The Europeanization of America

Whenever I post about Islamization, cultural enrichment, and the suppression of free speech in Europe, commenters are likely to remark on the difference between Europe and the United States.

“Europe is lost,” they say (a particular favorite on my posts at Big Peace).

Or: “We’re lucky things aren’t this bad in the USA.”

Or: “Wake up, America! We don’t want to be like Europe.”

Well, think again, fellows: we already are like Europe. You’re late to the game — it’s already underway here.

Five years ago I said we were roughly a decade behind Europe, and we were. But then we elected Barack Hussein Obama as our Dhimmi-in-Chief, and after that we caught up very quickly. We’ve all but closed the gap between United Socialist America and the EUSSR, and Mr. Obama is working very hard to finish the job, and maybe even pull ahead of the EUniks.

Take for example what happened yesterday to Florida pastor Terry Jones, who went to trial and was even jailed briefly because he wanted to hold a protest outside a mosque in a suburb of Detroit. Not only was he denied his First Amendment rights by a Dearborn jury, but as part of the court decision against him yesterday, Rev. Jones was prohibited for three years from setting foot on the property of the mosque or adjacent areas.

Mr. Jones has never broken the law. He has never been violent nor threatened violence. However, because what he says makes other people threaten to kill him, his right to free speech — as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution — has been denied. And because violent idiots may confront him if he exercises his right to free speech, he has been denied his Constitutional right to peaceably assemble.

This is the equivalent of what is known as an “ASBO” in the UK — an Anti-Social Behaviour Order. ASBOs have been used repeatedly against members of the English Defence League to restrict their activities and keep them from participating in demonstrations.

In Britain, however, there is no formal written constitution that forbids the government from engaging in such tyrannical behavior. The British Constitution is customary rather than formal, and the customs of the state have changed radically over the last fifty years. What is happening now in Britain is brutal and illiberal, but there is no single document to which the average law-abiding Britain can point to and say, “According to this, my rights have been violated.”

So, in a way, our situation is worse, because the highest law in the land — the United States Constitution — forbids the states and the federal government from doing exactly what was done yesterday to Terry Jones.

His case may make its way all the way to the Supreme Court, but I wouldn’t count on five justices upholding his right to speak freely. One of the justices is, after all, on record as saying that he’s not certain the First Amendment protects Koran-burning. Since the Constitution means whatever five Supreme Court justices say it means, we are at most a single Obama appointment away from the formal encoding of sharia in the Constitution.

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Unfortunately for the American Left, progress — and I use the word “progress” advisedly — towards its extra-constitutional goals has been slow and intermittent. The suppression of Terry Jones has gone fairly well, but the same is not true of all American dissidents. Some of them utter right-wing words and commit non-progressive deeds, and get away scot-free.

Take, for example Derek Fenton, a New Jersey Transit worker who was fired last year for burning pages of a Koran on 9/11 at Ground Zero. Mr. Fenton has now been reinstated in his job. It took the help of the ACLU and seven months in court, but his right to do what he did has finally been acknowledged.

It’s obvious that Obama administration and its comrades in the trans-national Marxist community would like to speed up the transformation of America. Part of their impatience manifests itself as concern for the persistence and increase of hatred, bigotry, and “Islamophobia” in the USA, and now they’ve invited over some British socialists to give them some professional advice on how to handle restive freedom-loving troublemakers and bring on the socialist millennium.

According to the Center for American Progress:

The growth of Islamophobia and rising hate-rhetoric aimed at ethnic minorities and immigrant communities has become a significant feature of right-wing politics in both Europe and North America. This new politics of hate and fear represents a concerted political strategy on the part of a new right, one which presents a significant challenge to those wishing to create prosperous, tolerant and diverse societies. It cannot remain unchecked.

The Center for American Progress, in co-operation with Searchlight, will host a transatlantic conversation on the rise of identity politics and its consequences for the future of progressive politics. Bringing together leading analysts and activists from either side of the Atlantic to discuss how best to approach the rise of nationalist groups, the conversation will evaluate why Islamophobia and hate-rhetoric are on the rise in the U.S. and the UK, and the panel will share lessons from their own experiences on the most successful tactics for combating the politics of hate and fear.

Our British readers’ ears have already pricked up at the mention of “Searchlight”, and yes, you are right: the upcoming extravaganza will be a real progressive kulturfest of the Left, European style. The invitation says:

Please join the Center for American Progress for a special presentation:

Fear and Hope: Understanding Identity and Combating the Politics of Fear

April 28, 2011, 10:00am — 12:00pm

Introduction: John Podesta, President and Chief Executive Officer, Center for American Progress

Keynote Address: Rt. Hon David Miliband, MP

Panelists:

Faiz Shakir, VP and Editor, ThinkProgress, Center for American Progress Action Fund
Nick Lowles, CEO, Searchlight
Anthony Painter, Author
Eduardo Garcia, Advocacy Associate, Campus Progress

Moderator: Tara McGuiness, VP and Director of Progressive Media, Center for American Progress Action Fund

Space is extremely limited. RSVP required.

Center for American Progress
1333 H St. NW, 10th Floor
Washington, DC 20005

For more information, call 202-682-1611.

The Center for American Progress is, well, progressive. The good old Roosevelt-Dewey-Wilson sort of progressivism — remaking the world and removing our freedoms, but all for our own good. Its motto: “Progressive ideas for a strong, just, and free America.”

Before we get to the British component, let’s examine the American half of the event. The Center for American Progress is really the Obama Administration doing business as an NGO. It’s a non-profit that was set up with the express purpose of implementing the progressive Marxists-Without-Borders agenda, but outside the confines of government. It works hand in glove with the current administration, but without all those annoying legal constraints that are sometimes imposed on actual government employees.

The SourceWatch report on CAP includes this:

The Center for American Progress was begun in 2003 with funding from philanthropists Herbert M. Sandler and Marion O. Sandler. It is a Washington, DC-based liberal think tank created and led by President and Chief Executive Officer John D. Podesta, the head of Barack Obama’s presidential transition team after the 2008 election and former Chief of Staff for President Bill Clinton.

In 2009 CAP’s Progressive Media project emerged as a major communications war room on behalf of Obama’s domestic and foreign policy agenda and CAP became a strong advocate for escalation in Afghanistan. Progressive Media is run through the Center for American Project Action Fund, the more political 501(c)4 arm of CAP. It coordindates [sic] closely with the Common Purpose Project, an effort to create message discipline among the pro-Obama organizations, with a direct tie to the White House. [emphasis added]

Mr. and Mrs. Sandler, as you may recall, helped inflate the real estate bubble while they were owners of Wachovia bank. They sold their holdings for a huge profit just before the collapse, after which Wachovia crashed and burned under its new owners. The Sandlers have thus been of enormous assistance to CAP, building a private adjunct for the new administration’s policy wonks.

UK readers who are well-versed in the details of their own subversive Marxist networks will recognize the name “Common Purpose”. A British group by the same name is responsible for the intensive globalist multicultural training given to teachers and civil servants, often under government mandate. It is tied in with the networks that intersect with the EU, the UN, and other international bodies, and is effectively a service of the globalized elites.

John Podesta is familiar to most American readers. He was prominent in the Clinton administration as the President’s chief of staff, and more recently moved into the coterie around Barack Hussein Obama.

The Center for American Progress is his baby now, and his role in the “transition” never really ended. With Hillary in the Cabinet, and Mr. Podesta heading CAP, the conversion of Clinton World into Obama World proceeded smoothly — after an annoying eight-year hiatus while the Republicans pretended to run the country. The Obama version of Progressivism is more radical than Bill Clinton’s, and thus probably more to the taste of Miz Hillary.

Now let’s take a look at a couple of the distinguished guests who are jetting over from Blighty for the conference.

David Miliband is the son of a Polish Communist and a well-known lefty in British politics. He was foreign secretary in the last Labour cabinet under George Brown, and had hopes of becoming party leader after Mr. Brown’s political star completed its long, lingering descent. Unfortunately, Mr. Miliband’s younger brother Ed gained the support of the unions, and beat out his big brother for the leadership of the Labour Party.

His official duties have now been greatly reduced, so he has time on his hands, and presumably must welcome this opportunity to explain to the colonials the proper way to build a full-fledged socialist state. He carries excellent credentials for the task, being a Marxist of the Frankfurt school persuasion, and a full multi-culti.

To add to his cachet, he was one of the many MPs who were caught fiddling their accounts during the notorious expenses scandal that raged in Britain a year or two ago — so he ought to feel right at home hobnobbing with the Democrat establishment in Washington DC.

Some choice selections from the Wiki on David Miliband:

Miliband stated during the programme, in a response to a question about terrorism, that “yes there are circumstances in which it is justifiable and yes there are circumstances in which it is effective, but it is never effective on its own”.

Hmm. What would he add to terrorism to create an effective policy?

In autumn 2009, as the [Lisbon] treaty came close to coming into force, Miliband was named as being under consideration for the post as EU officials regarded him as “ideal material”.

Yes, for him, as for so many other British officials in all three major parties, the British nation is passé, and national identity must be suppressed so that Britain may be folded seamlessly into Europe.

Mr. Miliband is not known as a friend of Israel, either, so he will fit right in with the Obama crowd.

Another prominent Progressive scheduled for the podium is Nick Lowles. He is the editor of the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, and serves as the polite, respectable face of the Antifas, the “anti-fascist” anarchist gangs who violently oppose nationalists, conservatives, and any other organized group that dares to question the international Progressive agenda. The most prominent anti-fascists in Britain may be found in UAF, “Unite Against Fascism”, whose bully-boys have gained substantial publicly-expressed support from politicians of all parties, including the current “Conservative” prime minister.

Mr. Lowles also writes for The Guardian, the official mouthpiece of the Leftist establishment in Britain. As you might expect, his most urgent issues concern the British National Party and the English Defence League, who represent the growing danger of “fascism” that he has warned about for so long.

He wrote about rise of the BNP:

The emergence of the BNP is just one consequence of the change under way, and it is a change far more fundamental than many political commentators and politicians appear to register. […]

This is a phenomenon occurring across Europe and North America. In the United States, middle-American nationalism has emerged over the past 30 years, which despises the corporate elites above and the “undeserving” poor below. Across western Europe we have seen working-class voters turn towards far-right and populist parties at the expense of centre-left parties. Only a few days ago, two far right parties polled a combined 29% in the Austrian elections.

Antifascism has to change to meet this new threat. Unless we understand why the BNP is growing — and that entails accepting that its appeal is built on more than simple racism — we have little chance of defeating it.

A simple “Don’t vote Nazi” slogan is no longer enough. Of course we need to expose the true politics of the BNP leaders but we also need to address the issues on which the BNP campaign.

There is a limit to what traditional antifascism can deliver. We can certainly organise a turnout campaign to defeat the BNP in an election and through focused and localised leaflets we can undermine and expose the racism and ineffectiveness of BNP councillors and candidates. We must also get involved in the very communities where the BNP is most active, something progressives have increasingly failed to do over recent years.

More recently, Mr. Lowles wrote in a similar vein about the EDL:

The apparent willingness of the police to accommodate the EDL has had an adverse affect on many locals, including the Muslim community. Many do not trust the police to protect them, and this has bolstered calls to mobilise to defend their neighbourhoods. Compare this with the police in Bradford and Leicester, who restricted EDL demands and went out of their way to reassure target communities — and as a result reduced tensions.

I am not advocating a ban on all marches, but with freedom of speech comes responsibility. The rights of one group have to be put against the affect it has on others. […]

More worryingly, the EDL protest is likely to further alienate the Muslim community. Many Muslims will be more nervous; others are likely to be attracted by the extremist message peddled by Anjem Choudary and his Islam4UK group.

[…]

With cuts of up to 50% in the Department for Communities and Local Government, and the closing of its tension-monitoring groups, no one in the government is willing to look at the wider implications of EDL activities.

As you can see, Nick Lowles has his priorities straight. The real enemies are British nationalists of any stripe, whom he regards as essentially the same as Nazis. He’s not worried about Islamization, or terrorists — who, after all, are only reinforced and encouraged by the EDL and the BNP. Nor does he have anything to say about the grooming and pimping of white teenage girls by young Muslim men, but presumably that is also the fault of the “fascists”.

From his point of view, the important thing is to preserve and expand the trans-national socialist state, which requires the suppression of national identity and nationalist ideology. There is no room for compromise with “Nazis”, and the Muslims make strategically useful allies, since they share the same goals, albeit for different reasons: the British state must be destroyed in favor of a European state, and eventually a world state.

All for our own good, mind you.

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So it seems the Obama administration — oops, I mean the Center for American Progress — has invited over these fine Progressives to help them plan the American version of full state socialism.

As happened in Britain, this will be aided by an official government policy that promotes Multiculturalism and opposes “hate speech”, “intolerance”, “bigotry”, and “Islamophobia”. Like the British establishment, its American counterpart is enlisting Muslim Brotherhood front groups to help implement this agenda.

Also like the British, American Progressives intend to accomplish these ambitious projects quietly, without any particular notice in the newspapers or on TV, and without the need for Congress to pass many new laws. It simply requires the right administrative decisions, the assistance of well-funded private progressive organizations, and a few carefully choreographed judicial decisions by hand-picked judges.

Remember: the Labour Party brought more than two million Muslim immigrants into Britain over the course of a decade without causing a public stir, and with the acknowledged purpose of nailing down a permanent electoral base for Labour among the imported foreigners.

Remember: Barack Hussein Obama has already indicated his intention to bring thousands of additional Muslim immigrants into the USA every year. He is also intent on pushing through some form of amnesty for the illegals, and he may well achieve his goal, with the help of useful idiots in the Republican Party.

So don’t think it can’t happen here. It can happen here. It is happening here.

It’s been going on for a long time, but the Light-Bringer is really speeding things up.

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By the way — I didn’t refer to the name “Soros” in any of the above analysis, but if you start looking into some of the sources, it won’t be long before you find it mentioned.

So if you live in the Washington area, and don’t have anything better to do at 10am on April 28, you might want to saunter over to the 10th floor 1333 H St. NW and see what’s going on. You never know who you might run into there.

Admission is free, but you’ll need to RSVP — they say they expect the available seats to fill up very quickly.


Hat tips: for the AP story, heroyalwhyness; for UK material, Aeneas and Gaia.