love of a good pair of sandals.

But Wright’s point was that any criticism of Corbyn is wholly unacceptable. Indeed, Brooker would be off The Canary’s Winterville list even if he’d spent one minute making jokes about Jezza and the other fifty-nine calling the Prime Minister ‘Theresa Gay’ and ‘Kitten Heel Cunt’. Because when you’re as convinced of your own virtue as we are the freedom to unleash your inner Stalinist is hard to resist.

Consider this: Brooker’s main targets throughout the show were Michael Gove, Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson, yet curiously no Tory or UKIP supporters wrote articles on the internet crying about it. Similarly Brooker directed plenty of jokes towards Jezza’s opponents in the PLP – calling Owen Smith ‘so boring he makes Ed Miliband look like David Miliband’ – yet I don’t recall angry Blairites vowing never to watch Cockwipe again.

The reason for this is simple – they have no soul. And unlike us brave Corbynites who routinely scour the media for Jezza-hate then whine about it on a blog, they have no stomach for a fight either. Because deep down, Tories, Ukippers, Blairites, Zionists, Ex-Muslims, Uncle Toms, TV Critics, impressionists and those annoying people on Twitter who try to win arguments with facts and evidence all know how wrong they are. Which is why they’re left with no choice but to smear Corbyn by reporting stuff he’s said and done.

Traingate was a perfect example, as both Virgin and the Tory press showed how terrified they are of the Dear Leader by accusing him of lying when he said he couldn’t find a seat on a ‘ram packed’ train. They then released a video clearly showing Corbyn walking past several rows of empty unreserved seats before filming himself sitting on the floor like an alcoholic attorney thrown out of a municipal courtroom for not wearing a tie and smelling of Burritos.

But Wright dismissed this with characteristic Corbynite bluntness: ‘Passengers have since debunked the claim, as has a closer look at the footage’. Indeed, a closer look at the footage does debunk the claim, provided you’re willing to believe Jezza and co entered the carriage at the exact moment a dozen or so people simultaneously visited the toilet and left all their belongings behind. Belongings which couldn’t be seen on the video but according to Labour sources were definitely on the seats which is why they had to sit on the floor and it’s all Richard Branson and the Government’s fault so stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

The fact that Brooker featured this non-story speaks volumes, as those of us who’ve devoted our lives to Corbyn are well aware it’s not uncommon for him to enter a room and instantly empty it. What Traingate illustrated was how much the Tories and the establishment at large are running scared, particularly Branson whose evil rail network will be the first thing on the Dear Leader’s shit-list when he enters Number 10. I’ve no doubt the bearded billionaire spends many sleepless nights fretting about what will happen when Jezza is PM, in-between pondering more serious questions such as whether he should get out of bed and go for a crap or wait ’til morning.

As well as revenge for Traingate Branson will also be fearful of the Dear Leader’s plan to curb sexual assaults on public transport by introducing women-only carriages. And with good reason as this has already gained support among a diverse range of Labour supporters from the Muslim Council Of Britain to the Islamic Human Rights Commission. Though as I’ve written before, if Corbyn really wants to turn it into an election-winning policy he should just take a leaf out of his ‘very good friend’ Ibrahim Hewitt’s book and propose any woman raped on a train is stoned to death for adultery. It’ll appeal to left-wing segregationists and cut prison numbers in one fell swoop. Granted, it will also lead to a sharp drop in female mortality but hey, if it works in Afghanistan who are we to stick our imperialist oars in and tell them how to behave?

But we should never forget that while Jezza is clearly a fearsome, powerful opponent who has Branson, Brooker and the Government shitting bricks, he is also a victim. Such a victim in fact, that according to Canary editor Kerry Ann Mendoza and several commentators beneath Wright’s article, Brooker’s quips about the leader of the opposition were yet another example of modern satire’s failure to ‘punch up’. Because anyone with half a brain can see that taking the piss out of a privately educated career politician who was brought up on a manor is ‘punching down’.

But by far the worst aspect of Brooker’s failure to treat the Dear Leader as an untouchable demigod was the way it revealed him to be a member of that most repugnant group: left-wingers who make jokes about the left. Because any liberal who does this commits the ultimate sacrilege, putting them down there in the dirt with Muslims who denounce extremism, blacks who condemn Black Lives Matter and women who reject radical feminism.

Of course, wretches like Brooker aren’t really left-wing – how could they be? – as everyone knows a true lefty couldn’t make fun of Corbyn if they tried. Like peace in the middle-east or Diane Abbott appearing on telly without making an utter plank of herself, it’s just not possible. And in making the grave error of satirising the left Brooker instantly put himself on a blacklist along with John Sullivan, Ben Elton and whoever it was who thought it’d be funny to depict the Jezza-lite shop steward in Carry On At Your Convenience as a shifty, delusional fuckwit.

Still, the signs that Brooker isn’t what he seems have been around for a while. From mocking the claim that David Cameron stuck his penis inside a pig’s head to criticising the censorious, middle-class reaction to evil rape-joker Dapper Laughs, it’s clear this shy Tory has been hiding in plain sight for some time. And as for his personal life, no true liberal would shamefully exploit his white male privilege by culturally appropriating an Asian wife. As proper lefties and die-hard social segregationists like Giles Fraser and Lindy West would no doubt put it – get back in your lane, Charlie.

And should he fail to heed this advice and end up on the receiving end of a visit from someone who objects to either his choice of partner or the bullying of Jezza? Well, he made his bed. Like Lee Rigby, Qandeel Baloch, Duncan Keating, Asad Shah and the staff of Charlie Hebdo it’d be bloody hard to argue he didn’t bring it on himself. But hey, I’m sure he’ll see the funny side.

‘Cos you like a good laugh, don’t you, Charlie?

By Ben Pensant

The one silver lining of Donald Trump’s victory was the way it united the most vilified groups in society: ethnic minorities, middle-class journalists and rich actors who know as much about real life as I do about snorting coke off a dead hooker’s tits. In fact, the election result has energised liberals right across the board, fostering an Us & Them swagger all the way from Twitter to Facebook. And nowhere was this solidarity more clear than in LA on Sunday night, when Merryl Streep brought tears to the eyes of a room full of millionaires whose job it is to pretend to cry. By talking about something that never happened.

For anyone too busy basking in their white male privilege to notice, Meryl used her Golden Gongs acceptance speech to show what a tolerant, level-headed liberal she is by looking down her nose at sports fans, presenting the most entitled people on earth as victims, and repeating a nonsensical claim that was debunked months ago.

In fact, this claim – that President Pussy-Grab mocked a reporter’s disability at a rally in 2015 – has been so thoroughly discredited that anyone with five minutes to spare can find an abundance of evidence showing it to be untrue. Which explains why most liberals haven’t bothered. And boy, did that tactic work as every liberal-left outlet under the sun came out in support of Streep’s condemnation of Trump for something he didn’t actually do. But the warriors of social media made a difference too, stubbornly refusing to find out what really happened and generally behaving in the manner you’d expect from people who’ve spent months attacking fake news and low-information voters but are happy to disseminate an unverified story about Trump paying hookers to have a piss on Obama’s favourite pillow.

Of course, neither Merryl nor her worshippers appear to know much about the disabled reporter. In fact, none of the dozens or so people I asked about him on social media could provide any info on his disability or even remember his name. And why should they? The left fight battles daily and Twitter is our frontline. When you’re dodging ideological bullets you can’t be expected to learn unimportant facts like what someone is called before before talking about them. And as for how his disability affects him? If you think we’ve got time to research such trivialities when there are deplorables to block then think again.

No, far better to simply refer to Serge Kovaleski – that’s his name, I Googled it and everything – as The Disabled Reporter. Because people lose their worth when you start treating them as human beings rather than tokens. Far better to give this prize-winning journalist the respect he deserves by reducing him to a nameless symbol for us to hang our virtue on, defined entirely by his disability and usefulness to people who hate Trump. Some may argue this is way more offensive than a speech by a boorish reality star but let me spell it out in words even a Leave-voter might understand: He’s not important. We are.

But we should never forget why we refuse to engage with evidence that might derail our pre-conceived ideas. Because it’s not just about making ourselves feel virtuous, as life-affirming as that is. No, it’s about protecting the helpless creature with the funny arm: the funny arm we’ve convinced ourselves Trump mocked at that infamous hate-rally.

Because as Merryl so kindly and patronisingly put it, when Trump picked on The Disabled Reporter he was picking on someone unable to defend himself, despite being a respected journalist of 30 years experience more than capable of holding his own in a battle of wits with a tantrum-throwing playboy whose favoured method of discourse is arguing with people on Twitter. But thankfully the overwhelming majority of liberals know bugger all about Kowalski and remain completely in the dark about the whole story. Which is a huge relief as the last thing we need is off-piste progressives doing their own research and realising Streep’s claim doesn’t hold up to the slightest scrutiny.

Luckily, my test was a success and the deafening silence I received after asking commenters if they could pinpoint which specific characteristics of Bukowski’s disability were being mocked was joyous. From Streep – only a few Goldman Sacks speeches short of going full-Hilary – right down to useful idiots like yours truly, this was the greatest collective attempt at maintaining a false narrative since the last time some berk argued that the recent spike in hate-crime was down to Brexit emboldening racists. Nothing whatsoever to do with the creepy way the police have re-defined what constitutes a hate-crime, leading to educated professors reporting the Home Secretary for suggesting a policy they wasn’t keen on.

And should you ask a liberal scaremonger for evidence of the presumably huge number of hate-crime charges or convictions? Well, you’ll be met with the exact same same silence I was when I enquired if any of these shrieking violets knew the first thing about The Disabled Reporter’s condition. Solidarity, kids.

Because the modern left is defined by inclusiveness: we’re open to everyone, apart from people who think differently to us. Which, granted, is most of the world’s population but as Brexit, Trump and the continued success of Mr Brown’s Boys has proven, they’re all racist idiots who think it’s funny to mock disabled people and dress up as old ladies. Which is why we must rigorously support these claims despite the fact it’s as clear as the white hood in Trump’s wardrobe that he didn’t actually mock Lewandowski for being disabled.

For liberals who don’t know the background of Trump’s beef with The Disabled Reporter – ie most of you  – it’s important to remember that the truth is only worth knowing so it can be avoided. Anyone venturing into the murky world of inconvenient facts about Trump would do well to adopt Seymour Burn’s line of thinking after he was spotted in Springwood’s notorious Burlesque club: “I only went in there to find out how to get out of there!”. That’s right, the left has become so incapable of independent thought we’re offering lifestyle tips from shell-shocked cartoon characters.

But it makes far more sense for principled liberals to simply carry on believing Trump was mocking someone’s disability. Because like our former PM, Trump long ago forfeited the right to plead innocent to something he didn’t do. Indeed, to this day the same people who gleefully accepted the unverified claim that David Cameroon once stuck his cock inside a pig’s head point-blank refuse to believe Jeremy Corbyn has ever defended and supported terrorists and antisemites, despite the mountain of evidence clearly showing Jeremy Corbyn has defended and supported terrorists and antisemites.

But back to 2015. As you may recall (which few seem to do, least of all Streep who thinks it happened in 2016), Trump gave a speech in some redneck backwater mocking Lewinski for saying he couldn’t remember writing a report for the Washington Times which backed up Trump’s claim that thousands of Arabs celebrated in New Jersey as the Twin Towers collapsed. And The Disabled Reporter had a point, as there was no record of this. What there was a record of, however, was a group of a dozen or so Arabs watching the carnage unfold from a roof across the Hutson, many of whom were later arrested in widely reported terror swoops.

Rather than putting Trump’s original comments down to his habit of exaggerating wildly, Klauskinski – now at the New York Post – wisely avoided a war of words by saying he couldn’t remember mentioning anything about ‘thousands or even hundreds’ of Arabs. Which both newspapers quickly re-shaped to give the impression the rooftop celebrations never happened at all. Although why these two anti-Trump publications would want to bury the story is an utter mystery, up there with brainteasers like “Why are Hugo Grant and Alan Coogan so keen on censoring tabloids?”.

So, ridiculous ego suitably bruised, Trump decided this brief rebuke constituted a form of grovelling and childishly mocked The Disabled Reporter with the infamous impression, a gift from the gods to a media eager to believe Trump wasn’t just a loud-mouthed bully with a fondness for tyrants but also someone who makes fun of disabled people. Especially disabled people he didn’t even know were disabled.

This last point was contested by Novak, who pointed out he interviewed Trump several times in the ’80s. Job done. Because a man on a flying horse can see it’s completely unacceptable for Trump to forget one of thousands of reporters to have indulged him and kissed his arse way before he became the most evil man alive.

The problem for us liberals in protecting this narrative, however, is that if Trump did know The Disabled Reporter it would render the impression redundant as Trump would know his disability doesn’t cause spasms or affect speech. But fear not, this is easily remedied by playing deaf and dumb, as I found out when I asked a cross-section of Streep groupies if they could describe any of the physical side-effects of arthrogryposis and received two replies: ‘”Shit like you is not worth spending time on” and “What the fuck’s arthrogryposis?”.

Because thankfully, most of those moralising online have barely seen a photo of Novoselic let alone learnt that his disability looks nothing whatsoever like Trump’s impression, gifting them the moral fibre to inadvertently reduce an otherwise able-bodied man with a rigid right arm into a generic ‘spastic’ cliché who flails his limbs around and talks funny.

“But that’s exactly what Trump was doing!” we counter. And freeze-framed and put next to a picture of The Disabled Reporter featuring his right arm this is almost convincing. Provided you ignore the many pieces of video footage showing Trump had previously done the exact same impression when mocking non-disabled people.

Luckily, the liberal media have done a sterling job of pretending these videos don’t exist. And with good reason, as they clearly show Trump mocking a general, impersonating Ted Cruise and even mimicking himself on The Late Show with Harry King in the exact same way. But the fact that this appears to be Trump’s standard impression for sneering at flustered people he disagrees with does not in any way make him innocent of mocking The Disabled Reporter for being disabled. No, that die was cast long ago and if wealthy role-models like Streep can stick to it then us normal folk bloody well can. It’s no more than Mr Wajadubakowski deserves.

And the conflicting proof being furiously forwarded by alt-right Nazis, Republican hawks, and people who value facts over ideology? Well luckily, despite the whole story being available from a number of outlets, liberals were able to dismiss the pile of evidence instantly due to the fact that the most widely circulated link came from a website called Catholics 4 Trump. Bingo!

Because no self-respecting lefty would contemplate accessing such blatantly pro-Trump sources, no matter how many demonstrable facts they shove under our noses. The last thing we have time to do is trawl through an exhaustive and forensically-detailed account of the whole episode, from 9/11 right through to last week’s beautiful awards show. These Twitter trolls won’t block themselves, y’know. And to check we were all on the same page I presented this link to a number of people and they all point-blank refused to read it. Beautiful.

Because in the fight against fascism playing dirty and propagating lies is positively encouraged. Trump does it so why shouldn’t we? The fact that we think of ourselves as a cut above the Milo Papadopolises of this world is irrelevant: sometimes you have to fight fake news with fake news. So for every Scum story demonizing immigrants there’s a fabricated report that post-Brexit hate crime has spiked; for every unfounded claim that Black Life Matters organised the Chicago kidnapping there’s a fictional account of Trump supporters attacking Muslims on the subway; and for every alt-right conspiracy theory about paedophiles and pizza parlours there’s a paragraph in a dossier alleging Trump spent Christmas Day in Moscow wearing kids’ pyjamas and watching animated Japanese bongo.

But cognitive dissonance is as much a part of liberal ideology as respect, decency and believing mischievous gay journalists are worse human beings than people who celebrate Israelis being squashed to death by a truck. And it doesn’t stop there – many of those I encountered online defending a Disabled Reporter whose name they couldn’t be arsed to look up are also supporters of Section 40. Hear, hear. It’s refreshing to know those quick to defend a journalist in a war of words with a powerful, arrogant billionaire are 100% in favour of regulations making it easier for journalists to be censored by powerful, arrogant billionaires.

Inconsistent? You betcha, but the left long stopped believing you could make the world a better place with facts and clarity. Which is why the same people who condemn the gutter press for printing squalid lies think nothing of rabidly endorsing stories about pissing prostitutes that the National Register would reject for being too lurid. And why all week right-thinking people have been falling over themselves to pay tribute to the basic decency of a millionaire actress who once led a standing ovation for a man who drugged and anally raped a child.

Now that’s what I call an Iron Lady.

By Ben Pensant

‘What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence’ 

For those not familiar with 21st century Islamophobes, the above Christopher Hitchings quote tells you everything you need to know about neoliberalism, white male privilege, and the ridiculous idea that dishing out wild claims without proof makes you look a right tit. Hitchings was talking about religion of course, and like celebrity atheist Bill Marr was a darling of the left until he started saying nasty things about Islam as well as Christianity. Because Islam is the one faith liberals can’t criticise, despite being about as liberal as a swastika in the eye. And if any right-wingers or self-hating Muslims do criticise the Religion Of Peace they can’t complain when someone calls them a goose-stepping Nazi. Just because the Qur’an has far more in common with Mine Kampf than a hundred Sam Harrison lectures doesn’t mean trendy racists have the right to point it out.

Which is why providing evidence is such a risky venture. Modern progressivism is based on the principle that some things are true because they are, like the gender pay gap, post-Brexit hate crime, or Israel being to blame for everything from ISIS to those new plastic fivers with Zionist propaganda hidden in Churchill’s chin-cleft. And just because all of the above can be discredited in seconds doesn’t mean for one second that the contemporary left are wrong about pretty much everything.

On the contrary, we just need to prop up the narrative by ignoring demonstrable facts and shutting down as many opposing views as possible. And last year in particular saw an exciting new development as the loudest voices on the left took the unprecedented step of completely forgetting about a little thing called Godwin’s Law.

Godwin’s is the internet adage which asserts “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches”. Coined by American lawyer Mick Godwin in the early ’90s, the original intention was simple: “I wanted folks who glibly compared someone to Hitler to think a bit harder about the Holocaust”. And think about it we did. So hard that we successfully convinced ourselves 2016 was actually 1939 in disguise.

And boy, did we go for it, resurrecting Godwin’s with such force it made Metallica’s comeback look as powerful as a 5ive Star reunion. You couldn’t glance at Twitter last year without coming across an educated liberal leap-frogging classic pejoratives like ‘right-whinger!’ or ‘raaaacist!’ and going straight to ‘Nazi!’ and ‘Friend Of Eva!’. They even usurped popular demands such as ‘apologise now’ and ‘tell me your name’ as the first words to leave a proud SJW’s privileged mouth when faced with a shopkeeper or taxi-diver who refuses to do what he’s told.

But unlike ten years ago when sensible people on left and right avoided comparing politicians to Hitler unless they were literally white supremacists with a penchant for invading countries and murdering Jews, we took to it with gay abandon, branding everyone from Andy Bernum to President Pussy-Grabber Nazis for saying stuff we don’t like.

The latter, of course, regularly attracts scorn from sensible pundits, intelligent commentators and that weird bloke who used to write Father Ted. Indeed, Graham Glinnerhan has become something of a one-man anti-Trump Twitter army, fighting fascism singlehandedly by sneering at people with less followers than him. When not creepily forwarding family photos of people he lost arguments with, Graham can be found attacking people for not hating the President-elect as much as he does, such as the person who recently fell foul of him for the heinous crime of…not wanting to disrupt Trump’s inauguration.

“I guess now we know what you would have done to oppose Nazism, eh?…You’ve been tested and you failed” Graham gravely intoned, leaving no doubt as to where this longtime Venezuela fan stands on dealing with people who disagree with him, while also reminding us why this gruff-but-principled middle-aged Irishman is so good at writing spoilt, petulant man-children.

But the real beauty of this exchange – and umpteen others that Graham has on a daily basis – was the way he didn’t so much drop Godwin’s Law into a conversation but engineer a conversation that was nothing but Godwin’s Law. Liberals claiming Trump voters are racist morons are ten-a-penny but it takes balls to tell people who don’t even like Trump that they’re no better than the Gestapo for not catching a plane to Washington to risk prison and a bullet in the leg by throwing rotting eggs at the nasty orange man off the telly.

Elsewhere, the award-winning screenwriter’s yuletide meltdown continued as he unveiled plans to take on Trump and his supporters in 2017, coming on like a bookish cross between John Hinkly Jr and Jimmy Crocket. “We need to shame these shits back into their hidey holes. Visible protest will do that. We need to make racists and misogynists scared again”. Admirable sentiments, though it’s worth noting Graham isn’t talking about all racists and misogynists, as that would mean condemning Hamas, something he recently refused to do as the issue is ‘complex’. Though happily he showed no such reluctance when evaluating Nigel Farrage in the same conversation – ‘a cunt’ – a man who at the time of writing is yet to kill any Jews. (Give it time.)

Because as all leftists know, there’s nothing more ‘complex’ than condemning antisemitic murderers who imprison gays, shoot protesters, and fire rockets at civilians. Luckily, Farrage has zero complexity. And a ridiculous, mouthy Thatcherite who dislikes the EU is clearly far more racist and misogynist than an Islamist terrorist group who have a written constitution calling for the extermination of Jews worldwide. Serious, uncomfortable questions require serious, uncomfortable answers and Graham has a shitload of those. Which explains why the co-writer of one of the greatest sitcoms of all time is also one of Twitter’s most humorless, intolerant bores.

And Graham has picked his recipients well as Farrage is second only to Trump when it comes to getting hit up with Godwin’s Law. Spend five minutes in the Guardian comments sections and you’ll see posts comparing Nige to Hitler are almost as ubiquitous as ones calling Leave-voters thick racists. Indeed, the internet is so awash with disregard for Godwin’s law it’s almost like it never existed.

Because what modern leftists may lack in historical knowledge they more than make up for with heart, passion, and old-fashioned ignorance. So it frankly doesn’t matter that Trump will never invade Poland or kill 6 million Jews, just like it’s unimportant that Farrage turning Britain into a fascist state is as likely as Lily Alan covering Mike Reid’s Ukip Calypso.

Not that that stops us massively over-exaggerating his party’s power, appeal, and hunger for totalitarianism. Just before Christmas a parade of Twitter users took to the net and lambasted Farrage for pointing out that Hope Not Hate had a history of supporting extremists, a view received unfavourably by people who know bugger all about Hope Not Hate. Needless to say, within hours the calm, considered, cat-shit crackers responses sent the International Godwin’s Detector off the scale.

“UKIP are the Nazis of 2016!” cried one, despite UKIP ending the year having neither seized power nor built a concentration camp. However, such stark differences between UKIP and the Nazis are easily explained, as this Tweeter did with consummate skill by reminding us it was only after seizing power that the Nazis started murdering Jews. The point being that Farrage and his boys aren’t finished by a long chalk yet.

“Fascists don’t arrive with gas chambers and genocide but with populist hate-filled xenophobic rhetoric” weighed in another. Though in this case they appear to have arrived in the form of a gobby City wanker with as much chance of winning a general election as he does of convincing the British military not to shoot his face off if he tries to overthrow the government.

But common sense be damned, these budding historians are so committed to fear mongering they’ve convinced themselves it’s only a matter of time before Nigel Farrage is anointed Supreme Leader. And they’ve reached this conclusion because he doesn’t like the EU, says the odd nasty thing about immigrants, and once posed for a photo in which the positioning of the microphone made him look like he had a Hitler ‘tache.

Naturally, the exact point in the future when Farage and co reveal their true national socialist colours is as vague as the explanation for how on earth a party with one seat will go from handing out poorly worded flyers to murdering millions and starting world war three. But the illogical beauty of Godwin’s is the way the mere mention of Nazism still has the power to enchant idiots so hypnotically that they’ll believe anything from “Hitler invented Zionism!” to “Eva Braun Was A Man!” without a second’s hesitation.

Such is the enduring appeal of the real N-word and its equally hysterical variations. All of which came thick and fast in 2016, from Polly Toungebee talking of Brexit-voting Labour strongholds where “white supremacy won the day” to Chelsea Handler calling UKIP “England’s version of the KKK”. To be fair, as Polly owns several homes across Europe she no doubt defines ‘white supremacy’ as ‘not having a brown-skinned au pair’. And if Chelsea doesn’t have the time to do any actual research on UKIP it’s probably because she’s been far too busy paying her plastic surgeon to turn her into Rennie Zellwegger’s bitter older sister.

Thankfully, the potential for trivialising the history of authoritarian regimes is low, as most SJWs know as much about the history of authoritarian regimes as Trump knows about clovergenders. And no, clovergenders aren’t 300ft rancor-fish-things wrongly assigned ‘human’ at birth. If you must know, they’re nonces who identify as children. Grow up.

But the biggest beneficiary of the resurgence of Godwin’s Law is professional gobshite Milo Yiannapoulopolopolis, whose recent book deal inspired the most self-righteous wave of moral outrage since Sam Smith got his Oscar history mixed up, causing Justin Lance Black to totally lose his shit and accuse the singer of hitting on his son Tom Daily.

Two of the publishers’ biggest critics were The Independent’s Sonny Hundal and queen of Channel 5 clip shows, Emma Kenney, both of whom took to Twitter to label Milo a Neo-Nazi while failing to provide any evidence whatsoever that the homsexual libertarian Jew is a Neo-Nazi.

Revelling in their flat-out refusal to entertain the concept of proof, Sonny went on to compare Milo to Islamist jail-bird Angela Choudary. And with good reason because criticising Islam, supporting Trump, and taking the piss out of feminists is exactly the same as supporting far-right terrorists who rape children and throw gay men off tower-blocks.

Going one step further, Gemma proceeded to block anyone who asked her for proof of Milo’s white supremacy. At the time of writing, neither Sonny nor Emma have been forthcoming with that elusive evidence, but needless to say they’ve both carried on repeating the accusation ad nauseam, insulting/ignoring/blocking anyone who requests proof and generally doing Godwin’s Law proud by behaving like fascistic warmongers with a genocidal belief in their own purity.

Hmm. Sound like anyone we know? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Ben Pensant

2016 was officially the worst year EVER. That’s a fact – there’s been surveys and everything. Sure, there was a rise in life expectancy and a fall in world hunger; the discovery of gravitational waves and Juno’s exploration of Jupiter; ground-breaking advancements in eradicating HIV, cancer, malaria and measles. But it means nothing when you remember we left the EU, a bad man won an election and a load of famous old people croaked.

Still, as we kiss goodbye to the most destructive year EVER, I will concede that despite global panic, the rise of the alt-right and election results not going the way Guardian-readers wanted, there is some good out there. Not much, granted, and this country in particular has a nerve calling itself ‘great’ when Islamophobes routinely react to terrorist attacks by condemning the terrorists rather than writing about what Nigel Farage said on Twitter.

But while the world may well end in 2017 – either as a result of Donald Trump’s warmongering or because, well, it’s high-time Al Gore got one prediction right – the festive season brought home that even in times of impending doom we should focus on the good things. And when I say ‘good things’ I mean stuff a little more important than curing diseases or exploring the universe. But what made me come to this realisation? A couple of beautiful pieces by The Guardian’s resident trendy vicar, Giles Fraser, that’s what.

Giles has been spreading good will and optimism via his Loose Cannon column for some time now and as I spent Christmas bed-ridden after a life-threatening battle with the sniffles, his words were as warm and cosy as a lambswool blanket. Indeed, his December pieces were like mini-remakes of It’s A Wonderful Life, albeit versions in which George Bailey escapes the horror of Potterville and returns to Bedford Falls to open a faith school, set fire to the Christmas tree and stone his wife to death for taking her top off in public.

Because following the Louise Casey report Giles put aside his liberalism to pen a piece decrying assimilation and integration. And in the process added ‘segregation’ to the list of dodgy things Giles is totally cool with, like censorship, blasphemy laws and human rights groups who campaign on behalf of murderers and believe 9/11 was a Jewish conspiracy.

But if you thought Giles’ support for CAGE hinted at his true colours, his celebration of religious minorities refusing to integrate left no doubt whatsoever. Because as right-on as he is – he wears a leather jacket for god’s sake – his dedication to keeping religious folk in the dark ages is second to none:

‘Why is integration such a self-evidently good thing?’ he asked. Of course, that a Muslim like Mo Farrah could answer that question by pointing to his mantlepiece full of medals or the fact that he’s one of the most popular, successful British sportsmen of all time is of no interest to Giles. No, Muslims like Mo bowed down to imperialist pressure by having the temerity to go to school, speak English and learn to read. As Giles writes: ‘The very nature of community is that there is a boundary between those who are in it and those who are not’, and Mo blurred that boundary when he selfishly defined himself by who he is and what he does rather than his religion or skin colour.

Similarly, Nadiya Hussain of Great British Bake-Off presents segregationists like Giles with something of a dilemma. On the one hand, he’s no doubt overjoyed she wears a hijab and had an arranged marriage. On the other, she let herself and her faith down by gaining a degree, teaching herself to cook and appearing on a TV show presented by an adulterer and a lesbian.

The fact that Mo and Nadiya owe their success in no small part to the way they integrated and made the most of what Britain offered them and their parents must trouble Giles greatly. Because a Muslim who overcomes prejudice and racism to be accepted and admired is skirting far too close to rejecting their victimhood for Giles’ tastes. In his world a Muslim with no victimhood is barely a Muslim at all. Though despite regularly telling his readers that the UK is a dreadful Islamophobic shit-hole he seems remarkably keen on Muslims coming here to live. And not only live but re-create the oppressive, illiberal environment they invraiably left behind.

And if the anti-Muslim bigotry he never shuts up about- or ‘Islamophobia’, to give it its made-up name – is inadvertently added to by Muslim immigrants ‘othering’ themselves and contributing bugger all to society because their fundamentalist parents don’t want them to then so be it. It’s no skin off Giles’ nose if racist morons express their objection to the weird foreigners across the road by setting fire to a mosque but you can bet your arse when it happens he’ll gleefully squeeze a column out of it.

Because as far as Giles is concerned Muslims don’t have the capacity to learn that children of white clergyman do. The fact that Muslims are just as capable of excelling in a secular society as anyone else is deeply problematic to Giles – encourage minorities to think for themselves and next thing you know you’ve got another Maajid Nawaz on your hands. And the last thing we need is Muslims being forced to reject the key tenets of their peaceful faith, such as misogyny, homophobia and anti-Semitism. Because no Muslim brought up in a liberal, secular society could possibly make up their own mind and reject an ideology that tells them their non-Muslim friends should be murdered.

‘Of course, the barely concealed target of Casey’s report is Muslims’ bemoans Giles, just in case anyone thought it was about those radicalised Anglican youths we hear so much about. ‘They won’t allow the Borg-like values of secular liberalism to corrode their distinctiveness’. Admirable sentiments and I’m sure the women and children oppressed by Sharia Courts and arranged marriages will be delighted to know a decent liberal like Giles is all for maintaining these customs in the name of ‘distinctiveness’.

If only more Muslims could be like the child-grooming gangs from Rotherham and Rochdale: brave men who refused to sacrifice their values to secular constraints like the age of consent, boldly sticking to the Qur’anic tradition of treating women like sex-objects. Of course, as Giles isn’t keen on integration he was probably disappointed that they targeted white girls. On the other hand, among fundamentalists women and non-Muslims are just about the lowest of the low so hey, why not rape two birds with one stone?

Of course, Giles is keen to clarify that the kind of segregation he’s talking about doesn’t have to be divisive: ‘All community is necessarily and rightly exclusive to some. This absolutely does not mean that the ‘us’ and the ‘them’ have to be antagonistically related’. Indeed it doesn’t, though it’s hard to avoid when the ‘them’ grow up in an isolated community in which they are told that the ‘us’ are decadent, blasphemous infidels who deserve punishment for not submitting to Allah.

But this is of no concern to Giles. Much like his oft-stated plea for Britain to let ‘every single’ refugee from Calais in despite the fact that a large percentage of them aren’t actually refugees, the inherent problems of social cohesion that come with importing reactionary cultures that keep themselves to themselves are someone else’s problem.

And if the children in these cultures miss out on the opportunities available in one of the most liberal democracies on the planet? Well, good for them. As Giles clarified on Twitter when asked if he was okay with children growing up without being taught English or Maths: ‘Absolutely Okay’. He even went further, slamming the bigots who suggested that children in strict religious communities are being left behind: ‘They are not missing out on an education. Many study Talmud a lot harder than my kids study geography’. And I’m sure employers would agree that having an impeccable knowledge of ancient religious texts is worth far more than being able to read and add up.

But Giles isn’t particularly bothered about people contributing to the country that welcomed them either, as evidenced by his ‘let them all in!’ rallying call. Though he’s clearly keen for his own kids to receive an education, and I’m certain any geography problems his little cherubs may be having will be ironed out before the end of term, as they probably go to a school where teachers can actually teach without having to repeat everything several times so all forty kids in the class can hear it.

Which only proves Giles’ point about the dangers of integration. One only has to look at Asad Shah, the Ahmadiyya shopkeeper murdered in April for selling out his faith by wishing his neighbours ‘Happy Easter’. The Ahmadiyya, of course, eschew many aspects of the Qur’an and are the only sect of Islam that can be described as remotely peaceful. Which explains why they are ostracised, persecuted and hacked to death on Glasgow streets. But as Giles would no doubt agree, if Mr Shah had just kept his head down and got on with being a proper Muslim instead of pandering to white supremacy perhaps he’d still be alive. When will they ever learn that tolerance kills?

Thankfully, Giles never dwells on Muslims killing people any longer than he has to, hence his brilliant piece on the Berlin truck attack which devoted roughly half a sentence to condemning the killers while the other thousand words absolved religion of any blame. See, Giles hit upon a simple truth; it wasn’t that the murderers were too religious but that they weren’t religious enough. ‘How to defeat terrorists? True extremism’ he suggested. Because as any leftist knows, Islam is never to blame for anything.

Everyone from Jihadi John to the Kouachi brothers may have shouted ‘Allahu Akbar!’ before following direct instructions from the Qur’an but a man on a flying horse can see this has nothing to do with Islam. Because no acts of barbarity ever have anything to do with Islam. As opposed to the times when a Muslim does something good – such as winning a gold medal or a baking competition – which of course has everything to do with Islam. Despite the fact that the Qur’an contains considerably more passages about punishing blasphemers and beheading infidels than running shoes or birthday cakes.

Still, thanks to Western foreign policy countless more oppressed Islamists will be forced to crash trucks into Christmas markets until society stops being so racist and just gives them what they bloody want. Combine this with the fascistic attempts to impose assimilation upon Muslims and it’s not hard to see why so many are left with no choice but to kill people.

Of course, if Giles had his way the Berlin attack would never have happened, as Muslims would have no way of learning about Western foreign policy as they wouldn’t be able to read. And there’d be little chance of your average Muslim stealing a truck as they’d have neither the ability to drive nor the linguistic skills to tell the Polish driver what will happen to his testicles if he doesn’t give up his vehicle.

In fact, in Giles’ perfect world the only thing Muslims would be able to read is the Qur’an, a sure-fire recipe for peace and harmony as there is nothing in that book even vaguely connected to jihad, imperialism or murdering people. As 2017 begins – a year nailed on to be even more grim than the last – we could do worse than heed the soothing words of Reverend Giles and quietly celebrate the progressive future he envisions. And nothing exemplifies that progressive future better than a liberal newspaper publishing articles that promote segregation and religious fundamentalism.

Amen.