The Most PC Thing You'll Ever Read

Go on, have a look. It's basically a guy whining that Rage Against the Machine don't deserve to be Christmas #1 because he doesn't share their opinions. How so?

• They have "images of books" on their website. He doesn't like the books in question.
  
• They also like Che Guevara, Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore.
  
• Their guitarist, among other things, once said "A great song should destroy cops and set fire to the suburbs", which Edmund Standing takes very literally indeed

You'll notice in the article, there is zero analysis of Rage's music or even lyrics. You wouldn't expect similar for the fucknut right's artists. You don't hear Edmund Standing laying into W.B. Yeats for his politics, or Wagner for his fruity views on Jewish people. Does he refuse to watch Briget Bardot films because of her disgraceful views on Muslims? When he was at university, did he start yelling in the lectures every time someone mentioned Heidegger? I imagine if we were getting 'Peaches in Regalia' to Christmas #1, he wouldn't be condemning Frank Zappa and listing the faults of libertarianism. His objection to Chomsky is especially nasty, slandering him as a "pseudo-academic" despite the article he links to, '200 Chomsky Lies', only making one passing reference to linguistics. Would he also refer to Chris Brand as a 'pseudo-psychologist' because of his views? Actually, speaking of racist gobshites, hasn't Dannii Minogue said enough stupid shit to disqualify the X-Factor from another Christmas #1?

This is a textbook case of what the right-wing call 'political correctness'. Getting all oversensitive about certain opinions, making some athletic leaps of logic and then coming over all censorious towards anything associated with anything they disagree with. Deciding who should be where in the charts based on their politics, using a bad Brecht play you saw a few years ago to dispute Marxism, that sort of thing. That Chomsky one's a classic actually, I've come across that before. Some horse's arse with zero interest in L1 acquisition disputing his professional credentials because of his privately held beliefs. At least when Kilroy got sacked, he'd had a shit chat show anyway.

I always wondered why these people saw 'PC' everywhere, why they were so disgusted at writers like Polly Toynbee, who they seem to imagine as fifty feet tall with Communist lasers for eyes. Now I know. It's because they imagine we lefties think just like them, and are just doing exactly what they would do in the same position. The only reason they're ever upset about PC is because it's happening to them.

Of course, I've just completely failed to mention Rage's music or lyrics, so I should point out that 'Sleep Now in the Fire' has the best lyrics (which, isn't really saying much from my point of view) and (apologies for the youtuber visuals) 'Ashes in the Fall is just generally an awesome, awesome piece of music. Especially the Gang of Four-ish bit in the middle.

Exploiting Misogynist Killings Like a Rat up a Drainpipe

What did I tell you? WHAT DID I TELL YOU? Three days and already the Goren murder is being exploited. Read the post, look at the quotes it highlights. One accuses the government of ignoring a root cultural cause:

The Government has also been turning a blind eye to the problem [of fundamentalism], which only makes things worse.

This one also seems to miss the point a little, as I'm not convinced this was a particularly fundamentalist family.

A few speculate as to why the government is failing to prevent honour killings:

It’s a betrayal of these women to be PC about this. Look at the figures. Asian women in Britain are three times more likely to commit suicide than their white friends.

instead of looking after the human rights of vulnerable young women you get accused of doing down the Asian community.

Is this because forced marriage is not a problem in those areas, all of which have some of the largest Asian populations in Britain? Or is it because authorities there are failing to use the powers for fear of creating offence? I am afraid it is the latter.

And this one actually specifically mentions multiculturalism and diversity:

Serious crimes are being treated as a matter for diversity officers rather than for the police and the courts… stop trying to excuse forced marriage as just a price to pay for multicultural diversity.

But, notice, only as red herrings, only as reasons why honour killings are tolerated, not actually as problems.

All the articles quoted were pretty good, and I basically agreed with most of all of them. But look how the overview read them:

Campaigners against so-called honour killings have spoken with one voice against multiculturalism after Tulay Goren’s father was jailed for her murder.

So-called honour crime, and the alien value systems that breed it

the murder of Tulay Goren has uncovered yet more criticism of the multicultural doctrine and political correctness

It is time for campaigners and politicians who question the benefits of multiculturalism to join forces

There's even a cheap shot blaming Labour.

We even get a bonafide iylismwdyglt when a verbose commenter goes even further:

Namely; people who wish to live in the UK or elsewhere, should be in no doubt, not even a shadow of a doubt, that entertaining such slave, misogynist attitudes have no place or business in the civilized world. And should they wish to act out their way of life, just to feel at home [...] they shall be removed right back to wherein they came and where such attitudes are acceptable and obviously such an “honorable” way of life for them. Better still do not come here in the first place. It is that simple! [...] All cultures are very far from being equal.That is a fact of life, take or leave it! Everyone, with the exception of children, mentally under developed and the out dated advocates of PC/MC creed know that much.

A few articles speculate about why our society fails to protect women from honour killings. A (Tory?) blogger twists it a little way so it's about multiculturalism. Along comes your comment monkey, suddenly the issue is who should and should not be allowed to live where, whose culture is best and whether right of residence should be tied to personal values.

I'd also like to explain why I don't put the bunny ears when I talk about honour killings or consider the term some kind of deformation of the language. I'm not particularly bothered about whether the killings were honourable. Apart from good old-fashioned sabres at dawn, I can't think of an occasion where any killing ever was honourable. It should be taken as read that we don't agree with any crimes, that we don't ever confuse motive and justification. But that's the implication of any objection to the term 'honour killing'.

On top of that, there's a reason Mehmet Goren would have preferred to see his daughter dead than married to the wrong man, while almost nobody in Europe is holding their duelling wounds open to get a better scar. 'Honour', as a concept, is valued and defined differently in different cultures. In the West, it's largely seen as outdated and subordinate to reason, rule of law, personal freedom and loving your children. Hence settling our disputes verbally in court and letting our kids marry whoever they want. We could only achieve this by devaluing honour as a cultural value, something we should obviously be encouraging as much as possible in cultures that kill for it. Acting as if honour is always good and needs to be protected with punctuation is tacitly devaluing the seriousness of the crimes committed in its name, like claiming Osama Bin Laden is not a "real" Muslim. Accepting that honour is just one of many shifting cultural values and declining to pass judgement on them lets us examine motives without approving of them. It allows us to separate our judgement of someone's actions with our judgement of their values, and so we should, as in the end, it was her father's actions and not his cultural values which killed Tulay Goren.

Watch

Well, I reckon this story will trigger a fierce debate about honour killings, women in Islam and "multiculturalism". By which I mean a bunch of people will use this as a stick to beat Muslims with. Now, I've mentioned this before, and it'll be good to see it in action. We all know this is going to trigger anti-Islamic sentiment, but watch how it works.

Basically, behind the killing were Mehmet Goren's Southern Turkish/Islamic cultural values of family honour and paternal authority. Watch how quickly the debate shifts from the second half of that to the first. Watch how the opposition switches from feminism and individual rights versus honour and patriarchy, to mono- versus multiculturalism. Watch how disgust at the killer, sympathy for the murder victim and admiration for the courage of the key witness become sidelined by rage at the culture they shared. Watch how discussions of culture shift from what to whose values. And watch how professed concern for Muslim women soon reveals itself as masked hatred.

Epic Xenophobia Failure

Switzerland, Switzerland, Switzerland, if you're going to pretend your attacks on Islam aren't just about Islam, don't try and do it by laying into the Jews. Surveys consistently confirm them as the most popular darkies and heathens among far-right not-racists across Europe, and have done for decades.

Besides, normally when the PC brigade do the Jew test on not-Nazis, you can just say it's crass and Muslims and Jews aren't comparable. Trying to be consistent by chucking in some anti-Semitism just does our job for us. Idiot.

I'm Confused

You know what Libertarians like? You know what they fucking love? Absolutely bum to bits? Banning shit. Yeah, take THAT, pointy tall symbol.

In other news, the Communist blogosphere is erupting with support for the bankers, prominent Zionists have pledged their support to cancelling the whole Israel thing, and nothing makes sense any more.

PS: Pigdogfucker has more.

Vague Weapon

Oliver Kamm spouts some libellous wank about MediaLens. He uses the phrase "genocide denial", which I think is quite clever. Of course, one problem is that what he's accusing them of:

We sparked off "several hundred e-mails" - perhaps as many as 500 - affirming that Chomsky had +not+ denied there had been a massacre in Srebrenica.

Technically, of course, this is genocide-denial-denial. Another problem is that well, it's not like Holocaust denial or Srebnica denial, or any other denial of specific historical events. Basically, you can accuse almost anyone of genocide-denial so long as there is one genocide they don't think really happened. This can, if you want, include the Thetan genocide or any you happen to make up. It's vague.

The awesome thing about it though, is that it's not like Holocaust denial or Srebnica denial, or any other denial of specific historical events. Basically, you can accuse almost anyone of genocide-denial so long as there is one genocide they don't think really happened. This can, if you want, include the Thetan genocide or any you happen to make up. It's vague. And it sounds almost as bad as Holocaust denial, and makes your victim sound like a far-right conspiracy-nut, even if all they've done is claim the Alderaan genocide to be fiction.

Incidentally, recent historical sources show quite clearly that Oliver Kamm perpetrated an act of genocide on Belgians in 1885. Ask him. He won't deny it.

Dear Nick Cohen: Please Defend to the Death

Nick Cohen is very angry at a Muslim:

[John] Denham is entertaining Inayat Bunglawala of the MCB, who gave a taste of the 'progressive' policies Labour is encouraging when he wrote an article defending Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a preacher who recommends wife-beating, genital mutilation of girls and the murder of apostates and homosexuals. Earlier this year, the sheikh said of Adolf Hitler's massacres of the Jews: 'This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers.'

I like that. "Wrote an article defending". Classic smearmonger sleight-of-hand from Cohen there. I can disapprove of the death penalty for shoplifting without being pro-shoplifting. Every day, batsmen across the world defend the wicket without sharing its opinions. Who's to blame for this world where anyone thinks this kind of bollocks smear is worth printing? I'll tell you who: shit Voltaireans. You know the ones. Not read a word of his work except one thing he didn't even say:

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Thing is, a lot of people these days - especially racists and homophobes - use it exclusively for people they who they don't disapprove of. So instead a doctrine of universal free speech that says "I personally disagree, but you can say it if you want", we get the far less universal "I personally agree entirely, so you can say it if you want". And now Nick Cohen thinks (or expects his readers to think) that 'defend' means 'wholeheartedly agree with'.

Let this be a lesson to you. Every time you use that quote for someone you agree with, you're breaking it. You confuse the slow readers of the world, and you make it easier for shameless dick-waving journos to run their petty, spiteful guilt-by-association shtick on proper human beings.

Of course, I defend Nick Cohen's right to say all this, but please don't take that to mean I don't think he's a hackish bag of dicks.

More of the Same, Please

Lukewarm on the heels of bloodless genocide and non-violent Jihad come the verbal pogroms.

Is it just me or when fucknut culture-warriors like Griffin, Delingpole and Phillips put forward their most apocalyptic visions of what the left is inflicting on their people, does it actually sound like the utopian fantasies of the world's most extreme pacifist?

I eagerly await the tea-and-biscuit Holocaust.

Problem With Question Time

Short post to follow a long one.

Question Time last night: everyone except the BNP themselves seems to be gushing about how Nick Griffin got torn a new one last night, but I'm inclined to disagree. They said he was a wolf in sheep's clothing, but I don't think we ever really saw the wolf, although the sheep's clothing slipped a few times, like when he continued to evade questions about his Holocaust denial even when the Justice Minister told him he was safe. But there were three moments when I think everyone involved did abysmally:

"White": Instead of telling the audience and people at home that Griffin meant 'White' when he said 'indigenous' it would have been far more effective to simply press him on it until he admitted it himself, for example by asking him to clarify what "non-indigenous" meant. Just shouting "white" looked like a smear, and let him pass himself off as a witty anti-racist, with the retort that skin-colour doesn't matter.

Benefits of multiculturalism: Nick Griffin asserted that multiculturalism has been foisted on us by a liberal elite and has "given us nothing but tax-bills in return". He wasn't picked up on this, even in pure economic terms.

Wicked and vicious faith: Some idiot in the audience asked him about this and gave him a chance to go off on a rant he's probably been rehearsing since he got on the plane out of Libya. He wasn't picked up on his claim that "it says so in the Quran", as if you can just extrapolate from there, with no history of interpretation, what all Muslims actually believe.

The Yes-Platform types insisted that letting the BNP expose themselves would be the best strategy, but that's not what happened. I still don't know why Nick Griffin changed his mind about the gas chambers, and his neatly-worded, reasonable-sounding spiel about why Islam actually is a wicked and vicious faith was being repeated, uncut and unchallenged on the Today programme.

On the other hand, "The leader of a Ku Klux Klan, and almost entirely non-violent one" is a brilliant bit of backtracking.

Quote Me As Saying I Misquoted Myself

Man, Jan Moir is an terrible, terrible liar. Here's her attempt to justify making an utter arse of herself in front of the internet.

Last week, I wrote in this column about the death of Boyzone star Stephen Gately.

I've included this first line just to show that not everything Jan has written here is complete bollocks.

To my horror, it has been widely condemned as 'homophobic' and 'hateful'. Obviously, a great deal of offence has been taken and I regret any affront caused. This was never my intention.

This excuse never ceases to amuse me. You didn't intend to offend anyone because, being an insensitive, halfwitted cow who writes for one of the most cynically mendacious and manipulative publications in the country and doesn't understand Twitter, you thought you were addressing an audience exclusively composed of polite, middle-class homophobes who wouldn't be offended.

To be the focus of such depth of feeling has been an interesting experience, but I do not complain.

This is one of the best preambles to a lengthy complaint I've ever seen. Is there an award for this or something?

To them, I would like to say sorry if I have caused distress by the insensitive timing of the column, published so close to the funeral.

This is pretty good as well. The article was spot on, it's just, well, maybe she should have given it another week.

That's just the beginning of her bollocks though. She then reels off lie after lie after lie about what she said in her original column:

The point of my article was to suggest that, in my honest opinion, Stephen Gately's death raised many unanswered questions. What had really gone on?

They're only "unanswered" if you ignore the coroner and persist in asking questions about other people's private lives.

Absolutely none of this had anything to do with his sexuality. If he had been a heterosexual member of a boy band, I would have written exactly the same article.

even though he could barely carry a tune in a Louis Vuitton trunk

It is not disrespectful to assume that a game of canasta with 25-year-old Georgi Dochev was not what was on the cards.

the ooze of a very different and more dangerous lifestyle has seeped out for all to see.

What had been reported about that night is that Stephen and his civil partner Andrew Cowles went to a nightclub and brought back a Bulgarian man to their apartment. There were also reports of drug-taking. Following this, it was reported that Cowles went to the bedroom with the Bulgarian, while Stephen remained on the sofa. I have never thought, or suggested, that what happened that night represented a so-called gay lifestyle; this is not how most gay people live.

Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael. Of course, in many cases this may be true.

Do you really hold your readership in such contempt you don't think we'll understand the difference between 'most don't' and 'many may not'?

My assertion that there was 'nothing natural' about Stephen's death has been wildly misinterpreted. What I meant by 'nothing natural' was that the natural duration of his life had been tragically shortened in a way that was shocking and out of the ordinary. Certainly, his death was unusual enough for a coroner to become involved.

Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one. Let us be absolutely clear about this.

After all, Stephen was a role model for the young and if drugs were somehow involved in his death, as news reports suggested, should that not be a matter of public interest? We were told that Stephen died of 'natural causes' even before toxicology results had been released. This struck me as bizarre, given the circumstances.

I should apologise, as that second one isn't from the original article, but from the same embarassing excuse-fest. I would have thought Jan Moir would draw the line at lying about what she said in a separate article, but she obviously doesn't even trust Mail readers to remember ten seconds ago or scroll up.

The point of my observation that there was a 'happy ever after myth' surrounding such unions was that they can be just as problematic as heterosexual marriages.

Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages. Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael. Of course, in many cases this may be true. Yet...

Indeed, I would stress that there was nothing in my article that could not be applied to a heterosexual couple as well as to a homosexual one.

Canasta, Jan?

And, of course, she misrepresents the reactions:

This brings me back to the bile, the fury, the inflammatory hate mail and the repeated posting of my home address on the internet. To say it was a hysterical overreaction would be putting it mildly, though clearly much of it was an orchestrated campaign by pressure groups and those with agendas of their own.

Ah, agendas.

However, I accept that many people - on Twitter and elsewhere - were merely expressing their own personal and heartfelt opinions or grievances. This said, I can't help wondering: is there a compulsion today to see bigotry and social intolerance where none exists by people who are determined to be outraged? Or was it a failure of communication on my part?

If by "failure of communication" you mean 'lie', then yes, it's several unconvincing failure of communications.

Certainly, something terrible went wrong as my column ricocheted through cyberspace

Was it that you wrote it?

It is worth stressing that the version of events I recounted in my column had already been in the public domain, having been described in detail in several newspapers.

The facts were never an issue in your article. The tens of thousands of people who complained about your article were based on your ham-fisted attempt to bring them together and speculate about how they might have killed him.

unread by many who complained

I think this is maybe why she thinks she can get away with such shameless lies. She genuinely doesn't think anyone read it, and obviously they won't be able to now, as they'll probably have thrown their print copy away by now.

Their view, and mine, was that it was perfectly reasonable of me to comment upon the manner of Stephen Gately's death, even if there are those who think that his celebrity and sexuality make him untouchable.

Revealing sentence here: the idea of him being untouchable because he wasn't even in the ground and his family were still reeling from the shock didn't cross her mind. This would go a long way to explain the other awful ghoulish shite this horrible, horrible woman has put her name to.

Can it really be that we are becoming a society where no one can dare to question the circumstances or behaviour of a person who happens to be gay without being labelled a homophobe?

I love this excuse as well. Hopefully her next column will go "No-one can even dare purposefully distort the facts without being labelled a liar".

Finally, I would just like to say that whatever did or did not happen in Majorca, a talented young man died before his time. This, of course, is a matter of regret and sadness for us all.

Except for you. You get paid by the word.