Former German central bank board member Thilo Sarrazin has got himself in trouble with the UN, as the Turkish Union in Berlin-Brandenburg (Türkischer Bund in Berlin-Brandenburg or TBB) stated with satisfaction in an April 18, 2013, German-language press release. The spokesman of this German-Turkish interest group, Hilmi Kaya Turan, praised a February 26, 2013, “historic decision” by the CERD condemning Germany for not having prosecuted Sarrazin’s criticism of Arab and Turkish immigrants.
CERD complained that “[i]n this interview, Mr. Sarrazin expressed himself in a derogatory and discriminatory way about social ‘lower classes’, which are not productive’ and would have to ‘disappear over time’ in order to create a city of the ‘elite’.” Sarrazin specified that about 20% of Berlin’s population depended on welfare payments, which he wanted to cut, “above all to the lower class.”
Berlin’s indigent included within the immigrant population a “large number of Arabs and Turks in this city, whose numbers have grown through erroneous policies, have no productive function, except for the fruit and vegetable trade.” Compounding the problem for Sarrazin was a birthrate among Arabs and Turks about three times their percentage of the population. Sarrazin thereby saw “Turks…conquering Germany just like the Kosovars conquered Kosovo: through a higher birth rate.” Sarrazin “wouldn’t mind if” these immigrants “were East European Jews with about a 15% higher IQ than the one of Germans.” Central to Sarrazin’s thesis was the assumption that “human ability is to some extent socially contingent and to some extent hereditary.” Sarrazin’s “solution to this problem” was “to generally prohibit influx, except for highly qualified individuals and not provide social welfare for immigrants anymore.”
As noted by CERD, Sarrazin’s interview comments prompted on October 23, 2009, a criminal complaint by the TBB under the German Criminal Code’s Article 130 against “Incitement to Hatred” (Volksverhetzung). Yet upon review, German prosecutors suspended their investigations on November 23, 2009, deciding that Sarrazin’s views fell under the protection of free speech contained within Article 5 of Germany’s Basic Law (Grundgesetz). Prosecutors quoted by CERD had judged Sarrazin’s statements as a “contribution to the intellectual debate in a question…very significant for the public.”
The Bavarian branch of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), has placed under state surveillance German activists accused of fomenting hate against Muslims due to their opposition to the construction of a mega-mosque in Munich.
The move to silence critics of the mosque for being “unconstitutional” was announced by Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann in apress conference on April 12, and represents an unprecedented threat to the exercise of free speech in post-reunification Germany.
Herrmann made the announcement while presenting an annual report about threats to democratic order in Germany. A seven-minute video of the press conference with subtitles in English can be viewed here.
Herrmann singled out a citizen’s movement called Die Freiheit Bayern (Freedom Bavaria), as well as the Munich branch of a highly popular free speech blog called Politically Incorrect (PI), which focuses on topics related to immigration, multiculturalism and Islam in Germany.
Both groups have been drawing public attention to plans to build amassive mosque complex known as the Center for Islam in Europe-Munich (ZIE-M). The 6,000 m² (65,000 ft²) project, which will cost an estimated €40 million ($51 million), is designed to be a key strategic platform for spreading Islam throughout Europe.
Speculation is rife that the Persian Gulf Emirate of Qatar — which is building Wahhabi mega-mosques at a breakneck pace across Europe — will be financing the project in Munich.
Opinion polls consistently show that growing numbers of ordinary German citizens are worried about the consequences of decades of multicultural policies, as well the emergence of a parallel legal system based on Islamic Sharia law.
Post-Christian Europe became noticeably more Islamized during 2012.
As the rapidly growing Muslim population makes its presence felt in towns and cities across the continent, Islam is transforming the European way of life in ways unimaginable only a few years ago.
Some of the more notable Islam-related controversies during 2012 occurred in Germany, where the Muslim population has jumped from around 50,000 in the early 1980s to more than 4.5 million today.
What follows is a brief chronological review of some of the main stories involving the rise of Islam in Germany during 2012.
In January, German authorities welcomed the start of the New Year by officially confirming that they are monitoring German-language Internet websites that are critical of Muslim immigration and the Islamization of Europe.
In a January 4, 2012 interview with the Berliner Zeitung and the Frankfurter Rundschau, Manfred Murck, the director of the Hamburg branch of the German domestic intelligence agency (the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV)), said his organization was studying whether German citizens who criticize Muslims and Islam on the Internet are fomenting hate and are thus criminally guilty of “breaching” the German constitution.
The BfV’s move marked a significant setback for the exercise of free speech in Germany and came amid a months-long smear campaign led by a triple alliance of left-wing German multicultural elites, sundry Muslim groups and members of the mainstream media, who have been relentless in their efforts to discredit the so-called counter-jihad movement (also known as the “Islamophobes”) in Germany.
In a country stifled by decades of political correctness, the counter-jihad activists and bloggers have been giving a voice to millions of frustrated Germans who see the harm being wrought by the cult of multiculturalism.
Opinion polls consistently show that growing numbers of ordinary German citizens are worried about the consequences of decades of multicultural policies that have encouraged mass immigration from Muslim countries. Germans are especially concerned about the refusal of millions of Muslim immigrants to integrate into German society, as well as the emergence of a parallel legal system in Germany based on Islamic Sharia law.
Also in January, Muslims in Duisburg, one of the most Islamized cities in Germany, clamored for the right to turn empty churches into mosques. All of the churches are located in the gritty Hamborn and Marxloh districts in northern Duisburg where Islam has already replaced Christianity as the dominant religion, and where several Catholic churches have been abandoned.
In Germany as a whole, more than 400 Roman Catholic churches and more than 100 Protestant churches have been closed since 2000, according to one estimate. Another 700 Roman Catholic churches are slated to be closed over the next several years.
By contrast, Germany is now home to more than 200 mosques (including more than 40 mega-mosques), 2,600 Muslim prayer halls and a countless number unofficial mosques. Another 128 mosques are currently under construction, according to the Zentralinstitut Islam-Archiv, a Muslim organization based in Germany.
Meanwhile, on January 16 one of the oldest universities in Germany inaugurated the country’s first taxpayer-funded department of Islamic theology. The Center for Islamic Theology at the University of Tübingen is the first of four planned Islamic university centers in Germany.
The German government claims that by controlling the curriculum, the school, which is to train Muslim imams and Islamic religion teachers, will function as an antidote to “hate preachers.” (Most imams currently in Germany are from Turkey and many of them do not speak German.)
But the idea has been fiercely criticized by those who worry the school will become a gateway for Islamists who will introduce a hardline brand of Islam into the German university system.
In February, the interior minister of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, Jochen Hartloff, said he favored the introduction of Islamic Sharia law in Germany. In an interview with the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, Hartloff, a Socialist, said that using the Islamic moral code “is certainly conceivable when it comes to questions pertaining to civil law.” Hartloff said using Sharia law to resolve family law issues such as alimony, divorce or financial contracts “could have a pacifying effect” in Germany.
Hartloff’s comments were seconded by Michael Frieser, an expert on integration issues for the Conservatives in the German parliament. He told the Süddeutsche Zeitung that he has nothing against Muslim immigrants seeking judgments according to their own legal systems. “That can ultimately serve the cause of integration,” Frieser said.
In March, Muslim mobs in Berlin threatened to “burn down the neighborhood” after a German fatally stabbed an 18-year-old Muslim, in what police deemed was an act of self defence. The March 9 incident occurred in the heavily Islamized Berlin neighborhood of Neukölln, when the German, Sven N., tried to stop a fight between two groups of Turks over who should get a football that had been kicked over a fence. The Turks quickly turned their anger against the German. After a group of 20 Muslims armed with knives and daggers challenged Sven, he stabbed one of the attackers, Yusef Al-Abed, in the heart. More than 3,000 Muslims attended Yusuf’s funeral, evoking scenes of the Gaza Strip (photos here).
In April, Islamic radicals launched an unprecedented nationwide campaign to distribute 25 million copies of the Koran, translated into the German language, with the goal of placing one Koran into every household in Germany, free of charge.
The mass proselytization campaign — called Project “Read!” – was organized by dozens of Islamic Salafist groups located in cities and towns throughout Germany.
Salafism is a branch of radical Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia that seeks to establish a Sunni Islamic Caliphate (Islamic Empire) across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe, and eventually the entire world. The Caliphate would be governed exclusively by Islamic Sharia law, which would apply both to Muslims and to non-Muslims. Salafists believe, among other anti-Western doctrines, that democracy, because it is a man-made form of government, must be destroyed.
Although Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, regards the Salafist groups as a threat to German security, Salafists have free reign in the country, and Salafist preachers are known regularly to preach hatred against the West in the mosques and prayer centers that are proliferating across Germany.
Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-basedGatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him onFacebook.
With the nations of Europe and the rest of the world lining up to support the PLO bid to receive non-member state status at the UN General Assembly, it is worth noting two anniversaries of related but forgotten events.
Of course, everyone knows the obvious anniversary – Nov. 29, 1947 was the day the UN General Assembly passed the plan to recommend the partition the British Mandate of Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jews accepted the plan. The Arabs — both local and regional – rejected it. The local Arabs who 25 years later became known as “Palestinians,” responded to the passage of UNGA resolution 181 by launching a terror war against the Jews. Their war was commanded by Iraqi and Lebanese terror masters and supported by the British military and its Arab Legion from Transjordan.
On May 15, 1948 five foreign Arab armies invaded the just-declared Jewish state with the declared aim of annihilating all the Jews.
Now for a couple less known anniversaries
On November 28, 1941 the religious and political leader of the Palestinian Arabs and one of the most influential leaders of the Arab world Haj Amin el Husseini met with Adolf Hitler in Berlin. Husseini had courted the Nazis since just after the Nazis rose to power in 1933. Husseini was forced to flee the British Mandate in 1937 when he expanded his fourth terror war against the Jews, that he began in 1936 to include the British as well.
He fled to Lebanon, and then in October 1939 he fled to Iraq. In April 1941 he fomented a pro-Nazi coup in Iraq. As the British — with massive unheralded assistance from the Jews from the land of Israel — were poised to enter Baghdad and restore the pro-British government, Husseini incited the Farhud, a 3-day pogrom against the Jews of Baghdad that took place over the festival of Shavuot. 150 Jews were murdered. A thousand were wounded and 900 Jewish homes were destroyed.
With the coup defeated and the Jews murdered, Husseini escaped to then pro-Nazi Iran and then in October to Germany by way of Italy. (He was flown out of Iran on an Italian Air Force plane, and feted by Mussolini when he landed in Rome).
He arrived in Berlin and two and a half weeks later he had a prolonged private meeting with Hitler. There, on November 28, 1941, two months before the Wannssee Conference, where the German high command received its first orders to annihilate European Jewry, Hitler told Husseini that he intended to eradicate the Jewish people from the face of Europe.
Husseini remained in Berlin through the end of the war and served as a Nazi agent. In Berlin he broadcast daily diatribes to the Arab world on German shortwave radio in Arabic. Specifically Husseini exhorted them to kill the Jews in the name of Allah and make common cause with the Nazis who would deliver them from the Jews, the British and the Americans.
In 1943 Husseini organized the Hazhar SS Division of Bosnian Muslims. His division carried out the massacre of 90 percent of the Bosnian Jewish community of 12,000.
In 1920 Husseini personally invented what later became known as the Palestinian national movement. He shaped its identity around the sole cause of destroying the Jewish presence in the land of Israel.
During the war Husseini used his broadcasts to shape the political and religious consciousness of the Muslim world by fusing Islamic Jew hatred with annihilationist Nazi anti-Semitism. Whereas much of the Nazi anti-Semitic ideology was discredited in postwar Europe, it has remained the single most resonant theme of Arab politics since World War II.
In 1946, as his fellow Nazi war criminals were being tried in Nuremberg, Husseini made a triumphant return to Egypt where he was welcomed as a war hero by King Farouk, the Muslim Brotherhood and the young officers in the Egyptian army who fused Nazi national socialism with the Islamism of the Muslim Brotherhood and took over Egypt after deposing Farouk in 1951.
The founder of Palestinian nationalism’s singleminded dedication to the genocide of Jewry brings us to the second notable but forgotten anniversary we passed over this month.
On Nov. 12 1942 the British led forces — with the massive and unreported support of Jewish commando and engineering units from the land of Israel — defeated Germany’s Afrika Corps led by Gen. Rommel in the second Battle of Alamein. With the German defeat, the specter of a German occupation of the Middle East was removed. Husseini and Himmler had planned that under German occupation, the Arabs would expand the Holocaust to the 800,000 Jews of the Arab world and the 450,000 Jews in the land of Israel. To this end, the Germans had organized the Einzatzgruppen Afrika unit attached to Rommel’s army. Under the command of SS LTC Walter Rauff, it was tasked with murdering Jews located in the areas that were to come under German occupation.
It is fitting that yesterday, on the anniversary of Hitler’s meeting with Husseini, Germany announced that it would not oppose Husseini’s heirs’ bid to receive UN recognition of a Palestinian state that seeks Israel’s destruction.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
The more things change, the more they remain the same.
Soeren Kern, writing for the Gatestone Institute in his November 16th article, “Islam Needs a Fair Chance in Germany,” reported a significant development in Germany that portends dire consequences for that benighted nation and for all of Europe: the city of Hamburg signed a “treaty” with organizations representing its Islamic population.
The “treaty” features a series of concessions, not by the Muslims to secular authority, but by the secular government of Hamburg to the Muslims. The “treaty,” which requires ratification by the city’s Parliament, grants Muslims “rights” and “privileges” enjoyed by no other religious group there.
The November 13 agreement, signed by Hamburg’s Socialist Mayor Olaf Scholz and the leaders of four Muslim umbrella groups, is being praised by the proponents of multiculturalism for putting the northern port city’s estimated 200,000 Muslims on an equal footing with Christian residents….
The most controversial part of the accord involves a commitment by the city government to promote the teaching of Islam in the Hamburg public school system. The agreement grants the leaders of Hamburg’s Muslim communities a determinative say in what will be taught by allowing them to develop the teaching curriculum for Islamic studies.
Moreover, Muslim officials will also be able to determine who will (and who will not) be allowed to teach courses about Islam in city schools. In practice, this means that only Muslims will be allowed to teach Islam and that pupils will not be exposed to any critical perspectives about the religious, social and political ideology of Islam.
Under the wide-ranging accord, Muslims in Hamburg will also have the right to take three Islamic holidays as days off from work. Up until now, it has been up to individual employers to decide whether or not to grant Muslim staff religious days off on a case-by-case basis. In addition, Muslim students will be exempt from attending school on Muslim holidays.
The agreement also includes provisions for the construction of more mosques in Hamburg, the upkeep of cultural Islamic facilities, the authorization for Muslims to bury their dead without the use of coffins, as well as the counseling of patients and prison inmates by Muslim clerics.
Moreover, the “treaty” will guarantee “broadcast slots alongside Protestant and Catholic broadcasts on public and private radio and television, as well as broadcasting council seats for Muslims with the northern Germany NDR public broadcaster and Germany’s federal ZDF television channel.”
The German term for treaty, vertag, occurs no less than five times in the article. It occurs in the document itself. In the article, the term agreement occurs fifteen times. But the actual document reads, in a loose English translation, “A Draft Treaty between the Islamic Community and the Municipal Authority of Hamburg.”
However, no matter how many times the term agreementappears in the article, a treaty is what the agreement is. Islam is on a cultural or civilizational jihad against the West and all Western institutions. So, what is a treaty? Is it a “truce” between the secular authorities and the religious Muslims? Is it a “non-aggression pact” between two powers vying for hegemony? Is it the granting to Muslims a “separate but equal” political status?
A treaty is commonly regarded as an agreement between belligerent nations, states, or governments. TheOxford English Dictionary defines treaty as:
3a. A settlement or arrangement arrived at by treating or negotiation; an agreement, covenant, compact, contract.
3b. spec. A contract between two or more states, relating to peace, truce, alliance, commerce, or other international relation; also, the document embodying such contract, in modern usage formally signed by plenipotentiaries appointed by the government of each state.
A treaty between belligerents indicates a cessation of hostilities between the parties. The Hamburg treaty implicitly acknowledges that its Muslim “communities” are part and parcel of the Islamic Ummah, or the worldwide, global “community” of Islam. The treaty has implicitly recognized the Ummah as a state to “treat” or “negotiate” with. So, the “agreement” is called a “treaty.” The German government has not been waging cultural or political jihad against Muslims; it is Muslims, especially those of Turkish origin in Germany, who have been waging all sorts of jihad against non-Muslim Germans in the way of rape jihad, jihad against freedom of speech, and jihad against Jews.
This is the situation in all European countries now, especially in the western European nations of Belgium, France, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. Across the Channel, Britain is succumbing to the same phenomena.
Out of a population of about 1.8 million in the city proper of Hamburg, Muslims of various sects, including the Alevi, a Turkish sect, constitute over nine percent.
Again, I think it is significant that this agreement is consistently called a treaty. It acknowledges that Islam has been at war with Western culture, and will continue to be until the “peace” of a global caliphate is achieved. For the time being, in Hamburg, its activists see a short-term gain in minimizing or playing down their necessary and constant hostility. In Islam, this is an instance of Dar al-Ahd, or a temporary truce. The “treaty,” from the Muslim perspective, is also necessarily an instance of what could be called “Grand Taqiyya,” or the Koranic sanctioning of lies and deceit when dealing with the enemy kaffirs and infidels, especially in their own countries.
But these “treaties” will turn out to be nothing but “truces,” when a movement is renewed to exact more concessions from the Germans. Call these “treaties” for what they are: fleeting “non-aggression pacts,” with Islam being the sole aggressor. Regardless of the nature or content of these treaties, Germany will remain Dar al-Harb, the land of the enemy, and Dar al-Kufr, or the land of the kaffirs or unbelievers. It is noteworthy that all the concessions will be paid by non-Muslim Germans as a form of jizya, or “protection” tax. Germans will not “retaliate” against Islamic aggression, for political correctness will silence them for fear of being accused of racism or bigotry.
Islam, however, is first and foremost, from top to bottom, a totalitarian ideology. Its doctrine requires that Muslims and their spokesmen advocate Islam’s own kind of racism and bigotry.
Islam is a nihilist ideology, as well. It is the enemy of all human values. In exchange for submission to it, it promises a paradise after death. Life on earth is merely transitory and not important. The Hamburg “treaty” is an extension of that nihilism; it requires its secular signers to aid and abet the piecemeal annihilation of their values and their culture. The Islamists know what they are doing. Their secular cosigners do not. It seems the “right” thing to do, per a Kantian categorical imperative to pursue an end regardless of, but especially because of, its selfless nature, in the name of what Mayor Scholz called “the strengthening the societal foundation” of Hamburg.
Which is tantamount to injecting the bubonic plague pathogen into a human body in order to “strengthen an individual’s well-being.”
Edward Cline is the author of the Sparrowhawk novels set in England and Virginia in the pre-Revolutionary period, of several detective and suspense novels, and three collections of his commentaries and columns, all available on Amazon Books. His essays, book reviews, and other articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the Journal of Information Ethics and other publications. He is a frequent contributor to Rule of Reason, Family Security Matters, Capitalism Magazine and other Web publications.
The German government has launched a nationwide poster campaignaimed at fighting against the radicalization of young Muslim immigrants.
The ad campaign is the brainchild of German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich, who has been leading Germany’s multifaceted response (here, here and here) to the rise of radical Islam there.
Beginning on September 21, the posters, which feature photos of four different Muslims under the caption “MISSING,” will be put up in the immigrant areas in Germany’s large cities (mainly in Berlin, Hamburg and Bonn), and will feature text in German, Turkish and Arabic.
The Interior Ministry says the posters — which feature a helpline telephone number for worried acquaintances and relatives — are designed to “counter radicalization” and “provide support.”
One of the posters includes the word “MISSING” in very large print above a portrait of a young man with dark hair and reads: “This is our son Ahmad. We miss him, because we do not recognize him anymore. He is withdrawing more and more, becoming more radical every day. We are afraid of losing him altogether — to religious fanatics and terrorist groups.”
According to documentation published by the anti-radicalization center, “Parents, relatives, friends and teachers are often the first to notice that a young person is becoming radicalized, and are also often the last people with whom a young person maintains contact despite becoming increasingly isolated. In order to provide them with the best possible support in such a difficult situation and so to jointly counter the radicalization of the people close to you, professional consulting services are now available.”
The text continues: “German Interior Minister Friedrich, within the framework of the ‘Prevention Summit’ on June 24, 2011, confirmed that the radicalization of Muslim youth and young adults by Islamist groups would be resolutely pursued. The counseling center is an important element of this. Those within the social environment of the affected individuals are usually the first to notice when a son, student, friend or colleague change their religious attitude or even their entire worldview, increasingly withdraw from their existing environment, turn off from their past and embrace a radical spectrum, and are increasingly guided by ideologies that are incompatible with the principles of a liberal democratic state.”
“Missing”According to the center, the victims “often pull back sharply from their previous environment and refuse to ‘mix’ anymore. This leads to friends, but especially parents, to uncertainty: they are in a conflict between the potentially welcome religiosity of the child and the concomitant concern that their child might fall into the ‘wrong circles’ and that they might lose contact with them. This is especially true for non-Muslim parents, whose children have converted to Islam, and who have many questions about Islam as a religion.”
The text concludes: “In these cases, professional advice is important and necessary. It is important to recognize the problem as such and to accept to resolve pressing issues and finally to consider ways to counter the radicalization process. The ‘Radicalization Advice Center’ at the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees is in close contact with various consultancies and knows contact persons as well as networks for special topics in all areas. The offer of counseling is for all citizens provided free of charge.”
According to the Interior Ministry, the Radicalization Advice Center is currently handling about 20 cases, mostly involving German parents whose children have converted to Islam. The objective of the poster campaign, which will cost about €300,000 ($375,000), is to reach out to Muslim parents who may be concerned about the radicalization of their children.
Soeren Kern is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the New York-basedGatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him onFacebook.
The West will either reject the logic of Political Correctness or suffer a catastrophic failure of vision, will, power and influence, destroying civil society as we know it. This may sound drastic, and of course it is. But why is it being claimed here? Because the ideas in the doctrines of Political Correctness and related notions like Multiculturalism are so destructive that—much like magma—these cannot long be held safely before spilling over and causing tremendous damage, chaos and destruction of our society.
The reason it must be eliminated is because Political Correctness is a Trojan horse for Marxism, which always destroys everything it touches. PC is a curse which must be denounced before it mangles its host society, especially since it is the very opposite of Free Speech. More importantly, individual responsibility is eliminated by PC standards which make irrelevant personal morality. This is the subject of this essay.
I. Definition of Political Correctness
Political Correctness (PC) is shorthand for an ideology which implies ethical or moral superiority for various positions which challenge traditional morality. The Freedictionary.com defines PC as
1. Of, relating to, or supporting broad social, political, and educational change, especially to redress historical injustices in matters such as race, class, gender, and sexual orientation.
PC has become, in practice, a set of standards by which communication is purified from unacceptable content. But PC has also deeply affected public policy and law, and ultimately ideas about morality, itself. For example, against the longstanding notion of the right of free expression, even thinking many forbidden thoughts would break PC norms. And for this reason, PC has evolved from being rules for “sensitivity” training into a set of un-breachable social mores.
Political correctness has 3 features. First, political correctness is a set of attitudes & beliefs divorced from mainstream values. Second, the politically correct person has a prescriptive view on how people should think & what they are permitted to discuss. Third, & most importantly, political correctness is embedded in public institutions, which have a legislative base, & which have coercive powers. It is this third aspect that gives political correctness its authority. Without this capture of power the views of the politically correct would simply be another view in the marketplace of ideas. A person, an institution or a government is politically correct when they cease to represent the interests of the majority, & become focused on the cares & concerns of minority groups.
Yet, when peeling back the layers of the onion of PC, one cannot help but notice a strongly socialist or Marxist bent to these rules. And this is no coincidence. As Bill Lind says,
Political Correctness is cultural Marxism. It is Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms. It is an effort that goes back not to the 1960s and the hippies and the peace movement, but back to World War I. If we compare the basic tenets of Political Correctness with classical Marxism the parallels are very obvious.
So PC is a method for transporting Marxist ideas into traditional cultures.
II. History of Political Correctness
Political Correctness seems like the type of thing that would arise of its own merits. How misleading! Instead, the Frankfurt school of Marxism, from Frankfurt Germany, created PC as a way to disseminate their ideas in the Institute for Social Research. Bill Lind gives a brief history of this,
In 1923 in Germany, a think-tank was established to translate Marxism from economic into cultural terms. This created Political Correctness as we know it today. This institute, associated with Frankfurt University was originally supposed to be known as the Institute for Marxism. But the people behind it decided at the beginning that it was not to their advantage to be openly identified as Marxist. So instead they decided to name it the Institute for Social Research.
Then, when these Marxist professors fled Hitler, they applied to emigrate to America and were accepted. The Germans brought PC with them. As Lind says,
Members of the Frankfurt School were both Marxist and Jewish. In 1933 the Nazis came to power in Germany. Not surprisingly they shut down the Institute for Social Research. Its members fled to New York City, were the Institute was reestablished in 1933 by Columbia University. These shifted their focus from Critical Theory about German society, to Critical Theory directed toward American society.
III. Multiculturalism
Related to PC is Multiculturalism—but what is that? Dictionary.com defines Multiculturalism as “The preservation of different cultures or cultural identities within a unified society, as a state or nation.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says:
Multiculturalism is a philosophical theory regarding the proper way to respond to cultural and religious diversity. Mere toleration of group falls short of making minority groups equal citizens; recognition and positive accommodation of group differences are required through “group-differentiated rights.” While multiculturalism is an umbrella term to characterize the moral and political claims of a wide range of disadvantaged groups, including African Americans, women, gays and lesbians, and the disabled, most theorists of multiculturalism tend to focus their arguments on immigrants who are ethnic and religious minorities, minority nations, and indigenous peoples.
The West is beginning to understand the problems with multiculturalism, as described in the article The Netherlands to Abandon Multiculturalism. States the author:
A new integration bill (covering letter & 15-page action plan), which Dutch Interior Minister Piet Hein Donner presented to parliament on June 16, reads: “The government shares the social dissatisfaction over the multicultural society model and plans to shift priority to the values of the Dutch people. In the new integration system, the values of the Dutch society play a central role. With this change, the government steps away from the model of a multicultural society.”
IV. Effects of Political Correctness
So it is clear that PC is a Marxist ideology which is meant to help ripen the West for socialist takeover. But what are its impacts? Here are some pernicious effects of the PC movement which prove we must drop this false standard.
A: PC Opposes Freedom of Belief
Clearly, if PC blocks the expression of “bad” statements—this is because these ideas are inherently unacceptable. In other words, one should be ashamed at having these thoughts. As individuals lose their freedom to express their beliefs, they lose their ability to think freely, as well.
B: PC Allows an Ideology Without Standards of Right & Wrong to Establish Morality
There is no locus of morality in Marxist or socialist thought—merely a demand to equally distribute all world goods. Therefore, PC beliefs, rules and judgments can only be subjective.
C: PC Assumes Moral Excellence is Achievable Without Debate
The chief presumption of PC is that all serious moral debate about the human condition has already taken place and arguing about it is redundant. This is related to the philosopher Hegel’s (Marx’s role model) insane idea that history was over now that Hegel had come on the scene.
D: PC Presumes Moral Bravery is Unobjectionable
An absurd result of the PC fiction is that all moral struggles have now been solved, and the outcome is not only clear, but unremarkable. Yet, if this were assumed in the past, many irreplaceable debates would have never happened, including over democracy, sufferagism, slavery, women and children’s rights, etc. But this is a nonsensical conclusion.
E: PC Sanctions Mere Words
PC seeks to make illegal every insensitive use of language. Yet only for socialist or Marxist causes.
F: PC Predetermines Truths & Stops Honest Moral Analysis
Perhaps the most audacious presumption of PC is that all truths are already known and have been processed by PC thinkers and writers. So it eliminates the idea that truth be debated since it has already been decided beforehand. In doing this, it makes all moral debates redundant.
G: PC Keeps People From Talking Honestly so Cripples Free Debate
PC means one cannot freely discuss any controversial topic since such a debate presumes honesty. But if moral positions are predetermined, then it is simply unacceptable to announce or advent for any positions not already blessed by PC. This stops people and societies from dealing with the most pressing problems.
H: PC Forces Individuals to Accept Ideas Against Their Conscience
Even a few years ago, a person of a religious mindset could espouse opposition to things of which they disapproved. Now to do so would mean public sanctions and possibly criminal penalties. All for merely disagreeing with certain thoughts or activities.
I: PC Makes Certain Groups Above Criticism
A dangerous aspect of PC is the tendency to defend the actions of individuals not by virtue of their inherent morality, but instead by association of their tribal source.
J: PC Makes Logic, History & Ethics Subservient to Lesser Concerns
PC forces socialist mores and standards upon individuals even though history reveals such ideas always fail, and common sense indicates these beliefs lack all ethical soundness.
K: PC Creates Distrust Between Races & Cultures
Since the PC movement has created special categories and rewards for those of exemplary status, other groups feel suspicious of these persons. This refusal to accept meritocracy can only breed unsoundness and destruction in such sacrosanct groups.
L: PC is Anti-Efficiency, Rewarding Status Over Achievement
If groups are rewarded not by their good works, but merely by being a passive member of a protected class, this action will certainly increase indolence and incompetence.
M: PC is Backwards Looking
The PC movement seeks to repay groups on the basis of things denied their predecessors which is not just irrational, but also unfair to those amongst the living.
N: PC Breaks Down Potential for Democracy
Since PC opposes free speech, it harms democracy since democracy is based upon free political choice.
O: PC Claims Coercion More Important Than Persuasion
Clearly, since PC spends so much time and effort to silence “insensitive” speakers—it cares more about shutting people up as opposed to persuade them. Therefore, PC can lead to conflict by bottling up anger, ignorance and misunderstandings.
P: PC Invalidates All Religions Which Claim Timeless Morality
If the PC movement is correct, all traditional—meaning biblical religions—must be false, since they regularly argue against PC standards. Therefore, PC is not just anti-religion but also against traditional morality. Therefore it is very destructive of society.
V. If Not for PC, Barack Would No Longer be in Office
It is obvious that Obama has received many kudos for being the first true minority elected president. Yet, it is also doubtless that he gathers enormous sympathy and pity for this status, as well. Yet, if we are honest, we must admit that another president would not have received the same support and forgiveness for his many mistakes. So, since Barack is destroying America through ignorance, laziness or even ill-will, the PC movement is likewise dissolving the US.
Therefore, we must destroy PC before it destroys us. And the only way to eviscerate this intellectual parasite and moral blight is to demand Free Speech be regarded as more important than PC and its countless restrictions. Further, that PC is the mortal enemy of Free Speech and only one of them can survive. These leftist codes must be permanently dismissed in favor of our ancestral liberties and rights, or bondage will be established as surely as night follows day.
Kelly O’Connell hosts American Anthem on CFP Radio Sundays at 4 pm (EST).
Kelly O’Connell is an author and attorney. He was born on the West Coast, raised in Las Vegas, and matriculated from the University of Oregon. After laboring for the Reformed Church in Galway, Ireland, he returned to America and attended law school in Virginia, where he earned a JD and a Master’s degree in Government. He spent a stint working as a researcher and writer of academic articles at a Miami law school, focusing on ancient law and society. He has also been employed as a university Speech & Debate professor. He then returned West and worked as an assistant district attorney. Kelly is now is a private practitioner with a small law practice in New Mexico. Kelly is now host of a daily, Monday to Friday talk show at AM KOBE called AM Las Cruces w/Kelly O’Connell
Speech of Ayaan Hirsi Ali on occasion of the Axel Springer Honorary Prize in Berlin
Thank you so much for this great honor. The late Axel Springer had four guiding principles, which he later extended to five after the terrorist attacks of September 2001. I want to begin by reminding you of them.
Unconditional commitment to German reunification, which he changed to European Union after 1989;
Reconciliation of the Jews and the Germans and support for the state of Israel;
Rejection of any kind of political totalitarianism;
Defense of the free social market;
Support of the transatlantic alliance and solidarity with the USA on the basis of shared values of freedom.
It is about the third and the fifth of these priniples that I wish to speak to you tonight. In particular, I want to talk about the freedom of speech – and the loss of freedom that comes with that silence. [...]
“People ask me if I have some kind of death wish, to keep saying the things I do. The answer is no, I would like to keep living. However, some things must be said and there are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice.” I wrote those words in 2005. I was alluding to the plight of Muslim women who live in Europe, whose suffering inspired me to make the film Submission with Theo van Gogh. He was shot and stabbed to death by a radical Muslim.
Today, the problem of how to integrate Muslim immigrants into European society is, if anything, even more complex and challenging than it was then. There are, of course, still the advocates of silence. They say that an honest discussion of the challenges posed by some Muslim immigrants to European society will lead to a build-up of hatred against those immigrants: A hatred so vile and so strong as to translate into violence. A violence carried out by lone renegades like the Norwegian Anders Breivik, now on trial for his horrific spree in Oslo last year, or a more organized violence by neo-Nazi groups.
The advocates of silence also warn that honest discussion will encourage the emergence and rise of populist parties whose only political issue is immigration and Islam. They fear the election through non-violent means of politicians with a violent agenda that they will apply to Muslims as soon as they get into office. Advocates of silence conjure up terrifying visions of fascistic regimes that will implement mass deportations of Muslims, mass imprisonment of Muslims, the closing of their mosques, the shutting down of their businesses, the exclusion of Muslims from education and employment, and other types of discrimination.
When voicing these fears, the advocates of silence point, implicitly or explicitly, to the history of Germany between the world wars. The argument is often made that those intellectuals who wrote about “the Jewish question” – not all of whom were self-consciously anti-Semitic – paved the way for Hitler’s rise to power, for his policies of discrimination against Jews – not to mention homosexuals and the handicapped – and the ultimate horrors of the Holocaust. Here in Berlin, more than anywhere else in the world, such fears cannot and should not be lightly dismissed.
Citing this history of intolerance and genocide, the advocates of silence demand that no specific references be made to Islam or Muslims when discussing the issue of integration. They demand that only social and economic aspects of the problem be highlighted and only social and economic policies be implemented. They also urge that cultural demands made by some Muslim leaders be accommodated without complaint. Animal rights groups are asked to look the other way when it comes to the ritual slaughter of sheep, cows and chickens. Women’s rights groups are told to look for other issues when they agitate against women’s only swimming pools, the veil, forced marriages, genital mutilation and even honor killings. Activists may condemn the killing of women and the forcing of girls into marriage, but they may not link it to the religion of Islam or the community of Muslims.
Assaults on Jews or homosexuals may be the responsibility of Muslim youths, indoctrinated by agents of radical Islam to express their religious beliefs in this way, but advocates of silence say once again: “Condemn the act, but do not in any way relate it to the religion of Islam or Muslims.” They argue that these acts of intolerance are relatively small in number and are committed by a fringe of the Muslim immigrant population.
There is a growing resentment all over Europe towards the dependence on the welfare state of Muslim immigrants. The high rate of drop-outs from education. Everywhere in Europe Muslims are a minority, but in some prisons and in many women’s shelters they are shockingly overrepresented.
The advocates of silence warn us that publishing these facts or debating them in the media and in parliament will transform the existing resentment towards Muslims into violent behavior. The sentiment of xenophobia, they argue, is irrational and cannot – or will not – tell the difference between a good Muslim and a bad Muslim. The xenophobes will persecute Muslims regardless of their guilt or innocence and hurt them.
Censorship and silence, we are told, are the best preventive remedies against hatred and violence.
I believe that the advocates of silence are wrong, profoundly and dangerously wrong.
By Matthias Bartsch, Maximilian Popp and Christoph Scheuermann
Part 2: The Embodiment of a Self-Confident Islam
German imam Vogel was a professional boxer before converting to Islam. He was the German junior champion in the light heavyweight division, which gives him the kind of street credibility that a 60-year-old imam from Neu-Ulm in southern Germany can never achieve. “I know it all: amusement arcades, discos, women,” says Vogel. “I can be more persuasive when I say that it’s better to be married and live a virtuous life.”
A number of Muslims feel that the German convert is too vain, and find it presumptuous for Vogel to drive to rallies in a VW SUV with the license plate number HAM-ZA 911. Vogel calls himself Abu Hamza, the name of a warrior who lived in the time of the Prophet Muhammad. The number stands for 9/11, the day of the terrorist attacks on the United States.
His followers agree with Vogel that it’s cool to be pious. During his presentations, they hand him their questions, which Vogel then addresses in his monologue. Is gelatin prohibited? Must a Muslim despise the West? When he has finished the questions, Vogel comes up with new ones and sets up a camera. Is stoning in keeping with the times? Do extraterrestrials exist? Vogel says that one reason extraterrestrials cannot exist is that the Prophet, who predicted everything, never mentioned them.
The young imams are servants of Allah and self-promoters in equal measure, but none of them uses the media as skillfully as Vogel. A search for his name on YouTube yields 50,000 hits. Some of the videos placed on the web are jittery, and some were made with cell-phone cameras, which lends them authenticity. In one video Vogel, while driving a car on the autobahn at high speed, implores the German rapper Bushido to abandon his life of money and women and return to Islam. “Brother, you’re on the wrong path,” Vogel says.
‘Holocaust against Muslims’
Talk show hosts invite him to appear on their programs whenever they need a younger, bearded man to goad a group of aging experts with catchy punch lines and provocative statements. Vogel has been on the shows of several major German hosts, including Johannes B. Kerner, Sandra Maischberger and Frank Plasberg. He is the bad guy of the German debate over Islam. It’s a role he relishes, partly because he is one of the few Islamists in Germany who have rhetorical skills and want to be on television.
Vogel and the other young imams embody a self-confident Islam. A 2008 study by the Dutch government concludes that Salafists provide their followers with a sense of identity and social cohesion. They seize upon the widespread belief that Muslims are treated unfairly and channel it into their message.
Imam Abdul Adhim
Vogel speaks of a “Holocaust against Muslims.” Adhim once warned against a Jewish-American world conspiracy, according to a taped conversation obtained by the State Office of Criminal Investigation in Berlin. The imam accuses the West of lying, hypocrisy and hatred of Muslims. He accused German Chancellor Angela Merkel of helping to finance the war in Gaza, and he called upon all Muslims in the Palestinian Territories to wage jihad against the Jews in Israel. According to Adhim, Hamas militants are not terrorists. Instead, he says: “They are the best of this nation! They are at the front in this nation.”
The public prosecutor’s office in Berlin launched an investigation against Adhim on suspicion of incitement, but dropped it a short time later. An Islamic scholar who analyzed a speech on behalf of the State Office of Criminal Investigation concluded that although Adhim stirs up emotions, he is not a typical “inflammatory preacher.” The scholar also said that the young imam exhibited “great intellectual agility.”
‘Only Just Begun’
In his speeches, Adhim condemns terror and violence. Nevertheless, security services view the Al-Nur Mosque in Berlin, where he appears regularly, as a meeting place for militant Islamists. The mosque has received funding in the past from a Saudi Arabian foundation suspected of bankrolling terrorism.
Vogel also claims that he convinces young people to renounce violence. But a few radicals see him as a role model. Arid U., the Frankfurt Airport assailant, included “Pierre Vogel” as one of his interests on his Facebook page.
Robert B., the German native who was arrested together with a friend in England in mid-July 2011 after arriving on a ferry with bomb-building plans and jihad instructions in their luggage, was also a follower of Vogel. He had attended one of Vogel’s rallies in Hamburg in the summer.
For some young Muslims, imams like Vogel are apparently the gateway drug into an ideology with Islamist overtones, which recognizes violence as a legitimate tool, and not just in war zones.
By Andrew Harrod & Sam Nunberg:
by 
“Missing” “
“Missing”According to the center, the victims “often pull back sharply from their previous environment and refuse to ‘mix’ anymore. This leads to friends, but especially parents, to uncertainty: they are in a conflict between the potentially welcome religiosity of the child and the concomitant concern that their child might fall into the ‘wrong circles’ and that they might lose contact with them. This is especially true for non-Muslim parents, whose children have converted to Islam, and who have many questions about Islam as a religion.”
