Science as a Social Contruct

There is an abstract philosphical sense in which everything we know is a social construct. After singular solipsism, we might agree we are seperate minds; and then it looks, to those minds, like there’s an empirical reality; and that reality includes our brains; and our brains are the physical substrate upon which the mind software operates. This is how we see reality*.

(*when we’re not inventing fantasies and believing them)

The most useful social construct we have is science, because it’s so practically productive. And science can be used to evaluate other social constructs, sufficiently well that we can now assess the nature of the very mind that started to contemplate the nature of the world. Science is a social construct because it has been constructed socially, by cooperating humans over centuries; and, before that nascent ‘science’, natural philosophy was the most rigorous discipline, for millennia. Of course a lot of the old ideas have been superceded by better ones, backed up by good empirical evidence; and many old ideas have been rejected because after millenia there is still zero positive evidence to support them.

Science is such a useful social construct it can assess the utility and reliability of the sciences themselves. There’s a hierarchy of sciences. They are commonly referred to as being on a spectrum of hard and soft sciences.

But ‘hard’ sciences, while difficult at higher levels of expertise, are simpler, more reliable, easier sciences than the ‘soft’ sciences. The term ‘hard’ does not mean difficult or complex, relatively speaking, but solid, reliable, repeatable. The ‘soft’ sciences are far more complex and difficult to do well, reliably, as sciences. The hierarchy is not one of moral merit, but of simplicity, reliability, repeatability. Physics, Cemistry, Biology, Neuroscience, Psychology, Sociology, to pick a few, go from hard to soft. Note, though, for newer sciences, like neuroscience, the field will change fast but become more reliable, while much older sciences, like psychology, will contain a lot of historic contested results. Hard science experiments are easier to replicate, support, or falsify; soft sciences are way more difficult, with much more disagreement about the ‘facts’ that the science uncovers.

This is why the biology of sex, backed by general biology, chemistry, physics, trumps the flaky end of the social sciences, where the abuse of science results in statements like ‘sex is a social construct’ in an attempt to refute inconvenient biological science. Well, yes, in the extreme philosoiophical sense, sex is a social construct but it results from the reliable categorisation of members of sexually reproducing species into male and female; a categorisation that is NOT a construct of science, but a construct of millions of years of differentiation between males and females in many species.

Are there variations that aren’t as ‘hard’ as the difference between a proton and an electron? Yes. Biological complexity being far greater than atomic complexity (not least because biology is constituted by the physics and chemistry of matter – there are necessarily more ways to make a biological system than an atomic one) has variations that don’t conform to strict and simple ‘hard’ differences typical of smaller objects viewed through the social construct of the science of physics.

But, if reality has any meaning at all, it really is the case that there are two sexes, and that the variations we see are deviations from statistical norms that dominate the biology of sexually reproducing species.

The norm is so strong that it’s only in 20th and 21st century sciences of biology, neuroscience, psychology, sociology that we have established reliably that the variations we see in sexual attraction and gender identity are ‘normal’, natural variations, while not being close to the norm.

However, the softer the science, the easier it is to politicise and attribute moral meaning to, and interpret in any desired politically motivated context one wishes. It’s difficult to politicise Newton’s laws of motion – they do not care about your feelings or your moral probity. This is why the moralising politicisation of the social sciences looks so much like religion.

The religious often object to the ‘dogma’ of science, but to say Newton’s laws are dogmatic is to mistake solid consistency and reliability for unsupported actual religious/political dogma. To say scientists are being dogmatic when they debunk crank ‘science’ (perpetual motion, astrology works, morphic resonance) is to be completely ignorant of the reliability of the hard sciences. On the other hand much soft sciences is infected with claims based on unrepeatable results from inadequately controlled observations with too few trials, all wrapped up in moralising political dogma: decide what you want to be, invent the ‘science’ to support it, falsification be damned.

Out of respect for the difficulty of the soft sciences (how really ‘hard’ they are) they should be treated with far more scrutiny and caution, but sadly, that goes out the window when you have a political and moral crusade to push.

Social Constructs Gone Mad

[It wasn’t my intention to pick on trans issues when I started writing this post, but coincidentally, the trans-ideology and gender-idology just happened to have provided extreme examples.]

People that vary in their sexual orientation or their feeling of their gender identity have been, and still are, persecuted for wanting to be who they are. I don’t know any TERFs (to use the derogatary term that many trans rights activists are fond of) that do not respect the rights of adults to identify as they wish, to engage in any sort of consensual adult relationships they wish.

The disagreements amount to two key ones:

Respecting one’s chosen identity and how one wants to be referred to – typified by the topic of pronoun use.
The interaction in safe spaces reserved for women.

The main disagreement regarding identity is not whether one should use whatever pronouns one chooses, but to what extent everyone else is expected to comply. If your gender is so fluid it changes as often as your underwear, and appears (no matter how serious it may feel to you) that you are inventing it as a political social construct in order to make a political point and entrap others into being ‘transphobic’ (i.e. you’re forever being dramatic about it) then sorry, but not everyone wants to be on their toes all the time trying to pre-empt your current gender or apologise for getting it wrong.

If you want to take a look at the insanity of social constructions at work, look no further that left wing progressivism.

If a serious discussion about how you are going to end Capitalism is degraded by you forever interrupting with a ‘point of order’, don’t be surprised if people stop taking you seriously.

Conversely, you might have a case of claiming transphobia if you have established an identity and even after plenty of time for adaptation colleagues insist on misgenering you. This is all about social niceties, and sadly, on both sides, some people are dicks.

For many women, the second disagreement is far more serious. Millennia of male domination and abuse is not merely a social construct but an evolutionarily determined biological one. I find many, but not all, radical feminists to be dicks too. Many really do hate men. But it may not be without justification that they hate most or all men, if they have suffered abuse at the hands of one or more significant men in their lives: fathers, uncles, brothers, cousins, boyfriends, husbands, … bosses and co-workers, … priests, police men.

The Changing Social Construct of Being a Man

Men have had to adapt to the realities that have emerged from the social constructs of science too. Women are not bimbos, sexual toys, properties of marriage, but are equal on most counts, and better or worse on others, on average.

Men also have to adapt to the fact that compared to the average woman, many if not most men are hypersexualised beasts that need to control our urges because we don’t have rights to women’s bodies. You only have to look at any war zone to realise this nature of men is on a tight leash, at least for some. The tendency not to rape may be innate to some men, perhaps many men, perhaps most – though its difficult to see in wars over the last few centuries to what extent the pre-war socialisation of behaviour of ‘gentlemen’ has programmed its suppression, rather than it being innate. If, as a man, you feel this is an unfair characterisation of men, that their ‘decency’ around women is not natural but socially programmed, you’d need a heck of a lot of information that isn’t available – we don’t have access to pre-social man; we can’t yet investigate our brains sufficiently well to separate nature from nurture.

The clues in other species don’t always help. While some species of ape seem to have acquired at least some habits of decency, requiring a modicum of consent, clearly females are attracted to some males when they are ready to mate – the biological tendency is heavily related to procreation, though not always.

Given the typical human family size compared to interest in sex, sex is very much a social pleasure that varies between the sexes and more so between individuals. Male sexual attacks dominate. Most sexual offenders are men. Female sexual offenders are far more rare.

History, even recent history, even the very recent history of 2023, shows that some men have a tendency to want to rape if the opportunity arises. To what extent is our socially constructed morality preventing men behaving in ways they would it the rules were not in place? How far off are we from becoming raping and pilaging mobs?

The sciences of anthropology, sociaology, psychology can inform us to some extent, but there’s no hard science test you can perform to determine whether women would be safe around any particular man if the social rules were lost in a post-apocolypse world.

Religious Constructs

Religions are social constructs. It may be difficult to convince a bleliever of a particular religion that theirs is a fantasy, but they are unlikely to conclude that other religions are fantasies, or at least delusional distortions of a true religion.

The hard science fact is that there is zero evidence to support the spiritual claims of any religion. Though the historicity of mortal religious figures is on firmer ground, they tend to be in the distant past, and the only ‘evidence’ are the books that were often written long after the period to which they refer.

It is ironic then when the religious complain about science being a social construct, as if that in any way lessens the abscence of evidence for their gods. Some of the challenges that refer to ‘scientism’ have some merit, when scientists are sloppy with their own claims about what science can and cannot prove. But it is particularly funny when the cry of “Scientism!” comes from the religious.

Summary

Yes, science is a social construct. An excellent one that has been particularly productive.

Every other systems of thought we invent is also a social construct, but always with less rigor and less certain results, and with a greater susceptability to ideological abuse, than is science.

Science is not to be confused with bad science, or the abuse of science, where it is used incorrectly to affirm some even less reliable ideology.

Does Mehdi Hasan Think Islam Is A Mental Health Issue?

Mehdi Hasan is an Islamist – someone that expresses support for Islam, politically. He is an active apologist for Islam.

He is also rather sparing in his criticism of Islamic extemists. It’s not that he never criticises them, it’s that his criticisms appear to be one of two kinds, possibly both:

Where the outrageous atrocity of an Islamic terrorist incident is so extreme, it would be remiss not to criticise it. I find Mehdi to be an insincere person on the whole, but without evidence to the contrary I have to accept he’s sincere in his opposition to these extreme cases of Islam.
He feels he must make some criticism, to avoid being seen as supportive by his omission of any comment. You can only ignore Islamic terrorism so much.

One of Mehdi’s ploys is to complain about how little criticism of ‘far-right’ attacks there is. Or, more specifically, he wants to know why when some perceived ‘far-right’ attack happens they are often attributed to the ‘mental health’ of the ‘far-right’ perpetrator, and not labelled as terrorism. In many cases he uses the ‘far-right’ label when there is no connection to any political cause, and he is using this as an opportunity to expand the number of ‘far-right’ incidents he can point to – an aspect of his insincerity and duplicity.

He then wonders why most Islamic terrorist attacks are labelled as terrorism, and not the result of ‘mental health’ problems.

He attributes this difference in blame as a result of Islamophobia.

Let’s address the labels he uses, ‘Islamophobia’ and ‘far-right’.

Islamophobia as Racism – The term ‘Islamophobia’ was invented, it is said, by the Muslim Brotherhood, as a means of making Islam seem like a race, so that it can compete with ‘antisemitism’ as a form of racism – and that’s certainly how many non-Muslim politicians use it (shout out to the race baiters of UK Labour). The problem is, Islam is not a race. Many white Muslims from the West joined ISIS, so how can white critics of Islam be racist towards those Muslims. When some of the most vociforous critics of Islam are ex-Muslims, of the same ‘race’ as their Muslim families, it makes the charge of racism look a little foolish.

In fact Islam is specifically not a race by design, and theoretically is not a racist religion – anyone can become a Muslim. The principle of non-racism is about the only redeeming characteristic of Islam – though even that can be questioned, not only by looking at the words and acts of Muslims, but also of Mohammed. So that raises the question of how can opposing Islam be racist?

Not is opposing Islam a phobia.

So the cry of “Islamophobia!” by Mehdi and other apologists for Islamism is a dishonest means of deflecting attention away from Islam and towards its supposedly racist critics.

Far-right – This is an odd one. Because Islam is a far-right political ideology: it’s ultra-conservative, homophobic, misogynistic, endorses slavery, demands the death penaly for apostasy, blasphemy, adultary and other non-crimes, and the Quran has prescriptions for beheading and chopping off of limbs. How on earth can Islam not be considered far-right?

In Mehdi’s 2017 article, “The numbers don’t lie, white far-right terrorists pose a clear danger to us all.“, he said the following:

Compare and contrast: Islamist terrorists are depicted as wild-eyed fanatics driven to kill by their religious faith or ideology, while far-right terrorists — be it the shooter of two Hindus in a bar in Kansas in February, or the killer of nine black worshippers in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, or the murderer of six Sikh worshippers in a temple in Duffy’s own state of Wisconsin in 2012 — are almost always “mentally ill.” After the recent double murder in Oregon, it didn’t take long for Portland police spokesperson Pete Simpson to announce: “We don’t know if [the suspect] has mental health issues.” (Isn’t it weird how we Muslims seem somehow immune to “mental health issues”? Mashallah.)

OK, fine Mehdi, all terrorists suffer mental problems, so all Islamic terrorists are wide-eyed fanatical mental cases. What makes them so mentally unstable? Islam. They cite Islam when they commit their attacks. They do it for Allah. They can often quote from the texts of Islam to justify their attacks.

This ‘mental health’ issue is not restricted to Islamic terrorists. How many times have we seen enraged mobs of Muslims rioting? Many rioted over Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, and many more wanting to hang Asia Bibi. Are they mental cases too? Maybe Mehdi is right, Islam causes mental illness.

It won’t be the first time that religious fanaticism has been considered a mental health problem. So, what is it about religions, Islam in particular, that makes it so appealing to the mentally ill? Or, what is it about Islam that makes otherwise stable people go off the rails, become so insensed by the ‘insult’ that people commit towards Iaslam that makes these Muslims think they should kill someone?

It’s not restricted to acts of public terrorism on strangers, or mobs of offended and enraged Muslims. Many an ex-Muslim will attest that their families have theatened to kill them for leaving Islam. So devout are these Muslims that they think their own children should die for leaving Islam! That sounds pretty mentally deranged to me.

There does indeed seem to be something unstable about a religion that promotes death over life. Many Muslims will tell you themselves this is so:

The Death Cult – We Love Death As You Love Life – This is what Muslims say, in their own words. When you read what they actually say, you come to understand why dying in a terrorist attacks isn’t a big deal. Now, Mehdi might come out with the usual excuse, “It’s a sin to commit suicide in Islam” … well, maybe, if it’s a pointless death, but not if it’s considered an act of martyrdom in a justified battle against Jews, Christians or infidels. Mehdi is a Shia Muslim, and it’s the Shia Muslim clerics of Iran that popularised suicide bombing … so, who is Mehdi to disagree with the clerics of his religion?

The Numbers Don’t Lie – Oh Yes They Do

Mehdi tries to pull the wool over your eyes with figures from the USA, “since September 12 2001”.

Why do they always choose figures “since 9/11”. Why not including 9/11? They do it because by ignoring 9/11 it makes the deaths from Islamic terrorism look much smaller. Why not choose since 31st December 1999 – i.e., why not start counting for the 21st century?

The duplicitous Mehdi Hasan, skipping 9/11, gives us these figures (his article was in 2017).

Yet the numbers don’t lie — even if the Islamophobes do. “Since September 12, 2001,” noted a recent report prepared for Congress by the Government Accountability Office, “the number of fatalities caused by domestic violent extremists has ranged from 1 to 49 in a given year. … Fatalities resulting from attacks by far-right wing violent extremists have exceeded those caused by radical Islamist violent extremists in 10 of the 15 years, and were the same in 3 of the years since September 12, 2001.” Imagine that.

The report continues: “Of the 85 violent extremist incidents that resulted in death since September 12, 2001, far-right wing violent extremist groups were responsible for 62 (73 percent) while radical Islamist violent extremists were responsible for 23 (27 percent).” That’s a margin of almost three to one.

What Mehdi neglects to tell you here is that Muslims amount to less than 2% of the US population. So how about multiplying his Islamic terrorist attacks by 50 for a pro-rata comparison with everyone else in the USA.

It’s also rather convenient that Mehdi focuses on the USA, where the number of Muslims is relatively low, when Islamic terrorism is a world wide theat – even in “Muslim lands”. Yes, Islamic terrorism poses a top security concern in most Western nations, and in many Muslim nations too.

Mehdi Being Mehdi

It’s not unusual for Mehdi Hasan to twist words to suit his own Islamist agenda. Many other people have noticed.

Here he is pretending a comparison of Islam and Nazism is supposed to be excusing Nazism rather than criticising both.

Special pleading for Islam …

Failing to criticise Islamic terrorists …

More special pleading – Mehdi has no problem with the vile messages in the Quran, but complains when anyone bad mouths Islam …

Getting blood from a stone is easier than getting Mehdi to criticise Islamic terrorism …

For this next example, you may have heard that Mehdi has distanced himself from these opinions. However, you should know what Taqqiya is in Islam:

1-Taqiyyah, according to Ithna-`Ashri Rafidis, means presenting outwardly something that is different from what one believes inwardly, as an act of religious devotion. 2- Taqiyyah, according to Ahl as-Sunnah, is something to be resorted to when one has no other choice, and it is an extraordinary measure to be used only in times of extreme necessity. For more, see the detailed answer. What is Taqiyyah

These were Mehdi’s views, but now he claims they are not …

Bear in mind, Hamas removed their explicity antisemitic end-times antisemitic quote, “Oh Muslim, there is a Jew behind me come kill him.” from their second charter … nobody believes they don’t still mean it. What makes you think Mehdi doesn’t still hold his views privately? Does he now deny that these passages from the Quran are applicable? This is a tricky one when the Quran is supposed to be the inerrant world of Allah … isn’t is blasphemous to not hold the same views as Allah?

So, Mehdi do you really want Islam to appear as an insane psychotic death cult mental problem, or not?

Here’s a guide to terrorists for idiots: https://ronmurp.net/2016/03/31/a-guide-to-terrorists-for-idiots/.

Which Far Right? White Spremacy or Islamic Supremacy?

There has been an attempt by successive UK governments, as well as ‘progressive’ activists and press, to boost the narrative that White Supremacism’s “far right” terrorism is a greater threat than Islamic Supremacism’s terrorism.

This post looks at that narrative, why it is an inadequate perspective, and then covers a Channel 4 programme from 2022 that tries to put the freighteners on the public, with the help of some dubious characters. The programme makes fair points about a particularly nasty group of racists, but the agenda of the participants in the programme becomes clearer with a bit more background information.

Which Far Right?

The first slight of hand here is the name, “far right”. Historically in the West we have distinguished far right and far left by the nature of the dominant politics: Fascism is far right, Marxism is far left.

But where does Islam and Islamic extremism fit into this? Well, by Islam’s own definition it is far right: ultra conservative, highly political (Sharia), misogynistic, homophobic, brutal punishments … it has more in common with Fascism than Marxism.

This becomes more obvious when we look at the history of Muslim Palestinians during and after WWII. There was a Muslim SS division. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, in Germany during the war, encouraged Hitler to exterminate Jews rather than let them expel Jews to Palestine. Many Muslim Palestinians have made it clear they supported Hitler’s ‘solution’ and that they intend to finish the job.

The Fastest Growing

With a majority white non-Muslim population, the UK certainly has a greater potential for growth in white supremacist ‘far right’ terrorism, but the figures don’t match up. This Guardian piece from 2019 tried to pull a fast one: Fastest-growing UK terrorist threat is from far right, say police

What the headline neglects to tell you is that in the article the Islamic extremism remains the far greater risk to the UK. The ‘fastest rising’ claim is based on a very low starting point.

Racism In The UK

While we’re concerend with white racism here, it’s important to point out that there is plenty of non-white racism in the UK. Darcus Howe made the Channel 4 documentary in 2004, primarily about racism in the UK Asian community towards bglack people.

In 2004 Darcus Howe investigated the changing face of racial politics in Britain, predicting trouble ahead for Britain’s ethnic population. In this authored film, he travelled the country expressing his views on a netherworld of unreported violence and prejudice, not between blacks and whites, but between Britain’s increasingly divided ethnic minority groups.

There are a few clips of the programme online:

This is another topic in itself, so here we’re only looking at white racism.

Channel 4 Dispatches: Inside Britain’s Far Right

The title is misleading. The programme puts an under cover journalist into one particular group, Patriotic Alternative (Wikipedia). While I accept much of what the Wiki page has to say about the group, care needs to be taken when considering who is criticising them.

This 2022 Channel 4 Dispatches programme is mostly a good one, exposing a specific racist far right group.

The racial aspect of “white replacement theory” is stupid. It not only racializes the problem, it makes it too easy to oppose a genuine active replacement theory: the Islamization of the West … which has nothing to do with race and everything to do with the problems of Islamic extremism.

The main subject group, “Patriotic Alternative” is one that should be monitored. It may put on a face of simply protecting white culture, but from the programme we can see that there are definitely racist aspects to the movement that could turn violent. The Wiki page makes specific claims abut Neo Nazism links to the group.

The Three Stooges of Islamic Apologetics

However, the programme is tarnished by the use of Nick Lowles, Julia Ebner, Dame Sara Khan.. They are all known for their opposition to anyone criticising Islam – they declare such people far right, whether they are or not.

Lowles (of Hope Not Hate – you see their banners at all the trendy marches, even pro Hamas marches) is the one that produced this false claim that there were reports of acid attacks on a Muslim woman. Not a black women, not a far east woman, … not even an Asian women (Asian Christian?). No, a Muslim woman. It’s important to make sure that Muslims are under attack because for the left, Muslims are a (convenient) protected minority. The point being that the anti-Islam was a significant factor following the Middlesborough riots.

As posted on X

Ebner has been stirring this “far right” labelling of critics of Islam since at least 2017, with lies in her hit piece while at Quilliam .

As with the other two, Khan will not be found criticizing Islamic extremism too much … it’s far more likely that if an Islamic terrorist attack occurs, her first thoughts will be for the violent backlash against Muslims … that rarely happens. Muslims feel unsafe because other Muslims have committed a terrorist attack … perpetual victims.

It’s ironic that the three stooges here focus on the far right, when Islam is far right by design. It’s a conservative political ideology that has Sharia at its core, that if implemented as the governance of a state (Caliphate) would see many of the horrors we see in many Islamic states: homophobia, misogyny, apartheid (dhimmi status), brutal punishments.

In the programme Khan says that although Patriotic Alternative claim to be non-violent, they have the same ideology as far right extremists. … Hilarious. Every moderate Muslim follows the ideology that Islamic terrorists follow – Islam.

So, can we say the same of Muslims that Khan says of PA, “.. the fact that they are promoting the same ideology, the same dangerous anti-non-Muslim narrative (read the Quran) as extreme Islamic terrorists, they are fundamentally helping to create a climate that is conducive to terrorism and violence. The law in this country at the moment is not adequate to deal with hateful religious political ideologies like Islam.“

The Far Left Appear

There is further irony in the programme after Khan’s words, when the PA are delivering leaflets in Rotherham and are attacked by a group of masked men. “PA blame the attack on far left anti-fascists.” … Nick Lowles, do you know anything about that? Bit of a coincidence.

Indoctrination of Children

Ebner is on screen again looking at the ‘educational’ material of PA, which is clearly promoting racist indoctrination.

Indoctrination in Islamic is far greater, as many ex-Muslims will attest. And if you look at how Muslim Palestinians are raised to hate Jews, you might understand the ME troubles more clearly. You won’t find the three stooges covering that indoctrination.

The programme goes on to make legitimate claims about the links of PA members to other more dangerous far right groups. It’s reminiscent of the way we see many ‘moderate’ Muslims in the UK and US have links to more extreme Islamic groups.

Batley & Spen

Along with showing the far right links to people like the killer of MP Jo Cox, Thomas Mair, the programme moves on to the 2021 Batley & Spen by election, where Kim Leadbeater, Jo Cox’s sister is standing.

We hear that Leadbeater won the seat, and much is made of her being the sister of Cox.

The purpose of this part of the programme is to point out the illegal activities of PA in putting out fake leaflets supposedly from a Labour union, and then again with a fake leaflet, mimicing Conservatives, in the constituency of murdered David Amess.

What the programme neglects to mention is that

In Batley a school teacher had to go into hiding because of death threats from Islamic extremist (he’s drawn a picture of Mohammed in class to about free speech).
Amess had been killed by an Islamic terrorist.

I appreciate that the programme was about a specific white racist far right group, but what they don’t say is often significant. It’s a common tactic to deflect from or ignore Islamic extremism: Owen Jones – Missing In Action – The Battle of Batley

Summer Camp

The programme turns next to the summer camp held by PA.

The undercover reported has been invited to their mass national gathering. … About a hundred and fifty people are descending on the Peak District.

That’s fewer than many a single extremist mosque. The programme are certainly continuing to hype up the far right influence in the UK.

The summer camp recording certainly exposes nasty racist ideas. PA is definitely a group of racists. The links to other more dangerous “far right” groups is a legitimate concern. There’s also plenty of evidence on X that this is definitely a hateful group.

Avoid them like the plague.

Sadly, useful programmes like this don’t help, because many non-racist Brits know the three stooges for what they are and that will diminish the imapct of a programme like this.

The BBC made a similar programme.

Sara Khan appears again …

There is no good reason why we should allow hateful extremist groups like PA to operate, and I believe there’s an obligation on our Parliament, on our government, to outlaw the activity of groups like Patriotic Alternative. To not do so I think would be a failure.

There are plenty of mosques and Islamic groups that spout just as much hatred, but aimed at unbelievers, homosexuals, … and Jews (they have that in common).

The Three Dangers

These are the ideologies that threaten the West:

Islam, because it is anti Western democracy and freedom. It is an explicitly far right ideology. While many ‘moderate’ Muslims are not themselves extreme, like Sara Khan they enable extremism by opposing criticism of Islam and trying to pass such criticism off as racism.

White racism, because it is infecting fair criticism of ideologies with racism and conflating ideology and race. It’s stupid, because it alienates so many great non-white opponents of Islam and far left extremism.

Marxism and far left activists and apologists for Islam, like Hope Not Hate, and governments that follow their line of criminalising criticism of Islam.

The Red Green Alliance

The Red Green Alliance is one between the far left Marxists and Socialists, and the far right Islamists, both of which hate Western democracy, free markets and capitalism.

This is why we see such bias from our politicians, press and other media, that pust a lot of effort into demonising people as far right, whether they are or not, and neglect as far as is possible extremists of Islam and the far left.

Gender and Other Body Dysphorias Meet Politics

Various forms of body dysphoria—including gender dysphoria, body integrity dysphoria, and body dysmorphic disorder—are deeply related to disruptions in the sense of self, particularly in how the brain integrates embodiment (the felt experience of the body) with identity (the conceptual sense of “who I am”).

These conditions involve mismatches between the subjective experience of the self (who I feel I am), and the perceived or physical body (how my body appears or feels). This mismatch implicates specific neural networks and regions that contribute to the construction of the embodied self. This can result in a personal struggle to come to terms with differences between perceived and experienced self.

When it comes to gender dysphoria it is no longer a private medical issue about dealing with personal problems of coping with one’s view of self. It has taken on a contentious political dimension that impacts not only the individual with the dysphoria, but also affects other people, especially women, and how the trans-lobby and weak politicians have changed policy and law.

Forms of Body Dysphoria & Neural Basis

1. Gender Dysphoria

Experience: Incongruence between experienced gender identity and assigned sex at birth.
Relation to Self: Affects the core narrative and embodied sense of self.
Brain correlates:
- Insula: Disrupted interoceptive and emotional body awareness.
- mPFC: Involved in identity formation and gender representation.
- Structural/functional differences in brain regions associated with body perception (e.g., somatosensory cortex, anterior cingulate, hypothalamus).
Evidence: fMRI studies show brain activity patterns in transgender individuals that more closely resemble their experienced gender than their assigned one, particularly in self-related tasks.

2. Body Integrity Dysphoria (BID)

Experience: Desire to amputate a healthy limb because it feels “not part of the self.”
Relation to Self: Distorted bodily self-awareness; a limb is disowned at the perceptual/identity level.
Brain correlates:
- Right superior parietal lobule: Associated with body ownership and multisensory integration.
- Premotor cortex and insula: Integrate touch, position, and body schema.
Evidence: Reduced connectivity in brain regions responsible for integrating bodily signals and constructing body ownership. The limb is intact, but not felt as “mine.”

3. Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD)

Experience: Preoccupation with imagined or minor bodily flaws.
Relation to Self: The aesthetic self becomes pathologically distorted—how one sees themselves is at odds with reality.
Brain correlates:
- Orbitofrontal cortex: Overactive in self-monitoring and error detection.
- Amygdala and insula: Heightened emotional response to appearance-related stimuli.
- Occipitotemporal cortex: Altered visual processing of faces and bodies.
Evidence: Functional imaging shows hyper-focus on details of the face/body, and difficulty integrating a coherent visual body image.

These forms of dysphoria reveal that the sense of self is not a monolithic entity—it’s layered and distributed:

Level of Self	Description	Neural Substrate	Disrupted in…
Embodied self	The sense of owning a body, having a location and agency	Insula, parietal lobes, premotor cortex	BID, gender dysphoria
Narrative self	The autobiographical identity—who I am over time	mPFC, PCC, hippocampus	Gender dysphoria
Social/aesthetic self	How I appear to others or believe I do	OFC, visual cortex, amygdala	BDD

Body dysphorias are expressions of fractured self-experience, often rooted in neurologically and psychologically measurable dissociations between aspects of the body and the self. They do not imply delusion or insanity, but rather a misalignment between brain-level representations of the body and one’s internal identity. They often involve core regions tied to self-perception, body ownership, emotion, and social identity.

Treatment

It is generally the case that clinical treatment of dysphorias aims to reduce or resolve the dysphoria itself—but how that is done varies greatly depending on the type of dysphoria, the individual’s needs, and evolving ethical standards.

The core goal across cases is to alleviate the suffering caused by the mismatch between self-experience and bodily or identity representations. However, how that’s achieved differs by condition and philosophical/clinical approach.

The general clinical strategy for dysphorias can be summaraised as:

Primary aim: Reduce psychological distress and improve functioning
Not necessarily: Restore a “normative” body or identity
Often: Align external realities (body, environment) with internal experience when that is stable and persistent

Examples by Dysphoria Type

1. Gender Dysphoria

Goal: Align body and social role with internal gender identity.
Treatment may include:
- Psychotherapy: Supportive, exploratory, not reparative.
- Social transition: Changing name, pronouns, clothing.
- Medical transition: Hormone therapy, surgeries.
Ethical approach: The dysphoria is treated by affirming the identity, not by attempting to “correct” it toward the assigned sex.
Effectiveness: Transition (social and/or medical) often results in substantial reduction in dysphoria and improvement in quality of life, according to major clinical studies (e.g. WPATH guidelines).

2. Body Integrity Dysphoria (BID)

Goal: This is highly controversial and medically complex.
Typical treatments:
- Psychotherapy (often ineffective)
- Experimental use of VR, neurofeedback, or brain stimulation
Surgical amputation: Ethically debated. A very small number of surgeons have performed amputations with informed consent, resulting in reduction of distress, but this is rare and medically contested.
Clinical dilemma: When the sense of body ownership doesn’t respond to therapy, clinicians face the challenge of respecting autonomy while avoiding harm.

3. Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD)

Goal: Correct distorted body image perception, not the body itself.
Treatment:
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): Targets faulty beliefs and behaviors.
- SSRIs: Often effective, due to overlap with OCD-like patterns.
Not recommended: Cosmetic surgery—can worsen symptoms since the dysphoria is about perceived flaw, not actual appearance.

Dysphoria Type	Core Strategy	Example of Alignment
Gender Dysphoria	Affirm identity, adapt body/social role	Hormones, surgery, social support
BID	Unresolved; experimental	Rare surgical cases, neuromodulation
BDD	Challenge beliefs, reshape self-image	CBT + medication, avoid surgery

While the goal is often phrased as “resolving dysphoria,” the ethics of treatment focus on minimizing suffering and supporting autonomy—not imposing a fixed or “normative” model of self or body.

In gender dysphoria, the most effective and ethical approach is to support self-identification and bring the body/social experience into alignment with the felt self. In BDD, the emphasis is on changing perception, not the body. In BID, treatment is still evolving because the condition challenges current medical norms of body integrity.

However, there are further controversies when it comes to treating gender dysphoria: the medical treatment of the young, and political consequences of affirmation and its impact on women.

Pushback Against Genger Affirmation and Self-ID

There has been increasing pushback in recent years against the affirmative model of care for gender dysphoria, in cases involving adolescents, and especially young children. This pushback isn’t uniform or universally accepted, but it’s shaping public policy, clinical guidelines, and ethical debate in many countries.

The gender-affirmative model holds that clinicians should respect and affirm a person’s stated gender identity, without pathologizing it, support social transition (e.g. name/pronoun change). When appropriate and desired, facilitate medical transition (e.g. puberty blockers, hormones, surgery). This model is based on the belief that:

“Gender diversity is a normal part of human variation, not a disorder to be corrected.”

But why isn’t that the case with other dysphorias? Why is gender dysphoria the special case? Aren’t other dysphorias also “a normal part of human variation, not a disorder to be corrected.” Would it be acceptable to start affirming BID by amputating limbs and carrying out other affirming surgeries?

Concerns About Medicalization in Minors

Puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones carry irreversible effects on: Fertility, Sexual development, Bone density, Brain development (still under research).
Surgical interventions (e.g. mastectomy or genital surgery) are irreversible and, if later regretted, cannot be undone.

Some critics argue that adolescents may not be developmentally capable of informed consent for such life-altering choices.

Example: Sweden, the UK, Norway, and Finland have revised their national guidelines to de-emphasize early medical interventions, particularly for youth, in favor of psychological exploration first.

Detransition and Regret

A small but visible population of individuals have detransitioned—returned to living as their birth-assigned gender. Some feel that medical transition was rushed or encouraged without adequate exploration of other factors (e.g., trauma, autism, internalized homophobia). While detransition rates are low overall, some critics argue that the lack of long-term follow-up studies makes it difficult to accurately assess regret.

Ideological vs Clinical Framing

Some argue that the affirmation-only approach is politicized and discourages neutral, exploratory psychotherapy. Concern exists that therapists feel pressure to affirm gender identity without deeper assessment of psychological complexity (e.g., co-occurring conditions like depression, trauma, or neurodivergence). Critics say this may foreclose developmental possibilities, especially in adolescents whose identities are still forming.

There is also a marked political aggression shown to detransitioners by the trans-ideology movement, that pressures people to transition in the first place then demonises those that regret it.

Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) [Highly Controversial]

Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria describes a phenomenon where adolescents, especially natal females, develop gender dysphoria suddenly, often in peer groups. Critics say it may reflect social contagion, trauma, or identity distress—not a stable transgender identity. This term is not officially recognized by most medical bodies (e.g. APA, WPATH), but it has driven political and clinical debate, especially around screening and gatekeeping.

Responses from Medical Institutions

Revisions in Guidelines:

UK (NHS): Closed the Tavistock gender clinic in 2022, replacing it with regional centers emphasizing broader psychological assessment.
Sweden/Finland/Norway: Moved toward psychotherapy-first models, allowing medical interventions only under strict criteria.
WPATH (v8): Continues to support access to care but encourages individualized assessment and greater caution with youth.

Core tension:

How to balance autonomy and access vs safeguarding and caution, especially for young and vulnerable individuals.

Issue	Debate
Consent	Can minors consent to irreversible treatment? Should parents/clinicians delay transition until adulthood?
Identity Formation	Is gender identity always innate and stable, or can it evolve through adolescence?
Gatekeeping vs Affirmation	Does caution protect or harm trans people? Does affirmation suppress legitimate clinical inquiry?
Regret and Responsibility	Who is responsible if someone regrets treatment? Should clinicians be held accountable for affirmative pathways?

Women’s Spaces

There is a greater concern for the way trans-women in women’s spaces impact women that there is for the way trans-men impact men. Why?

Why do women historically have separate spaces and sports?

Women-only spaces arose from a need to protect privacy and bodily safety in a world where women were, and still are, at greater risk of sexual violence. They also ensure dignity and comfort during vulnerable acts like undressing, using the toilet, or seeking refuge (e.g., shelters), all of which are opportunities for male predators to take advantage of women. The safe spaces further acknowledge physical and social differences between men and women, including societal gendered power dynamics.

These spaces include: Bathrooms and locker rooms, Shelters for survivors of domestic or sexual violence, Prisons and inpatient facilities, Changing rooms and some female-only services (e.g., spas)

Women’s sports exist because biological males (on average *) have substantial physical advantages in speed, strength, endurance, and size due to male puberty and testosterone. Fairness and safety in athletic competition requires separation based on sex, not identity. Without this separation, women would be systematically outperformed in nearly all elite sports.

* It is the case that many women are stronger than many men. Comparing the bell curves of the distribution of stregth in men and women there will be some overlap. However, competetive sports do not pit strong women against weak men, they select for the strongest. And it has been shown over and over that trans-women that would be below average in a men’s competition tend to win easily when they compete against women.

The Religious Problem

Religious or cultural values may prohibit women from being seen by males while undressed. This is a particularly contencious point, politically, because there cross-overs of interests and political views.

The Trans-ideology lobby is typically ‘left-wing aggressive progressive’, and will demonise Christians for trying to impose their religiously motivated restrictions on how people live their lives. This has been the case when Christianity was explicitly homophobic, but even now, when homosexuality is accepted, or at least tolerated, in modern Christianity, the trans-lobby will be hightly critical of Christians that express their religious views on the matter.

However, the left has an odd tolerance for Islam, which has arisen out of Muslims initially being a minority in the West, and where the West has historically colonised what are seen of as ‘Muslim lands’. What they are keen to neglect is that ‘Muslim lands’ were aggressively colonised Christian and Jewish lands … but, one’s view of history is selective when current politics matters. (In a wider context, there is also the Red-green alliance that hangs over us, where both the far left and the far right of Islam are allied in opposition to democratic free market capitalist West.)

It is no easier for feminist critics of Trans-ideology, because many of them are also of the left progressive, and have been part of the ‘left-wing aggressive progressive’ (with some justification) when criticisng men. Many of them too are reluctant to criticise Islam for fear of stoking the perceived ‘far-right’.

But, as it happens, the regressive Islamic ideology does discriminate against women in many ways, and sees both homosexuality and transgenderism as corruptions of the human spirit. The idea that homosexuals should be “thrown off high places” has been reified by ISIS and other factions of Islam; and it is not far below the surface of the sentiments of many Muslims in the West.

This is a bit of a dilemma for gender critical feminists, though some have become more outspoken about it, such as Kellie-Jay Keen aka Posie Parker.

The Self-ID Problem

A major problem has arisen with Self-ID laws or policies that allow individuals to declare their gender identity (e.g., as a woman) without medical, surgical, or legal requirements—in some cases, without even psychological assessment.

Allowing anyone to enter women’s spaces based on self-identification creates a loophole that bad-faith actors (biological males) could exploit. Examples are: changing rooms or shelters where women are undressed or sleeping; cases where biological males convicted of sexual crimes identify as women and request transfer to female prisons.

Critics emphasize: Not all trans women are predators, but all predators are opportunists—and policy matters more than intent.

Many women are uncomfortable undressing or using intimate spaces with someone biologically male, regardless of identity. Critics argue that compelled exposure to male-bodied individuals violates women’s bodily autonomy and consent.

Trans women who went through male puberty retain significant athletic advantages, even with hormone therapy. In several sports, trans women have outperformed female competitors and taken spots in competitions, podiums, or scholarships. Female athletes may feel unable to speak out for fear of being labeled transphobic, creating a climate of suppressed dissent.

Policy Landscape: A Global Variation

Different countries have taken different approaches:

UK: Protects single-sex spaces under the Equality Act; debate ongoing over gender recognition reform.
USA: Highly state-dependent; Title IX interpretations vary.
Nordic countries: More cautious in extending self-ID to female-only spaces.
Canada & Ireland: Self-ID laws with few restrictions; some public controversy followed.

Closing Thoughts

This issue doesn’t have easy answers, but thoughtful policy needs to:

Respect the dignity of trans individuals, while
Preserving hard-won protections for women, particularly in safety-critical spaces and competitive arenas.

This will likely involve nuanced distinctions—e.g., between informal public bathrooms, high-risk environments like prisons, and regulated domains like elite sports—rather than one-size-fits-all solutions. The public bathroom is probably the easiest to solve, with more single occupant rooms, rather than a room with cubicles. Prisons and sports need to be segragates spaces. Sports are always for elites – most men and women do not make it into elite sports.

That does mean that there are some social costs to being trans-gendered, beyond those experienced as a result of the dysphoria directly. There’s more focus from the trans-ideology movement on how sex-based space affect trans-women, when in reality the really vulnerable members of the trans community are trans-men (i.e. women). While sex-based spaces keep trans-women out of women’s spaces, must trans-men therefore use women’s spaces because they are women? What friction will ‘they ‘passing’ trans-men suffer when women are already opposing the presence of male looking trans-men.

To counter that concern we might wonder how a passing trans-man would fare if they continued to use men’s bathrooms – they should fare no worse than many men that appear to be effeminate, whether gay or straight. There is a unspoken rule in men’s bathrooms that you don’t make eye contact or interact with other men … glory holes aside.

There are other associations with gender dysphoria that blur the issue: political persuasion, sexual kink, drag, homosexuality, non-binary politics.

We don’t have this political fallout with other dysphorias, because they do not have a related political activism that makes use of them for other goals, and they don’t have difficult consequences for half the population, women.

The social contagion aspect of gender dysphoria conflated with political activism and the weaknesss of policy makers that respond too easily to fashion, has caused a lot of conflict.

This may take a long time to resolve. In the meantime it will probably be the case that harmless ‘passing’ trans-women and trans-men will continue to use the batchroom of their choice

Islam – When The Left Go Missing

There’s a pattern of activity of people on the left, where they are quite active on Twitter/X … until there’s some bad news about Islam. Then they go missing.

Iran – Missing In Action – Owen Jones

When the Trump administration took out Iran’s terrorist Czar, Owen was all over the story. But he went very quiet when the Iranians shot down the passenger plane.

Iran – Missing In Action – Jeremy Corbyn

Jeremy Corbyn also went missing when Iran shot down the plane.

Owen Jones – Missing In Action – The Battle of Batley

Owen’s next vanishing trick occurred when the Batley teacher had to go into hiding in fear of his life because Islamic extremists were threatening him. Owen had been very interested in Batley, as Jo Cox’s sister was the candidate for Labour in the Batley & Spen election.

Hamas Attack – Owen Jones Response?

When the Islamic terrorist enclave of Gaza attacked Israel on October 7 2023, Owen wen missing yet again. This time he waited until the 9th October, not to give Hamas a slap on the wrist, but to lay into Israel for responding to the invasion and slaughter of Israelis.

Condemning Hamas – Corbyn Goes AWOL Again

What we might expect of our politicians and political commentators, even those critical of Israel, is a swift, explicit and vehement condemnation of the Islamic terrorism of Hamas. But not from Corbyn.

Woke Ideology – Marxism or Individualism?

The first video is a discussion between Dr. Gadi Taub and @GadSaad, where they talk about Gad’s ideas on the parasitic nature of woke ideologies.

Dr. Gadi Taub challenges the idea that woke ideology is a form of cultural Marxism, and he thinks it is instead based on extreme individualism, because the American left has individualistic roots.

So, Judith Butlers ideas, according to Gadi Taub, are not really Marxist, but rather individualistic, “the self-made man is not the self-made transgendered individual, … and the whole logic is that only I will decide who I am.“

It is inevitably both, and here’s why …

We think of Marxism as a collective ideology. But all collective ideologies, including religious ones, they are made up of the individuals that sign up to them, and the great flaw of collectivism is that the proponents think you can paper over the cracks of evolutionary individualism in humans and make us all the same, working for the cause, like ants. “Be nice!“

What the collectivist ideologues are deluded about is that they think you can rub out the individualism. They can’t. It turns out they are just as nasty in tooth and claw as anyone – they are not very nice.

When they try to destroy the individualism, they end up with two results:

1 – They destroy the soul of the masses of powerless individuals that are forced to comply.

2 – They suffer from factionailsm among the leadership, because individuals have individual and conflicting ideas about what the ideology entails. And those individuals are either: killed or imprisoned, or at best ostracized; or they take power as a new faction, that then destroys the previous faction. It depends on who you can convince to support you … preferably the army.

We have seen this in Russian Communism. And we see it in Islam and other religions. See the second video, “Emo Phillips – Golden Gate Bridge”, one of the best expositions of the problem.

Islam even has a methodology for dealing with it: Takfir.

Takfir is so refined it even has a counter. If you try to Takfir someone’s ass into being declared an apostate, and you are not convincing, or you can’t muster the support, you are Takfired yourself. It’s the sort of paradoxical idea that could only come out of an ideology so full of insane ideas, where it doesn’t seem out of place.

So, woke ideology is based on a collectivist a delusion coming face to face with reality of individualism.

In the American context, we have a hyper-individualism of self-identity, where everyone can possess different oppressed characteristics, and where the collective will support you, no matter how crazy. But … step out of line, slip up and vocalize your marginal oppression over another’s greater oppression, and you’ll find your ass Takfired.

The clue that it’s still a Marxist ideology? The enemies of Marxists are Nazis … and that’s what they’ll call you rather than ‘apostate‘, but it’s the same thing.

Die, heretic!

Dumb Conspiracy Theory: Muslims Are Puppets of The USA and Israel

The narrative is that Israel sponsor Hamas, and/or the CIA have something to do with it. This tweet is typical.

We do know the CIA backed the Taliban against the Soviet Union, but later had to fight the Taliban in the “war or terrorism” when coalition forces invaded Afghanistan. And it’s a fair bet to say that the CIA and Israel’s Mosad have their fingers in many pies in the Middle East.

But then so do most Islamist states or organisations – for example, the Israel strike on the Iranian compound in Syria was an attack on a number of actors that are involved in such clandastine activities themselves.

Since 2013 Iran has maintained a presence of its troops in Syria in response to the Syrian civil war, as Syria is a crucial ally of Iran. Additionally, it has been involved in training and funding paramilitary forces from Hezbollah, along with foreign militias from Iraq and Afghanistan, not only in Syria but also in neighboring Lebanon.

Israel attack on Iranians in Syria

But, does the conspiracy theory hold up in sense claimed, that the CIA and Israel have been funding Hamas?

Hold that thought, that question, and for the moment, suppose it is true, that the CIA and Israel have been funding Hamas. This raises another question, and one that conspiracy theoriests of various sorts will be keen to answer – why would they? But let’s park the question of the motivation of the CIA and Israel. Let’s just assume they did.

What next? What can it tell us about the Muslims of Hamas that we didn’t know already?

If you’re a member of a law abiding organisation, a “religion of peace”, that’s at peace with its neighbours, because your neighbours are “people of the book”, what would you do if those neighers said, “Hey, here’s some money, buy some arms and come and attack us so we can make you look bad?” Would you be stupid enough to fall for it?

You see, the problem with this conspiracy theory is it absolves Hamas of all agency in the atrocities they commit, and futher, it is a particularly antisemitic conspiracy, because it feeds off the many antisemitic tropes about Jews and their coniving ways.

It still takes the motivation of the Muslims* of Hamas to actually do the following:

Carry out the atrocities of October 7.
Continue to fire rockets into Israel.
Commit suicide bombings of buses and other targets in Israel.
Indoctrinate their children on Palestinian TV to hate Jews, to become martyrs for Islam, and to stab Jews.

This hatred has been going on for 1400 years, instigated initially by Mohammed when the Jews of Medina would not side with him in his battles – his ‘final solution’ being to massacre the Jews of Medina, and to be invloved in that personally. This has set the model for Jew hatred in Islam ever since.

No, Muslims that support Hamas, al Qaida, ISIS, Boko Haram and many other extremist and terrorist Muslim organisations are fully motivated by Islam, and it is their own agency that is responsible for anything they do.

So, even if it were true that the CIA and Israel funded Hamas, it still takes Muslims to commit the horrifica attacks of October the 7th, and just to remind you, this is what they did, much of it taken from their own phones and body cams. I must warn you that this is terrible, but you have a duty to know what Hamas is capable of.

https://www.thisishamas.com

And this isn’t unique. And nor is this denial of Muslim agency. It happened with ISIS. Of course Obama pulled out of Iraq too soon, leaving it in a mess, and of course Bush and Blair take some blame for attacking Iraq, even though Saddam Hussein was a brutal dicator. But it still required “ordinary Muslims”, “nice young men”, “indoctrinated young girls” to make their way to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS and start genocide of Yazidis, the taking of sex slaves, the burning alive, the chopping of heads, the cricifixions, and all manner of barbarity that echoes the ways of Mohammed and his Merry Men of 1400 years ago.

Muslims are agents that follow the Quran and Hadith. When they kill the way they did on October the 7th, it wasn’t some unusual event, or an act of resistance. It was Islamic terrorism, the Islamic terrorism we have seen time and time again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Islamist_terrorist_attacks

It’s one heck of a long list for a “religion of peace”.

* Muslims of Hamas … when we talk about hamas, ISIS, Boko Haram, and other Islamic terrorist groups, there is often the claim theya re “Nothing to do with Islam” or they do not follow Islam as they should. But it’s only ever Muslims. Even on October 7, I don’t know of any Christians or Druze from Gaza that joined them. Historically there have been instances of Chistians persecuting Jews in Palestine, but these are usually separate incidents. And in the 2oth and 21st centuries I don’t know of any Christians joining any Muslim Islamic terrorist organisation. Why is this significant? Because the narrative of the Middle East conflict is often framed as Israeli v Arab or Jew v Arab, when there are Arab Jews, and other non-Muslim Arabs, and Irainains consider themselves Persion, not Arab, and many reject the “Arab religion”, Islam. It would be far more accurate to speak as we find: Muslims engage in Islamic terrorism, not anyone else.

Owen Jones – Missing In Action – The Battle of Batley

I can’t imagine the Batley ‘blasphemy’ incident has escaped the notice of ANYONE interested in British politics. In summary, a teacher showed a class a cartoon of Mohammed. From what we know it was a legitimate use of the cartoon. And, we don’t have a blasphemy law in the UK … officially. Yes, we are damned close with our ‘Hate Incidents’, and Scotland now has what is essentially a blasphemy law, introduced by Humza Yousaf, SNP Cabinet Secretary for Health & Social Care. But, as yet, it is not illegal to use a cartoon of any religious figure in a classroom while teaching about religion, or about blasphemy.

Of course, the Islamists of the Batley ‘Muslim community’ want otherwise. They’d like nothing more than a blasphemy law preventing the criticism of Islam. So, when it became known that the teacher had used a cartoon of Mohammed, the Islamists stepped it up a gear and ‘parents’ (i.e. leaders of mosques and a members of a number of Islamist groups) started to demonstrate outside the school.

The teacher was justifiably afraid for his life. A similar incident resulted in the beheading of the teacher Samuel Paty, in France. The Batley teacher went into hiding.

Where were that teacher’s union representatives? Where was the outrage over the Islamist activists attempts to impose blasphemy laws by coercive campaigning? Nowhere.

And, where has Owen Jones been? Perhaps he’s too busy wondering, “Why do they think I support Islamic extremism?”

Here’s why some people might.

Our 21st Century Citizen Smith was out meeting with striking teachers, and even managed to put in an appearance at a photo op for a George Floyd and Black Lives Matter. Knowing how fond Owen is of teachers (he has many tweets supporting them), and the persecuted, you might expect him to have a few things to say about the situation at Batley, and the persecuted teacher, no?

No, of course not. At least not the incident at Batley involving Islamists trying, again, to dictate the school curriculum and enforce blasphemy rules.

When Owen suddenly took an interest in Batley, it wasn’t for the persecuted teacher, but for Labour’s potential demise in that constituency. Owen was happy to tweet support for Labour.

The video linked in Owen’s tweet only had this to say about Batley …

“Batley … diverse … Muslim community … supporters of the Labour Party”

Since Owen has an interest in the wellbeing of teachers, including the Batley teacher in hiding, and of Labour’s Muslim voters in Batley, why would he miss the opportunity to mention the problem, the conflict, the ‘slight’ difference of points of view on the matter of Mohammed cartoons?

Owen wasn’t going anywhere near this banana skin. There was no way he was going to risk alienating Labour’s Muslim voters (the remaining red wall) by having anything to say about the extremists in their midst If you listen to his video it will become clear that IF Batley is lost to Labour, it will, as usual, have “nothing to do with Islam” and its horrific blasphemy demands, but instead will all be Keir Starmer’s fault. Keir, it seems, is the new Labour patsy for all that’s wrong with Labour.

Both Owen and the Batley teacher’s union that has also gone missing. It seems Batley’s ‘bin men’ have a greater interest in a persecuted teacher than either teaching unions or Owen Jones.

Except that the teachers unions did eventually put in an appearance, or at least ‘a teaching union official’ is reported to have done so, and has told the bin men to shut up.

Where have we seen this sort of intervention before regarding Labour’s reduced red wall in Yorkshire? Remember Naz Shah liking and retweeting this?

Corbyn ally shares message telling Rotherham sex abuse victims to be quiet 'for the good of diversity'

Not only have the teaching unions not come to the aid of a member, but they seem to prefer to support a ‘charity’.

So, Owen Jones, defender of the persecuted, supporter of teachers’ rights … why are you MISSING IN ACTION AT THE BATTLE OF BATLEY

See also: Social Justice Warrior Owen goes AWOL on Iran: Iran – Missing In Action – Owen Jones and help Owen solve the riddle of why some people think he sides with Islamic extremists.

The Delusional Demos Director

Before getting round to their director, Polly Mackenzie, let’s start with Demos.

Demos on Wikipedia

Their Twitter Bio

The last bit, “Based in London”, and it’s name, “Demos”, might be the only true parts of that bio line.

Think tank? Well, I’ve a couple of other posts related to their thinking. I’m not impressed. These were about a really sloppy piece on the Victoria Derbyshire, on the BBC News channel, and Carl Miller, of Demos, and their dubious ‘research’ milking the ‘Islamophobia’ craze.

BBC Victoria Derbyshire – Sloppy Islamophobia Journalism

Carl Miller of Demos Still Misfires on ‘Islamophobia’

Britain’s leading independent cross-party think tank? Really? Independent and Cross Party?

Well, they have done work for more than one party, but to say they are cross-party is a bit of a stretch. Independent? Not of thought.

From the Wiki page:

Demos was founded in 1993 by former Marxism Today editor Martin Jacques, and Geoff Mulgan, who became its first director.
In the run-up to the 1997 general election it was seen as being close to the Labour Party, in particular its then leader Tony Blair.
On 9 August 2006, in a speech at a Demos conference, British Home Secretary Dr John Reid stated that Britons ‘may have to modify their notion of freedom’, as a result of his plans, claiming that freedom is ‘misused and abused by terrorists.’

Take a look at their 2018 accounts, here.

Click to access application-pdf.pdf

And, after you’ve tried to work out the flow of money in and out, go to page 30 for some of their funders.

The Open Society Foundation. And who are they? You want to know what George Soros funds? Demos is one of his pets. Independent?

Don’t like the George Soros conspiracy theories? OK, let’s try another.

The Politics and Economics Research Trust. Did you know this report was produced by Charity Commission for England and Wales?

You can read more here: Politics and Economics Research Trust: case report

And here: Charity alleged to have illegally funded Brexit campaign groups – Questions over grants given by the Politics and Economics Research Trust to anti-EU groups, with potential for tax relief.

I can’t pretend to know everything Demos get up to, but to me, and having seen the work of the fabulous Carl Miller, it looks like a bunch of people that can’t get proper jobs so they sell their souls to anyone that will buy them and enjoy playing around in the dubious charity money-go-round, and call the work ‘research’.

So, what about their director, Polly Mackenzie? How much thinking does this head of a think tank do? More to the point, what’s the quality of this thinking?

Polly Mackenzie joined Demos as the new Director in January 2018. She previously worked for Nick Clegg from 2006 to 2015, helping to write the 2010 Coalition Agreement, and served as Director of Policy to the Deputy Prime Minister from 2010-15

Well, that didn’t go too well did it.

Just curious, but did Polly have anything to with forming Nick Clegg’s opinions on the EU. Yes, I know her time with him was up to 2015, before Brexit EU Ref, but, well, ideas aren’t formed over night, are they, and when Nick Clegg laid into Nigel Farage about how saying there would be an EU Army was a dangerous fantasy, Nifty Nick had buggered off to Facebook just before Merkel and significant EU figures started telling us that not only was the EU starting an EU Army, but political and military fusion ought to be a future goal.

Anyway, whatever contribution Polly made towards Nicky Know Nothing’s demise, at least she is able to put her own thoughts down. Sadly, it doesn’t get any better.

Case 1 – Letting Children Vote – And Proxy Parental Votes

This is Polly’s recent piece in Unheard …

What if we gave children a vote? – The electoral system is inherently biased towards the 83% of the population who are over 18

Here are some of Polly’s bright ideas:

Children 10 and above should be able to vote. How hard is it for a ten year old to make a cross in the right place on a piece of paper?
Children under 10 shouldn’t be able to vote (come on, Polly’s not mad, you know). Instead, their parents should be able to cast a proxy vote on behalf of the infant (I presume only one parent gets to vote for each child, but which one? Not sure Polly has think-tanked this through).

You can read the delusional reasoning yourself. But here, for Polly’s benefit, are some objections.

The notion of a proxy vote is entirely counter to the principle of one-person-one-vote. Large families, religious conservative families, would in fact give multiple votes to the parents, as proxies. To say that such proxy voting parents were casting a vote for the children themselves is delusional. They would be casing a vote for themselves and their of how the world should be.

Childless people will be disenfranchised, because parents get 2 or more times their vote.

As for children themselves voting, there are several reasons why they should not, not least of which are the following.

We have limits on parent power. Parents cannot abuse their children. An anathema to this is the indoctrination of children into political and religious ideologies. We are not raising independently minded adults, but pre-programmed adults. It takes a lot of learning to realise the extent to which you’ve been indoctrinated, and some never get out of it. Jess Phillips, Labour MP, describes how she was taught a visceral hatred of Tories. The indoctrination of children into our main religious cults is a disgrace to civil society. Until both political and religious indoctrination are criminalised, and a rounded education in reason and science becomes the standard, we will not be producing independent minded rational adults, but victims and perpetrators of the tribal party and religious politics we have today.

Young teenagers are naturally rebellious, and are wide open to the political indoctrination by extremists. Labour’s Momentum know this – Corbyn’s Kids is not a neutral educational programme but a mind programming school. Many young people were so easily indoctrinated into extreme Islam, and left home to join ISIS. The Orthodox Jewish communities keep a tight control of their children, as do Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Roman Catholics, and even ‘moderate’ Islam.

Why do you think the Humanists UK and National Secular Society are campaigning to stop and reverse the growth in faith schools.

Read Poly’s article. But just for fun, here’s a sample of Polly’s think-tanking.

“Will you let them drink and smoke, too?” – This is usually the first response I get when I propose enfranchising all citizens under the age of 18. The answer is, obviously, no. We have laws that prevent young people from drinking and smoking because these things are harmful. voting, by contrast, is not harmful; drawing an X on a ballot paper is substantially less dangerous than inhaling toxic smoke into your lungs.”

What? So, coerced voting of ten year olds, indoctrinated ten year olds, isn’t a danger? To society, and the better judgement of those children that have to live in the world they were coerced into voting for?

Polly, putting an unlit cigarette in a child’s hands and to a child’s lips is no more dangerous than putting a pencil in the mouth after drawing a cross on a piece of paper. However, to the child personally, the former could have longer term implications for the individual, if they were coerced to light it; but the latter could cause a far wider danger to themselves and society, if they were coerced to vote a particular way.

There are now many people that were indoctrinated into voting Labour – “I’m a life long Labour supporter.” But many such supporters are overcoming their own indoctrination because they can see before their eyes how Corbyn and Communist McDonnell are changing the party, and they have figured out that in their opinion they don’t like it. The same has been true of may Conservative voters. Many adults learn to change their minds for themselves.

Children cannot. Do you imagine a ten year old having a conversation about the subtleties of Labour’s Socialism, McDonnell’s Communism, the entryism that’s been going on in the Labour Party for generations? No. They won’t even take an arbitrary lucky dip vote. Their parents will coerce them into voting for the parent’s preference.

And all the above doesn’t even begin to take into account the actual issues of brain development and maturity.

We should be worried about the indoctrinating abuse of children and their use in political vote rigging only somewhat less than psychological child abuse.

No, children should not be allowed to vote, and their parents should definitely NOT get extra votes because they have kids.

This piece by Mackenzie is idiotic. Yet she’s the director of Demos? And Carl Pilkington, sorry, Carl Miller (apologies to Carl Pilkington) is their Research Director, Centre for the Analysis of Social Media? Would you trust ANY of their output?

I can see why conspiracy theorists look to Soros. Throwing money at this bunch of clowns is top rate trolling.

Case 2 – Free Stuff Utopian Dreams

It was at this point I thought I’d have a look at Polly on Twitter. Interesting. Following what was obviously a quick lesson in economics by Labour’s John McDonnell’s free stuff promises, Polly gave it a critical eye.

Tweet – Nationalising Openreach is perfectly plausible. But why should broadband be free and not – for example – water, food, heating, clothes, all of which are rather more essential to the human condition.

You’d think Demos might have a director that have some feel for economics. Apparently not.

But, not to worry, Utopia is within reach for Polly …

Which manifesto? Only given Polly’s eagerness to indoctrinate voting children there are several to choose from.

So, for Polly’s benefit, what’s wrong with free stuff, state control and the removal of wages?

Eventually, workers don’t need money because everything is free.
But workers are then dependent on the state alone.
Result: oppression of workers that can have no independent means of survival so must comply with the state.
Check out some history. Hint: Soviet Union and its oppressed satellites; Moa’s China. The brutality of the party and the Dear Leader.
Political Utopias are no better than religious fantasies – they are used to control people.

The Nation State

The nation state is still the only large scale functional unit of social cohesion that can provide citizens with both rights and freedoms in a manageable manner.

The USA has struggled, mostly successfully, to balance what could have been small nation states as states within a larger federal state. The EU wants to go the same way, but, just as many in the US oppose federal government power, so in the EU some of the nation states (Brexit) object to the lack of accountability of the federalists and the loss of self determination of the individual states.

Globalism, of any kind, is currently worse. There is no functional world democratic government (UN?🤣) so all the global power is in the hands of global corporations and powerful individuals and groups. While Soros may not be the monster he’s portrayed to be, I didn’t get the chance to vote him in as a mover and shaker of EU affairs. Meanwhile, we all know of Putin’s dabbling in the affairs of nation states. Or indeed of nation states interfering with other nation states, of which the US, UK and others have vast experience.

Then we have the dreamers … the anarchists, the socialists, that have some crazy idea that humans can form Goldilocks societies that just happen to work .. in their heads … but which take no account of the variety of human political opinions that are out there. The Utopians look mystified when you tell them you don’t want their particular Utopia. Well, I suppose they think “There’s only one true Utopia!” I’m sure I’ve heard that sentiment in another context.

Even the nation state has its troubles. Who in their right mind thinks Pakistan is a good functioning state? Yet they just had elections. And, good luck bringing socialism to Afghanistan … or secular freedom of belief to anywhere dominated by religion.

Let’s be realistic, and call western states ‘nearly’ functioning, ‘reasonably’ representative of the wishes of the people. Trump and Brexit have exposed the visceral hatred that the nice socialists are capable of towards their fellow citizens. Then there’s the ‘far right’ (the real, not the imagined). The right will grow in response to the craziness of the left. Extremes sustain each other.

Many on the left have shown their colours. Democracy, as long as they win. Secularism, as long as you don’t offend their pet religion.

It’s difficult enough to hold a nation state together. Europeans have been trying to do it in one form or another since Ancient Greece, slowly, often too slowly, extending the franchise to all citizens. Trial and error. Two steps forward one step back. It’s been hard and often bloody work. But nation state democracy is about the best these evolved apes with partially functional brains are capable of.

Thinking you can wreck it and start over, or that revolution *against* a democratic system is even a rational idea, pretty much sums up the capabilities of some human brains. Haven’t we tried ‘day zero’ scenarios a few times and watched the genocide unfold to know that’s probably the worst of all worlds. Isn’t revolution the last desperate attempt to get rid of an oppressive state?

There is no western government that cannot be voted out of office, no matter how bad you currently think they are. None. And while many in the west are looking at destroying democracy, other parts of the world are struggling to implement it.

But, the first sign of a democratic system going down the pan is a loss of free speech. If you can be locked up for speaking on any political matter, then your freedom is on the way out. The ECHR has just approved the protection of Europe’s pet religion. You can go to jail in European states for expressing an opinion … and I don’t mean incitement to violence dressed up as opinion. I mean opinion dressed up as incitement to violence. If you point out the capacity of Islam to be used to incite violence in terms that upset the violent among the Islamic religion, and they threaten or enact violence against you, you are in danger of becoming their victim, or, a victim of the state that is busy eroding your free speech. Madness.

The shock to many liberals has not been the bunch of actual far right loons, or the stupid alt right that think ethnic separation is even a possibility, or the oppressive nature of a conservative, actual far right, political judicial religious ideology. No, the shock has been the willingness of the supposedly secular left to go along with Islam’s far right political agenda while mouthing off about a much smaller fractured far right of perceived fascism. They can spot a good old Nazi, but can’t see an Islamofascist cheer leading them on.

Islam, anarchism, socialism, big business … these contain a variety of globalist agendas that will subvert individual freedom in order to gain ground. Sometimes they are temporary allies in localised regions. Each contains ideologues that think their way will inevitably win. If they could only stop pesky individuals getting in the way with their damned freedoms, they could set everyone free to live in their Utopia on their terms.

Currently, the only safeguard against these varied globalists is secular liberal democratic nation states, cooperating on security, law and policing, but also ensuring the individual freedoms of their citizens as a primary principle … especially freedom of speech.

So, when you hear that nationalists are racist xenophobes, you’ll realise that the target isn’t just the actual real live racist xenophobes. It’s the nation state and its capacity to thwart the various globalist agendas.

We can’t have versions of democracy where every single person gets a say on every single topic – someone always has to compromise. So, representative democracies of one sort or another are the way to go, as the least worse option. They could be improved, with some variety of proportional representation … but even then, someone always fails to get what they want – compromise is inevitable. There is no perfect democratic system.

And to work on local, regional, state, global scales, we need representational democratic systems that are seen to be democratic.

So, I don’t have a problem with federalism in principle, as one of those levels. That includes, in my local case, a federal EU. I’d even back a world federation, if its members were also democratic states (the UN fails in the respect).

The problem with the EU, and one of the reasons Brexit has come about, is that the EU federalisation project has not been democratic, and is still subject to the whims of dominant states like Germany, or rather to dominant parties within the dominant states. And, this made Brexit appeal in another respect: the 2016 UK EURef vote that came after 2014/5 unilateral action by Merkel to not only open the EU’s external borders with no vetting, but to go on to bully other EU states into complying and taking ‘refugees’ (i.e. economic migrants).

Even ex-Muslims and fanatic for ‘open doors’, Maryam Namazie doesn’t want to avoid proper vetting:

Open borders doesn't mean no vetting. EU has open borders within itself; is there no vetting. Absurd misinformation. https://t.co/LQgWIezoFV

— Maryam Namazie (@MaryamNamazie) March 24, 2017

And, just to clarify the related issues of ‘xenophobia’, ‘racism’, ‘Islamophobia’ that raise their ugly heads any time one objects when some SJW suggests un-vetted immigration is OK and “There are no illegals, they are all humans” …

Protecting a democracy with law and order and applying it to all citizens, avoiding an undocumented underground that’s rife with black markets and people trafficking seems a pretty rational perspective … and opposing those things seems insane.
The term ‘Islamophobia’ is an irrational fear of Islam – and the only true Islamophobes are those press, politicians and police that go out of their way to make excuses for Islam … which is, by the definition of its own texts, an ultra-conservative (i.e. far right) political judicial ideology dressed up as a religion, with strong misogynistic and homophobic tendencies written in, and a mechanism for threatening death for any Muslim that chooses to leave. It’s not compatible with secular liberal democracy, except in so far as many Muslims explicitly (Reformers) or implicitly (“Not MY Islam”) fail to follow the prescriptions in the supposedly ‘inerrant’ Quran. And, just to be clear, Christian lunacy has its own problems, not least in the USA.
Actual racism and xenophobia exists, and it doesn’t help the cause against them if everyone that dares talk about immigration is labelled a far right racist xenophobic Nazi from the outset.

Clear up those mostly left wing misrepresentations of reality and we might see some normality and rationality return to western politics.

And so, if we want effective global governance that supports genuine secular liberal freedom, we need a system that looks democratic, behaves democratically, and is respected enough to hold in check the excesses of rogue states … or even our own democracies that get it wrong so often. The UN has been referred to prior to a number of actions (Iraq War), but in the end, western states felt they had sufficient authority to go to war without the full backing of the UN.

And now Trump has shown his disdain for the UN, and a large number of Brits have done the same for the EU. Those organisations are not fit for purpose. Who the heck thinks the UN is up to scratch if Saudi Arabia is on the UN Human Rights Council? Who the heck thinks the European Court of Human Rights is up to scratch if it endorses jailing someone for disrespecting some cult’s fake war mongering child marrying prophet?

In an effort to be ‘nice’, and in order to protect a ‘minority’ (second larges and most violent religion in the world), the left has sold out secular liberal freedoms, and ordinary people can see that. Hence, Trump and Brexit.

Liberal democratic secular nation states are currently the only protection against chaos and corruption – as imperfect as they are, with their own corrupt elements. In fact, if we can’t get nation states right, what chance have we with larger organisations? Nation states will remain valuable until and if similar global systems can be set in place. Tearing them down in some ‘Year Zero’ fantasy will not help. Destroying them slowly by a thousand cuts of erosion to personal freedom and free speech will only make the demise apparent when its too late.

Nick Cohen Finds Cover To Smear Robinson

[Now part of a series on Fallible Heroes]

The recent and undeniably stupid Tommy Robinson walked into jail. And this has given cover to many people that wanted to jump on the bandwagon. Perhaps made uncomfortable by his ‘activist journalism’, as he’s moved away from street protest himself, this last installment has proved too much of a temptation.

So, Nick Cohen jumped aboard.

Tommy Robinson and the rise of the new extremists

This is a thinly disguised hit piece on Robinson. Though disguised as general commentary on ‘extremism’ politics, that talks about the funding of political enterprises, it also throws in a few other individuals, but only in passing, for good measure, to keep up the tone so that it looks less like a hit piece with one target. He mentions Katie Hopkins, for example. But, Robinson gets more paragraphs than anyone else.

Why is Robinson lumped in with extremists? What has been extreme, exactly, about his activism? If you think he has, could you be explicit.

He created a street protest movement, the EDL, which he says himself was beleaguered because it attracted the unsavoury elements. Some of Robinson’s and the EDL’s reported thuggish behaviour was actually throwing those elements out. You’ll also note that in another context, when AntiFa are on the scene there’s often violence, and ‘arrests’ are reported – though what fails to be reported is that it’s usually AntiFa doing the attacking and sustaining most arrests. No matter. Blame Robinson.

So, other than a street protest movement, what extremism?

I don’t think Labour is considered an extreme party even though it has attracted left wing extremists all along, and arguably has them running the show now – but all very mainstream.

It doesn’t take Nick long to get down to trolling the uneducated masses. There’s the usually snobbish hat tip to the working class ‘beer hall’. But I suppose the ‘Doc Martens’ is very much a reference to the Reggae loving skinheads against fascism, isn’t it? Oh, well, may be not. Football thugs? Yes, that must be it.

On the point of football, what’s not covered here is the Football Lads Alliance. Look on Twitter and they are clearly labelled in the same light as Robinson often is: fascists, Nazis, racists. The FLA t might well appear on Nick’s radar when it has smeared so sufficiently to let Nick write a piece on it without seeming to be too obviously anti-working class. British football has undergone a transformation since its skinhead ‘bovver boot’ days. It’s now a family affair, supporting local communities, with female directors and women’s teams becoming stars alongside their male first team counterparts. Watch any FLA march and you’ll see people of all ethnicities, and, gosh, some females. And banners representing elements of supporters of many clubs – it’s serious business if you can unite football ‘thugs’. It turns out their message is pretty much the same as Tommy Robinson’s – it’s just that Tommy Robinson has been louder, and he’s been saying it longer.

Robinson has some issues, there’s no doubt. But, his actual criminality is, when you examine it, far more mundane than many other street activist groups, such as AntiFa, that not only get a pass from the press (if they can keep the violence below the radar) but are actually endorsed as Nazi-punchers. Robinson’s criminality emerges from his over exuberant stupidity more than any criminal intent, and also gets a good helping from conveniently unrelated charges being filed, and even thrown out of court. And what he genuinely does do that is criminal doesn’t remotely compare to the criminality that he protests, both terrorism and grooming gangs.

Yet more people on the ‘progressive left’ hate Robinson with a passion they seem unable to muster for the child killers and child rapists. They’ll happily scream about Robinson, but would be much happier if they could sweep the bomb bits, body parts and broken childhoods under the carpet.

To call (or, as in Nicks piece, to sneakily imply, with sufficient deniability) Robinson an extremist is extremely dishonest.

When Julia Ebner misrepresented Robinson in this way, though a little more explicitly, with less deniability, she did it in the Guardian, but while she worked out of the offices of Quilliam. Haras Rafiq felt it necessary to go on Newsnight with Robinson and actually deny that he, or Quilliam, endorsed what Ebner had written. Ebner didn’t last long after that. She still manages to do what Nick has done here: write a piece ostensibly on extremist politics, but name dropping Robinson with sufficient frequency, alongside the names of actual extremists, that the inference is near impossible to not to fall for. Throw ‘alt-right’ in a few times, without actually saying Robinson is alt-right, and that will be enough to get retweets* of the article by those that will do the job more explicitly. And, when writing these articles, conveniently avoid an explicit meaning of the term alt-right – because Robinson is obviously not alt-right, since in terms of racism Robinson is as polar opposite of Richard Spencer as Nick Cohen is. But, the ‘racist’ smears will follow on nicely just by making sure ‘Tommy Robinson’ and ‘alt-right’ appear in the same article that avoids saying the former IS NOT the latter.

*Money making click bait that helps Nick’s income? Odd, that Nick, a paid journalist, homes in on Robinson’s earning capacity, as if earning a living from a cause one is passionate about is less moral than other moralising journalism. That’s how the world works.

Oh, and apparently, Robinson has been raised to the grand position of ‘politician’ or is it lowered – you can never tell with politicians. Anyway, this seems absurd:

Most conservatives steered well clear of Tommy Robinson, even though he was one of the few politicians who can speak well to the racist strain in white working class British culture.

“can speak well to”? Well, if joining with people of various ethnicities, targeting one specific political judicial religious ideology, and being particularly clear that his real targets are Islamists, terrorists and grooming gangs, amounts to racism, then surely criticising the Indian Caste system or FGM is racist too. Yes, I know that some ‘progressive’ numpties think it is, but that’s besides the point. Pointing an accusing finger at the abusers and terrorists that currently over-represent in some (non-Monolithic) ‘communities’ is not racism.

In this context, you should note, though it’s often ignored, that Tommy Robinson targets the genuinely ‘Islamophobic’ politicians, police and press. You know, the ones that have such an irrational fear of Islam they will look the other way as abuse goes on, as Andrew Norfolk did, until he snapped out of his ‘progressive’ mindset and came to his senses.

“racist strain in white working class British culture” – Too easy, Nick. You know full well that for so many, this means ALL working class people. I hear this from people that are, or were working class too, but managed to get a reasonable education, leave their council estates for the suburbs, and now look down on the scum they left behind. The very people that jump down your throat, if, in talking about ISIS, you don’t qualify it with NOT ALL MUSLIMS.

What about the title of the article? “Tommy Robinson and the rise of the new extremists”

Well, it doesn’t actually call Robinson an extremist. And we often see article authors using the get out of jail card, “Well, I didn’t write the headline.”

Many working class people, that lack the sophisticated education enjoyed by many that look down on them, are far more ‘straight talking’ – which obviously means not being as capable of being judicious with their smears as the more literary journalists that thinly disguise their contempt for the likes of Robinson.

For other topics of public concern, what would be called ‘people power’, is extremism when engaging in the thoroughly decent thing of taking a dislike to Islam. Why do religions get such unholy passes to promote such barbaric ideas, and then get away with claiming to be a religion of peace?

It’s typical that the credibility of a call to ‘people power’ very much depends on who is doing the calling. Jeremy Corbyn manages to appear interested in the people, while looking down on the actual people that have no voice. He’s become the leader of the Labour party on the back of his ‘say nothing, commit to nothing‘ skills in this regard (“I abhor all bombing”).

But I’m afraid there’s somebody else shouting now, making the very claims about police and political corruption that allowed grooming gangs to operate in plain sight. Maggie Oliver investigated and brought to justice just a small number of the Rochdale grooming gang members. Her success has given her a voice (and funnily enough, a means of earning a living from her valuable experiences). What’s Maggie Oliver calling for now?

People power.

People power must be the way to do this…. we must speak out when we see corruption and injustice. #MeToo #timesup #GMP https://t.co/pgL3TD1Nhn

— Maggie Oliver (@MaggieOliverUK) May 28, 2018

Tommy Robinson was doing people power when ‘Islamophobia’ (the fear of criticising Islam or Muslims) was well established by Blair’s multiculturalist funding of self declared Muslim representative organisations.

Now, Maggie Oliver is saying what Robinson has been saying:

The vast majority of police officers are doing the very best they can…. it’s those at the TOP who have no conscience or moral code and have put their own self servicing interests above their duty to protect, uphold the LAW with honesty & integrity! And they are not ACCOUNTABLE! https://t.co/b3gW7PzkVY

— Maggie Oliver (@MaggieOliverUK) June 4, 2018

Remember, Islam is a very conservative political judicial religious ideology. The judicial part is Sharia, that so many Muslims turn to for justice. The politics is written into all religions that make social prescriptions and proscriptions, but it’s even more explicit in Islam, which is anti-secular and has an explicit goal of Islamic domination written into it.

Many traditional liberals like Nick have already commented on how the Left’s alliance with Islamism is characteristic of actual extremes having common goals – rub out the sensible voices in the middle and deal with the final battle of what looks like interchangeable good and evil later.

I won’t bother asking for examples of Robinson’s racism. They never materialise. Some very credible examples would have appeared by now were there any truth in the charge. That failed narrative has moved on.

The ‘far-right’, ‘alt-right’ and ‘extremist’ charges are much easier to make and not support, when you don’t even have to back them up. They are charges that are vague enough that they are far easier to deny you made them.

So, what extremes does Robinson represent? Well, you could actually make the effort to ask him.

To write a piece about extremism, and include Tommy Robinson, who Nick has sort of defended in other contexts, and the only difference then and now is his latest arrest, … well, that seems like outright dishonesty.

Sure, Nick thought Robinson didn’t help himself. But an extremist? Like, comparable to say an Islamic extremist? Seriously? Has Tommy Robinson EVER called for the harming or ANYONE?

If we take Anjem Choudary, who approves of death for apostasy, as the low bar of extremism, and ISIS as the high bar, compared to which even Hitler wins only because of numbers, then ‘extremist’ is already pretty wide. Even then, based on death for apostasy alone, that’s a lot of Muslims you’re calling extremists.

How about AntiFa? Sure. They are extremists. They shut down people they disagree with. Violently. That’s pretty extreme. Has Robinson EVER recommended that?

No. Nick’s piece is pure bullshit, when you look at in that context.

It’s funny, because I’m pretty sure Nick has lamented the tendency for the Left to call everyone Nazis, fascists, and other things they are not. What happened?

I suppose otherwise rational people can go off the rails sometimes.

Our Islamophobic Politicians

The hot trend at the time of writing is the call for the Conservative Party to investigate itself for the amount of ‘Islamophobia’ engaged in, by members or MPs.

Obviously, this is kick-back for the accusations of antisemitism in the Labour party, and it looks like Corbyn is now benefiting from his alliances in the Islamic world, as race baiting CMB and their puppet master Miqdaad Versi push this for all they’re worth.

To Conservatives in particular. You have lost the narrative to Islamic fundamentalists. You bought into the ‘multiculturalism’ narrative of Blair’s Labour, and you have lost. But, as you’ll see, you can start to save your party.

Politicians generally. You are being conned on ‘Islamophobia’.
The people know this.
The people know that YOU know this.
Do you realise the contempt with which you are currently held for this cowardice?

Islamophobia:

a) a tool used by Islamists (those politically motivated to further Islam and Sharia)
to shut down discussion of the worst practices in Islam,
by conflating criticism of Islam, anti-Muslim bigotry, and racism.
b) a fear instilled in Muslims, based on indoctrination into a cultish reverence
for Mohammed and the Quran,
such they submit themselves to Islam,
often above family members,
so that some would kill their own children or siblings if they left Islam.
c) a fear instilled in Muslims by Islamic fundamentalists,
that to speak out about the bad practices in Islam is
un-Islamic, treason, blasphemous, heretical,
even default apostasy by fiat … and threateningly, a death sentence
d) the fear of Islam instilled into UK politicians, police and press that shuts them up,
and even persuades them to collude in the silencing of those that speak out about the worst aspects of Islam.
e) the fear of Islam instilled in politicians across Europe,
that Muslim unrest is more difficult to deal with than any popularist reactionary unrest,
so that they would rather kow tow to Muslim community demands.
https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/1001744765707223041

Islamist have succeeded. We realise you just want it all to go away. Your opponents know how to play this game. It’s a rhetorical method that works very well throughout the wider Islamic world. But, you are too scared to do anything about it.

Andrew Norfolk knew of this fear of Islam, when he accepted he’d sat on a report on paedophile Muslim grooming gangs, and let the rapes continue unexposed.

Maggie Oliver knew this, when her GMP seniors deflected her from investigating a case. Only with #threegirls in Rochdale, did she get anywhere.

Maggie Oliver realises you have no stomach to do the right thing. So she now calls for people power.

People power must be the way to do this…. we must speak out when we see corruption and injustice. #MeToo #timesup #GMP https://t.co/pgL3TD1Nhn

— Maggie Oliver (@MaggieOliverUK) May 28, 2018

But we know what you politicians and police have done when people have raised this. We have seen you smear those that speak out, or at best, you have looked the other way.

Labour sacked MP Sarah Champion. They even deselected a Labour councillor.

Decent head teacher, Ray Honeyford, was hounded out, three decades ago, for trying to protect and improve the lot of children, and YOU or your fellow MPs let this happen.

Here’s what you can do.

You can start by rejecting the term ‘Islamophobia’.
Islam is the set of ideas.
Muslims are the people.
Oppose actual anti-Muslim bigotry, where individual decent Muslims are persecuted.
Oppose racism.

On that last point, I’m sure you’ve been told, but, Islam is not a race. There are many ‘white’ Muslims, and many ‘non-white’ non-Muslims. Make sure you are prosecuting actual racism, and not opinions on what is just another set of ideas.

If you play this ‘Islamophobia’ game, of seeing Muslims as victims while a minority, then you’ll find that you are becoming the minority.

Decent secular Muslims will tell you all this too. Perhaps you don’t want to listen. Perhaps you’ve already submitted to Islam.

Killers for Religion and Atheism?

So, an atheist kills a bunch of religious people, and the religious can now cite an example that shows that their religion isn’t that bad after all.

Not so fast.

Atheism vs Theism

Both Atheism and Theism are simply opposing philosophical positions. Any other system’s metaphysical philosophy is ‘atheistic’ if it rejects theism.

A particular theism might be vary vague – “I believe there is one, and possibly more gods, but I don’t know whether any of the religions are true …”.

Or it might be specific yet still ‘other worldly’ – “I believe that there must have been a creator god, but I have no idea what he intends for us, and I offer no moral guidance based on my belief that there is a god.”

Or it might be committed to the variable claims about the god or gods of a particular religion, which may have many sects.

Atheism is pretty much opposition to these sorts of theism, usually on the grounds that there is no evidence or reason to believe specific claims, or support the level of hopefulness that the ‘spiritual’ seem to be clinging onto. In this respect Atheism is a negative position: it simply rejects the claim that there are gods.

Note that Atheism does not assert that there are definitely no gods.

Some atheists might assert that there are absolutely no gods, but that isn’t much better than asserting absolutely that there are gods. You might call such an atheism a ‘faith’ based atheism. But if you take the trouble to pin atheists down they generally agree that they do not hold such a strong opinion, but merely act as if they do because that’s often easier to express.

But this acting as if there are no gods is a fair position to take. Christians act as if there are no Norse gods. They act as if there are no fairies or Santa. (Note that playing along with such fantasies for the fun they provide for children isn’t acting with true belief.)

Religions

Religions are a subset of Theism …

Atheism-Theism-Religion

[Agnostics may not deny the existence of god, but they don’t positively assert there are gods either.]

Religions take the basic philosophical position of theism, thinking there are some teleological entities that created our universe, and add many more specific claims:

Our god is the only god.
Our god cares about us.
Our god dictates our moral codes.
Our god wants us to punish people that don’t follow his codes.
Our god wants us to punish people that don’t believe in him.
Our god doesn’t want us to eat pig meat and thinks it a moral obligation that we don’t.
Our god wants us to punish people that have sex outside the specific type of union sanctioned by our god (monogamy for Christians, up to four wives, but one husband for Muslims)
Our god will not remarry divorcees – old school Catholic; god changes his mind sometimes; he’s fickle; or humans decide he changed his mind.

Most religious people are born into, indoctrinated into, their religion. And the religion may provide many social benefits if it’s a large religious community.

But there can also be great costs for those that simply cannot continue to believe. In some more fundamentalist communities, ex-believers can be ostracised, might suffer social and economic hardship if rejected by the community, and might even risk death. If the religion prescribes death for apostates, as is the case for Islam, then even if the religion isn’t the state authority, believers are easily persuaded to take it upon themselves.

The list of additional beliefs on top of basic theism, including the many moral prescriptions and proscriptions, is long. It depends on the religion, the sect within the religion, and the personal willingness of individuals to follow the rules of the religion.

This becomes a little tricky for the religious that try to divert criticism away from their religion, when opinions differ so widely within:

God changes his mind often, it seems, judging by how religious opinions change.
Individuals make up their own minds what they take from their religion … you’d think the religious would therefore appreciate how atheists make up their own minds about morality.
The greatest opponents to a particular religious believer’s views are … other religious people. Islamic terrorism? Many victims are other Muslims, for being the wrong type of Muslim.

The variety of religious belief is often greater than the difference between Atheism and a particular Religion. Modern Anglicans that accept secular liberal democracy, have no problem with homosexuality, even in the church, are for full gender equality, and gender identity. They have much more in common with the social and political leanings of many atheists, than with even their fundamentalist Christian brethren, let alone than with people of other faiths.

And yet, the religious stick together. It only takes the whiff of an atheist with a strong opinion for the ‘interfaith’ community to band together in offended outrage. And let anyone speak out about the Islam of the Islamic extremists and even moderate Muslims will come to Islam’s defence as much as agree with an atheist that there might be a problem with the religion.

[Update 5/12/2017] There was greater outrage that Trump retweeted a lead figure one of Britain First’s outspoken anti-Islam activists than at the content of the videos the activist posted. One was ‘fake news’, but the other two were of Muslims persecuting others. Despite the acts of the Muslims, this was actually seen as anti-Muslim bigotry. Take a moment. Here’s the upshot: every tweet condemning German neo-Nazis is anti-German bigotry; every tweet showing and condemning videos of Britain First are anti-British bigotry, and by extension, anti-Muslim bigotry, since, as is belaboured painfully, British Muslims are British. This is the state of play in 2017, where any criticism of Islam is interpreted as ‘Islamophobia’, ‘anti-Muslim bigotry’ … and yes, ‘racism’.

Political Ideologies of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, …

Whenever an atheist argues with Christians or Muslims, it’s not long before we get the Hitler, Stalin, Fascism, Nazism, Communism line thrown at us. And no matter how often it’s pointed out that this isn’t a valid argument, it still keeps on coming up. Often from the same people that have had this pointed out before.

Political ideologies can of course cross boundaries of Atheism-Theism. Christians can be socialists. In the 70s it was quite common for Islamists to lean towards socialism … maybe they hadn’t realised how far right Islam really is … or maybe they had.

And, Hitler was not an atheist. He might not have favoured the established churches that opposed his thugs, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t religious. Many Nazi ideas were based on the old Teutonic ideals of religiously motivated knights.

Communism? Don’t think that political ideology stops you believing in a personal god … it just becomes less convenient and maybe a little dangerous to admit to one, but Communism does not preclude theism.

These political ideologies tell us little about the wide variety of atheists. The Atheism that some political ideologies might embrace informs the ideology with nothing other than the fact that there is no evidence for any god.

Religious Political Ideologies

Some political ideologies are religious ones.

And most religious ideologies are political – they are inherently so because they dictate the behaviours of people, and that’s a very political thing to do. And they usually have a lot to say on social issues … not all good. Homophobia, sex outside marriage, modesty, … religions can be obsessed with sex, particularly with regard to women, and if feminism isn’t a political matter I’m not sure what is.

It is possible to believe in a religion and treat it as an entirely personal belief system that determines how you live your own life, without you making any claims about what it implies for anyone else.

But this is rare. Most religions, and especially religious organisations, are very keen on telling: religious believers how they should act; non-believers that they are anything from misguided to evil; the religious what they should do to the non-believers: killing apostates, bombing abortion clinics, punishing people for blasphemy (the modern version is imprisoning people for ‘hate speech’).

Christianity, as supposedly expressed by Jesus, is a “render unto Caesar” kind of religion – a reasonable basis of separation of church and state. However, the Catholic church in Rome put a swift stop to that. Christianity, especially through many bishops and popes, made state business very much church business. The US continues this tradition by distorting the intentions of the founding fathers and making it the godly nation the founding fathers tried to avoid – they’d seen enough of that in Europe.

Islam is very specifically, inherently, by design, a political ideology. Only Muslims can hold certain offices of state. Muslims and non-Muslims are taxed differently.

Many Muslims will try to pull a fast one by telling you that Islam insists that Muslims follow the laws of the the land in which they find themselves … where Muslims are a minority that does not hold power. But Islam also requires Muslims to spread Islam … which means it would eventually become a majority. This is why many opponents of Islam also oppose too much immigration from Muslim countries.

Of course many Muslims don’t want a dominant Islam any more than non-Muslims do. Many escape the domination of Islam of their homelands, and are quite happy to live in secular democracies where they can practice their religion in peace.

But then we also see a lot of duplicitous language from supposedly ‘moderate’ Muslims that think homosexuality should be illegal, and make excuses for their more extreme brothers and sisters (“Nothing to do with Islam”).

In Europe the atheists and secularists have been opposing the power of the church for centuries, letting the humanistic principles take precedence. There’s still plenty of religious protectionism that goes on – a refusal to give up the reigns of power, as diminished as they are. Why the heck do Bishops get seats in the UK House of Lords – and why is there even such an unelected house still?

But I’ve seen and heard much more of the stranglehold religion has in some parts of the US, where the mark of a good plumber is whether he’s a good Christian or not. “In God We Trust” – indeed they do.

So, religions are political, and as such are as fair game for criticism and ridicule as any non-religious political ideology.

And being offended when religions are criticised is just one more political tool the religious try to pull. It may be a genuine feeling, and so they try to give it moral weight. Hence, critics of Islam are labelled haters of Muslims.

But, realising that atheists tend not to be impressed by the special pleading for the religion, that atheists aren’t taken in by the piety, the hurt feelings, what are the religious to do? Compare their religion to atheism? They can’t. They are not comparable.

Humanism

So, religious friends, you can’t really compare Atheism with your religion.

You can compare Atheism with Theism, if you’re talking only about the philosophy, reason, evidence, to support either case.

But you can’t compare Atheism as such with Christianity or Islam. Yes, I know that atheists argue against Christianity and Islam, but they do so on two quite separate grounds:

1 – A disagreement with the underlying theistic claims of your religion. If your religion relies on a claim that there is one or more gods, and there isn’t, then 2 is irrelevant. But, we humour you anyway and so …

2 – A disagreement with the moral assertions that you think your imaginary god has prescribed. It’s not like we disagree with all your moral positions, we just hold those we agree on for different reasons, for which we don’t need an imaginary god. But those Humanist atheists also find many of the moral guides of religion to be immoral, barbaric at times, and remnants of ancient codes of conduct prescribed at the time of the religion’s inception.

The thing is, Atheism prescribes no moral position whatsoever. It really is merely the rejection of your unsubstantiated claims about your god.

And this, of course, leads to another failure to understand atheism: “Atheists have no morals. They are nihilists.” Not so.

We have morals. We just don’t think some imaginary friend dictates them; and we very specifically reject many of the immoral codes that gods supposedly do dictate.

But you’re nearly right. it’s not our atheism that determines our morals, it’s something else.

Many atheists find other reasons for their morality – many simply acknowledging that harming others isn’t nice. People and animals don’t like to suffer harm, so we prefer to minimise that. It seems a very simple idea, but it’s amazing how far you can go with just that basic starting point. And it also avoids the need to punish people for daft reasons – such as for having sex outside marriage, for not being heterosexual, for drinking, for working on the Sabbath.

[In the UK the Shops Bill 1986 was defeated; the Sunday Trading Act 1994 eventually introduced limited Sunday trading … so strong was Christianity’s hold over British life. Now we’re finding we have to start again, with Islam.]

Many atheists want to live by their own moral ideals, and many collect these ideas about living a moral life into a set of codes. It’s not that these codes are necessary, but they are helpful in declaring some minimal set of behaviours we agree to abide by.

And one example of such a guide is the Humanist Manifesto. Take a look at it. You’ll find no diktats about women being lesser than men, or how to deal with the evil of homosexuality, or what the best way is to kill apostates. Humanists don’t have to look for ‘nuance’ and ‘scholarship’ to explain away inconvenient passages ‘revealed’ through some desert warlord or hippy.

So, if you want to carry out any comparisons I’d suggest you try these:
– Atheism vs Theism
– Humansim vs Christianity, Islam, …

You might find that many atheists tell you they don’t belong to any Humanist organisation, because they would rather not belong to any group that sets their ethical standards for them, as they can figure it out for themselves. They have a point. We are free to decide our own moral codes, and put them to the test in our societies.

My personal subscription to Humanism is one of convenience, and support for many of the programs of Humanists UK (formerly British Humanist Association).

Other atheists might join other groups of common interest, such as the many secular and skeptical societies around the world. Ex-Muslims have a shared experience that brings them together in various groups – often with the added benefit of providing a safe community to those ex-Muslims that are still at risk from their families.

Let that sink in, and imagine a child of Humanists being ostracised, forced into marriage, threatened with death, killed. I don’t know of any such incident. Has one ever made the news?

The next time you’re arguing with atheists on Twitter, they are unlikely to be Nazis. So when you pull the “What about Hitler, Stalin ..” it’s a Straw Man. If you want to argue for your religion, why don’t you try coming up with good reasons for it, not excusing the bad stuff by dragging in some irrelevant comparison.

And for pities sake, give up on trying to defend the indefensible. Your religious texts are full of ancient stuff that really doesn’t stand up to our moral standards today. Some religious passages are outright contraventions of the human rights that most people would want to sign up to. Stop defending that crap with ‘nuance’ and ‘scholarship’ – it makes you look like damned fools that are fooling no one but themselves.

Atheist Terrorists

And that atheist killer you want to call a terrorist because you’re sick of hearing about Islamic terrorists? Could be they are genuinely crazy, or have some motive other than their hate for religion.

And even if they carried out the heinous act because they hate religion and religious believers, there’s no Atheist Bible, and nothing in the Humanist Manifesto to suggest they should … unlike your religious books. Not even The God Delusion, Letter to a Christian Nation, or any of the New Atheist books.

If some killers that are atheists really are killing for atheism, there’s nothing in atheism, or Humanism, that can be removed that would stop them. There are no doctrines we can reject. There’s no “Believers are children of Satan” sermons going on. Pointing out the problems with religion doesn’t automatically create Atheist Killers. Sadly it does all too often create killers of atheists.

But, hey, if someone has a terrorist agenda, against believers, for atheism, then pretty much all humanist atheists will oppose them. I’ll happily denounce any such terrorists. But I won’t be able to point to any atheist texts that has incited them. I can only point to Humanist texts that are very short and very explicit in their opposition to doing harm. There is no Humanist Prophet whose example I should follow that includes his beheading of enemies.

The Humanist Manifesto is so clear in rejecting doing harm to others there’s no way you can mistakenly or otherwise derive some crazy idea that it’s a good idea to kill believers.

This cannot be said of the books of Christianity and Islam. Alongside all the lovely stuff is some seriously dark and immoral doctrine.

Look, if you want to call some atheist killer an atheist terrorist, knock yourself out. Any disagreement from atheists will be on a technicality, not for some fear of having to explain away our inconvenient texts. Let me help you out with A Guide To Terrorists For Idiots.

Lies, Damned Lies, and .. Political Rhetoric

Britain voted to leave the EU, and the 48% of British people that voted remain went all wobbly, then turned into hate filled monsters spewing fire in the direction of the 52% Brexiters, for the hate filled xenophobic racist bigotry some of the 48% perceive in them.

I’ve no way of knowing how many of the 48% have gone crazy with hate, but they are certainly loud. It really isn’t the end of the world for the UK, though you’d think it was from the rhetoric. Look at Aleppo. Remember two World Wars?

We’re damned lucky to live in Britain, even a Brexit Britain. We have to get over our disappointment and deal with it, whether it’s committing to the leave process or trying to persuade the nation to remain in the EU despite the referendum – not such a good idea.

But the haters, with their powder dry, primed and ready to blow, watched the Tory government hold their conference. Correction – the crazies watched and misrepresented, and the gullible lapped up the misrepresentations.

There is always room to criticise a government – none are perfect and there’s always room for improvement, and opportunities to take a different route. That’s what an opposition should focus on. The gross misrepresentations are plain dishonest and bring into disrepute the offenders themselves more than their targets.

Amber Rudd gave her conference speech, and despite the text of her speech being available, people seemed to hear things that weren’t said by Rudd, their Babel Fish translators set to Demonic.
Continue reading “Lies, Damned Lies, and .. Political Rhetoric” →

Referendum – Not Such A Good Idea

I used to like the idea of a referendum on big decisions that set the direction of the nation for the foreseeable future. It’s important everyone gets a say, right?

When I was really young and idealistic I looked to a future where the power of computers would allow every voter to have a say on every issue and problem the government faced. Until I realised how chaotic that would be.

But I still thought it was a pretty good idea on big issues like EU membership. I voted in favour every time we had a choice. I’ve gone off the idea. Is it just because I was on the losing side? Or has being on the losing side woken me up to the problem with referendums?

One problem with a referendum is it represents a single snapshot of opinion, influenced by conditions at the moment of the vote, supposedly on one issue, but influenced by many others. Had the UK EU referendum been held before Merkel opened the door to migrants (and not just the minority that are refugees) the result could have gone the other way. Had Johnson not made such a hash of it with his Bus NHS millions the Brexit win might have been greater. It’s all down to the moment, the chaos of lots of voices, each making points, some of them dumb.

Another problem is that many of us, we the voters, don’t have the technical knowledge to make the right choices. And here for me, like Dawkins, I don’t mind admitting this is the case, even if I do think I have a grasp of many of the issues.

Elected representation for a number of years brings some stability that a referendum cannot. The scientists at Cern don’t have a referendum on what experiments should be run.

And ‘experiment’ is a good analogy. The world is changing all the time, such that any elected government is effectively experimenting with the economy in a set of novel world conditions, and the conditions change throughout the life of a government. And you need bags of expert input when making decisions (not less, Mr Gove).

Not only is a referendum a bad idea in this regard, it could also be argued that all too often governments don’t take enough of an account of expert opinion, letting ideological politics overrule it.

It’s not just the government choosing ideology over good ideas. What’s disappointing about a lot of politics is that oppositions act as if the government should have foreseen and planned for problems that neither the government, OR the opposition saw coming; or the opposition work to make a government policy fail, and then crow over the fact that it failed. Much of our plolitical rhetoric carries the fortunate weight of hindsight.

Perhaps we need to make the system we have work better, rather than throw it out in favour of a referendum. And perhaps demand better quality members of parliament, and better standards of political behaviour, and political education (but not the indoctrination of children – looking at you, Momentum).

One of the principles we hold dear is that elected members should come from a cross section of society and therefore be ‘representative’. Unfortunately that alone isn’t enough, because it ensures some popular but inadequate people can be elected, and their faults become apparent the more important a role they are given in government. Counter to this is the fear of elitism – but in science I want scientists to be the elite of their profession.

To some extent this worry of electing dummies is alleviated by the fact that cabinet positions are determined by the leader, and the leader is chosen by the party. There’s a chance that there are enough sensible people around not to elect a fool. Not iron clad I know, but still better than a referendum, surely. It’s even dubious whether opening leadership election to the whole party membership is a good idea – Mr Corbyn.

Corbyn has been elected leader effectively by a referendum of the Labour party membership – anyone with £25 and a bucket of idealistic wishful thinking to spare; and he will now have the power to determine a shadow cabinet. Which will form a destructive rather than a constructive opposition.

So, we (I) have realised that referendums aren’t that helpful.

Is that it? Scrub referendums and let the government decide? Well, no. It should be a parliamentary decision, with free votes – none of that bullying coercion by party whips. And perhaps it should be preceded by more expert opinion. Parliamentary committees have a pretty good reputation generally. We should use them more as precursors to big events, rather than for telling us what went wrong after the fact.

And, better political education! Did I say that already?

And, proportional representation, to stop the use of the fear factor that creates our binary system: “If you don’t vote Labour/Conservative you’ll let Tories/Labour in!”

Catlicks and Prodidogs

Religion’s sectarian influence pervades the minds of children and can persist into adulthood and on into politics, and on across generations.

Heather Hastie’s More Delusions About Religion looks at a news article that tries to distance religion from violence, by trying to convince us that the the Northern Irish Troubles were not about religion. That’s nonsense, and here’s why. Continue reading “Catlicks and Prodidogs” →

I Don’t Like The Labour Party

I haven’t voted Labour for a long time, and even back then I occasionally voted Conservative when I thought that Labour was leaning too far left.

I’ve been watching the Labour internal conflict and it has echoes of earlier decades, just different players. A post I read recently was about the unelectability of Corbyn, and the author mentioned “57 varieties of Trotskyists“. That pretty much says it all. Continue reading “I Don’t Like The Labour Party” →

Why #FreeMilo IS About Free Speech

Dan Arel made wrote: Stop claiming that Milo Yiannopoulos’ Twitter suspension has anything to do with free speech

Let’s open up Dan’s points to a wider scope, by replacing Twitter with the press: Continue reading “Why #FreeMilo IS About Free Speech” →

Populations in a Secular Liberal Democratic EU – #EUref

This is about the UK referendum on EU membership. It’ll meander back an forth across some issues as it’s more an ideas and concerns barf than a rational argument aimed to persuade, so apologies if it’s a chaotic and incoherent at times. These are the issues that I hear people talking about; issues about populations, migration and sovereignty that are easier to understand than the economic ones that even the ‘experts’ can’t give clear answers to.

Here’s a quick summary, with short videos, that explains the organisation of the EU and the powers of its various bodies. Use it as a primer if you’re not sure what the EU is about: BBC’s EU Introduction.
Continue reading “Populations in a Secular Liberal Democratic EU – #EUref” →