Killing in God’s name

The familiar refrain of the Right goes something like this: “not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.” It’s become ubiquitous enough that you can find it on T-shirts and bumper stickers.

A more intellectualized version of that is found in this Wall Street Journal column, by a member of that paper’s editorial board. Quote:

The mayor’s comments, so bizarre in their determined denial of the deluge of facts delivered by top police officials standing next to him, were, nonetheless, familiar enough. Americans have learned to expect, after every Islamist terror attack, lectures instructing them that such assaults should in no way be connected to Islamic faith of any kind.

If the writer was being fair, she would have acknowledged that there is a good reason for that: attributing every act of terror to an entire religion simply (a) angers and alienates adherents of that religion, the overwhelmingly majority of whom are obviously not terrorists and (b) drives some of those angry and alienated adherents into the arms of ISIS and al-Qaeda and the like, who are delighted that conservative xenophobes have volunteered to do their recruitment for them. Gratis.

Personally, I still find all of this astonishing. I find it amazing that so many have forgotten what they learned in History 101. That is, every religion always has within its ranks a few extremists or lunatics who will always pervert its scriptures to hateful and murderous ends.

I should know, I guess. I wrote two entire books about the subject. In one of them, Web of Hate, I chronicled the crimes of a gang of terrorists who carried out the biggest armed robbery in US history; who carried out multiple assassinations and bombings; who inspired the single biggest act of domestic terrorism in US history – the murder of nearly 170 men, women and children in Oklahoma City in 1994.

All of the members of that group, called The Order, belonged to a religion. It called itself Christian Identity.

After each of The Order’s crimes – and there were many – no newspaper editorialists called on all Christians to condemn Christian Identity. No politicians warned against the perils associated with admitting Christian refugees to America. No Christian babies were placed on no-fly lists because their name happened to be similar to someone else’s. No aspiring presidential candidates demanded that a wall be erected to prevent Christians from getting into North America.

The point, I guess, is that every religion has its assholes. Every religion has its killers. We Christians have ours, and the Muslims do, too.

All of this seems blindingly obvious to most people, of course. Most people are sensible and fair, and know that unfair generalizations almost always lead to trouble. All of this is common sense.

Unless they happen to write editorials for the Wall Street Journal, that is.


Low

I am in shock. What a towering genius he was. I literally can’t believe it.

For us misfits at Bishop Carroll in Calgary – for our Room 531 gang of punks, poets, artists, musicians, dancers, gays, lesbians, outcasts and drama types – this LP changed everything.

Low was it. And low is what I am, right now. I can’t believe David Bowie is dead.

He released this Friday. Gutted by this.


Catharsis vs. Cancer: Is obnoxiousness is the new charisma?

Sure.  In the 2016 GOP presidential nominee race, it’s certainly that.  So too the 2010 Toronto mayoralty race.  The obnoxious jerk is the winner.  Sure.

But what the author doesn’t answer, so much, is this: why isn’t there a similarly-obnoxious progressive standard-bearer? Is there one? (There isn’t. There hasn’t been.)

“At some point, we have to deal with the fact that there are at least two candidates who could utterly destroy the Republican bench for a generation if they became the nominee,” Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff to the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, told Politico’s Alex Isenstadt recently.

Being LOUD and MEAN and HATEFUL is certainly the best way to get noticed in the Internet Era, true. Conservatives are good at that – they are better at peddling emotion and resentments.  I’ve written about that for years.  And it’s why scum of the Earth like Five Feet of Hate and Amazingly Fat Cur somehow survive, too: they traffic in hate, online, 24/7.

If they want to survive, however, real conservatives need to wrestle the controls away from the extremists who want to hijack their operation and pilot it into a mirror. They need to reassert the notion that conservatism is actually about continuity, not trying to stop history.

Will they? Beats me.  I’m not a conservative.  And I’m precisely (and proudly) the kind of progressive that Mesrrs. Trump/Cruz/Ford hate.

But something is clearly happening within the body of the modern conservative movement.  And it less resembles catharsis, and much more cancer.

 

 


Conservatives love to make fun of Justin Trudeau’s CV

After watching the video embedded in the tweet below, however, one thing conservatives used make fun of – in particular – should perhaps be accorded a bit more respect.  It certainly changed my perspective, big time.


We get letters: this one isn’t from Ezra, by the way

It’s from someone who is claiming to be him – and Ezra doesn’t ever swear, in my experience, and we have now put aside several decades of, er, disagreements.  That said, this letter is a really nice one.  Really friendly.

Ezra Levant
therebel.mediax
ezra@levant.com
162.247.72.200

Hey asshole

Holocaust denial shouldn’t be a crime.
No more that denying that the earth is round should be a crime.

fuck you btw.
you are just a liberal c*nt.

fuck you

Yes I am angry and for good reason: because of liberal piece of shit like you

Ezra Levant for PM
Trump for President
small dead animals all the way up your ass

I am going to troll u … ahahahahahahahah


Why does Canada Post continue to distribute Holocaust denial and white supremacy?

Because they do.  Just this week, in fact.

Here’s an extract from the latest issue of Your Ward News, distributed this week by Canada Post to tens of thousands of homes in East Toronto and beyond:

YWN Holocaust

That is, prima facie, Holocaust denial. That is a criminal offence. Canada has prosecuted such cases in the past, as is well known. Why the Hell is the Trudeau government permitting Canada Post to distribute Holocaust denial?

And that’s not all.  Here’s something from the same issue, in which its editor, James Sears – who has pleaded guilty to sexual assault, and lost his licence to practice medicine for sexually assaulting patients – promotes his association with something called the Canadian Association for Free Expression (CAFE).

CAFE and YWN

CAFE is an organization founded and led by Paul Fromm.  Here’s the Southern Poverty Law Centre on both: “Paul Fromm is a Canadian neo-Nazi based in the Toronto area. He serves as the international director for the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), a direct descendent of the White Citizens Councils that rabidly opposed school desegregation in the 1950s and 1960s. He formerly hosted a daily radio show on Don Black’s racist web forum, Stormfront. Fromm also lectures frequently in both the United States and Canada and has appeared at annual conferences hosted by the CCC and the white nationalist American Renaissance…

Fromm has founded several organizations, including Citizens for Foreign Aid Reform (C-FAR) in 1976 to oppose multiculturalism and aid to Third World countries. In 1981, he founded the Canadian Association for Free Expression (CAFE ), which works against the Canadian Human Rights Commission to defend anti-Semites, racists and Holocaust deniers from persecution under hate crime and human rights legislation. These two organizations serve as Fromm’s primary platforms.”

Holocaust denial and aggressive promotion of white supremacy and neo-Naziism, right here in Toronto.

Where is the Toronto Police Service on this? Where are our local MPs and MPPs and councillors? Where is the Crown? Where is the Trudeau government? Where is Toronto’s mayor? Where is the outrage?

Well, as I told my friend Bernie Farber over the holidays, me and mine are outraged. And if the powerful people referred to above don’t start taking concrete action, now, they are going to be named and shamed.

And not just by me.


The OPP: incompetent and unethical

Per the below posts about my pal Laura Miller, here and here, looky here! The OPP – into whose conduct a misconduct hearing has been ordered for possible perjury in testimony given about Laura – have a history.

One of Laura’s inquisitors, for example, is OPP Detective Brian Mason. And Mason is the same guy who made all kinds of wild allegations about another political person, former Ottawa Mayor Larry O’Brien.

Remember all that? And O’Brien – after a huge personal expense, and after having to step down temporarily, and after the OPP put him and his family through the frigging grinder – was acquitted. Exonerated. Remember that well, Ontario PCs now stupidly cheering on Mason et al.

The officers of the OPP: they never get their man (or woman). But they’ll sure as Hell try and bankrupt you along the way.