Tommy Robinson arrested and jailed

[Mugwump]

^ similar in effect, Stui. it’s impossible to speak openly against Islam in the UK without being accused of pathology (“Islamophobia”) and threatened with losing your employment for violating the “equality and diversity” religion. Ostracism and unemployment is the gentle gulag, but probably as effective.

British politeness, which is still a powerful (if diminishing) force, also makes people more likely to talk about issues behind their hand rather than in the open, as they do in Australia. So it is seen as a bit embarrassing to talk about it, and one learns not to.

The really big difference is that the problem in Britain is far more real. About 8% of the British population is Muslim, and they exert a strong voting bloc within the Labour Party. The great preponderance of these British Muslims have deep connections to countries with a strong Salafist ideology, notably Pakistan and Saudi, so radicalism (and covert implicit support for Islamism across the wider Muslim community) is more widespread. By comparison, the issue in Australia is in its infancy. We have time to manage our immigration policy to present Islamizatiion of Australian policy, but of course everyone is too cowed by the self-regarding Twitter-mob and the flagellating E&D police to say so.

[stui magpie]

Cheer's mate, I assumed as much but good to have it supported by someone there.

[thesoretoothsayer]

[stui magpie]

^

You could easily rewrite that for the US and have Trump in the last public list

[Mugwump]

^ yes, if we could do one single thing to improve the functioning of our democracy, it might be to ban the word “racist”, a grotesque slur which has been used to smear as Nazis and KKK etc those who want a managed immigration policy. It is not racist to protest at having your nation turned into an aircraft carrier of convenience, for the benefit of big business and property owners who benefit from the “growth” that results.

[Pies4shaw]

It's fascinating that people can't (or, more accurately, don't want to) distinguish between a legitimate debate about the role, scope and content of immigration in a particular country, on the one hand, and a bloke who has repeatedly committed egregious offences jeopardizing the conduct of criminal trials. It is not necessary to commit a contempt of court to have a debate about immigration. It is not necessary to turn up to a court, film defendants and refer to them as "Muslim child rapists" to have a debate about immigration. Anyone with two neurons to rub together can see that the link between a trial of people accused of appalling criminal offences against children and a "concern" about immigration is a spurious and exclusively racist one. Most people do not sexually abuse children. Some people do. Those who do are appalling and should be imprisoned.

Go ahead, have the debate - but put this nasty little criminal out with the rest of the garbage. Nothing he has done is defensible and reading people defending him insults our intelligence.

[think positive]

[David]

[HAL]

I can't say I believe it, but I believe you.

[Mountains Magpie]

[HAL]

Sorry my eye is not attached right now.

[Mugwump]

[David]

I certainly don’t think all antipathy towards Islam is necessarily racist in nature (some of it is purely ideological, some of it is primarily sectarian, some of it is xenophobic but not racist per se). But would you agree that at least some anti-Muslim sentiment is a conduit for racism (i.e. against Arabs and other non-whites)?

[stui magpie]

[Mugwump]

In many respects I do not even know what the word “racism” means now, it is so degraded.

It used to mean the repugnant belief that people of a certain race were inferior (which was called “racialism” in the 1960s). Then, mutating to the word “racism”, it seemed to metastasize to to mean something like “xenophobia” (another term of abuse covering wider “sins”). Then, it became broadened so that the bigoted Left could attribute hateful racialism to those who resisted mass immigration, and wanted some idea of the “commons” in civil society.

There are racialists, of course : my experience, doing business across much of the world, is that most of these people are not white. Where they are white, however, the term “white supremacist” describes these benighted souls accurately. Using that term, in preference to the discredited “racist”, would remove much pugilistic intolerance and self-righteousness from our public discourse, and make it far richer. I suspect, however, that a rich public discourse is not desired by those who fear they may lose the right to define permitted speech.