The Establishment’s Anti-Reality Check : Edward Cline
http://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-establishments-anti-reality-check.html
Are our political and cultural establishments connected to reality? Evidence shows that they are not.
On January 7th we saw the political, intellectual, and mainstream media establishments around the world stare with dropped jaws and frozen saucer eyes at the massacre of twelve people in the offices of Charlie Hebdo. The spectacle was worthy of a “deer in the headlights” Charlie Hebdo cartoon.
In the wake of the attacks, those establishments went into full denial mode. They repaired to the Club of Denial for a sleep-over.
They’ve had time to sleep on the event, recover from the trauma, regain their composure, and in the morning, issue in their grogginess hysterical, astonishing denials that the three individuals responsible for machine gunning the staff of the satirical magazine to revenge the “Prophet” had nothing to do with Islam, or that Islam had nothing to do with the attack. They haven’t got that straight yet. One almost expects them to claim that the three Muslims were renegade Quakers who were really upset at Charlie Hebdo over its impiety. They dressed like terrorists and spoke Arabic just to fool everyone.
Or, they were really Muslims who wanted to besmirch Islam’s “good name”? Or, perhaps didn’t want to besmirch it? Nevertheless, according to the politicians, the intellectuals and PC pundits, and the MSM, the killers had nothing to do with Islam. They’d heard that the jihadists even left a note to that effect on the body of one of their victims, a note which the French authorities have not yet released to the public lest it compound the offense and cause more car burnings and “lone wolf” assaults on Frenchmen. Sources close to their contacts say the note read: L’Islam est une religion de paix!
Obviously, these “terrorists” had mental problems, they were all escapees from a Bolivian psychiatric hospital and traveling on false Tasmanian passports. They had a history of mental turmoil ever since they threw their Korans to the floor from their highchairs in a typical infantile tantrum because they couldn’t have their halal oatmeal. So, who knows which screws are loose in the attackers’ minds? Responsibility can’t rest on any one set of ideas.
Those “violent” Koranic imperatives, after all, could just as easily be interpreted to read : “Take a Jew to lunch at the Behind the Tree Coffee Shop,” or “Rape is bad. That isn’t nice. Invite the exposed meat to a Tupperware party, or “There’s no money in beheadings. Open up a Barber Shop and Hair Salon for Men and Women instead.”
The killers had nothing to do with Islam. They weren’t motivated by Islam, except perhaps by a paltry handful of Koranic verses that could be interpreted any one of a dozen ways. They were blameless “Walking Dead” zombies who can’t help but kill and destroy. That’s the Party line.
You see, psychotic, touchy, super-sensitive criminals obsessed with an icon, Mohammad, who was also a psychotic, touchy, super-sensitive criminal, have a right not to be provoked or incited by loose lips that sink ships and cartoons that swell and inflame their frontal cortexes. If they go on murderous rampages, it’s our fault for sticking our tongues out at them or giving them the Italian salute or by putting eye-liner and rouge on depictions of Mohammad. Had we not offended them by mocking their icon, we wouldn’t even know they were there.
Except that we know they’re there and object to their presence – nay, even to their very existence among us, for they are either passive, assembly-line manqués, or grenades whose pins ready to be pulled.
One senses that the kneejerk deniers of the true calling of Islam are quivering with the fear that the public will expect them to lay the blame on Islam, pure and simple. This, they don’t want to do. That would mean emerging from their Kantian, moral relativity shells to look at the truth with saucer eyes and with all the dignity of a newly hatched ostrich.
One reads the actual denials and they’re not far from being self-satirical. One asks: What world are these people living in? Are they actually pod people sprung from alien watermelons? Invaders from a parallel universe who have settled here and taken control of our culture?
Is it a neurosis that strikes just liberals and leftists and cringing conservatives? Or is it an undiagnosed psychosis for which there exists no cure and no medication? Whatever its identity, the condition is embedded in their minds and there is no reconciliation or redemption in it.
The truth is that every one of these vehicles of denial is living in an imaginary universe where reality is simply a phantasm, but their communal, consensus-driven fantasy takes precedence over facts and truth because they’ve imbibed the idea from Immanuel Kant and Georg Hegel and their disciples that reality is unreal and subjective and unknowable. They’ve drunk from that well of philosophical Kool-Aid called Kantiism. They exude a militant delusion that refuses to accept the evidence of their senses.
It does no good to point to the reality that Islam is the root cause and nihilistic end of all the violence we have seen over the last month: From the Sydney chocolate shop murders by Muslims to the car jihad actions to the murder-executions of Stéphane “Charb” Charbonnier and his staff in the offices of Charlie Hebdo, followed by the cold-blooded killing of a French policewoman during a traffic accident and the hostage- takings at two other French locations, a kosher grocery store and a printing shop, where hostages were taken (and four murdered). It’s a waste of time to shove reality in front of their faces. They aren’t going to be persuaded.
They’d rather kiss a Muslim’s butt than stop and ask him: “What’s wrong with you?”
Nous sommes tous Charlie. We are all Charlie now. Well, not everyone. Many might mean it. The politicians, intellectuals, PC Pundits, however, are all crying crocodile tears. (Except for Barack Obama, who uttered the usual formulaic platitudes, but don’t expect him to retract his U.N. diktat that “the future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam.”)
They don’t want to be Charlie Hebdo. That would contradict their chimerical world view.
The list of broadcasters, columnists, and publications that are in denial and refuse to even reprint one of Charlie Hebdo’s satirical covers is a long and indecent roll-call of cowards and compromisers. Heading the list here is the White House’s latest Charley McCarthy ventriloquist dummy, Press Secretary Josh Earnest. , who was interviewed on January 7th as the Paris events were unfolding.
“This is a terrible act of violence, and one that we condemn in the strongest possible terms,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday morning, shortly after masked gunman killed 12 people at the offices of a satirical newspaper in Paris that has made fun of the Prophet Mohammed.
French President Francois Hollande called Tuesday’s massacre a terror attack, but Earnest did not: He used the phrase “terrible act of violence” three times, and he also called Islam a “peaceful religion.”
How original. Dear Mr. Earnest: Name me an “act of violence” that involves slaughtering unarmed people that isn’t “terrible.” By that definition, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago in 1929, which saw gangsters gunning down unarmed gangsters, was “terrible.”
This violent extremism is something that the world has been dealing with for more than a decade now,” Earnest said. “And we obviously are trying to monitor what we consider to be a really important threat, which is this threat of foreign fighters. So it is clear that ISIL does harbor the ambition to try and radicalize people all across the globe, and one core component of our strategy has been to mobilize the …leaders in the Muslim community, particularly the moderate voices in the Muslim community, to talk about what the values of Islam really are. It’s a peaceful religion.
“And it’s terrible that we’re seeing some radical extremists attempt to use some of the values and tenets of that religion and distort them greatly and inspire people to commit terrible acts of violence.”
There’s those “radical extremists” again. Those renegade Quakers. President of France François Hollande assured his nation on January 9th that the perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo massacre and subsequent carnage involving the murders of policemen and hostages had nothing to do with anything. Especially not with Islam.
“Not being divided means we must not paint people with a broad brush, we must reject facile thinking and eschew exaggeration. Those who committed these terrorist acts, those terrorists, those fanatics, have nothing to do with the Muslim religion.”
Au contraire, replies Anjem Choudary, the “British” preacher of “fundamentalist” Islam, who provided the world with a clarification in USA TODAY on January 8th on just how much Islam is a “religion of peace.”
Contrary to popular misconception, Islam does not mean peace but rather means submission to the commands of Allah alone. Therefore, Muslims do not believe in the concept of freedom of expression, as their speech and actions are determined by divine revelation and not based on people’s desires.
Although Muslims may not agree about the idea of freedom of expression, even non-Muslims who espouse it say it comes with responsibilities. In an increasingly unstable and insecure world, the potential consequences of insulting the Messenger Muhammad are known to Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
Muslims consider the honor of the Prophet Muhammad to be dearer to them than that of their parents or even themselves. To defend it is considered to be an obligation upon them. The strict punishment if found guilty of this crime under Sharia (Islamic law) is capital punishment implementable by an Islamic State. This is because the Messenger Muhammad said, “Whoever insults a Prophet kill him.” However, because the honor of the Prophet is something which all Muslims want to defend, many will take the law into their own hands, as we often see.
Within liberal democracies, freedom of expression has curtailments, such as laws against incitement and hatred.
That’s non-fanatical Islam speaking. You can’t get plainer than that. Mr. Choudary is as “moderate” as Islam can get. Choudary says there is a “division,” as between master and slave, and those who say what they please about the “prophet” must be dealt with in fatal fashion, even by alleged “radicals” who take the law into their own hands. We infidels have a statutory responsibility to gag ourselves when we are tempted to observe that the duck fills all the criteria of being a duck.
As Muslims in Britain run “grooming” gangs to subject British girls to sexual slavery, beginning with sweet talk and long walks on the beach, and ending with gang rapes in anonymous rooms,
the West is being “groomed,” as well, beginning with sweet talk — aka, taqiyya – and ending with across-the-board slavery as rightless kaffirs and deferential subjects of Allah, is what Islam has in mind for the West. The petit fascism of political correcntess can only become a fascism writ large, and Islam means to be that fascism.
But, what enables Islam? Kant. Moral relativism. Progressivism. Multiculturalism. Tolerance of the irrational under the guise of cultural diversity. A refusal to think. All in all, these doctrines, dogmas, and habits save their adherents the bother of having any values to fight for, to defend, to preserve, to protect. Values mean thinking and passing judgment. The adherents don’t want to judge. They don’t want to think. They want to exist without values, without reason.
Literally.
Mark Steyn, that irascible, fisticuffs champion of freedom of speech, in his January 10th column, appropriately named “Hollande Daze,” ladled out some biting sauces for the goose and for the gander:
The louder the perpetrators yell “Allahu Akbar” and rejoice that the Prophet has been avenged, the louder M Hollande and David Cameron and Barack Obama and John Kerry and the other A-list infidels insist there’s no Islam to see here. M le Président seems to believe he can champion France’s commitment to freedom of expression by conscripting the entire nation in his monstrous lie.
Is he just pandering? There are, supposedly, six million Muslims in France, and he got 93 per cent of their vote last time round. Or is he afraid of the forces that might be unleashed if the Official Lie were not wholeheartedly upheld? Stéphane Charbonnier said he’d rather die standing than live on his knees; M Hollande thinks he can get by with a furtive crouch.
Here is a short roll-call of the Club of Denial:
The German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière: “The extremist Islamism, Islamist terrorism, is something quite different from the Islam. And this differentiation is urgently needed just on a day like today.”
Fox News, MSNBC, NBC, CNN: In its breaking news coverage of the Paris killings at Charlie Hebdo magazine, “Fox & Friends,” the morning show of Fox News, showed a shot of one of the magazine’s controversial cartoons. Yet the network, according to a spokeswoman, has “no plans” to show further examples. Fox News’s decision falls in line with those of other cable news outlets. As reported earlier here and here, CNN has cropped out the provocative drawings from its coverage of the killings. And in an extensive rundown of the news media’s approach to the matter, Rosie Gray and Ellie Hall of BuzzFeed note this policy at the NBC family: “Our NBC News Group Standards team has sent guidance to NBC News, MSNBC, and CNBC not to show headlines or cartoons that could be viewed as insensitive or offensive.”
Financial Times of London: “…It is merely to say that some common sense would be useful at publications such as Charlie Hebdo, and Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten, which purport to strike a blow for freedom when they provoke Muslims.”
Variety: “The Charlie Hebdo carnage will likely fuel the racism and anti-Islam sentiment which has been on the rise in France. It will also certainly boost the popularity of far-right (Front national) party leader Marine Le Pen, who is expected to run for President in 2017.”
All of these brave publications and many more answered “Present” when the Chairman of the Club of Denial called the roll for a vote on whether or not to show Charlie Hebdo’s unadulterated Mohammad cartoons. The Nays have it: “No.”
There was one dissenting vote against self-censorship, but he was wrestled to the floor by the sergeant-at-arms and ejected from the chamber as most members taunted him with charges of “Islamophobe!” “racist!” and “bigot!”
Douglas Murray in a Gatestone Institute column, “We Are Charlie: Free Speech vs. Self-Censorship” on January 8th observed:
Those of us who have proposed that all Western — and in particular European — news outlets should multilaterally publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons have been greeted in return with a terrified and terrifyingly self-conscious silence. The papers and broadcasters do not want to do it. Last time they refused to republish the cartoons, from Denmark’s Jyllands Posten, they said it was because the cartoons were from a “right wing” newspaper.
In conclusion, on January 9th Daniel Greenfield at Sultan Knish offered some rational advice on how to combat Islam in his column, “Let’s Laugh at Islam”:
The true war against Islam is not a military war, it is a cultural war. For Islam it is a religious conflict by an empire intent on transforming every aspect of life into one defined by Islam. For us it is about preserving our way of life. The cartoon controversy woke many Europeans to the fact that free speech and many of the other attributes of democracy that they take for granted are incompatible with Islam. Under the relentless pressure of multi-culturalism, they and we are increasingly deciding that our way of life has to bow to theirs.
This is the ultimate victory of Islam. Not the fall of the Twin Towers or any single act of terrorism is as great a victory for Islam as when our own government and press repeat their propaganda and muzzle their critics. This represents the submission of the West to their rule. It turns Islam into the only legally sanctioned religion in Western nations that have long since instituted separations of Church and State.
If there are more such slaughters and mayhem committed by Muslims in the future – and, to judge by the official, politically correct response to the Charlie Hebdo massacre – the blame can largely be laid at the doorsteps of our so-called lovers of freedom of speech – the politicians, the mainstream media, the academics, and the intellectuals who govern our culture and that of Europe.
Ils ne sont pas Charlie Hebdo. They are not Charlie Hebdo. Not a bit.
They are all “anti-reality.”
* * 30 * *
Edward Cline
Williamsburg, VA
January 2015
Links:
Charlie Hebdo link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Hebdo
AP on Paris shooting:
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/shots-fired-french-satirical-paper-police-witness-28050653?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=*Situation%20Report&utm_campaign=January%207%202015%20Sit%20Rep
Collection of Hebdo Mohammad cartoons:
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-collection-of-charlie-hedbo.html#.VK6f33veeQk
Choudary on freedom of speech:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/01/07/islam-allah-muslims-shariah-anjem-choudary-editorials-debates/21417461/
Obama still thinks Islam is “peaceful” after Hebdo massacre
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/obama-spokesman-islam-its-peaceful-religion
Obama and future of Islam video:
https://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play;_ylt=A0LEV7v5i7BU3CcAu40PxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTBsa3ZzMnBvBHNlYwNzYwRjb2xvA2JmMQR2dGlkAw–?p=obama+the+future+must+not+belong+to+those+who+slander&tnr=21&vid=d087c594e45e6135c81627377530a886&l=5&turl=http%3A%2F%2Fts1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DUQ.415770085060%26pid%3D15.1&rurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DLNTplEW1sPE&sigr=11brtieit&tt=b&tit=Obama%2C+%26quot%3BThe+future+must+not+belong+to+those+who+slander+…&sigt=1208frp9k&back=https%3A%2F%2Fsearch.yahoo.com%2Fyhs%2Fsearch%3Fp%3Dobama%2Bthe%2Bfuture%2Bmust%2Bnot%2Bbelong%2Bto%2Bthose%2Bwho%2Bslander%26ei%3DUTF-8%26hsimp%3Dyhs-001%26hspart%3Dmozilla&sigb=14100gten&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-001
Greenfield: Let’s laugh at Islam quote from see hard copy
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2015/01/lets-laugh-at-islam.html
Hollande says attack had nothing to do with Islam
http://www.consulfrance-sanfrancisco.org/spip.php?article3122
Steyn on Hollande, others:
http://www.steynonline.com/6744/hollande-daze
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