Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • Violent antisemitism & its perpetrators

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    "There is no doubt that these people pose a threat to Jews, why are governments not acting?"

    Perhaps the results weren't what they were hoping for…

    The funny thing is despite these results Oslo University Center for counter extremism has opened a special department for right wing extremism

  • Helmets of the Fatherland

    From the Times:

    Teachers in Russia have been mocked after being fooled into posing for photos in tinfoil hats by a prankster who claimed they would protect them from a “malicious” Nato plot.

    The teachers in the Voronezh region all received messages purporting to be from President Putin’s ruling party urging them to make “Helmets of the Fatherland”.

    The letters were actually sent by Vladislav Bokhan, an exiled Belarusian blogger who opposes the Kremlin. He told the teachers that the tinfoil hats would provide protection against Nato satellites that were trying to “irradiate the Russian people physically and biologically”

    Bokhan included detailed instructions on how to make the hats and decorate them with the Russian flag.

    Tinfoil

    Bokhan said that the willingness of a number of schools in the region to comply with the absurd orders was an indication of the strength of Kremlin propaganda and “another sign of fascism”. Tinfoil hats are typically associated with conspiracy theories and paranoia.

    The teachers were also told to provide photos and videos to prove that they had followed the instructions.

    Some of the teachers posed for photos in the hats next to a portrait of Putin. “Making tinfoil hats is not only an interesting and creative activity but also an important patriotic act, symbolising a readiness to defend one’s homeland from foreign threats,” one teacher said.

  • Teaching kids to hate Israel

    Well this is grim, but not surprising. Abigail Shrier, via Jerry Coyne, at the Free Press, on "a well-coordinated, national effort between teachers, activist organizations, and administrators to indoctrinate American children against Israel":

    Four years ago, I was among the first journalists to expose the widespread incursion of gender ideology into our schools. Once-fringe beliefs about gender swiftly took over large swaths of society partly thanks to their inclusion in school curricula and lessons.

    Today, extensive interviews with parents, teachers, and non-profit organizations that monitor the radicalism and indoctrination in schools convinced me that demonization of Israel in American primary and secondary schools is no passing fad. Nor is it confined to elite private schools serving hyper-progressive families. As one Catholic parent who exposes radicalism in schools nationwide on the Substack Undercover Mother said to me: “They’ve moved on from BLM to gender unicorn to the new thing: anti-Israel activism. Anti-Israel activism is the new gender ideology in the schools.”

    Parents who watched in alarm as gender theory swept through schools will recognize the sudden, almost religious conversion to this newest ideology. And very few educators are standing against it….

    For instance:

    In another incident, a 12-year-old middle school student at a charter school in San Jose arrived visibly upset on the first school day following the October 7 Hamas massacre. According to a complaint against the school district later filed by her parents in federal district court, the girl had close family members in Israel whose whereabouts were unknown. The girl asked her world history teacher if she could go to the bathroom to collect herself.

    The history classroom “was decorated with maps of the modern Middle East in which Israel was erased.” The history teacher knew the girl was Israeli American because she had identified herself as such at the start of the year during an icebreaker exercise. He told her she could not go “until she read aloud to the entire class a passage he had selected to the effect that in the past, Palestinians and Jews had gotten along,” according to the complaint. “The requirement to publicly espouse a position that was at odds with present reality was overwhelmingly oppressive and humiliating.” She read the passage aloud, as directed.

    The next day at lunch, two female classmates wearing hijabs approached her, according to the complaint, “and demanded ‘What do your people think about the conflict?’ ” When the girl tried to answer, they screamed, “You’re lying—Jews are terrorists.” One demanded: “Do you know that your family in Israel is living on stolen land?”

    A few days later, two boys chased her around the school yelling, “We want you to die.” Kids began to refer to her as “Jew.” They would say, “Hi, Jew” or “Hey Jew.” If she protested, they said they thought it was funny.

    The rest of the kids isolated and ignored her when they weren’t whispering about her, the complaint alleges. She lost all but one friend. Her parents met several times with school faculty; according to the complaint, they did nothing to ensure her safety or improve the girl’s situation.

    Plenty more like that…

  • In Antwerp

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    There's a large Orthodox community in Antwerp – the diamond trade etc.. This does not bode well.

  • A religious conflict

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    In full:

    This chant is a reference to the Battle of Khaybar, which took place between Muhammad's army and the Jews of Khaybar, Arabia, in the year 628.

    Muhammad and his men attacked and defeated the Jewish community. Many of the men were executed while the remaining were subjected to paying protection money and tribute. Many of their goods were confiscated.

    Many children and women were enslaved. Among them was Safiyya, the daughter of a prominent Jewish leader. Muhammad made her pass by the beheaded bodies of her relatives and raped her the same night. Then he married her and kept her as one of his many wives until he finally died 4 years later.

    The remaining Jewish community and all other non-Muslims among them were forced to pay tributes until they were collectively expelled by Caliph Umar, who ordered the expulsion of all non-Muslims from Arabia after Muhammad's death. Their properties were seized and added to the Islamic Empire's wealth.

    Now, why are Muslims today shouting "Khaybar Khaybar ya Yahud" when they protest against Israel?

    To them, this is a fight between Muslims and Jews, who are considered the enemy until the end time when Muslims will exterminate the Jews, as prophesied and promised by Muhammad. The Israelis today and the Jews of Khaybar are one and the same in their eyes, even when Jews have no idea what Khaybar is. To them, this is a religious conflict that they deceptively depict as a matter of land and rights when they need to appeal to non-Muslim leftist useful idiots.

  • Just more Hamas propaganda

    The latest from David Collier:

    Yesterday, the BBC ran another story about a ‘massacre’ in Gaza. We have now seen it countless times – Hamas propaganda make an empty claim – and the BBC rush to promote it.

    The latest headline covered both Gaza and Lebanon.

    ‘Israeli strikes on north Lebanon and Gaza kill dozens, officials and rescuers say’.

    The only named Gazan based source for the claims in the BBC article was a Dr Fadel Naim, director of the Al-Ahly hopsital….

    The report from the good doctor is grim. Of the 17 bodies his facility received ‘nine’ were women – thus strongly implying this was a random attack that killed women – not terrorists.

    But is there any reason the BBC should not have reproduced the claim of Fadel Naim? Did the BBC do the slightest bit of due diligence on this witness, before sharing his lies to the world?

    The answer is no. They could not have checked at all.

    Unusually for Gazan based witnesses these days, Fadel Naim does not hide his social media behind confusing variations of his name. Search for a ‘Fadel Naim’ in Gaza on Facebook and you quickly find his account.

    When you search his account to see what he was posting on October 7 2023 – it quickly becomes apparent this is not the type of person any of us would recognise as a doctor. His timeline is full of open support for the October 7 atrocities…

    If the BBC journalists had even bothered to look – they would have seen that this man openly supports terrorism and should not be trusted. In the end, it is left to people like me to do their job for them.

    Perhaps Collier is being too generous here. It's entirely plausible that they're fully aware of the politics of this Fadel Naim, but either don't care or are in sympathy with his views.

    From scanning the photos on his own public timeline, it soon becomes apparent that this doctor is no idle supporter of terrorism. This is an image from his daughter’s wedding. The top table at the event included not just Fadel Naim, the BBC ‘witness’ – but also Ismail Haniyeh – the (then) leader of Hamas in Gaza…

    We can conclude that this doctor is closely aligned to the top Hamas leadership – and no western media organisation should be relying on him as a witness. It is kind of obvious anyway. A basic truth completely ignored by western media is that Hamas control Gaza – so if a person has ‘made it in Gaza’ – (for example becoming a director at a hospital) – it is a near certainty that his family is aligned with Hamas.

    Senior BBC reporter Jeremy Bowen has stated that Hamas are a “good” source of information on Gaza casualty figures. It's possible that the noble and worthy BBC reporters find it impossible to believe that people could be so downright rotten and unscrupulous as to lie in the service of their cause – which suggests they should choose another profession. Either that, or they're biased.

  • The Dems and gender identity

    Helen Lewis at The Atlantic acknowledges the Dem's gender problem:

    One of the mysteries of this election is how the Democrats approached polling day with a set of policies on gender identity that they were neither proud to champion—nor prepared to disown….

    Biden’s administration has long pushed the new orthodoxy on gender, without ever really explaining to the American people why it matters—or, more crucially, what it actually involves. His officials have advocated for removing lower age limits for gender surgeries for minors, and in January 2022, his nominee for the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, refused to define the word woman, telling Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, “I’m not a biologist.”

    On sports—an issue seized on by the Trump campaign—Biden’s White House has consistently prioritized gender identity over sex. Last year, the Department of Education proposed regulations establishing “that policies violate Title IX when they categorically ban transgender students from participating on sports teams consistent with their gender identity just because of who they are.” Schools were, however, allowed to limit participation in specific situations. (In April, with the election looming, this part of the Title IX revision was put on hold.) Harris went into the campaign tied to the Biden administration’s positions, and did not have the courage, or strategic sense, to reject them publicly. Nor did she defend them.

    The fundamental issue is that athletes who have gone through male puberty are typically stronger and faster than biological females. Rather than contend with that fact, many on the left have retreated to a comfort zone of claiming that opposition to trans women in women’s sports is driven principally by transphobia. But it isn’t: When trans men or nonbinary people who were born female have competed in women’s sports against other biological females, no one has objected. The same season that Lia Thomas, a trans woman, caused controversy by swimming in the women’s division, a trans man named Iszac Henig did so without any protests. (He was not taking testosterone and so did not have an unfair advantage.) Yet even talking about this issue in language that regular Americans can understand is difficult: On CNN Friday, when the conservative political strategist Shermichael Singleton said that “there are a lot of families out there who don’t believe that boys should play girls’ sports,” he was immediately shouted down by another panelist, Jay Michaelson, who said that the word boy was a “slur,” and he “was not going to listen to transphobia at this table.” The moderator, Abby Phillips, also rebuked Singleton, telling him to “talk about this in a way that is respectful.”…

    The tragedy of this subject is that compromise positions are available that would please most voters, and would stop a wider backlash against gender nonconformity that manifests as punitive laws in red states. America is a more open-minded country than its toughest critics believe—the latest research shows that about as many people believe that society has not gone far enough in accepting trans people as think that it has gone too far. Delaware has just elected the first transgender member of Congress, Sarah McBride. But most voters think that biological sex is real, and that it matters in law and policy. Instructing them to believe otherwise, and not to ask any questions, is a doomed strategy. By shedding their most extreme positions, the Democrats will be better placed to defend transgender Americans who want to live their lives in peace.

    As Leor Sapir points out – while acknowledging that this is generally "a good and important piece" – that last paragraph misleads with its talk of "a wider backlash against gender nonconformity":

    …it's a profound mischaracterization to say that there is a "backlash against gender nonconformity" among Republicans and non-progressive voters. Just the opposite is true. The "backlash" is in favor of gender non-conformity, over and against the rigid stereotyping of "gender identity" theory. Boys who like to play with dolls and dance ballet are not "trans girls." They're effeminate–i.e., gender nonconforming–boys.

    This point has been made ad nauseum in the gender culture wars, and I've yet to read a persuasive rebuttal to it. There is no definition of gender identity that isn't either circular or reliant on stereotypes. Typically, it is both. There is no secular ideology more hostile to gender non-conformity in our day than gender identity theory. None.

    This is a key point and any effort to understand where Democrats went wrong and what they need to do to fix it must begin from a correct understanding of what critics of gender identity theory actually think and say.

  • Protecting Islamic values

    Meanwhile, in Libya:

    Libya's interior minister has announced the reintroduction of the morality police to the streets to enforce what he called "society's traditions" and restrict women's freedom of movement.

    On Wednesday, Emad al-Tarabulsi said the patrols would resume next month. They would target people with "strange" haircuts, ensure women wear "modest" clothing and prevent gender mixing in public spaces.

    He also suggested that women would be barred from travelling within the country without a male guardian, adding that those "seeking personal freedom should go to Europe"….

    Since 2011, Libya has seen a decline in religious freedoms in the predominately Muslim country.

    The circulation of non-Islamic religious materials, missionary activity and speech considered “offensive to Muslims” is illegal. In May, the GNU's [Government of National Unity's] General Authority of Endowments and Islamic Affairs established what it called the “Guardians of Virtue” to protect Islamic values.

    Non-Muslims and members of Muslim minority sects have faced persecution from both the state and armed groups in Libya.

    The subjugation of women – Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya – does seem to play a very large part in these Islamic values.

    That Islamic Reformation we've all been waiting for…it's just doesn't seem to be happening. Perhaps – just a thought – it's never going to happen. Perhaps the Reformation was specific to the Christian world because of the Christian emphasis on individual conscience – an emphasis that Islam singularly lacks.

  • Condoning child rape

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  • A struggle within the elite presented as a struggle against the elite on behalf of the poor and the dispossessed

    From Kenan Malik in the Observer:

    When Musa al-Gharbi first arrived in New York in 2016, what he most noticed was the operation of a “racialized caste system” under which “disposable servants… will clean your house, watch your kids, walk your dogs, deliver prepared meals to you”.

    The “disposable servants”, who earned “peanuts for their work”, were inevitably mainly black or Hispanic, the ones being served, almost exclusively white. No one remarked upon this; it was taken to be “the way normal society operates”.

    Al-Gharbi was not describing the uber-rich Upper East Side or the billionaires’ hangout of Scarsdale. He was a freshman at Columbia University. Those profiting from the “racial caste system” were fellow students, many of them vocal about social justice, but largely indifferent to the needs of those at the bottom of the social hierarchy on whose labour their lives rested.

    Four years later, many of these same students joined Black Lives Matter protests. Al-Gharbi watched as they demonstrated on Broadway in New York’s Upper West Side, oblivious to the “homeless Black men who didn’t even have shoes” sharing the same space. The protesters “were crowding the benches that homeless people were using”, insisting that “Black Lives Matter”, but apparently not “the Black guys right in front of them”.

    This constant disparity between the professed beliefs of liberal students agitating for social justice and actions that revealed an indifference to the material injustice surrounding them led Al-Gharbi to write a book to try to make sense of it. We Have Never Been Woke has just been published in America and will soon be out in Britain. If you want to understand what just happened in the US election, it is one of the more useful starting points. For the story of the election can be viewed from one perspective as that of the division between those who can see the disparity that so struck Al-Gharbi and those who can’t or won’t.

    Given that the Columbia activists were ignoring the tangible injustice all around them, why did they adopt the language of social justice? Or, to put it another way, what role does that language play in a world in which real injustice and inequality are ignored? Those were the questions that bugged Al-Gharbi as a student and lie at the heart of his book.

    His answer is that the language of social justice – “wokeness” if you will – is not about social justice at all but acts rather as an ideological glue binding together a section of the elite that want to keep climbing the ladder of privilege but don’t want to see themselves as part of the elite….

    The key to understanding wokeness, Al-Gharbi insists, is the struggles of “symbolic capitalists” – “professionals who traffic in symbols and rhetoric, images and narratives, data and analysis, ideas and abstraction”. In other words, writers and academics, artists and lawyers, museum curators and tech professionals. It is a social stratum that attempts to entrench itself within the elite, elbowing out others already there, by using the language of social justice to gain status and accrue “cultural capital”. Theirs is a struggle within the elite presented as a struggle against the elite on behalf of the poor and the dispossessed.

    This is not simply cynicism or hypocrisy, Al-Gharbi argues. Symbolic capitalists have constructed myths about their social roles that allow them genuinely to believe in fairness and equity while entrenching inequality and injustice, myths that have been accepted by many social institutions and power-brokers. The consequence is that the language of social justice has helped “legitimize and obscure inequalities”, allowing sections of the elite to “reinforce their elite status… often at the expense of those who are genuinely vulnerable, marginalized and disadvantaged”.

    Out here on the 19th.