We all know that Europe is descending into a sort of politically correct mass insanity. That’s been evident for quite a while.This morning a reader in Britain has brought to our attention an article from today’s online Telegraph which demonstrates that the slide into multicultural madness is in fact accelerating.
First, the note from our reader. She says, in part:
Essentially, the EU has issued a diktat that the words “Islam,” “jihad,” and “terrorism” are not to be used in news coverage together and that terrorists should be referred to as “abusing Islam.”
I had personal experience of this two days ago when my comments (and the entire page full of comments) on Islam were removed from a news article in the Telegraph. That was the first time in my experience of that paper in my decades’ worth of reading and writing to the paper which has published both my Letters and comments several times, usually on Islam.
It is a very dire turning point for Europe. I think your readers should know of this…
I read the latest report of the religious freedom act. I think that reporter is naive. The danger is real, everywhere. If people are kept ignorant of the core and evil doctrines of Islam, they will not be able to appreciate that Islam is antithetical, in every respect, to our beliefs, values and laws, as Americans and as predominantly Judaeo-Christians. (Lest you think I am too intense on that last reference, we have several Hindu friends, my husband’s family having served in India during the Raj, and for decades we have been warned by them that it was sheer madness on the British part to allow Moslems into Britain in such numbers. They are having huge problems in India now with Moslems. Not for nothing was it called the Hindu Kush — slaughter of the Hindus. You may also find it interesting that these same Hindu friends, whose accents and vocabulary are a joy to hear, have said to us frequently that “You British will never rule anywhere, again, least of all over yourselves — because you have lost your love of the English language.”)
And now let’s hear from the gibbering lunatics of the EU:
Don’t confuse terrorism with Islam, says EU
The European Union has drawn up guidelines advising government spokesmen to refrain from linking Islam and terrorism in their statements.
Brussels officials have confirmed the existence of a classified handbook which offers “non-offensive” phrases to use when announcing anti-terrorist operations or dealing with terrorist attacks.
Banned terms are said to include “jihad”, “Islamic” or “fundamentalist”.
The word “jihad” is to be avoided altogether, according to some sources, because for Muslims the word can mean a personal struggle to live a moral life.
One alternative, suggested publicly last year, is for the term “Islamic terrorism” to be replaced by “terrorists who abusively invoke Islam”.
I’ve got an another suggestion: “individuals of differing cultural values who choose violence as a personal lifestyle.”
- - - - - - - - - -
An EU official said that the secret guidebook, or, “common lexicon”, is aimed at preventing the distortion of the Muslim faith and the alienation of Muslims in Europe.
This is truly Newspeak, to call a manual of guidelines for censorship a “common lexicon”.
“The common lexicon includes guidance on a number of frequently used terms where lack of care by EU and member states’ spokespeople may give rise to misunderstandings,” he said.
“Careful usage of certain terms is not about empty political correctness but stems from astute awareness of the EU’s interests in the fight against terrorism.
“Terrorists exploit and augment suspicions.”
Aha! Now I understand the solution. If we quit being suspicious, the terrorists will stop bombing and beheading us. That’s only common sense, right?
“Ahmed! Defuse that bomb. The kuffar are no longer suspicious. Now at last we can forget about jihad!”
Details on the contents of the lexicon remain secret, but British officials stressed that it is there as a helpful aid “providing context” for civil servants making speeches or giving press conferences.
“We are fully signed up to this, but it is not binding,” said one.
The guidelines are secret. Why are they secret? Surely the enlightened European populace is in broad support of their leaders’ efforts…?
I feel compelled to quote Catch-22 again:
“They don’t have to show us Catch-22,” the old woman answered. “The law says they don’t have to.”
“What law says they don’t have to?”
“Catch-22.”
Not everyone has lost his mind, however:
However, Conservative MEP Syed Kamall hit out at the lexicon. “It is this kind of political correctness and secrecy that creates resentment among both the mainstream in Europe and in Islam,” he said.
Meanwhile, UK Independence Party MEP Gerard Batten claimed that the EU was in denial over the true roots of terrorism.
“This type of newspeak shows that the EU refuses to face reality,” he said. “The major world terrorist threat is one posed by ideology and that ideology is inspired by fundamentalist jihadi Islam.”
Notice that one of the voices of reason quoted above is — based on his name — “a brown person”. One of those multicultural chaps. What’s wrong with him? Why doesn’t he get with the programme?
This whole fiasco is so absurd, so ludicrous, that it would be laughable if the stakes weren’t so high. People are actually going to die because of the EU’s lunatic policies. Dozens, hundreds, thousands — who knows? But real people will eventually lose their lives because of this tendentious nonsense.
The soft-spoken and well-dressed inmates are now in charge of the EU asylum.
14 comments:
What a shocker! More lemming-hearted, autophobia from our friends across the pond. I'm almost tempted to believe that they no longer DESERVE their freedoms but I am loathe to give up on an entire continent so quickly.
Something needs to happen there qnd happen quickly or Rip Van Winkle is going to wake up one fine morning with a knife at his throat.
Well, in a way the constant focus on language shows the superficiality of the EU. Words do not change the world, ideas and actions do.
So by behaving more and more stupid, the EU works on its own destruction.
A bit more of this hilarious stupidity, and people will start not taking the EU serious anymore.
It will be irellevant.
If the Telegraph is bending to the Islamofascists, then it's all over in Britain; it's all over in Europe. Even Denmark and Poland will not be able to withstand the combined Marxo-Islamist might of the EU and even Russia, which is Islamifying even more quickly than France.
Our Danish friends (and any anti-dhimmis and European Jews reading this)should very seriously consider emigration. Even if you can't get into the USA, Canada or Australia right away, get yourself off that miserable continent. Jews have the option of Israel, of course; others -- well, if you're well educated, lots of countries will have you.
"Implementing Newspeak"
Inevitable, considering that various Western European governments have been moving to outlaw politically incorrect speech.
Trackbacked by The Thunder Run - Web Reconnaissance for 03/30/2007
A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention.
Europe has gone mad. What world do we live in when the Telegraph is censored in such a manner.
Churchill and Wellington are rolling in their graves
El Jefe Maximo:
Soon, the only way they are going to be able to preserve and protect the remains of Churchill and Wellington and countless other historical figures of Britain's last 1,000 years will be to dig them up and re-inter them in North America, before the Islamist goons destroy them.
The EU is already dying. Up to the opoint of the referenda on the constitutional treaty it was always increasing. After the no votes by France and Denmark it stalled, and has never recovered. It is a dying construct. The only question that remains is whether it will fragment before any islamic attempt to take over... and I suspect any such attempt will actualy hastenm the EU's demise, as the reality of what we face sinks in to the general population.
The devil always plays his hand too soon, and so do the authoritarian types. That includes Islam. I submit that it is not merely pessemistic to assume that this means europe is doomed, is is irresponsible, as encouraging people to leave just when they might be most needed to restore sanity will create a self-fulfilling prophecy.
old peculier
I trust that G of V readers are not making the mistake of confusing an document devised by self-serving EUrocrats with the opinions of most people this side of the Atlantic? Just to make themselves feel complacent?
If the people of Europe don't feel strongly enough to demonstrate about the idiocies of this neo-Marxist bureaucratic dictatorship called the EU, then yes, I would assume these opinions are shared by most of the EU.
It's not like Europeans don't know how to take to the streets to protest things -- like they do in the hundreds of thousands against those evil Joooos defending themselves against the new Nazis, or against those evil Yanks (manipulated by us evil Jooos, according to most Europeans)when they overthrow heroes of Eurosocialism like Saddam Hussein.
Zero, you fail to appreciate that, for most people, the EU bureacracy is a vast, remote thing at the very edge of their conscious perception. They aren't protesting because the whole thing is so incredibly boring; it's impossible to pay attention for long enough to get enraged, or even slightly emotive, unless you force yourself to wait and drink lots of coffee. Most people just want to get on with their lives, not try and work themselves up in to a fury about something that appears to be so incredibly uninteresting and appears to have no actual relevance to their daily lives.
Appears.
The appearance is that the EU is a distance body that doesn't do very much. The reality is that it has hollowed out our national institutions and infests them like a parasite. The appearence is that we are still independent, and because most people don't want to believe that this could change, the deception is very easy to maintain. The idea that we are no longer a free nation is too radical and terrifying, and the idea that the distant, boring EU could be behind it is too laughable.
This is all about appearances, you see, not realities. The reality is quite different, but most never see it because it's hidden, by the media, by politicians, by their own lyin eyes.
This applies in everything you see from your side of the atlantic, too. Lies on top of obfuscation surrounded by plain deceit, put across by the media on both sides of the atlantic desperate to convince the world that "Europe" is a socialist utopia and that the west is obviously guilty.
And that's the mistake you're making in your assessment. At every protest against the war there were counter-protests for it. At every protest about Israel, more people turned out to oppose the protesters. They are never shown in the media. Not even bloggers show them most of the time, because most bloggers get their news from the MSM, and because the counter-protesters tend to resemble the protesters... y'know, all speaking that funny frankish tongue and such. Some of these counter-protesters did appear in the media once but because they were holding signs in french they were simply labled as being the protesters, and the counter-protest was airbrushed out of history.
Let me give you an example from your own recent history. The Tet offensive in Vietnam was a military success no matter how you looked at it, but your entire nation was fooled in to believing it was a failure by one man. We have an entire army of walter kronkites telling us - and you - that the anti-israel protests, anti-war protests and all that jazz are popular movements; that the EU is not destroying our culture; that we support tyranny at the expense of our culture.
It's all lies. And the worst part is, you're believing them.
Faced with this constant barrage of lies most right thinking people sit back and wonder if they're wrong in their thinking, if perhaps the other side is in the majority. They know their friends think the same way they do and they know the friends of their friends also think the same way, or similar, but day after day they face a cosntant message from the goggle-box telling them that the majority thinks in a different way.
There's certainly no denying that we're at one of those historical moments. Decisions made in the next few years will alter the path of history in ways we can't fully comprehend. The east side of the atlantic is on the verge of being overwhelmed by an enemy who's very presence is denied by the people who claim to be our leaders and protectors. We are on the verge of destruction, and blindfolded by our media. You sit there and snipe at us, not realising you're wearing the same blindfold and facing the same destruction, delayed a few years hence perhaps, but as inevitable as ours so long as you mistakenly assume that you are safe simply because it's happening here and not there. As one of your founding fathers once said, we must hang together, or we shall surely all hang seperately.
It's ironic, really. We say we don't trust the media, but when it confirms our preconceptions we lap it up and ask for more...
Archonix,
Well-written and cogent post. However, you flounder on several points:
Lies on top of obfuscation surrounded by plain deceit, put across by the media on both sides of the atlantic desperate to convince the world that "Europe" is a socialist utopia and that the west is obviously guilty.
Polls have shown that Americans, far more than Europeans, are skeptical of what their media tells them. Typically, polls show that about 35-40% of Americans think the media is fair. Among those who think it's biased, by a 3:1 margin they think it has a left-wing biased. Polls also show that the news media is now among the LEAST trusted institutions in the USA (this by polls conducted by the leftist media, no less). The military comes out as the most trusted. This type of widespread skepticism of the media is not matched in Europe, where people still naturally defer to their unelected elites, as they have since the days of the Roman Empire.
At every protest about Israel, more people turned out to oppose the protesters. They are never shown in the media.
That is not true. Pro-Israel protesters were, in fact, afraid to organize, fearing attacks by the Islamonazi goons that have basically taken over European foreign policy with their threats of violence and with appeals to Europe's fear of being called racist, and yet also to its instinctual hatred of Jews.
We have an entire army of walter kronkites telling us - and you - that the anti-israel protests, anti-war protests and all that jazz are popular movements; that the EU is not destroying our culture; that we support tyranny at the expense of our culture.
Given that polls in Europe consistently show that Israel and the Jews are the most hated nation among Europeans -- especially younger ones, and given a recent poll that found that the Nazis --er, exucse me, Germans, think America is more evil than Iran -- I would say that Europeans, far from rejecting the anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism spewed out by its media, academic and bureaucratic elites, are in fact eating it up.
Look, the American media, especially CBS, CNN and NPR, are little more than Marxist and Islamist propaganda outlets; yet Americans polled on the Israel-Islamonazi conflict favor Israel by a 3:1 margin, and few have no opinion on the subject. So just because the media feeds us a Marxist fantasy doesn't mean that the people have to buy it.
But based on what polls consistently say in Europe, they do. Because it reinforces their beliefs -- about how Americans, and even more so, Jews -- are unmitigated evil.
I can only reiterate what I've said above. You see, while you have a lot of media outlets that are broadly right-wing and at least some competition, we only have state-owned broadcasters and a bunch of wannabes that cater to the same audience in a market that is so distroted by the presence of state-funded media bodies as to be completely uncompetitive in any meaningful sense. Consequently any polls are automatically suspect and most likely are just made up.
As for the rest? Who do you believe? I, who have seen what I am talking about, or the state-owned and otherwise entirely leftist media that tells you otherwise?
Archonix:
Continental Europe may have nothing but left-wing, politically correct, anti-American, anti-Semitic propaganda media.
But Britain has more political diversity in its newspapers than we do even here in America. You go from the Daily Mail and Telegraph on the right (well, the right by YOUR standards), to the moral idiocy of the Grauniad and das Independent.
We have more than 150 papers in the USA with daily circulation > 100,000 but I can probably count the number that are conservative (or at least non-leftist) on my two hands with fingers to spare - NY Post, Wall Street Journal, Investors Business Daily, Boston Herald, and Washington Times. That's about it.
And take away Fox News, our television news is just as sorry a piece of Communist propaganda machinery as Europe's.
Ahh, but at least it has to make a show of catering to the market, which is a moderating influence in the worst excesses of their behaviour toward certain subjects.
Lets not forget that journalists from these "right wing" papers were educated in the same universities as those from the left. They often swap around and they've all moved toward the left in recent years, simply because they efine themselves in terms of how far to the right they are of the BBC, which claims it stands in the centre ground - a falacy.
Your media has a similar problem, in that your journalists are alle ducated at the same universities and are under pressure to conform to left-wing ideaology.
Simply put, there are no truly right-wing newspapers anymore. You seem unable of understanding just how much the state media distorts both the market and the perception people have of political events. I don't blame you. I wish I didn't have to understand it either...
No matter how conservative a newspaper is, there is a constant pressure to appeal to the BBC intelligentsia for approval, as the BBC reaches in to nearly every home and can almost literally destroy the circulation of a broadsheet overnight with a few sneers if it wants to. People trust the BBC because they've spent their entire lives being taught to trust it; to say they do is almost instinctive, no matter how little actual content they agree with. If the BBC says jump, they might not jump, but they'd be inclined to believe that jumping was a good idea, and so if the BBC implants the idea that a newspaper is "evil", for want of a better word, a lot of people will take that on board.
If the BBC didn't exist and the majority of people in this country were still of the same opinion as they are now then I wouldn't argue with you, because you'd be right. But we can't guess at that, can we? The BBC exists and has had its influence over this country for the better part of a century. It can make policy. It controls governments. It destroyed the Major government. But. WHere do people get their news for this sort of thing? The BBC. And other journalists? They're all much of a muchness in the end; they never go after their own.
Can you see the predicament now? You base your opinions of how Europeans think by taking information put out by the media, but that media - left or right - works in collusion almost all the time. They follow the lead of the BBC in the majority of cases, because the BBC, with all that funding, holds all the power. You will find the same situation in nearly every other european country, where state-funded or state-owned media acts with impunity, portraying its ideas as public opinion with very little evidence.
Want to prove the jews are evil? Phone around the east-end of london where all the muslims live and ask them. Want to get a "europe thinks america is evil" survey result? Just call up all your mates in kensington and notting hill, call it a random survey and publish the results as fact.
When the media has such control over what the public does and does not see, surveys, polls, "popular" movements all mean nothing. Your media has wet dreams about this sort of control over people's lives, but they have to cater to the market for their funding, so they can never truly assert it.
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