The English ‘fascist‘ movement is a bit like a bowel movement, smelly but easily disposed of. In truth they are so trivial in terms of their support or intellectual influence that I cannot escape the notion they get as much publicity as they do primarily to keep them as a boogieman to be pointed at by their equally irrelevant confrères on the loony left.
The Rotherham scandal is not about comically half witted and pleasingly unphotogenic fascists (sorry Ed Temple). It is not about Islam or Pakistanis (sorry BNP, EDL et al.). It is not even about immigration (sorry UKIP). It is entirely about how the political culture pushed unfailingly by the BBC and Guardian (and the increasingly indistinguishable Telegraph and other formerly ‘Tory’ papers) for decades has so completely enervated British institutions along with all the mainstream political parties, that such thugs could not be dealt with. We do not need more laws, we have more than enough to deal with what happened. What we need is the preposterous culture of political correctness and its obsession with race to be flushed down the toilet.
So my caring sharing multicultural leftie chums… Rotherham? That is entirely down to you. Yes, YOU
Yes of course the rapists needed to be ‘blamed’, prosecuted and sent to jail, but that applies to all rapists. That should go without saying.
But Rotherham is not a ‘normal’ case of a rape gang, it is far more than that. It is about the entire edifice of the British state utterly failing to do what it is supposed to do. THAT is what I am blaming the Guardian and BBC for. They did not create the culture that these rapists came from, blame Pakistani Islam for that (and do so loudly and unapologetically and tell anyone who responds with “that is racist!” by saying “fuck off you apologist for rapists and the community leaders who shield them”). The blame I am talking about is the multiculturalists who let it happen and keep happening. They have ‘marched through the institutions’ and Rotherham is the result.
Sorry Perry, we don’t do ‘blame’ at the Guardian. Blame implies responsibility, responsibility implies ownership, ownership implies private property, which implies capitalism, so blame is bad.
Except for blame upon the socially-unfriendly elements of course.
All true.
I’ve started having a read of the actual report itself. I suspect the 1400 figure may be exaggerated, as it seems to have been reached mainly by extrapolation from a much smaller number. Still, there do look to have been hundreds of appalling cases.
When you compare the treatment of the likes of Saville and Rolf Harris the double standards are glaring. In Rotherham teenage girls who wanted to be sexually active with Pakistani men (or at least those who were not obviously being forced to do so, even if, behind the scenes, they really were) were said to be making a ‘lifestyle choice’. Nobody said that the girl Rolf Harris had sex with was making a lifestyle choice, even though she wasn’t forced.
While I 99% agree with you.. surely the Pakistani Muslim abusers still do deserve some of the blame. After all just because the racist left will let you get away with vile shit doesn’t mean you should commit vile shit.
By the way. the attack has to be that the left is racist. i.e. the racism of low expectations.
Perhaps you miss the point I am making as I am not actually talking about the rapists, I am talking about the people who did nothing to stop them.
Yes of course the rapists needed to be ‘blamed’, prosecuted and sent to jail, but that applies to all rapists. That should go without saying (but I will add this to the article above to make that clear).
But Rotherham is not a ‘normal’ case of a rape gang, it is far more than that. It is about the entire edifice of the British state utterly failing to do what it is supposed to do. THAT is what I am blaming the Guardian and BBC for. They did not create the culture that these rapists came from, blame Pakistani Islam for that (and do so loudly and unapologetically and tell anyone who responds with “that is racist!” by saying “fuck off you apologist for rapists and the community leaders who shield them”). The blame I am talking about is the multiculturalists who let it happen and keep happening. They have ‘marched through the institutions’ and Rotherham is the result.
The fix is already in.
The MSM and the left have already moved the blame onto their perennial fall guy: The Police.
It’s all their fault, apparently. Watching left wing pols and commentators in full, “WHY OH WY OH WHY?” mode is stomach-turning. Akin to watching KKK members standing round a lynched black man and blaming the guy who sold them the rope.
Not just Rotherham, other towns too.
There is more still to make its way into the public consciousness.
When many of my professional assignments required working in (and from) London and Dublin in 1972, at the tender age of 48, I found the M. Gdn. awful(almost deceitful); didn’t care much for what Manchester was then either, but at least it was getting better by 1990.
The Gdn and NYT have both been in decay (a stage following actual death) for years. Why are they still afloat? These parallel cases are dumfounding. Maybe that’s a clue: “dumbfounding.”
I have no disagreement with the post, and this comment is a bit of an aside, but I’m getting more and more annoyed with people (such as Ed Temple) who clearly haven’t a clue as to its actual meaning using the word “fascist” as an all-purpose epithet for strong nationalists. Fascism has a specific meaning, and it’s not the EDL. In his 1944 book “When We Go Marching In” John T. Flynn defined fascism as a system:
Flynn’s conclusion: “Wherever you find a nation using all of these devices you will know that this is a fascist nation. In proportion as any nation uses most of them you may assume it is tending in the direction of fascism.”
The US has marched very far down that road already, with no signs of turning back, and the UK seems to have also, if perhaps to a somewhat lesser extent. Indeed, over the last few decades most of the west has been moving steadily toward overt fascism, which is becoming the dominant political philosophy of our age. But we have so debased the word that no one recognizes this for what it is. (Indeed, I invariably receive objections from the ignorant when I assert that Obama is not a Marxist, but rather a fascist.) This linguistic debasement cannot be entirely an accident, and it is exacerbated by useful idiots such as Temple who perpetuate the dishonesty.
Fascism is a clearly defined political philosophy, and presents a very real danger to freedom. As Jeffrey Tucker wrote recently, fascism “deserves a close reading today, especially as we look around at government policy. Every industry is regulated. Every profession is classified and organized. Every good or service is taxed. Endless debt accumulation is presumed. Immense doesn’t even begin to describe the bureaucracy. Military preparedness never stops, and war with some evil foreign foe, remains a daily prospect. All institutions of government originate with an idea. That idea has a name. It’s not socialism. It’s not laissez faire. It’s the third way that became all the rage in the 1930s. That few dare use the term correctly and accurately changes nothing about the reality.”
The first step is to stop acquiescing in the destruction of the word which actually describes the looming issue.
To those who refer to MSM (particularly in connection with the print noted), should observe that “Main” stream is now an arroyo, for awhile past an occasional creek, then dribbles (if it got direct rain), now running only effluents, which never seem to fully drain, but dry in place with their residues, redolent of their sources.
mis-posted in wrong thread
Laird,
You amaze me – John T Flynn !
He was of my father’s generation (couple years younger) appreciated as of the same ilk. Although I was otherwise engaged and never read him at the time cited, he is a remembered name (worth recovering) from my dad’s views
I saw it and replied there, RRS.
Aside from some lame attempts at deflection, Comment Is Free at The Guardian seems to have gone silent on the issue. Perhaps they’ve got a troubled conscience.
Thirty years ago, a custody sergeant beneath Nottingham Magistrates Court told me (I was then a young solicitor and we were chatting as I waited for a client to be brought up from the cells) that there were many “honour killings” in the city but that his colleagues routinely accepted the families’ ludicrous explanations; e.g. that the girl had committed suicide by pouring paraffin on herself and setting herself alight. The detectives believed these deaths were murders, but feared their bosses would think them racists if they pursued the cases. So they let murderers walk free.
To my shame, I disbelieved him and called him a “racist”. He looked at me sadly and said “then you, young man, are part of the problem.” He was right. He was an honourable man who thought all lives of equal value. He was rightly disgusted at the true racism of holding these families to a lower standard of behaviour. I, fresh from my Marxist professors, had bought into political correctness. I was refusing to open my mind to a disturbing possibility that did not suit my world-view.
Twisting language and contorting truth to suit your political beliefs is not some game to amuse the semi-educated self-righteous. It has consequences; including those we now face in Rotherham and will probably face in other British towns. We need to face reality even when it doesn’t suit us and do the right thing regardless. Probably there will be some effort to do so now, but how long before the Guardian and its readers raise the cry of “racial harassment?”
Well Tom, I think we have our Samizdata quote of the day for tomorrow!
…how long before the Guardian and its readers raise the cry of “racial harassment?”
Immediately if not sooner.
“Twisting language and contorting truth to suit your political beliefs is not some game to amuse the semi-educated self-righteous. It has consequences; ”
Well said, Tom. The language of wishful thinking and political bias has overthrown not only our civil institutions like the police and our media but also corrupted academia, not just dictating which subjects are out of bounds but also has led to the rise of scientivists, happy to corrupt or ignore data, to further desired conclusions. When will the primacy of truth reestablish itself? Scepticism become the hallmark of the inquiring mind? This whole rotten superstructure of assumptions and concealment collapse because they can no longer convince anyone beyond the Irretrievably indoctrinated?
Laird:
Jonah Goldberg, in his excellent book Liberal Fascism spends a large amount of time attempting, and failing, to pin down a definitive definition of the word ‘fascism’.
I’ve always believed it to mean “whatever the user of the word despises”.
Snag, that is precisely why the entire western world is rapidly but unknowingly descending into fascism. Just because you (or Jonah Goldberg) don’t know the definition of the word doesn’t mean that there isn’t one.
For an appraisal of the numbers of girls that have been abused by the “grooming” gangs, this report (although lengthy) is well researched and referenced and gives a ground floor number …
http://lawandfreedomfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Easy-Meat-Multiculturalism-Islam-and-Child-Sex-Slavery-05-03-2014.pdf
I have a feeling a lot of Pakistani Taxi firms are going to go bust.
A very good post – both about English Fascist “movement” and about the Guardian-BBC crowd (the “good students” of the education system).
Oh, what a small world it is.
30-something years ago? Nottingham Mags? You were a solicitor? There is an awfully-good chance that our paths crossed. An awfully-good chance.
I also recall a couple of stories I heard, not a million miles from there, about how teenage girls from that ethnic group would disappear without a trace. Upon inquiries being made, the family would respond that she had gone ‘home’ for a ‘holiday’. Two streets over, Satinder had also gone ‘home’ for a ‘holiday’. Three months later, the happy couple would show up with a marriage certificate from some village in Pakistan. And no further inquiries would be made.
In many cases, so I was told, the pressure on the girl to go along with this arrangement would come from her mother.
Ah, yes, Nottingham Central, one of the old-time police stations, with living quarters for unmarried officers and a bar in the basement – right down from the cells. If you got nicked in Nottingham, and if you behaved yourself, you might well find that your reward for letting the custody sergeant step down the hall for a quiet one is that an extra half-pint would accidentally slip out of his hand and right through the cell door. Happy days. I once got pleasantly lubricated there with the actual Sheriff of Nottingham – yes, Virginia, there really is . . . .
llater,
llamas
Tom,
Don’t suppose you remember that custody sergeant’s name? Or any further details?
Seems to me that in the wake of the Rotherham and Saville scandals, deliberately unsolved honour killings going back thirty years might be newsworthy. And it would be useful to find out exactly when and how and why the state decided to stop enforcing the law for certain ethnic groups.
Laird:
Don’t let my one line summary stop you from reading an excellent book.
Fear not, Snag, I’ve already read it (well, some of it; I didn’t quite finish it but will do so someday).
If anyone wants to check how Telegraph is now a Guardian caricature just go there:
Topics: motherhood is not so selfless , lesbian fatness, a neo-fascist praising EU appliances power control.
It’s Burnham’s “managerial state” . . . rape condoned while the finger of blame is pointed at antiliberals.
(editor’s note: presumably Ramspace uses the term ‘liberal’ in the US sence of the word, i.e. a left-statist illiberal, and thus by ‘antiliberal’ he means anti-lefists in Ameri-dialect 😀 )
Speaking of words and their meanings …
How about we quit talking about “honour killing” and instead call the thing by its right name:
Shari’ah MURDER.