RUTHFULLY YOURS

The latest reporting indicates that 22 people were injured, but fortunately none killed, in this morning’s terrorist bombing in the London subway transit system.

An improvised explosive device detonated at the Parsons Green Tube station in West London shortly after 8 a.m. British time. According to Sky News, at least one witness reports seeing “a white builder’s bucket” and a “foiled carrier bag.” The bucket is said to have had “wires hanging from it and a strong smell of chemicals . . . a chemical smell more than a burning smell.”

It is the fifth terrorist attack this year in the United Kingdom.

Police are hunting for at least one suspect, who has not been identified. President Trump, who has been briefed, took to Twitter to rail about another attack “by a loser terrorist.” He added a comment that suggests British authorities were aware of the suspect(s) before the strike: “These are sick and demented people who were in the sights of Scotland Yard. Must be proactive!” It would be a mistake to read too much into that, though, at this premature stage. At the moment, we don’t know who did this, although strong suspicions of jihadism are certainly justified.

On that score, there are two points to consider.

First, it has been the fear of American and European counterterrorism officials that the routing of ISIS in Syria and Iraq would heighten the terrorist threat in Europe. Jihadists fleeing from their “caliphate” have been dispersing, and many are making their way back to the Western countries from whence they came. The problem, of course, is that these are quite motivated fighters who have received military training. Our own experience in the U.S. — much of it featured in evidence we presented in the terror trials of the Nineties — shows there is a great deal of prestige, in fundamentalist Islamic circles, attached to any Muslim who has fought in what the Blind Sheikh used to call “the fields of jihad”: Afghanistan, Bosnia, Syria, Iraq, and so on. So, these jihadists are not just competent when it comes to conducting attacks; they are also very effective inciters, recruiters, and fundraisers.

The second point combines frighteningly with the first. Jihad in the West has reached a new stage. For many years, terrorists aspired to major operations — spectacular strikes that required know-how, discipline, and coordination. We were able to say with confidence that if we focused on training — not just ideological fervor but whether the would-be militant had been to a jihadist camp — we would have a reasonably good handle on who posed a threat. This is why, for example, we amended immigration law after the 9/11 attacks to preclude from entry into the U.S. any alien suspected of receiving jihadist training.

Again, it’s too early to draw conclusions about today’s attack. But based on other recent attacks, we can say that it doesn’t require any training to, say, plow a car into a crowd of people.

Terrorist organizations like ISIS have encouraged sharia-supremacist Muslims to attack in place — i.e., where they live in the West — rather than come to Syria. We are thus seeing more of these ad hoc strikes that require little or no expertise to pull off. In the Nineties, we used to be ironically relieved that the jihadists always wanted to go for the big bang; 9/11-type attacks are horrific, but they are extremely tough to pull off, and there are usually opportunities (as there were with 9/11) to disrupt them. That’s why they so rarely succeed. We worried that someday it would dawn on these monsters that there is a great deal of low-hanging fruit out there (virtually indefensible targets, like subways and crowded streets) that would be easy to attack, almost no preparation or coordination required.

The long-awaited psychiatric evaluation of Sarah Halimi’s killer, Kobili Traoré, was revealed in the media on September 13th. Forensic psychiatrist Daniel Zagury concludes that Traoré committed the crime under the influence of an “acute bouffée délirante” that altered but did not abolish his discernment. This psychopathological state was aggravated, according to doctor Zagury, by the consumption of cannabis, a total of 15 cigarettes. The voluntary drug intake somehow balances out the potential irresponsibility of some sort of temporary insanity in proportions that a judge will be trusted to decide. It is not incompatible with a criminal trial and, according to some reports, Kobili Traoré has already been transferred from a mental facility to the Fresnes prison.

On the night of 4-5 April, Kobili Traoré, a 27 year-old of Malian origin, burst in on Malian neighbors in a state of agitation. The neighbors took refuge in one room of their apartment and called the police. Hearing Traoré reciting koranic verses, the police called for reinforcements. While they waited in the hallway, Traoré climbed over to the neighboring balcony, broke into the apartment of his Jewish neighbor Sarah Halimi, a retired physician who lived alone in the apartment upstairs from the Traore’s. Shouting allau akhbar and koranic imprecations, he bashed and battered his victim with relentless fury and then threw her to her death from the 3rd floor balcony. By then, a heavily armed commando had arrived. Too late. Traoré was considered unfit for interrogation, placed in a mental health facility, and finally charged with voluntary manslaughter and sequestration. The aggravating circumstances of antisemitism were not added to the charges. [http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/sarah-halimi-case-will-truth-lead-to-justice/]

A virtual media blackout of the horrific crime was followed by months of dim silence. And now we have a puzzling psychiatric evaluation that confirms the impression of a perverse cover up of a savage Islamic anti-Semitic torture/murder, a systematic refusal to confront the genocidal antisemitism that runs like a deep dark river in Arab-Muslim societies here in France, in Europe, in the countries of origin. How could armed policeman stand down as an enraged man was venting his fury on a defenseless woman? If the killer was possessed by an acute bouffée délirante, the police must have been paralyzed by a bouffée of delirious panic. They reportedly assumed that Traoré must be a terrorist… because he recited koranic verses. Therefore, it would be too dangerous to intervene before the arrival of commandos.

Why did it take more than five months to present this psychiatric evaluation that looks to the naked eye like a whitewash? One more whitewash in an endless series of evasions. Like pre-emptive jail breaks. It has nothing to do with Islam, the car rammer was mentally disturbed, the stabber was depressed by an impending divorce, the mass murderer at the wheel of the truck driving wasn’t even religious, the throat slitter had never read the koran.

And now the enraged Muslim that batters his Jewish neighbor was a victim of an acute bouffée délirante. My search for the English equivalent of this fearsome psychic state came up with some curious specifics (in italics):

“A French term for a culture-bound symptom complex described in West Africa and Haiti, characterised by an abrupt onset of agitated and aggressive behaviour, confusion and psychomotor excitement.” http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Bouffée+Delirante

In my recent article, “What’s the Matter with Germany?” I argued that under the leadership of Germany, “Europe is committing ‘suicide by Islam.’” Adolf Hitler imagined a Thousand-Year Reich, with Germany dominating Europe and the globe. Today, Germany’s rulers imagine a multicultural world, where Germany and other European nations no longer exist.https://amgreatness.com/2017/09/14/whats-matter-germany-part-ii/

This does not represent an about-face from Germany’s imperial tendencies. It is, rather, just a new expression of it. The Germans tried to destroy Europe twice in recent history. Is it so surprising that Germans are welcoming an invasion that is on track to accomplish what Germany failed to do?

It’s very strange. Western history began with the account by Herodotus of the Greeks’ heroic resistance to the invading Persians. Today, Germany is bullying Europe to yield to an ongoing Muslim invasion. The Germans are welcoming the invaders, and Europe is abandoning its 2,500 year project of defending itself from Eastern conquerors.

Though strange, this is understandable, if one first understands Germany. I believe most Americans assume Germany is a Western nation like any other. The narrative would go something like this: Hitler was an unfortunate and tragic anomaly. He was a spellbinder with fantastical rhetorical powers that played on Germany’s historical resentments, and during his time he actually did manage to “fundamentally transform” Germany, changing it into the Hitler nightmare. Since Hitler has exited the scene, however, and the ravages of the Cold War are in the rearview mirror, Germany has returned to being a more-or-less normal Western nation.

But if this version of Germany’s story is true, why is Germany again bullying Europe, this time to yield to the Muslim invasion?

In my previous article I wrote that the Germans emerged from the Enlightenment era as the counter-Enlightenment people. This is not to deny any of the intellectual achievements of the German people. German music during the Enlightenment era, the time of Bach and Mozart, reached a peak which may never be equalled. And Germany’s achievements in science, mathematics, and technology have been of the first order. But in philosophy and especially political philosophy, the definite break between Germany and the rest of the West cannot be denied. Instead of being a part of the ongoing Enlightenment concerning the natural and political rights of man—a project started in England and taken up by America (with much success) and by France (with mixed results)—Germany was the heartland of the rejection of these ideas.

Romanticism, the 19th-century intellectual movement that gave the era after the Enlightenment its name, may be understood in shorthand as a rejection of Enlightenment thinking. And it started in Germany. The German thinkers who opposed the Enlightenment project loomed over 19th and 20th centuries. Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche are perhaps the most influential of these thinkers.

As I have argued, politically, the Enlightenment project was all about rights. But German intellectuals would have none of it. Hegel rejected individual rights and exalted the state. Marx rejected private property and the free market. Nietzsche exalted the will to power.

Unfortunately, German professors read—and worse yet, revered—those German thinkers and taught that reverence to their students. No one understood better than F. A. Hayek how this played out. Hayek, who won the Nobel Prize in economics, was one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century. Here is what he wrote about the situation in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century:

For more than seventy years the German professors of political science, history, law, geography and philosophy eagerly imbued their disciples with a hysterical hatred of capitalism, and preached the war of “liberation” against the capitalistic West…At the turn of the century the immense majority of Germans were already radical supporters of socialism and aggressive nationalism. They were then already firmly committed to the principles of Naziism [before the term itself was invented].

German professors prepared the way for that charismatic leader who emerged after World War I to fill the role in German society made ready for him by the German intellectuals of the Romantic era.

“The new religion — featuring political correctness, cultural vandalism and censorship — is dismantling the West.”

This politically correct nonsense highlights even further the infantilization of our culture — such as the demand for “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings”. It may look like a comedy, but its effect is deadly serious.

Groupthink is a debilitating force. in any civilization. It undermines one’s ability to resist the real enemies of democracy and freedom: it makes us blind to radical Islam and jihadi terrorism, and it gives the impression that our society is a joke.

Instead of being intellectually diverse, universities are trying their utmost to impose homogeneity of thoughts and ideas. So-called “right wing newspapers” are banned from certain universities. Recently, at the City University of London, the student union, devoid of irony, fascistically voted to ban some conservative tabloids in order to “oppose fascism”.

Headlines every day proclaim the new religion: political correctness, cultural vandalism and censorship — not from Islamic emirates such as Saudi Arabia, but in Western cities right here.

The Writers Union of Canada, for instance, recently apologized for a magazine editorial that defended the right of novelists to create characters from a backgrounds other than their own.

Just think of that: a writer defending the right to use one’s imagination?! What an insult! At least, to “the new Stalinists” it is.

“In my opinion anyone, anywhere, should be encouraged to imagine other peoples, other cultures, other identities,” Hal Niedzviecki, who was the editor of the union’s magazine, Write, defended freedom in an editorial. The Union then announced that Niedzviecki had resigned.

Another journalist also fell victim to this new religion. Jonathan Kay also recently resigned as editor of the magazine The Walrus. Defending Niedzviecki’s right to use his imagination cost Kay his job.

Their unspeakable crime was, it appears, “cultural appropriation” — one of the new “groupthink” expressions that the theologian Paul Griffiths condemned as “illiberal and totalitarian”. Griffiths, too, had to resign from Duke University after criticizing his colleagues for a “diversity program” that “provides foundational training in understanding historical and institutional racism.”

Every revolution needs to master a new “language” to achieve uniformity of expression and thought. George Orwell, in 1984, called the replacement language “Newspeak”.

Cardiff Metropolitan University, one of the largest in Britain, compiled a list of 34 words that it “encouraged” teachers and students to stop using, and replaced them with “gender-neutral” terms. “Fireman” should be replaced by “firefighter”; “mankind” should be replaced by banned “humanity”, and so on. Princeton University also expunged the word “man” in its various uses, in favor of supposedly more “inclusive” expressions. City University of New York decided to ban “Mr.” and “Mrs.” California State University replaced commercial terms such as “businessman”, “mailman”, “manpower” and “salesman” to avoid that horrendous, forbidden word.

While at it, why not also purge Christianity’s religious language? Some of the most famous theological universities, such as Duke and Vanderbilt, invited professors and staff to use “inclusive” language even when they are referring to God, because the masculine pronouns are “a cornerstone of patriarchy”.

This politically correct nonsense highlights even further the infantilization of our culture — such as the demand for “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings”. It may look like comedy, but its effect is deadly serious. British philosopher Roger Scruton has said that a kind of “moral obesity” is crippling Western culture.

Groupthink is a debilitating force. in any civilization. It undermines one’s ability to resist the real enemies of democracy and freedom: it makes us blind to radical Islam and jihadi terrorism, and it gives the impression that our society is a joke.