What do Nigel Farage, gender-critical feminism, masculinity, generalised homophobia and GB News have in common? All have been blamed in the past week or so for the pair of terror attacks in Berlin and Paris which left one dead and dozens wounded. Labour MPs (including the cabinet minister Chris Bryant), left-wing commentators and journalists have rushed to point the finger at a variety of bizarre targets.
It must be hard being an Islamist. Imagine, you’ve gone to a great deal of planning and effort to commit an atrocity and make clear to the world that your motivations for doing so are your murderous religio-political creed. Then, just as the malaikah are introducing you to the 72 virgins, you notice that Chris Bryant has posted on social media, attributing your actions to all-purpose, gender non-specific ‘hatred’. You are, then, according to Bryant and co, the same as a Christian who holds to the Church’s historic view of marriage. You are the same as someone who doesn’t believe a woman can have a penis. You are the same as a person who mocked Stella Creasy online for not knowing the difference between a parrot and a parakeet. Were Bryant not one of the most obnoxiously pompous people in Westminster, you would almost respect him for this level of trolling.
Politicians’ responses to Islamist terror attacks will probably make a fascinating PhD topic in future years. There is a set narrative that follows any of these incidents: the first priority is to decry any sense that the literal murder of innocent civilians could be used to divide communities. Now I don’t know about you, but I would suggest that the truly divisive act is that of stabbing a random stranger in a public place with the intent of striking fear into the West. Apparently not.
The tactic of blaming generic ‘hate’, rather than a specific ideology, is followed by an immediate condemnation of anyone who does otherwise. We are now in the deranged world where to take a murderer at his word is considered a worse act of ‘stirring up hatred’ – or at least one more worthy of comment – than the committing of the murder in the first place. So it has proved this time. The organisers of Berlin Pride said the attack must not be used ‘for political ends’. ‘People are trying to divide our society and set some people against others,’ they said in a statement. At a vigil, a singer even went so far as to say she hoped the attacker was ‘white’ and ‘Christian’. Soon afterwards, the suspect was identified as a radical Islamist of Lebanese extraction named Abdul Ballout. Germany, which has, shall we say, a track record when it comes to the wholesale embrace of dangerous ideologies, is not even an outlier. The Labour MP Kate Osborne linked the Berlin Pride attack to the rise of Reform UK and GB News. Both, she said, were part of an ‘escalation of hate’ across Europe, which was a ‘catalyst for real-world physical violence’. In Paris, officials warned against ‘jumping to conclusions’ following a stabbing spree in which the suspect was heard by witnesses to shout: ‘Allah has commanded me to do this.’ Ah.
In this deranged view, to take a murderer at his word is considered a worse act of ‘stirring up hatred’
There are evident double-standards here: the same people have no trouble identifying the far-right immediately should they commit any acts of violence. Yet across Europe, progressives in positions of power and influence go through an identical rigmarole every time an Islamist attack occurs. Only one, regime-approved, lesson is ever allowed to be taken from such tragedies. Everything else is ‘division’.
The progressives who excuse or equivocate over attacks on the most vulnerable – women, children, gays, Jews – are especially perverse given that these are the same people who talk so endlessly about justice and equality. At its most noble, the left seeks to protect and speak up for the innocent, the powerless, the forgotten. However, the left performs gymnastic-style apologetics for Islamism. It denies what it is and what it routinely tells us that it seeks to be – that is, a threat to the basic freedoms and values that make up the dignity of the West. Critically, it refuses to admit that Islamism is a threat unlike any other, lest the light of reality break into the myth of diversity. All this gives succour to violent men and imperils the innocent. It makes those at the edge of a fraying society vulnerable. Is it any wonder that gays in Germany are now more likely to vote for the AfD than any other party? Is it any wonder that some of the most important actions against the rape gangs in Britain have been led by women?
Deep down, I suspect progressives know that they are imperilling their traditional voting coalitions. Their responses often reflect this. There is a particularly invidious form of weasel words which play minority rights against each other (something, ironically, which those in power routinely accuse the right of doing). Sadiq Khan reacted to the Berlin attack by saying that it showed ‘why Pride matters’. Actually, it shows why we need stronger immigration controls and a more intense and targeted deradicalisation strategy for young Muslim males.
Khan knows that, most gay people know that, anyone with half a brain knows that. So the reasons for putting out such a statement are necessarily political rather than providing a practical solution. Khan’s inference is obviously that all gay people should get behind the state-approved line that what’s needed is more public displays of diversity, not any action against the specific ideology which commits these crimes again and again.
It will keep happening, and progressive leaders will keep minimising the threat by labelling it ‘hate’. But hate isn’t generic. Hate is horribly targeted. These attacks don’t happen because of an impossible-to-define misanthropy, they happen because their perpetrators believe we should live in a caliphate and it is their duty to bring this about using violence. It’s important to keep pointing that out, even if our leaders refuse to do so.
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