Monday, June 19, 2017

Terror, counter-terror . . . dystopia?


So, the inevitable has happened.  After several incidents of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism in the UK, it appears that an incident of counter-terror, directed against Muslims in that country, has now occurred.

One man has died and 10 others were injured when a van was rammed into worshippers in a terror attack near a London mosque, before the driver is said to have screamed: "I'm going to kill all Muslims".

The van driver - described by witnesses as a large white man - was detained by members of the public after the incident in Finsbury Park early on Monday that police said had "all the hallmarks of terrorism".

There's more at the link.

Let's be honest here.  The response of the UK authorities to the initial incidents of Muslim fundamentalist terrorism was pathetic.  Sure, police swarmed the streets, and there were all sorts of emotional responses (up to and including concerts to benefit the victims), but none of them addressed the real problem - that there are tens of thousands of potential terrorists in Britain, who are there because the government of that nation deliberately allowed them to enter, and allowed their ideology to be propagated unchecked.

By now it's too late to address that problem.  The authorities would find it almost impossibly difficult to trace and deport all of those tens of thousands of radicalized Muslims;  and even if they could, existing laws would prevent them from doing so on the grounds of 'human rights' or other current hot-button buzz-words.  Besides, if they were to be deported, who would take them?  Many of their countries of origin are only too happy to have got rid of potential terrorists.  They don't want them back.  Furthermore, many of the radicalized were born in Britain.  They have no other homeland to which to return.

The authorities won't admit it's their fault, of course.  They'll claim that no-one could have foreseen the extent of the problem when previous generations of politicians allowed mass immigration, virtually unchecked.  They ignore the crystal-clear vision and explicit warning delivered by the late Enoch Powell.  His so-called 'rivers of blood' speech in 1968 was widely derided and rejected at the time, but his views have proved to be prescient.  Here are a few excerpts.

In 15 or 20 years, on present trends, there will be in this country three and a half million Commonwealth immigrants and their descendants. That is not my figure. That is the official figure given to parliament by the spokesman of the Registrar General’s Office.

There is no comparable official figure for the year 2000, but it must be in the region of five to seven million, approximately one-tenth of the whole population, and approaching that of Greater London ... Whole areas, towns and parts of towns across England will be occupied by sections of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population.

As time goes on, the proportion of this total who are immigrant descendants, those born in England, who arrived here by exactly the same route as the rest of us, will rapidly increase.

. . .

We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependants, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant-descended population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre.

. . .

The other dangerous delusion from which those who are wilfully or otherwise blind to realities suffer, is summed up in the word “integration.” To be integrated into a population means to become for all practical purposes indistinguishable from its other members ... to imagine that such a thing enters the heads of a great and growing majority of immigrants and their descendants is a ludicrous misconception, and a dangerous one.

We are on the verge here of a change. Hitherto it has been force of circumstance and of background which has rendered the very idea of integration inaccessible to the greater part of the immigrant population – that they never conceived or intended such a thing, and that their numbers and physical concentration meant the pressures towards integration which normally bear upon any small minority did not operate.

Now we are seeing the growth of positive forces acting against integration, of vested interests in the preservation and sharpening of racial and religious differences, with a view to the exercise of actual domination, first over fellow-immigrants and then over the rest of the population.

The full text of Mr. Powell's speech can be found here.

Nearly two decades after his death, in 2015, his friend Simon Heffer pointed out:

[David Cameron] is but the latest prime minister to have paid lip-service to the warped ideal of multiculturalism, and all that entails. In case one is unsure what it does entail, let us run through the card. It is an idea that the cultures and values of new, minority communities are the equivalent of the majority ones.

It means the majority culture may not expect those from minority cultures to abide by majority ways. It carries with it an expectation to tolerate attitudes that the majority reject, such as towards women and those professing other faiths. And it abjures interference in those minority cultures, for fears of accusations of racism. That last fetish has paralysed sensible response to multiculturalism for decades, and continues to stop any senior politician giving the right lead today.

. . .

It was not Powell who made this discussion impossible: it was the fear of generations of politicians since him to state the bleeding obvious, that there was a group within Britain’s community of predominantly decent, law-abiding and highly civilised Muslims who were determined to impose a primitivism and savagery first on their co-religionists and then, if they could, on the rest of society.

To refuse to tolerate that was not racism, it was common sense and an appeal for reason and decency; to use what Powell had said as an excuse for doing nothing was simply the expression of a desire for a quiet life.

. . .

If you seek the monument of Powell’s critics, look about you. We are a prosperous, decent country that normally embraces many faiths and outlooks within a strong common culture. Yet we have this malignancy eating away at a part of us: and our political class still fears to take the lead necessary to deal with it.

Again, more at the link.

Since the British government and its security authorities have flatly refused to do anything meaningful about the problem of terrorism that has taken root in their midst, it's only to be expected that at least some of the people of Britain are now going to take matters into their own hands.  All over the world, in every nation where crime (including terrorism) has become a real and crippling problem, people have taken the law into their own hands in dealing with it.  I saw that at first hand in South Africa.  It's happening today in countries like the Philippines (where President Duterte has actively encouraged ignoring the rule of law in dealing with criminals, and allowed Communist guerrillas to fight alongside his forces against Islamic fundamentalist terrorists), and in Venezuela, where criminals are increasingly receiving 'street justice' rather than handed over to authorities whom no-one trusts any more.  Now, it seems, it's beginning to happen in Britain as well.

I don't expect yesterday's attack to be the last.  After the Paris terror attacks in November 2015, I wrote:

The terrorists haven't thought about it, I'm sure, but they're going to produce a similar and even greater tragedy for their own people than they've inflicted on France.  The reaction from ordinary people like you and I won't be to truly think about the tragedy, to realize that the perpetrators were a very small minority of those who shared their faith, extremists who deserve the ultimate penalty as soon as it can be administered.  No.  The ordinary man and woman on the streets of France is going to wake up today hating all Muslims.  He or she will blame them all for the actions of a few, and will react to all of them as if they were all equally guilty.

One can't blame people for such attitudes.  When one simply can't tell whether or not an individual Muslim is also a terrorist fundamentalist, the only safety lies in treating all of them as if they presented that danger.  That's what the French people are going to do now.  That's what ordinary people all across Europe are going to do now, irrespective of whatever their politicians tell them.  Their politicians are protected in secure premises by armed guards.  They aren't.  Their survival is of more immediate concern;  so they're doing to do whatever they have to do to improve the odds in their favor.  If that means ostracizing Muslims, ghettoizing them, even using preemptive violence against them to force them off the streets . . . they're going to do it.

I've written before about how blaming all Muslims for the actions of a few is disingenuous and inexcusable.  I still believe that . . . but events have overtaken rationality.  People are going to start relating to 'Muslims' rather than to 'human beings', just as the extremists label all non-Muslims as 'kaffirs' or 'kufars' - unbelievers - rather than as human beings.  For the average man in a European street, a Muslim will no longer be a 'person'.  He's simply a Muslim, a label, a 'thing'.  He's no longer French, or American, or British, no matter what his passport says.  He's an 'other'.  He's 'one of them' . . . and because of that, he's no longer 'one of us'.  He's automatically defined - no, let's rather say (because it's easier to blame him) that he's defined himself - as a potential threat, merely by the religion he espouses.  He may have been born into it, and raised in a family and society and culture so saturated with it as to make it literally impossible, inconceivable, for him to be anything else . . . but that doesn't matter.  It's his choice to be Muslim, therefore he must take the consequences.  We're going to treat him with the same suspicion and exaggerated caution that we would a live, possibly armed hand-grenade.  He's asked for it, so we're going to give it to him.

More at the link.

I think that's at the root of last night's attack.  As Newton posited, 'every action begets an equal and opposite reaction'.  Terror provokes counter-terror.  It's as sure and certain as the dawn.  It's been that way throughout human history . . . and we haven't changed.

In the end, society will either sort out its terror problem, or the whole of society will become dominated by terror.  That way lies dystopia . . . and I really don't want to live in a dystopian nightmare.

Peter

17 comments:

McChuck said...

Small typo at the end - replace "terror" with "Islam".

"In the end, society will either sort out its Islam problem, or the whole of society will become dominated by Islam."

War is the ultimate group punishment. Individual culpability and attitudes literally do not matter in war. Islam is at war with us, therefore, in order to survive, we must be at war with Islam. It is literally them or us - as history has shown for 1400 years.

Unknown said...

After a minimum of 16 years refusing to speak out against the barbaric actions of their co-religionists, it's hard to argue that there isn't some culpability.

One thing about collective punishment: it works.

Rolf said...

One way to try to deal with the problem is to make terrorism not cost-effective. It would be easy to do as they have no written constitution. Simply pass a law that strips the citizenship and residence rights of everyone in the family of a terrorist, and everyone in the mosque they attend, and they are all to be immediately deported to the nation of ethnic ancestry. If none will accept them or they are mixed ethnicity, they are to be deposited on the shore of any muslim nation not able to "repel borders" as it were (such as Somalia). The mosque they attended would be burned to the ground and salted.

Repeat as needed.

No, it's not nice. But I don't see anyone proposing or implementing plans that are working now... Well, maybe Italy, but they have an aggressive monitoring and deportation program, so the problem hasn't gotten so far out of hand there that they need it. And if the alternative is slavery or genocide, then...?

Unknown said...

I will say that I'm not yet convinced that this is a terror attack.

There have been a number of things wrong with the initial reporting (eyewitness claiming there were three attackers in the truck and that one jumped out and started stabbing people, but only one suspect and no knife wounds). From what I've seen, the most damming eyewitness statements are all from one person, and most of them have been wrong.

Everyone is on such a hair trigger to claim terrorism that a 'routine' accident would be classified as such.

Even the claim that the driver said something about "his job being done" could be a comment about him loosing his driving job because of the accident.

An attack at 12:20am just is not going to get nearly as many people as an attack during the day.

It's possible that this is a deliberate attack, but it's also possible it's a real accident. I'm not convinced by the breathless news coverage overnight that it's clearly an attack. It needs to be investigated as an attack, that's obvious. But we need to wait for more official statements and info on the attacker.

This is as of monday morning in the US and late monday in the UK

David Lang

Russell Newquist said...

Violence always escalates. Until it can't. This is the beginning, not the end.

Anonymous said...

Either the British remove the muslims from their country soon or the British will cease to exist. It's that simple. They can have a little chaos and be called bad names now or they can cease to exist in the future. It's not nice and it's not pretty but that's the choice they have. I'd imagine the whole mess makes an Englishman long for a proper British king again.

On a related note, this tendency for European countries, and I include the US and Canada in that, to seemingly commit national suicide is a perplexing one. With a few exceptions in eastern Europe they all seem to have this societal defect that has manifested itself quite recently historically speaking. It's one thing for nations to be subjugated or eliminated by military force or a technologically superior culture but to willingly and actively invite foreigners to replace the native population in your country is utterly baffling.

CarlS said...

We can hope that those member sof the U.S. governemtn who actually have the power - and the b ... uh, intestinal fortitude - to do anything effective will be passed your article as part of the President's Daily Brief and the Early Bird DoD Brief.

Though it's doubtful that we have any members of the Executive Branch who are not being blackmailed into compliance by the criminals they consort with, or by other members of our government (probably redundant, but still . . .).

BadFrog said...

Peter, the root problem with Islam is its concepts of Kitman and Taqiya which permit the truth to be hidden from Unbelievers . This does not allow any of their statements or protestations to be taken at face value.

Joseph said...

I have yet to understand the intense, overwrought defense of and protection of illegal immigrants in western countries, esp. the US. I am not judging on if an individual is good/bad or whatever, just that they are illegal. I know that many of them are trying to get away from unpleasant/dangerous/difficult situations, but the US cannot afford to rescue the entire world.

Quartermaster said...

The left has assumed the rule of law will protect them from the time when "The Saxon hates." Little do they know that the lawlessness will beget the same in return, and when the "Saxon" rises against them, the will miss the rule of law they took advantage of. they will miss it because they will no longer have the protection of the law they ignored.

It will happen to the Muslims as well.

JohninMd.(HELP?!??) said...

The Jihadi have sewn the wind. With no real outrage at them coming out of the Mosques, the ordinary Muslims will reap the whirlwind. Fair? No. Inevitable? Seems like.... I would prefer the targeting of the active Jihadi, but that requires work and effort, infiltration, study.
I don't like it either, but I will defend me and mine, regardless. The only other choice is what they want, surrender.

JK Brown said...

I found this observation on fascism from 1927, prior to the rise of Hitler and his sociopaths, to be telling. Fascism was a reaction to the inability or unwillingness of the governments to deal with the revolutionary (Bolshevik) socialists (communist) violence. Fascism was considered to have saved European countries, well, up until Hitlers murderous intentions blew it all up.

"It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error."

--Mises, Ludwig von (1927). Liberalism (p. 51)

The failure of the liberals (classical) to successfully address the communists with ideas, left a population ready to embrace the new ways of discourse the communists revealed.


"For more than seventy years the German professors of political science, history, law, geography and philosophy eagerly imbued their disciples with a hysterical hatred of capitalism, and preached the war of “liberation” against the capitalistic West. The German “socialists of the chair,” much admired in all foreign countries, were the pacemakers of the two World Wars. At the turn of the century the immense majority of the Germans were already radical supporters of socialism and aggressive nationalism. They were then already firmly committed to the principles of Nazism. What was lacking and was added later was only a new term to signify their doctrine.

"When the Soviet policies of mass extermination of all dissenters and of ruthless violence removed the inhibitions against wholesale murder, which still troubled some of the Germans, nothing could any longer stop the advance of Nazism. The Nazis were quick to adopt the Soviet methods. "
--von Mises, Ludwig (1947). Planned Chaos

camperbot said...


I am 100% convinced this was staged by the authorities in order to provoke. Just a few minutes with Google Streetview compared with the photographs of the aftermath shows that the witnesses are lying and the incident as described could not have taken place.

Billll said...

I seem to remember the Finsbury mosque as being the mosque of the most virulently anti-western Imam in England. A fellow with one eye and one hand, victim of an "industrial accident" when a bomb he was making blew up on him. Did he get deported? Who if anyone replaced him?

Unknown said...

@billl

since that time the mosque was closed and reorganized, it hasn't been extremist for about a decade (at least according to the media reports).

In any case, it seems the leadership on site stepped in to prevent the crowd from attacking the driver.

I will note that the press is now saying that the driver was shouting anti-muslim things, but there were no such reports during the first 9 hours or so of interviews with the eyewitnesses. So I have some doubts about that.

Some of the early interviews with eyewitnesses were claiming 3 people and knife attacks. We now know it was only one person and that there are no knife injuries

Steve Sky said...

WE MAY NEVER KNOW HIS TRUE MOTIVE
Suspect shouted "Allah Akbar" before stabbing a police officer at Bishop International Airport in Michigan NBC

H/T Instapundit

graylady said...

I'm only surprised it took as long as it did.