Thursday, August 11, 2005

The Tipping Point

As ludicrous as it is to witness Blair's pseudo-Chuchillian posturing on terror, it doesn't even approach within a country mile the chutzpah of his opponents. The prospect of restrictions on the right to claim that Semtex-assisted suicide is a good thing has Liberals channeling Voltaire, but who first started chipping away at the right to free speech anyway ? Ah yes. But is telling the one about the Irishman and the UFO really worse than encouraging people to detonate in the middle of a crowded bus ?

More to the point, the Left already supports actual, specific restrictions on the discussion of religion. Take the increasingly surreal pursuit of BNP Scumenfuhrer Nick Griffin. Try the attempts to bring in laws that will prohibit even talking about Islamic terrorism. Indeed, to follow the logic of Liberal's stated position, they want it to be legal for a Muslim to claim Islam supports suicide bombing, but illegal for an Infidel to do so.

As it happens, in a coincidence too neat for Hollywood, we have a chance to witness the Liberal worldview in action. While the Left is ostentatiously agonising over whether to prosecute naughty preachers, they have no qualms about targeting a real bad guy. Step forward Alan Buchan, now officially worse than Hizb ut Tahrir, Al-Muhajiroun and the rest.

Who ?

Alan Buchan, owner and editor of North East Weekly, a free paper distributed from Peterhead to Aberdeen, of course. Hey - that may sound like an obscure billet, but it's big enough to make him a target of the Race Commissars. Al's crime was to
write an article opposing plans to open an immigrant centre and a prison in his community. True, he has a certain way with words, but colourful language alone hardly constitutes incitement.

Forget Hollywood, the average jornalist's role models aren't Woodward and Bernstein so much as the Lion and the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. In keeping with his low rung on the journalistic ladder, however, Buchan still appears to have retained some integrity:

We are surprised by the police action in this matter as it is of extreme
importance to local people to open up a debate on the effects of the complex
before it is built," said Mr Buchan."The North East Weekly has been calling for
a local referendum on the issue, similar to that held on toll charges in
Edinburgh, so local people can express an opinion on what is being planned."The
police action is a move against press freedom and free speech. We intend to
mount a stout defence of the freedom of speech as this is the only way to defeat
the extremists bringing blood and carnage to the streets of our towns and
cities.

Exactly. This is what the editors of the nationals should be saying - but won't. Bear that in mind the next time you hear them piously intoning on the vital importance of their freedom to publish violence pr0n from Iraq or the like.

Of course, Buchan is quite correct to point out the essential lunacy of the charge. What race are asylum seekers ? Are Mexican asylum seekers and Indian asylum seekers the same race ? And is our putative Indian aylum seeker the same race as a doctor from Bangalore ? The Left won't say, but if they want a conviction they might have to.

That's what's significant about current events. Even ten years ago, the mere charge of racism - no matter how deranged or illogical - was enough to cow people into submission. Now, folks are starting to call the Left's bluff.

We're back to what I keep saying: what the Left fears most of all is people finding out what they really believe. Now that people have stopped folding like a row of tents every time the R-word is mentioned, the Left is forced to articulate its objections, and the public gets a chance to see who they really are. Hear that Nick Griffin has been charged with incitement to racial hatred and it's a dog-bites-man story. Hear that one of the things that got the Left all batey is his comment that 'Britain would sooner or later be struck by Islamic bombers, who would "probably turn out to be second generation Pakistanis from somewhere like Bradford" and that they would probably "blast the hell out of London tube trains and buses." ', and you've got an insight into the mentality of the modern Left. Never mind that Nazi Nick was 100% right, he still shouldn't have been allowed to say it. This is post-modernism gone wild.

For the record, I'm betting that the PF won't proceed with the charges against Buchan. That's good for him, but bad for us. It's always great to see Liberals forced to expand on their philosophy in full view of the public. In particular, it would be good to see the Left forced to discuss just who these 'asylum seekers' actually are. But, irrespective of what happenss in this particular case, the Left has lost its Mojo. They can't shut people up with cries of racism anymore, now they'll have to engage with the arguments. No wonder they're so panicky.

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