Vermin and scum

I've always rather liked the philosopher A.C. Grayling, and have one book of his on my shelves. Alas (unlike Zeno of Citium) he's no Stoic, and his tweets, in particular, have manifested a massive lack of stoicism in the face of recent events (since Brexit). Today the great man gave forth the following Epicurus-like epigram in reply to someone tweeting that "Trump is unfit to serve":

Alas, pretty much every response he's received on Twitter so far has been negative. It's as if he's Thrasymachus and dozens and dozens of Socrates-like gadflies have all suddenly descended upon his luxurious locks and begun furiously biting his philosophical head, accusing him (among many other things): of promoting hate, of contempt for people who don't thing like him, of using Nazi-like language, of displaying bile, of lacking a sense of balance, of being hysterical, of being "really off his rocker these days", etc, etc. (Others have been less kind).

Meanwhile, Geert Wilders (a man blessed with no less luxurious locks than our very own hyperventilating professor) has called some Moroccans "scum", according to the BBC. Not a Sheep, among others, isn't overly impressed with the BBC's home page headline (see above) about that story:

Bear of Very Little Brain

I’ve been wondering lately, what is all this blogging for? It’s time-consuming, and the effectiveness is disproportionate to the effort expended. However, someone's got to do it, and it might as well be us. 

Firstly, how many of us force ourselves to stay awake for Newsnight these days? It hasn’t been worth the sleep deprivation for quite a while, has it?

I started preparing a couple of half-hearted pieces about Newsnight recently, but they didn’t get very far.

One was about a Newsnight scoop about David Cameron and Paul Dacre, which roughly amounted to the BBC acknowledging, disapprovingly, that the press has a considerable influence on events. However it hadn’t occurred to Emily Maitlis as she strolled along the Embankment delivering her piece-to-camera in a mini skirt and fetching military style pea-coat that the BBC too has considerable influence on opinions (and therefore events.)

Another embryonic article, which I aborted and abandoned was about Evan Davis’s chairmanship of a discussion between an extremely belligerent Stella Creasy and Oliver Letwin. (whom Evan certainly didn’t  ‘let win’.) 

I wrote: “Evan’s wispy beard makes him look more unkempt and spectral than ever. If I’m not mistaken I’ve seen him sitting on the pavement with a dog, a sleeping bag and a few empty cans.”

Not very nice of me, was it, but I can understand why he succeeded Paxo. However, LBC’s James O’Brien’s appointment is a different kettle of fish altogether. 

The mystery is, did Ian Katz pluck O’Brien from relative obscurity to the harsh glare of ’national T.V.’ simply to be as objectionable on Newsnight as he is on LBC?  What does he have going for him? He is argumentative - maybe that’s it? He’s also partisan, potato-faced and petulant. His LBC interview with Haneen Zoabi made me think of David Brent surreptitiously scuttling off into his office to quickly Google “Israel and the Palestinians” .

Much more unprofessional than any of the above was / were the now infamous John Sweeney interview(s) with Geert Wilders. The BBC and Sweeney himself must have known how bad this looked because the BBC virtually gave him the right-of-reply-by-stealth, with that creepy FOOC. 

Bear of very little brain

“We sent our bear in a duffle coat John Sweeney in hot pursuit.” was how Emily Maitlis introduced the item when it went out on Newsnight.

The bear in a duffle-coat looked absurdly inappropriate riding a bike in pursuit of typical Dutchmen to use as selective ‘vox-pops’ before confronting “the great man” with that mischievous “Some say you’re a bit of a fascist”. 

He opened with the Mishal Husain manoeuvre, adapted to fit. Not quite “How many Israelis have been killed by those homemade contraptions?” but “What’s the biggest cause, by terror, of the loss of Dutch lives?” 

Same trap, different location.

With this approach, Sweeney is inferring that you can’t justify opposing the Islamisation of Holland until sufficient Dutch lives have been lost. 

All this was the lead-up to a massive ‘whataboutery’ -  the allegedly Russian-inspired downing of a passenger aircraft which killed hundreds of Dutch nationals, and Sweeney's accusation that “Myopic concentration on one thing (Islam) blinds you (Wilders) to ‘another’.  

To add insult to injury, in his subsequent FOOC, he falsely claimed that Wilders hastily “changed the subject’ when this was put to him.  In fact it was Sweeney who ignored, (rather than changed the subject) Wilders’s patient explanation as to why all religions and cultures do not merit moral equivalence.  

Sweeney and his fellow defenders of Islam face a huge conundrum. How to condemn Islamic terrorism without condemning Islam? The favoured  get-out strategy is to assert that ‘good’ Islam has nothing to do with ‘bad” (perverted) Islam. The same contortion is used to avoid appearing antisemitic. ‘Good’ Jews  - some of my best friends - have nothing to do with ‘bad’ (Zionist) Jews. 

Hugh Sykes squirmed to avoid being seen to be Islamophobic as Craig showed earlier .

The most offensive argument being used to denigrate opponents and critics of Islam like Geert Wilders who've been conveniently labelled 'far-right' and who seek to defend their country’s values, (democracy, liberalism, freedom of expression etc etc) against Islamisation is that they are Nationalists or white supremacists, and are behaving like Nazis. If Muslims are their victims then Muslims are the new Jews and the ‘nationalists’ and the Zionists are the new Nazis.

John Sweeney firmly elevated this twisted non sequitur into the headlights when one of his interviewees  elaborated on his opposition to Wilders, ending with a cryptic “I’ve been to Auschwitz….”  So the implication is that Geert Wilders’s political fulfilment will culminate in mass  government sponsored extermination of the world’s Muslims, will it? All 1.6 billion of them? 

Sweeney’s loaded postscript confirmed what we already know. The world has been turned upside down. 

And finally, Sweeney’s closing op ed demonstrates a staggering moral inversion : 

“Many Dutch find his views not just repellant but dangerous. So will Geert Wilders take power? This man is changing what was once the most liberal country in Europe into something different. “

No, it’s not ‘this man’ who’s changing liberal countries into something different. It’s Islam, stupid.

Not that John Sweeney will read this unless he spends his life Googling himself. We bloggers are renowned for preaching to the converted. Sad but true.

Myopic concentration

John Sweeney reflected on his encounters with Geert Wilders on today's From Our Own Correspondent. 

He described him as "the Dark Lord of Dutch politics". 

He said he was "smooth, polished, extremely articulate and very, very troubling".

He called Mr Wilders's loss of personal freedom since 2004 (due to death threats) "astonishing and grim". 

And he talked of Freedom Party leader's "myopic concentration" on "one big problem" - Islam. 

Three new 'noes'

I hear Craig is putting his feet up and is smoking a big fat cigar instead of blogging, though he disputes this. 

Meanwhile here are three recommends. Some might argue that they only tangentially relate to the BBC, but those of a particular turn of mind might say they relate to the BBC quite a lot.

 No Peace with Islam. No recognition of (moderate) Islam. No negotiations with  Islam.

Daniel Greenfield has written two particularly sparky articles on his blog Sultan Knish.

The first one, The Deadly Israeli House Strikes Again, sets out the absurdity of the fact that in the eyes of the world the issue of ‘Settlements’ is firmly established as the only ‘obstacle to peace’ .

It’s as though somewhere in the deepest darkest recesses of the collective brains of the most ingenious of Palestinian strategists’, something sparked off an inkling of weakness in the opposition. Perhaps it was an entirely spontaneous stroke of genius - or perhaps a throwaway remark by an Israeli or US negotiator.  “Aha!” the Palestinian strategist must have mused. “Let’s try this out. It’s a longshot, but if we douse it with mud and throw it quite hard, by Allah it might stick.”  Only he probably used more flowery language.

“Who but a Zionist zealot would bother to delve into the geographical minutiae of previously negotiated and agreed land swaps,  and even if one did, who takes any notice of them these days and who gives a flying fig for areas A, B or C? Not we. Israel already epitomizes greed and expansionism, so let’s do it!  When a planning application for an extension to a Jewish house is approved, we will cry foul!” they must have exclaimed jubilantly if more elaborately.

“As if by magic, all three of our “noes”, all our suicide bombings, our rockets, all the Jihadi antics of our coreligionists, the inherent antisemitism of our prophet, all these will pale into insignificance against the insult, the intolerable affront to our dignity at the outrage of another Jewish house being permitted  in defiance of our preconditions.” How well they understood the way things are. 

That’s the gist of it.

The other article is illustrated with a waxwork-like image of David Cameron. It’s about a puzzling phenomenon that no-one has ever seen. Believing in it requires a Leap of Faith and that... The title is “Moderate Islam is Our new Religion.”

We’re all familiar by now with David Cameron’s emphatic pronouncement, which accompanies every fresh declaration of outrage at yet another Jihadi beheading. “It’s nothing to do with Islam” 

Islam has been hijacked apparently. “Take us to Mecca” “Convert or die”. Well, even if ‘moderate Islam’ has been hijacked, no-one’s seen hide nor hair of it since. 

They seek it here, they seek it there etc etc..a decapitated dedicated follower of moderate Islam etc etc.

Anyway, there’s another piece that is related to this subject. It’s the man we love to hate,  or should that be the man we hate to love. Geert Wilders.

“During the past ten years and two days, the ostrich Cabinets did nothing. It has nothing to do with Islam, they lied to the people. Imagine them having to tell the truth.”