British streets have been the stage for the latest war in the Middle East between Israel and those who yearn for its destruction. The day after the Hamas pogrom saw a large demonstration outside the Israeli embassy, before any retaliation by Israel for the slaughter of 1,400 of its citizens. This was not protest, but a celebration of the atrocity. Then, for five Saturdays in a row, we have seen increasingly large marches through the centre of London, numbering 100,000 or more each time. These were supposedly pro-Palestine, but in reality, they were anti-Israel. Each march has seen widespread antisemitism, terror sympathising, and increasingly violent behaviour. The march to Trafalgar Square on 4 November ended in violence against the police.
The march on Armistice Day, 11 November, was the largest yet. It numbered between 300,000-800,000 depending on who one listened to. Repeated images and videos of antisemitism, that strengthen the case for these being hate rather than peace marches, have been filtering through on social media, which I’ve written about elsewhere. This time, protestors deviated from the pre-agreed route for the march, and then ignored the pre-agreed finish time. Monuments to our war dead were wrapped in Palestinian flags as a symbol of jubilant, ethno-religious supremacy. Swastikas intertwined with the Star of David were everywhere visible on banners and signs, as well as books sold at the march. There were other outright racist signs and those denying the right of Israel as a a Jewish state. Jeremy Corbyn, who ran twice to be Britain’s prime minister, along with John McDonnell who might’ve been his chancellor of the exchequer, marched with “Hamas activists Adnan Hmidan and Ziad El Aloul, who was thrilled to see the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. He called the murderers, torturers, and rapists ‘heroes.’”
There were also terrorist symbols worn by Hamas cosplayers, which were echoed by more chanting of the Khaybar, Khaybar and “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free” terror chants, along with a chant of “With blood with steadfastness we’ll free Aqsa.” Nazi imagery wasn’t the end of it. Some were even more upfront in their rhetoric, shouting “Killers, killers, death to all the Jews. F*cking Hitler” and “Hitler knew how to deal with these people,” as well as “Yes they may cause terror at points but that is because they are resisting.” Jewish babies were killed, burned in ovens, women raped until their pelvises broke, and elderly Israelis gunned down in bus-stops, but that was just noble intifada resisters getting carried away in their quest for liberation.
Away from the march, an anti-Israel convoy paraded through the streets flying Palestinian flags, while another group of cars idled outside a synagogue, their occupants blowing green smoke and intimidating Jews leaving after a service. Police had to escort worshippers past the threat. Back with the march, Michael Gove was mobbed and had to be hustled away by police. Violence and intimidation were rife through the day. In Victoria Station, poppy sellers from the Royal British Legion were chased away, and those wearing such symbols of our history were accosted and abused.
Meanwhile, a Marks and Spencer’s was protested, echoing an earlier protest. Those who claim this is about Palestine and not about Jews ignore this as well. Much as they have signs that had things like “To the river to the sea Palestine will be free is not just a statement it’s a promise” written on them, another banner had “Globalise the Intifada,” replicating a chant from the previous week. Apparently London should suffer on its streets what Sderot, Kfa Azar, and Nir Oz went through on 7 October. The march then ended in a significant disturbance, with young masked men clashing with police and launching fireworks, one of which went off in an officer’s face. The police reported that they’d detained a group of 150 people who’d broken from the protest to commit this violence. Mass searches had to be conducted.
Ideological delusion
There was also a group of counter-protestors, spearheaded by the former EDL leader Tommy Robinson. Some of them behaved disgracefully, clashing with police and people from the march on what should have been a sombre day of reflection. And so, of course, the narrative has been set back on the ground that, as Ed West calls them, the “Respectable Middle Class” (RMC) and their media foghorns are most comfortable with: the ‘far-Right’ is the primary danger, they present the real threat to democracy and the relations between communities in our diverse multicultural society, and any prejudice and bigotry from one minority group to another is irrelevant and must be ignored to maintain the oppressor/oppressed dichotomy of white people as racially-stained incipient fascists constantly endangering Britain’s ethnic minorities.
Yet this is a distortion. It is the ideological delusion of those who have benefitted enormously from the state of affairs of the last several decades. This has in fact threatened the stability and harmony that all British citizens, regardless of colour or creed, depend on for their ability to lead decent lives of dignity in common.
The last few weeks, following the Hamas terror pogrom and the reactions that it precipitated on Britain’s streets, has been a period of intensely painful cognitive dissonance. Many were confronted by the fact that not everyone in the world holds to our secular, rationalistic view of life. Indeed, not only do they not hold to this, but they actively repudiate it in favour of a world defined by ethno-religious ties and prone to conflict. Hamas are not rational actors driven by resentment over a border dispute that can be solved through reasoned dialogue and enlightened diplomacy. They are an explicitly genocidal group, combining Islamist jihadism with Soviet revolutionary vanguardism and Nazi antisemitism. They say what they mean and mean what they say. The atrocities in Israel threatened to burn the mirage away with the Middle Eastern sun.
As there, so here at home. The marches and the militancy of so many of their participants was something that couldn’t be unseen, despite what some political figures think. The fact that half of the march organisers themselves had links to Hamas only served to disintegrate the ridiculous claim that these were marches for peace and were not primarily about calling for Israel to just lie down and die, which is apparently what good Jews must do if they wish to be considered members of the moral community.
All of this has shaken those who view Britain through the lens of the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony, as a hymn to multiculturalism and the technocratic, managerial conception of national belonging that goes along with it. In fact, it seems that if you invite the world you inherit the world’s conflicts. The idea that peoples from elsewhere will automatically drop their attachments to faith, creed, and tribe when they come into contact with our supposedly oh-so-attractive form of decadent late-modernity is fatuous on its face. Why would they integrate or assimilate when our own culture is so degraded, unwilling to forthrightly affirm its historical heritage and moral foundations?
This is especially so when they come in such numbers, at such a pace. Lower numbers at a lesser pace might have been assimilable, but Britain stands little chance with what it has seen: more immigration from 1997 on than in the previous 900 years, or even 1,000. The share of the population born abroad stands at 16%, higher than America’s highest proportion in 1924 and today. That this is unsustainable should be obvious, but then the collateral consequences of what should be obvious is easily avoided by those with the economic and social capital to do so.
There is indeed a small rump of a far-Right movement: of 43,000 extremists monitored by the security services, 4,000 are classified as ‘far-right,’ or 0.0096% of the white British population. This is an increase, but we should also bear in mind the disproportionate focus on, and bizarre criteria for, far-right extremism compared to reality of the far greater threat of Islamist extremism by the Prevent counter-extremism scheme. Indeed, there are 39,000 Islamists of concern, or 0.975% of the British Muslim population. Islamist jihadist terrorism is more common than far-right terrorism, and is more lethal.
Moreover, below the level of terrorism, today much inter-ethnic tension and discontent doesn’t involve the white British mainstream at all. An example of the negative consequences is the rioting between Hindu and Muslim young men in the city of Leicester last year, during the period of mourning for the late Queen. But of course, none of this comports with the “white people as the oppressors of the non-white oppressed” dichotomy held by our cultural tone-setters and their RMC base, so it is consistently batted away in favour of a more American-inflected portrayal of group relations.
Snapping and severing
As a result of all of this, some now argue that we have a two-tiered system of police, enabled by a two-tiered media ecosystem. Police rightly came down hard on those counter-protestors who committed criminal acts of aggression and abuse. But it is just a fact that they have seemed far more comfortable upholding their public duty in this regard than with the repeated cases of aggression, hatred, and incitement seen on successive anti-Israel marches. When it comes to these situations, the police drop their forthright approach. They admit “there’s more of them than there are of us,” make excuses for cries of ‘jihad,” and engage in a form of public relations that involves tyrannising the non-violent and suppressing the law-abiding as a form of “community management” to “reduce tensions.” All this while those who advise on said community relations and hate crime are themselves part of the Islamist ecosystem.
This approach is echoed in media coverage, which determinedly ignored the inherently anti-Israel nature of the march and described it in glowing terms. Channel4 decided to tweet out (since deleted) “After being branded ‘hate marchers’ by the Home Secretary, a massive pro-Palestinian protest passed off peacefully, with hundreds of thousands in attendance. The only scuffles on the day involved far-right protestors who clashed with police.” One journalist seemed confused by the whole thing, tweeting “Troubling day. The far-right occupying the cenotaph. A peaceful march but one where there were anti-Semitic tropes from some. There’s only one thing I’m certain of—politicians need to be more careful and judicious about the words they use than ever.”
In other words, what is inflammatory and dangerous is noticing and objecting to the problem, rather than the inflammatory and dangerous problem itself. Apparently, the real danger is a brown-skinned home secretary of Indian descent writing an op-ed in The Times that riles up a bunch of thugs. Never mind that they wouldn’t read The Times and many probably don’t even consider Braverman English or British anyway. Easier to castigate anyone who transgresses the boundaries of our New Moral Order rather than accept the reality of the revolutionary Islamist vanguard exploiting the Soviet tactic of surrounding themselves with ‘useful idiots’ to further their aims under a façade of deniability. Braverman is guilty of deliberate incitement through her rhetoric, but don’t worry about the massive anti-Israel march with genocidal chants going on in the background.
And so Britain continues to crumble, as its leaders either pretend to be strong and decisive but are revealed as all talk and no trousers. Or salve their cognitive dissonance at events of the last five weeks by desperately grasping onto their narrative comfort zone of a massive and surging far-Right, rather than come to terms with the implications of Saturday after hundreds of thousands of anti-Israel marches brimming with hate and video after video of imams up and down the country preaching antisemitic bile.
It seems that grappling with the main problem would require a reconstruction of too many moral and political worldviews which ground the personal identities of those in the clerisy and RMC for it to stand a chance of happening. All the while, we see the continuing snapping and severing of the ties that bind us into the common life of the “first person plural” of the nation. Anarchy and tyranny will be our future if we refuse the liberty of truth.
Britain: Land of Anarchy and Tyranny
Photo by SunshineMunu / Shutterstock
British streets have been the stage for the latest war in the Middle East between Israel and those who yearn for its destruction. The day after the Hamas pogrom saw a large demonstration outside the Israeli embassy, before any retaliation by Israel for the slaughter of 1,400 of its citizens. This was not protest, but a celebration of the atrocity. Then, for five Saturdays in a row, we have seen increasingly large marches through the centre of London, numbering 100,000 or more each time. These were supposedly pro-Palestine, but in reality, they were anti-Israel. Each march has seen widespread antisemitism, terror sympathising, and increasingly violent behaviour. The march to Trafalgar Square on 4 November ended in violence against the police.
The march on Armistice Day, 11 November, was the largest yet. It numbered between 300,000-800,000 depending on who one listened to. Repeated images and videos of antisemitism, that strengthen the case for these being hate rather than peace marches, have been filtering through on social media, which I’ve written about elsewhere. This time, protestors deviated from the pre-agreed route for the march, and then ignored the pre-agreed finish time. Monuments to our war dead were wrapped in Palestinian flags as a symbol of jubilant, ethno-religious supremacy. Swastikas intertwined with the Star of David were everywhere visible on banners and signs, as well as books sold at the march. There were other outright racist signs and those denying the right of Israel as a a Jewish state. Jeremy Corbyn, who ran twice to be Britain’s prime minister, along with John McDonnell who might’ve been his chancellor of the exchequer, marched with “Hamas activists Adnan Hmidan and Ziad El Aloul, who was thrilled to see the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. He called the murderers, torturers, and rapists ‘heroes.’”
There were also terrorist symbols worn by Hamas cosplayers, which were echoed by more chanting of the Khaybar, Khaybar and “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free” terror chants, along with a chant of “With blood with steadfastness we’ll free Aqsa.” Nazi imagery wasn’t the end of it. Some were even more upfront in their rhetoric, shouting “Killers, killers, death to all the Jews. F*cking Hitler” and “Hitler knew how to deal with these people,” as well as “Yes they may cause terror at points but that is because they are resisting.” Jewish babies were killed, burned in ovens, women raped until their pelvises broke, and elderly Israelis gunned down in bus-stops, but that was just noble intifada resisters getting carried away in their quest for liberation.
Away from the march, an anti-Israel convoy paraded through the streets flying Palestinian flags, while another group of cars idled outside a synagogue, their occupants blowing green smoke and intimidating Jews leaving after a service. Police had to escort worshippers past the threat. Back with the march, Michael Gove was mobbed and had to be hustled away by police. Violence and intimidation were rife through the day. In Victoria Station, poppy sellers from the Royal British Legion were chased away, and those wearing such symbols of our history were accosted and abused.
Meanwhile, a Marks and Spencer’s was protested, echoing an earlier protest. Those who claim this is about Palestine and not about Jews ignore this as well. Much as they have signs that had things like “To the river to the sea Palestine will be free is not just a statement it’s a promise” written on them, another banner had “Globalise the Intifada,” replicating a chant from the previous week. Apparently London should suffer on its streets what Sderot, Kfa Azar, and Nir Oz went through on 7 October. The march then ended in a significant disturbance, with young masked men clashing with police and launching fireworks, one of which went off in an officer’s face. The police reported that they’d detained a group of 150 people who’d broken from the protest to commit this violence. Mass searches had to be conducted.
Ideological delusion
There was also a group of counter-protestors, spearheaded by the former EDL leader Tommy Robinson. Some of them behaved disgracefully, clashing with police and people from the march on what should have been a sombre day of reflection. And so, of course, the narrative has been set back on the ground that, as Ed West calls them, the “Respectable Middle Class” (RMC) and their media foghorns are most comfortable with: the ‘far-Right’ is the primary danger, they present the real threat to democracy and the relations between communities in our diverse multicultural society, and any prejudice and bigotry from one minority group to another is irrelevant and must be ignored to maintain the oppressor/oppressed dichotomy of white people as racially-stained incipient fascists constantly endangering Britain’s ethnic minorities.
Yet this is a distortion. It is the ideological delusion of those who have benefitted enormously from the state of affairs of the last several decades. This has in fact threatened the stability and harmony that all British citizens, regardless of colour or creed, depend on for their ability to lead decent lives of dignity in common.
The last few weeks, following the Hamas terror pogrom and the reactions that it precipitated on Britain’s streets, has been a period of intensely painful cognitive dissonance. Many were confronted by the fact that not everyone in the world holds to our secular, rationalistic view of life. Indeed, not only do they not hold to this, but they actively repudiate it in favour of a world defined by ethno-religious ties and prone to conflict. Hamas are not rational actors driven by resentment over a border dispute that can be solved through reasoned dialogue and enlightened diplomacy. They are an explicitly genocidal group, combining Islamist jihadism with Soviet revolutionary vanguardism and Nazi antisemitism. They say what they mean and mean what they say. The atrocities in Israel threatened to burn the mirage away with the Middle Eastern sun.
As there, so here at home. The marches and the militancy of so many of their participants was something that couldn’t be unseen, despite what some political figures think. The fact that half of the march organisers themselves had links to Hamas only served to disintegrate the ridiculous claim that these were marches for peace and were not primarily about calling for Israel to just lie down and die, which is apparently what good Jews must do if they wish to be considered members of the moral community.
All of this has shaken those who view Britain through the lens of the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony, as a hymn to multiculturalism and the technocratic, managerial conception of national belonging that goes along with it. In fact, it seems that if you invite the world you inherit the world’s conflicts. The idea that peoples from elsewhere will automatically drop their attachments to faith, creed, and tribe when they come into contact with our supposedly oh-so-attractive form of decadent late-modernity is fatuous on its face. Why would they integrate or assimilate when our own culture is so degraded, unwilling to forthrightly affirm its historical heritage and moral foundations?
This is especially so when they come in such numbers, at such a pace. Lower numbers at a lesser pace might have been assimilable, but Britain stands little chance with what it has seen: more immigration from 1997 on than in the previous 900 years, or even 1,000. The share of the population born abroad stands at 16%, higher than America’s highest proportion in 1924 and today. That this is unsustainable should be obvious, but then the collateral consequences of what should be obvious is easily avoided by those with the economic and social capital to do so.
There is indeed a small rump of a far-Right movement: of 43,000 extremists monitored by the security services, 4,000 are classified as ‘far-right,’ or 0.0096% of the white British population. This is an increase, but we should also bear in mind the disproportionate focus on, and bizarre criteria for, far-right extremism compared to reality of the far greater threat of Islamist extremism by the Prevent counter-extremism scheme. Indeed, there are 39,000 Islamists of concern, or 0.975% of the British Muslim population. Islamist jihadist terrorism is more common than far-right terrorism, and is more lethal.
Moreover, below the level of terrorism, today much inter-ethnic tension and discontent doesn’t involve the white British mainstream at all. An example of the negative consequences is the rioting between Hindu and Muslim young men in the city of Leicester last year, during the period of mourning for the late Queen. But of course, none of this comports with the “white people as the oppressors of the non-white oppressed” dichotomy held by our cultural tone-setters and their RMC base, so it is consistently batted away in favour of a more American-inflected portrayal of group relations.
Snapping and severing
As a result of all of this, some now argue that we have a two-tiered system of police, enabled by a two-tiered media ecosystem. Police rightly came down hard on those counter-protestors who committed criminal acts of aggression and abuse. But it is just a fact that they have seemed far more comfortable upholding their public duty in this regard than with the repeated cases of aggression, hatred, and incitement seen on successive anti-Israel marches. When it comes to these situations, the police drop their forthright approach. They admit “there’s more of them than there are of us,” make excuses for cries of ‘jihad,” and engage in a form of public relations that involves tyrannising the non-violent and suppressing the law-abiding as a form of “community management” to “reduce tensions.” All this while those who advise on said community relations and hate crime are themselves part of the Islamist ecosystem.
This approach is echoed in media coverage, which determinedly ignored the inherently anti-Israel nature of the march and described it in glowing terms. Channel4 decided to tweet out (since deleted) “After being branded ‘hate marchers’ by the Home Secretary, a massive pro-Palestinian protest passed off peacefully, with hundreds of thousands in attendance. The only scuffles on the day involved far-right protestors who clashed with police.” One journalist seemed confused by the whole thing, tweeting “Troubling day. The far-right occupying the cenotaph. A peaceful march but one where there were anti-Semitic tropes from some. There’s only one thing I’m certain of—politicians need to be more careful and judicious about the words they use than ever.”
In other words, what is inflammatory and dangerous is noticing and objecting to the problem, rather than the inflammatory and dangerous problem itself. Apparently, the real danger is a brown-skinned home secretary of Indian descent writing an op-ed in The Times that riles up a bunch of thugs. Never mind that they wouldn’t read The Times and many probably don’t even consider Braverman English or British anyway. Easier to castigate anyone who transgresses the boundaries of our New Moral Order rather than accept the reality of the revolutionary Islamist vanguard exploiting the Soviet tactic of surrounding themselves with ‘useful idiots’ to further their aims under a façade of deniability. Braverman is guilty of deliberate incitement through her rhetoric, but don’t worry about the massive anti-Israel march with genocidal chants going on in the background.
And so Britain continues to crumble, as its leaders either pretend to be strong and decisive but are revealed as all talk and no trousers. Or salve their cognitive dissonance at events of the last five weeks by desperately grasping onto their narrative comfort zone of a massive and surging far-Right, rather than come to terms with the implications of Saturday after hundreds of thousands of anti-Israel marches brimming with hate and video after video of imams up and down the country preaching antisemitic bile.
It seems that grappling with the main problem would require a reconstruction of too many moral and political worldviews which ground the personal identities of those in the clerisy and RMC for it to stand a chance of happening. All the while, we see the continuing snapping and severing of the ties that bind us into the common life of the “first person plural” of the nation. Anarchy and tyranny will be our future if we refuse the liberty of truth.
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