WELL, it’s been a pretty bleak one. Within days we learned that the Manchester synagogue murderer was indeed a dopehead. My article published by chance on the day of the outrage proved timely. Yes, Peter Hitchens, Ross Grainger and Alex Berenson have all been proved right again on the link between cannabis psychosis and violence, a crisis the authorities continue to ignore, pretending that terrorism is ideological alone.
Those who haven’t read Alex Berenson’s book, Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence, should do so. Next to emerge, unsurprisingly, was that vile Jihad al-Shamie was a rapist, bigamist and abuser too. He was, I suspect, more typical than anyone wants to own – but one manifestation of the drug-ridden and abusive Islamic subcultures harboured by Britain’s two-tier justice system. This, as well as the ‘extreme Islamic videos’ he watched, was the seed-bed for his murderous intent. But don’t expect any recognition of that by Starmer and Co.
Nor from the superficial Kemi Badenoch either. No mention of the Manchester synagogue attack in her conference speech; just five days later it didn’t exist. For the schizophrenic Telegraph it was ‘the return of the Mummy‘. Gushing does not begin to describe their coverage. Grand-scale self-deception over a speech that got it wrong and missed the issue from the start is more like it.
Mrs Badenoch’s irritating giggle and encouragement of continued clapping didn’t help. But what infuriated me far more was the sheer blindness of her opening statement.
‘Every generation must face its test,’ she said. ‘The 1940s’ was to defeat fascism and ensure the victory of freedom; in the 1980s it was to banish socialism and deliver prosperity.’ Then came the anti-climax: ‘In the twenties, our test is different. It is to restore a strong economy, secure our borders, and rebuild Britain’s strength . . .’
Different? NO! It’s the same but worse, I shouted at the screen. Don’t you realise that the terrible test of today is to defeat both, once again, but in the terrible combination they have returned to stalk us in? The twin evils of fascism and socialism in their contemporary form of globalist-Islamo-fascism and woke state socialism. More invidious than before because they are both now enemies within.
Ideologies that have all but destroyed our freedom and our economy. There will be no strong economy or strong borders until we have banished them! That, Kemi, is the test of our generation and you just don’t get it. If you did, you would be apologising for your own party’s appeasement of both. You would not pretend that the state expanded by a third by osmosis since Brexit and covid. Nothing to do with the Tories!
Where were the mea culpas, the only ashes from which a new Tory phoenix could possibly rise? Where were the words, ‘Today is the day we commit to restoring freedom, ending DEI oppression and censorship, to abolishing hate crime law, two-tier justice and to protecting our nation from those who hate us’?
Nowhere.
I fear we can’t expect them – or the new codes of conduct necessary to defend our freedom and democracy (that must accompany such a commitment) – from Kemi any more than we can from Shabana Mahmood. On the day of Kemi Badenoch’s speech to the Conservative conference we published an article by Gillian Dymond on sharia law, Islam’s contempt for women, and cultural norms which entrench ‘insular clan loyalties at the expense of integration’.
It should serve as a wake-up call for any half-decent politician. It made me think how fast-creeping is the acculturation and corruption our ever-tolerant and ignorant society has allowed. It is not just the burqa we must ban from our streets – and we must – but if we are to stop the anti-democratic Islamification of our society, any political leader worth his or her salt has to commit to re-establishing dress codes in the public space. Gillian’s article reminds us that the face-covering niqab is a radical symbol associated with recent manifestations of political Islam. But neither is the hair-covering hijab harmless – it reflects control over women and girls and is a symbol of submission. That’s why, in my view, hijabs should be banned from schools for both teachers and children, and from hospitals and courts for their employees. It is beyond shocking that we allow small girls as young as five to be sent to school with their heads tightly bandaged all day. In London where I live I see it every day. It is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Similarly, police must reassert the ‘clean-shaven’ rule. A photo in a newspaper I saw this week prompted this thought. It was of two heavily bearded officers dragging a pro-Palestine protester away. I found them more alarming than the protester.
The problem that Kemi doesn’t get or want to face is the cultural one. She is a skin-deep conservative who does not understand the conserving part of conservatism, key to the fight against the corruption of our institutions. I am not sure Nigel Farage gets it either.
Both need to face the political implications of allowing a select group to have exemptions from the normal law-abiding standards expected of a British citizen that Gillian reports on in her piece. Deportation of illegals and criminals and those who have no right to stay further is essential but not enough. Restoring our own culture and setting our own standards is just as important. Like calling out the depravity of Church leaders who defile our Christian heritage, and demanding a much, much tougher approach to drug use. It means above all having the confidence to confront the representatives of other cultures on what is not acceptable about theirs, leaders who are slow to respond to the ‘Jihads’ in their midst.
Better late than never.
All we at TCW can do is carry on speaking out, even at risk of repressive misuse of Online Safety Act, terrorism or hate crime law by the authorities to shut us down – like that facing Tommy Robinson in court tomorrow. I worry that we may only have a limited window of opportunity to do this. Heaven forfend that any of Mark Carney’s proposals to shut down dissent in Canada which I reported on last week come our way.
Thanks to the generosity of our readers, however, we are able to continue to defend our right to speak out and to battle on. I am so grateful to the many of you who responded to my appeal last week.
