I just read a comment, written by someone calling himself “Jonny Overcat”, which (a) tells me that the art of invective is not dead, and which (b), I think, deserves wider circulation. At the time of me concocting this posting, it is comment number six on this take-down of the appalling Mehdi Hassan. Here it is in full:
I can hardly put into words how viscerally disgusted I’ve felt the past couple of days with a significant number of allegedly “progressive” writers in American media who just trip all over themselves to denounce Charlie Hebdo as racist, wrong, oppressors and likely people who fuck puppies for fun. The forceful ignorance, the utter lack of even the most basic research or familiarity with the publication and people they are crassly denouncing, and the apologism (is that even a word? Now it is I guess) for the murderers are just utterly subhuman. A big part of it is that I’ve lived in Paris, I have family in Paris and I’ve pounded the pavement in every arrondissement pretty extensively (I do a lot of street photography). I absolutely love that city and its people, and any sort of terrorist attack there is deeply upsetting to me. I’m quite familiar with the neighborhood where Charlie Hebdo’s offices are, I have friends I used to visit who lived just a couple of blocks away from there. I take a terrorist attack in Paris kind of personally, even though I realize that it’s not all about me. I’ve been there during terrorist events in Europe (the Madrid train bombing) and I’ve seen the squads of soldiers patrolling the streets due to that, and the fear on people’s faces in the Metro etc.
So over on Slate, there’s the walking abortion that is Jordan Weissmann, who, before the puddles of blood of the murdered were even dry, valiantly asserts that Charlie Hebdo is just some racist rag and does everything short of just coming right out and saying that they had it coming to them. Never mind, of course, that he quite clearly demonstrates with his mischaracterizations, outright falsehoods and quite obvious lack of actual knowledge about the publication or its staff, that he just hasn’t got a fucking clue. An opportunist piece of shit trying to burnish his PC cred by symbolically standing over the corpses of the murdered and screaming “RACISTS!”
Then over at Salon there’s a specimen called Falguni A. Sheth, who ideally should’ve been fed into a wood chipper as an infant, whose article asserts that the REAL issue is Muslim feelings and how utterly horrifically Muslims are treated by everyone and boo fucking hoo because the world doesn’t bow low enough to Islam. Of course she asserts that the murderers who invoked Islam as their motivation before and during the attacks weren’t motivated by Islam at all, because whitey is racist. Yep. She hilariously states that Charlie Hebdo, a paper that has been published weekly for about 35 years, which amounts to roughly 1800 or so editions, “disproportionately targets Muslims” because they’ve published about 10 or 12 images satirizing radical Islam in the past ten or so years. Thus they are just some Muslim bashing rag, and basically had it coming. Don’t say what we don’t want you to say or we’ll kill you, and it’s your own fault. Never mind, of course that ten or twelve editions satirizing radical Islam don’t even amount to one percent of Charlie Hebdo’s total published works. Yeah, “disproportionate”, but she can barely bring herself to denounce the killers in anything but a passing fashion, as though their murdering is some minor technicality to be glossed over, because the REAL issue is that some fucking Muslim somewhere has had their religious sensibilities sullied by these evil, evil cartoonists. Because cartoonists do such irreparable harm to society. Muslims, of course, are all saints.
Seriously, fuck these people, all of them, and anyone who agrees with them.
I’ve always been socially and politically liberal, never a lockstep liberal, but always generally liberal. I’ve always had a problem with the significant number of so called American liberals and progressives who are rigidly doctrinaire to the point of stupidity, but over this issue, my disgust is reaching critical mass. I need to seriously consider whether I really have common cause with the unfortunately significant number of so called liberals and progressives who are more enamored of finding common cause with the severely illiberal tenets of Islamic fundamentalist thinking. When Bill Maher called Islam “the motherlode of bad ideas”, he was seriously understating his point. These supposedly liberal pieces of shit who find common cause with Islamic fundamentalism, whose basic grasp of the nature/purpose/context of satire is just as tenuous, or even weaker, than that of their braindead counterparts on the right, are just a bit more than I can stomach anymore.
I just needed to get that off my chest …
For someone who can “hardly put into words” how disgusted he is, Jonny Overcat sure does have a way with words, doesn’t he?
I do love the internet.
From memory, NickM is a master of the art of invective.
Ah, shucks I sure is.
A social and political LIBERAL. Bloody hell! As brilliant as his rant is, the MORON is still wading in the rotting, stinking mash of his own stupidity…
Actually Bogdan, from what he says, I think this may be the type of incident that will tip Jonny Overcat over the line to renouncing the left.
A friend of mine woke up to the idiocy of the left after 9/11.
I agree eb, this event may indeed have a similar effect.
Jonny, stop calling them ‘liberals’ for a start. They aren’t and probably never were.
Instead of walking away from liberalism, why not kick them out instead? It’s like waking up one day and finding your house is full of squatters shitting over the floor, and saying “Right, that’s it, I’M LEAVING!!”
I would have liked to have read whatever Christopher Hitchens would have written about this, but alas. I think we can guess though.
Bogdan – what is the problem with being socially liberal (I assume most people here are – it is hardly the natural home for social conservatives) or politically liberal (generally in favour of individual freedom and defined by opposition to totalitarianism)? I think you may have taken the adoption of ‘liberal’ by a strand of US political thought to be the true meaning of the label, whereas the writer of the comment clearly did not mean this but rather a more classical definition. Yes, classical liberals probably worry about the persecution of minorities for example, but unlike the modern US liberal they do not think this requires persecution of others as a response.
And to be honest, the modern liberal movement appears to be dying – it’s advocates striking more and more ridiculous poses whilst the party organisations that they rely upon slowly lose control of the votes they require (mainly low-educated, conservative and often instictively nationalist (not necessarily racist, despite what some liberals fear)) as the voters become aware they are not represented by those that they elect. As with all movements, its greatest extent disguises its growing weaknesses…
So in other words, it’s only victim blaming when it’s a college girl making accusations of sexual assault.
Indeed he does have a way with words.
Sadly “Slate” and “Salon” just reflect the ideas and attitudes taught by the schools and universities (and not just American ones) – the New York Times, and the rest of the msm, are fundamentally the same.
Will things change?
No they will not.
The same French government that now pretends to support freedom of speech, will continue to demand that people respect Islam (and will continue to prosecute people who do not – using some excuse or other). Mr Obama would like to do the same – but the pesky First Amendment stands in his way, till he can appoint one more Supreme Court Judge and have a majority – then the First Amendment and the Second Amendment will go down the Memory Hole to join the Forth Amendment and Tenth Amendment in oblivion.
Presently in the United States the forces that demand “respect” have to content themselves with firing people from their jobs, throwing them out of university (or failing in their degrees), or stealing their property (as with the person who dared make “racist” remarks in private – and, therefore, was not a fit and proper owner of a sports team).
Hope?
Under the present system, what is this “hope” concept?
After the present system collapses into economic and social bankruptcy (de facto if not legal) then there will, possibly, be hope – although of a savage kind.
When everything is in flux, when the existing structures have collapsed, evil normally wins – but not quite always.
I see that the foul bastards who run the French government have ordered the arrest of the foul bastard who calls himself “Dieudonne” (Godgiven?) for “Apologizing for terrorism”
Thank God – Thank God for the First Amendment.
The people who call themselves “liberal” in the US would get rid of it if they could.
Indeed, Taylor, it seems that with respect to the French government, je suis charlie non. They take umbrage when anyone except themselves uses guns to silence dissent. They have learned absolutely nothing from the whole affair. Which, when you get right down to it, describes all governments everywhere. Their formulaic expressions of outrage over the slaughter in Paris merely reflect unhappiness with the existence of competition.
NickM is indeed the master of invective, although he tends to be somewhat more colorful (i.e., joyfully vulgar) than the relatively restrained Mr. Overcat. When NickM gets on a roll it’s a joy to behold.
Eb and Watchman, perhaps you are right , my friends. In fact I always argue on the pages on American Conservative blogosphere against abusing the noble word LIBERAL and LIBERALISM which in an American interpretation have nothing in common with the true meaning of liberalism. Those are the American LEFTIST PARASITES that congregate mainly (but not only) under the banner of the so called “Democratic” Party who have actually stolen and illegally use the word liberal do describe themselves.
Our own Liberal Party, here in Aussie, is as conservative as any conservative party in the country of Western democracy (dying slow and painful death, anyway).
Also the so called “Democratic Party” in America has nothing in common with a true meaning of democracy like our Aussie or your own British the so called “Labour Party” has nothing in common with protecting the interests of the working people.
Sure, it seems to be an impressively good rant, but that’s all it is really.
If this discussion seems to be going down a rathole re the meaning of “liberal”/”liberalism”, then it may be that we have lost sight of the fact that labels like that and like (say) “progressive”/”progressivism” have been so tortured/hammered out of shape that they have become clichés. That is, they arguably no longer seem to have any clear meaning or definition except within the sphere of one’s own cognitive bias – which is an ambiguous thing to try to communicate, at best. Ergo, when you start talking in clichés, you probably become irrational by definition, because there is no longer a fully agreed hard definition of the terminology being used. Means whatever you consciously or unconsciously want it to mean or think it means. Tweedledum and Tweedledee. The terms are thus probably best avoided if you want to communicate something more specific than a cognitive bias.
So the guy still not discovered that the Left doesn’t have causes, only creates victimology groups that gives them power and throwns them out when they stop being useful.
Muslims are an assertive big electoral block so are the new victimology on show, the Jews are already thrown out from Left, White Workers are in way out, LGBT’s are dangling. Blacks being replaced by Hispanics…
I think you may have taken the adoption of ‘liberal’ by a strand of US political thought to be the true meaning of the label, whereas the writer of the comment clearly did not mean this but rather a more classical definition.
I don’t think he meant that at all, since he lumped “so called American liberals and progressives” together. He’s a leftist horrified by his fellow travelers.
The reason the leftists are so ready to side with the Muslims on this is they’re afraid they might lose the power of choosing to being offended. I mean, what would feminists and race hucksters be if nobody cared when they stamped their feet and shook their fists?
@Laird: Where you say
– I would suggest that the arguably pathetically failed (QED) elected collective-socialist French president/government is probably only desperately trying to recover some semblance of credibility and/or street cred, and is thus doing its level best to persuade people that
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At least that other arguably pathetically failed (QED) elected collective-socialist president/government of a much greater nation has apparently not yet stooped so characteristically low as to try to attach to the same apparently coercive newly-invented populist slogan – a slogan which seems to be rapidly acquiring a relevance in the religio-political ideology(ies) of the West similar to the relevance of the invented Nicene creed to the Christian dogma.
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The facts of the French murders by Muslim terrorists would seem to include at least the small matter that the Charlie Hebdo killers and the killer(s?) at the Jewish supermarket were known quantities to the State police/authorities, and yet the latter groups were apparently sufficiently alert and competent such that they effectively allowed the killers free rein to commit murder on French nationals/residents, thus failing in what would be a primary duty of any government – that of protecting the people from harm.
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It’s history seems to show that there has been a deep and subtle sickness growing in France like a cancer, since before the Revolution that inclusively embraced all peoples of the republic – including the Jews. The cancer is anti-Semitism (Jews and Arabs), and it has arguably been aggravated by importing excessively large numbers of one type of Semite (Muslim Arabs/Africans) to whom Allah has given a tremendous holy burden. The burden is in the form of an obligation to make Islam supreme wherever they find themselves and to exterminate another type of Semite (the Jews) and to convert (or kill if they will not submit) all other infidels. This is the jihad between Dar-Al-Islam (the world of the believers) and Dar Al-Harb (the world of heresy and the infidels). This jihad has been going on for approx. 1,400 years, and it is simply gaining increased traction in Europe, again, after Muslims were forcefully ejected/killed in earlier wars/bloodbaths in Europe’s violent history.
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We know that history repeats, and that we have free will. Thus, knowing what we do now, we arguably have a window of opportunity in which to choose whether we want to repeat history in this case, or take another direction. It could arguably be a kind of evolutionary step, as it probably will have a potential existential effect that will alter the course of human history.
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So don’t allow your attention to be distracted from this point, and so don’t pay too much mind to rants about apparent cretins like Mehdi Hassan and his ilk. Those people will continue to do whatever they do, because they must – they are doing exactly what they have to do as apologists for Islam, and a lot of it will necessarily include lying/dissembling. Mehdi Hassan is an absolute classic example of this – an exemplar to all Muslims – and he is impressively good at it; like a blob of mercury, he is all over the place. This is simply the creeping stealth jihad, blurring the lines of definition of Islam in one’s mind, so that it becomes less and less “not you”. After all, it is Islam – “The Religion of Peace”™.
Jihad literally means “holy war” (against Dar Al-Harb) and does not necessarily imply just the use of force, but is to be conducted on all fronts – including, for example, religious conversion, and social, cultural, and of course legislative changes, all in favour of Islam and Sharia Law becoming more dominant in society (as they must).
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In the case of France and some other EU nations, they may already have gone so far down the path of what could be called socialist-collectivist-liberalism that they have already unwittingly prepared a path of inch-by-inch and then mile-by-mile appeasement to Islam, so the result could be predictable. It’s more than, for example, just silently forcing the standard of halal food everywhere, or introducing prayer-rooms in airports and universities, or introducing Islamic studies into universities, or having an Islamic reading-room in the Gladstone Library (Allahu Akbar!) or allowing the wearing of the hijab and long sleeved garments (to more fully cover the female body), or having Muslim texts and teaching in “Faith Schools”, or allowing Islamic courts to be set up to settle “domestic” disputes in Islamic communities (as in the UK).
No, the greater steps would be, for example, if the proposed/actual UN resolutions of (say) criminalising the giving of “religious offence” are adopted, then that provides a major plank of Sharia Law.
The politics of Western democracy and liberalism seems to be driven largely by stupidity, corruption, greed, political expediency, and political correctness. Politicians rather look as though they are bending over backwards, striving to be seen to be “inclusive” and embrace “diversity” and “equality” (whatever those terms mean, if they are not already clichés). All this is weakness, and Islam can manipulate and fix that for you if you would just humbly submit to the will of Allah, and even if you don’t submit, they’ll fix it for you anyway, but over a somewhat longer period of time. Patience. Allah is wise and all-knowing.
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So what is France to be? At least three possibilities occur to me:
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1. “Je suis Charlie”? Certainly relatively risk-free if the rest of the shoals are chanting it. (Safety in numbers.) However, we can already see what a coercive slogan that is. What a cynical and hypocritical joke on the people who chant it. Freedom of speech? Freedom to chant what we tell you to chant, more like. What about (Oops!) “#IllRide WithYou”? – Yeah, right.
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2. “Je suis juif/juive”? It would probably never happen before Hell freezes over. The Jews are arguably, and apparently have always been, despised expendable collateral damage, and anyway the propagandists for the socialist-collectivist-liberals are anti-Semitic and detest them (QED BBC/Guardian, apparently). Nobody would be daft enough to set themselves up to be such an inviting political (or very real) shooting target in dangerous times such as these, and if the BBC/Guardian’s entirely possible and much-anticipated second coming of that foundation progressive socialist Hitler comes about, you’d be seriously in the poo with this chant. So it’s best to leave that alone then.
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3. “Je suis Muslim”? Now that’s more like it!
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And give Mehdi Hassan some slack. He’s probably a well-intentioned guy and is only doing the job that the Muslim Brotherhood or something has given him to do, and he seems to be doing it very well or at least to the best of his ability. Don’t forget that the Koran forbids lying and deceit in Muslim society, but Allah allows Muslims to dissemble and disguise their motives only if it is with infidels and is in pursuit of jihad and/or Islamic supremacy (e.g., for the establishment of the Caliphate).
Actually these cravens are liberals, and their posture is traceable to one of liberalism’s deepest roots. Part of the liberal struggle in the 1800s and into the 1900s was against the idea that “We’re better than them, and so we (white European Christians, mainly) get to push them around.” They won that struggle, overthrowing slavery and segregation and established religion and imperialism – pretty much all to the good.
But today they remain fixated on the counter-message of “We’re not better than them”, to the point where they can’t say “We’re better than them”, even when it’s obviously true.
@Rich Rostrom: Yes, nicely put. You could well be quite right.
Goodness knows how they define themselves nowadays though, or whether they even try. It’s the fixedness of their viewpoint that seems to become important. As soon as one says “This is my position on this matter”, then the ego’s rationalisation, maintenance and defence of that position becomes paramount, and any possibility for rational debate evaporates.
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This is what De Bono referred to in his book “Teaching Thinking” (skills) when he described the state of “intellectual deadlock” that can arise in the intelligent student’s mind. From memory, he gave an example of how it is internalised, and it went something like this:
* You want to teach me to improve my thinking skills.
* I am intelligent and can think very well.
* Witness that I can always defeat other people’s arguments in debate and can prove them wrong.
* Therefore I am always right. (This is a logical fallacy – a non sequitur (it does not follow) – as it merely shows that he/she can win a debate.)
* Therefore I have no need of improvement in the thinking skills department. (Based on a logical fallacy.)
* Therefore you cannot teach me anything about thinking. (Based on a logical fallacy.)
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De Bono said that the hardest people to teach thinking skills to were intelligent adults, and that this problem probably started when their egos started to set at about age 13. Thereafter, it was very difficult for them to change, since to accept that one can benefit from learning new thinking skills one must first confront and overcome one’s ego that rejects such a possibility. (And we think we control our minds…)
I gather that was why the CoRT Thinking Skills course (named from the Cognitive Research Trust, founded by De Bono) was introduced to so many UK secondary schools (and some NZ schools) for ages 11 and upwards.
Nowadays the UK schools have a GCSE called “Critical Thinking” that was based on an education advisory panel chaired by Dr Alec Fisher – refer also “Critical Thinking, an Introduction” by Fisher. I gather that it has been found to be a tremendously useful subject, helping the children to develop skills that are transferable across all subjects and that generally uplift the grades achieved.
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Of course, just as this could explain the “absolute rightness” and fixedness of (say) your usual “post-modern liberal”, it also explains a little local difficulty that we potentially all have, to varying degrees, whether we realise it or not. This is especially so with your usual Salafist jihadist, since he (and it usually is a male) has had to completely abandon reason in order to arrive at the necessary holy state of mind that he does, where killing and maiming of any/all infidels – men, women, children – is just fine and in accordance with Allah’s commands – e.g., as per the Charlie Hebdo massacre.
This detached dehumanisation (not-us), remoteness to and depersonalisation of the objects being killed is an important and necessary factor in the making of any effective soldier, and is, for example, probably especially well-refined in the case of (say) the US military personnel acting as snipers or operating drones and who literally do killing on command.
But going back to the liberals, I have to say that they seem to willy-nilly ad hom, sneer at and even tell outrageous lies about people who disagree with them, which not only seems to indicate not only an abandonment of reason and a lack of personal honesty and integrity, but also an arrogant “I am better than you” attitude – so what exactly happened there? Clearly they apparently can seem to consider themselves significantly better than some others.
Bah. Je suis, plutôt, Charles Martel. Stick that up yer Muslim arseholes.
Invective? I have not yet begun to invect.
I have to say that the prospect of more Hebdo-style attacks in the West has caused a change in my behaviour, lately. I now carry my AK-47 in the car whenever I leave the house, just in case an opportunity for some Islamic terrorist-cleansing presents itself.
On ne suis pas parisen, after all.
Aargh. I meant to write “Je ne suis pas parisien.”
Parallel thoughts lead to bad grammar. On est desolé.
I read my comment out to The Mrs., and she laughed. Then she reminded me that I’ve actually been carrying my AK in the car ever since 9-11, for precisely that purpose…
@Kim du Toit: Then you might appreciate the Stuck Mojo group’s song “Open Season”. It’s one of my favs anyway. I think I downloaded the mp3 file for free from their website. The YouTube video of them performing the song is rather good.