Here’s a story that should be familiar to BFD readers: a lone nutcase who isn’t a jihadist goes on a killing spree. Politicians and media immediately fall over themselves to express their moral goodness while cynically exploiting the tragedy for all they’re worth. Anyone whose views can even remotely be associated with the killer’s (usually alleged) motives, however many ridiculous pretzel-twists of logic are necessary, is relentlessly demonised, pilloried, un-personed and persecuted.
In this case, we’re talking about Anders Breivik, the monster who in 2011 carried out a bombing and shooting spree at a Labor party youth camp. Novelist, journalist and gay rights activist Bruce Bawer was one of the prime targets of the post-Breivik witch-hunt.
In the days after July 22, leading members of the mainstream media and the Norwegian left, from Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg (now head of NATO) on down, gassed on solemnly about how everyone in the country should come together in love and solidarity. At the same time, with ruthless cynicism, these same people exploited Breivik’s atrocities in an effort to demonize, silence, and, if possible, destroy their own political adversaries[…]Prominent figures called for severe limitations on free speech, at least on the topic of Islam, and for harsh punishments for those who failed to fall into line.
Critics of Islam like Bawer (who has had the temerity to notice that Islam is not exactly down with the whole “gay rights” thing) and Peder Jensen were prime targets for the political-media pile-on. Little matter that neither had ever advocated a single word of violence or anything that a normal person would characterise as “hate”, nor that Jensen, in particular, is spectacularly well-informed on Islam and Arabic culture and in many ways rather admires it.
None of that mattered. The left-media had a tragedy to exploit and they were determined to go the full McCarthy and amp up the propaganda. Notably through a mini-series, 22 July, produced by Norway’s equivalent of the BBC or ABC, NRK.
The series is quite clear who its villains are. Surprise, surprise, it’s not the, y’know, killer. Instead, the real culprits are apparently bloggers like Jensen (thinly disguised as “Mads Pettersen”), who had the nerve to argue that mass Muslim immigration isn’t all felafels and rainbows.
NRK presents Mads’s views as a fanatic’s fantasies. While Breivik, moreover, is barely seen in the first episode, Mads is a looming presence.
And so it remains during the whole series: nary a glimpse of Breivik, but lots of Mads[…]Breivik’s actions are a consequence of [Mads’] actions.
Never mind that Mads/Pedersen never did anything. But, in the addled minds of the left-media today, words are no different to actions. “Offending” someone is no different to punching them in the face. Criticising a hostile culture is the same as massacring dozens of children.
We’re clearly meant to buy this argument[…]Utterly ignored here – and throughout – is the vital fact that neither Jensen nor anyone named on that whiteboard has ever called for violence. On the contrary, our preoccupation with Islam is grounded in the fact that it’s a fountain of violence[…]The Koran explicitly commands believers to massacre infidels just as the Prophet (PBUH) did – an authentic cause-and-effect connection that the left rushes to deny every time Muslims carry out acts of terror.
This is where the pearl-clutchers of “hate-speech” hysteria show their slip for all to see: they never apply their own arguments to the people they like. The left-media not only never applies its fallacious guilt-by-association argument to Muslims, it actively rejects it. Just because some Muslims kill people in the name of their religion, they say, doesn’t mean that all Muslims are guilty.
This is absolutely true, as it happens.
But it’s just as true of people who criticise Islam. “Not all Muslims” are responsible for the actions of ISIS or jihadist killers in Europe or Australia. Neither are Bruce Bawer, Peder Jensen, Daniel Pipes, Geert Wilders, Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux in any way responsible for Anders Breivik or Brenton Tarrant.
None of these finger-pointers seemed to reflect on the fact that something or other that they’d written might just as easily have been seized upon by some madman to justify mass murder…if you followed [their] logic to its natural conclusion, then nobody should ever express a strong opinion about anything.
frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/02/norways-slime-machine-it-again-bruce-bawer/
The left has realised that they can’t win an honest argument with logic and evidence. So, their only recourse is to go full Thought Police and lie, bully and intimidate.
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