PETER SMITH: QUITE DELIBERATELY WORDS FAIL THEM
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2015/03/quite-deliberately-words-fail/
Tough topics demand a special degree of adroit evasion by those who would prefer unfortunate truths be swept from view. If we are ever to scotch, say, bloody jihad’s appeal to a disconcerting number of Muslim youths, those clouds of obfuscation must be blown away.
Let us begin thus:
Blacks in the US are about six times more likely to be murdered than whites. Over ninety percent of blacks murdered are murdered by blacks.
Evil people are intent on persuading disaffected young people to become radical Islamists. Disaffected young Muslims are falling prey to Islamic radicalisation.
If you were to focus only on the first sentence in each of the above two paragraphs you might miss some vital information. And no help is likely to be forthcoming from most of the commentariat. Their interest is not so much in presenting the objective truth as it is pushing a post-modern political agenda. I am at a loss to know their innermost passions. I have previously speculated that they are victims of alien body snatchers. But I have no hard evidence for that.
George Orwell in “Politics and the English Language” postulated that the language had become “ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish”. Perceptively, he also thought that the poor state of the language made it easier to have foolish thoughts. ‘A vicious circle,’ comes to mind, to use a cliché he might have deplored. Ugly and inaccurate language wasn’t the end of it. Dishonesty was also in his sights. He gave examples of statements in his day that were “almost always made with intent to deceive”. He proposed improving the use of the language as a “necessary first step towards political regeneration”.
Orwell would be disappointed in the progress since writing this in 1946. Those who use language deceptively are as active as ever. I will give two disparate examples. The first relates to cops and black crime in the US; the other to coverage of Islamic radicalisation in Australia.
Another case of a white cop shooting and killing an unarmed black teenager (Tony Robinson) recently occurred in Wisconsin. According to the police, the victim (who had been in trouble before and was high on hallucinogenic mushrooms) felled the cop with a blow to the head and was in process of further attacking him. No doubt the circumstances and the rights and wrongs of the incident will become clearer in the period ahead.
However, it seems likely, if the Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases are any guide news outlets will tend to slant the story against the cop. In particular, emphasis will be put on the victim being ‘unarmed’. It will always be highlighted. You might think that to be simply accurate reporting. I disagree. I don’t think a white teenage victim, with a record and accused of attacking a cop, would be as continually referred to as being unarmed. For a start it is plain silly.
Someone who attacks a cop is potentially just one punch away from being armed. Moreover, being punched and kicked is injurious and as potentially fatal as being shot. In the case of Michael Brown, the word ‘unarmed’ was not used as a factual description but as a form of indictment of the cop Darren Wilson. Seldom was mention made of Brown’s huge physique.
The commentariat knew what they were doing and, in my view, it was bias dressed up as fact. It must have been galling to them that Wilson was not only cleared of any wrongdoing by a grand jury but recently by Eric Holder’s Justice Department. ‘Unarmed’ was used in a consciously dishonest way with a clear intention to deceive.
Lost in the effort to deceive is the underlying problem of black crime, of blacks killing blacks, and of the consequential disproportionate clashes between law enforcement and blacks. It is the unmentionable truth buried in the diversionary cant of whether a 300-pound giant hurling himself at a cop was “armed”.
Similarly, in the case of Muslim radicalisation, language skirts around the only explanatory factor of relevance. Whatever you do, don’t mention the religious affiliation of the culprits.
This how Leigh Sales introduced a recent 7.30 segment:
“This is the new generation of jihadists signing up for Islamic State’s holy war against the West. They’re all Australian, otherwise normal boys from suburbia, they’re all in their teens and they’re being used as poster boys, propagandists and even suicide bombers.”
They are not, of course, “otherwise normal boys” from the suburbs. They are Muslim; and this is the critical fact. Nothing else is remotely relevant.
Here on the same segment is Hass Delaal from the Australian Multicultural Foundation:
“It’s a bit like I suppose, in the early stage, a rebel without a cause. They’re not quite sure where they’re going and what they’re going to do.”
And ditto for most teenage boys. The difference is most Australian teenage boys aren’t Muslim. Anyway, young James Deans they ain’t. The ambiguous sexual orientation often attributed to the long-gone Hollywood star might get you thrown off a building in ISIS-land or, for that matter, in any gloriously mediaeval Islamic republic.
Here, if you can stand it, is Silma Ihram from the Australia Muslim Women’s Association:
“Well, if we have a look at our society at the moment and what young men are involved in, there’s a lot of video game playing, there’s a lot of violence that our kids get exposed to in terms of entertainment. And, unfortunately, this is being presented as the real-life version…
Everybody is concerned that there is an increasing attraction towards that aggressive, in-your-face kind of element that Daesh represents. It’s attracting right across the economic spectrum. It used to be disaffected young people, but certainly those people who, for whatever reason, don’t have a very strong mentoring influence from either their father or other male members of their family that leads them in a positive direction, they are just cannon fodder for this kind of propaganda…
We’ve seen millions of dollars go into law enforcement, into the security side. This is not the answer. All it does is further alienate these young guys and convince them that this is the heroic way to respond. We need that kind of money to go into information, support services, mentoring, training of our Muslim leaders. They just do not have the skills that they need right now to be able to tackle this problem effectively.”
These particular ‘young men’ sure are work. Taxpayers need to front up and provide them with surrogate paternal-mentoring services. And otherwise? Well those video games will set them off to kill people.
Here, to top it all, is Anne Aly of Curtin University:
“The Federal Government has good intentions, but in my opinion I don’t think they’ve shown enough commitment to actually addressing this in the right way…Prevention is really about providing young people alternatives, allowing young people to become part of the solution, not just framing them as part of the problem, not just always putting them under the microscope and saying, ‘you guys are the issue because you’re constantly being radicalised and you’re a threat to public safety and national security’. These guys have the answers. Forget academics, forget me, forget my generation, forget all the theories that you read in books. These kids have the answers because youth have the answers for youth.”
Please don’t read the above quote for a second time. Its sheer vacuity will rob you of oxygen and send your head spinning, as it would undoubtedly have sent Orwell’s head spinning.
The problem, the only problem not mentioned, is that these young people are Muslim. Everything else they suffer from, many young people suffer from. The difference is that Islamism is poisoning their minds. It’s their religion, stupid!
Caution to readers: George Orwell might consider that the construction of this last sentence had outlived its freshness. Sorry, but it just seems so apt.
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