Bartlett's Bizarre Bazaar

Douglas Murray author of 'Neo-Conseravtism: Why we need it" and a stablemate of the contemptible Oliver Kamm at the Social Affairs Unit (SAU), presented a lecture titled “What Are We To Do About Islam?” That this was a speech to the Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference On Europe And Islam ought provide us with a hint to the bigotry that we will find in the text of the lecture.

Here are the highlights:

He invokes the Second World War to rally white people, sorry, Europeans, to his standard, which I expect is red and black and has some dramatically simple wheel-like symbol at the centre. Oh, you think that is hyperbole? Please, read on: He bangs on about ‘dhimmitude’ a hell of a lot. If you di“In their efforts to avoid war, Europeans are once again choosing dishonour. They refuse to cut back their welfare budgets or significantly increase their defence spending, and they still refuse to enforce the measures required to cease or reverse the disastrous effects of mass immigration… Yet in their effort to avoid confrontation now, Europeans are making a worse confrontation down the line more likely: in their effort to pretend-away the risk, the risk is swelling. The word for dishonour this time is Dhimmitude.” He bangs on about ‘dhimmitude’ a hell of a lot. If you didn’t know, this term, in the hands of writers like Murray, means any kind of accommodation with or sensitivity to Muslims and Islam.

“On the battlefield this enemy is defeated every time… It does not mean that they cannot win the battle of ideas… If you doubt this, then just think back on the so-called "defeats" which we are meant to have suffered since 9/11. Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, 100,000 civilians alleged to be dead by a fanciful survey courtesy of The Lancet magazine. What did our enemy do to win these victories? Absolutely nothing. It all came from within.” The ‘within’ that furnish these ‘defeats’ are not the brute military machine or even the ‘rotten apples’, but those who complain at these egregious offences against what we hope are ‘Civilised values’. As he writes; “it’s guaranteed that modern Europeans will finish the job much better than any two-bit thug or terrorist could have done.”

In order to persuade us that European decency and tolerance – and, indeed, socialism – is cowardice he offers up a laughable analysis of the Spanish election in 2004. He suggests that spinelessness on the part of the Spanish people led to elect “a sympathetic socialist who has spent his time in office so far offering up concessions to Islam” rather than an ideological descendent of Franco. This analysis can only be maintained by a studied ignorance. It is a fact that Aznar led his nation to war against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of the population. It is a fact that Aznar’s ministers insisted that the Madrid bombs were the work of ETA. They did not merely suggest, they insisted that ETA were responsible and that this truth could not be questioned. Unless these ministers are so stupid that they insist on improbable truths in the knowledge that they are ignorant of any evidence to support these truths, then Aznar’s government compounded acting against the wishes of the people with lying to the people. Murray is wrong, and he knows it. But he is keen to grasp at any opportunity to paint decent people, tolerant people as cowards.

But, what to do with Islam, eh? “Militarily, this is relatively easy to deal with, and in foreign lands there is a solution to the problem.” But “our societies in Western Europe are too weak-willed, tired and degenerate to act decisively.” It is a shame that our ‘weakness’ does not stretch to significant moral qualms at the mass killing of brown foreigners. But ‘degeneracy’ at home? I think that I have heard that call before, a call which Murray, and we, will return to.

He continues along the lines of his historical antecedents when he quotes the biological metaphor of Mark Steyn; “Radical Islam is an opportunist infection, like AIDS: it's not the HIV that kills you, it's the pneumonia you get when your body's too weak to fight it off.” Of course, ‘radical Islam’ may be this, it may be that. But Murray’s thesis does not deal with 'radical' Islam. It is a thesis that attacks Muslims.

“[I]n the current war the enemy is, as a demographic and political fact, massed not just on foreign shores, but within the gates of our cities. The collision of forceful Islam with European spinelessness and dhimmitude is fatal for our free societies.” ‘Gates of our cities’ in this context is a reference to the ‘Gates of Vienna’, where brave Christians repelled the Musselman horde. This a mythic rallying point for the militant Muslim-haters. And we have seen this careful building of a historical narrative in the service of ousting degeneracy and the building of a strong ‘culture’ before.

“The first thing to do is to address the problem at home unsparingly. It is late in the day, but Europe still has time to turn around the demographic time-bomb which will soon see a number of our largest cities fall to Muslim majorities. It has to. All immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop… [and] Those who are currently in Europe having fled tyrannies should be persuaded back to the countries which they fled”. Why not send them all to Madagascar, Murray? Just in case they do not know their place in society; “Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board”. And what measures does that include, and where do they stop?

Advocating a new round of wars on variously Islamic and secular Muslim states he writes; “We must remind the malignant that this war and this era will be dictated on our terms - on the terms of the strong and the right, not the weak and the wrong.” I mean, come on, is this a fucking satire, or is he just plagiarising fascism here?

Well, perhaps he is. For, as well as the Semitic enemy population within that needs solving through a battle of demographics, and a round of threatening, but weak enemies abroad to act as foci of proud, brave aggression, the real battle is with the ‘degeneracy’ within the Volk, sorry, body politic.

“[T]the reason why the war at home is not working as well as it should is because of the underlying disease of the West. We could decide with our immune system low that we should simply cut off all contacts with the outside world, try desperately to ensure that no malicious viruses – however small – get through to us. We can go some of the way to doing that, but there is a much better option. That option is to strengthen our societal immune system, to re-energise and build-up ourselves as a society”.

“And we must become absolutist – absolutist in defence of our societies, our traditions, our heritage, culture, freedoms and democracies. There is only one way to destroy relativism, and there is only one way to conquer the rise of Islamic militancy and that is to be uncompromising and absolutist. If people want certainty then let us give it to them here. Ignorant people will still say, "Ah, but I'm not sure what European culture is". Well that's their fault, not the fault of European culture.”

Well, I know what ‘European culture’ is. Or I know what ‘European culture’ is when the excreta spills from Murray’s gob. And it had its heyday between 1933 and 1945.