<div dir="ltr"><div id="m_-3140419503718551689m_310860282668060423m_3122587298407064240gmail-print_content"><h1 style="padding-top:0px;padding-bottom:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:5px">The West's Politically Correct Dictatorship</h1>
<h2 style="padding-top:0px;margin-top:0px;text-transform:none">It Has Blinded Us to the Real Danger: Radical Islam</h2>
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<p class="m_-3140419503718551689m_310860282668060423m_3122587298407064240gmail-sans-serif" style="margin:10px 0px 0px"><b>
by <a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/author/Giulio+Meotti" target="_blank"><span>Giulio Meotti</span></a><br>
<time class="m_-3140419503718551689m_310860282668060423m_3122587298407064240gmail-nocontent" datetime="2016-12-06T05:00:00">December 6, 2016 at 5:00 am</time></b></p>
<p class="m_-3140419503718551689m_310860282668060423m_3122587298407064240gmail-nocontent" style="margin:0px 0px 10px"><b><a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9491/politically-correct-dictatorship" target="_blank">https://www.gatestoneinstitute<wbr>.org/9491/politically-correct-<wbr>dictatorship</a></b></p>
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<ul class="m_-3140419503718551689m_310860282668060423m_3122587298407064240gmail-content_preface_bullets"><li><p>The brave work of the artist Mimsy was removed from London's Mall Galleries after the British police defined it "inflammatory."</p></li><li><p>In France, schools teach children that Westerners are Crusaders,
colonizers and "bad." In their efforts to justify the repudiation of
France and its Judeo-Christian culture, schools have fertilized the soil
in which Islamic extremism develops and flourishes unimpeded.</p></li><li><p>No one can deny that France is under Islamist siege. Last week,
France's intelligence service discovered another terror plot. But what
is the priority of the Socialist government? Restricting freedom of
expression for pro-life "militants."</p></li><li><p>Under this politically correct dictatorship, Western culture has
established two principles. First, freedom of speech can be restricted
any time someone claims that an opinion is an "insult." Second, there is
a vicious double standard: minorities, especially Muslims, can freely
say whatever they want against Jews and Christians.</p></li><li><p>There is no better ally of Islamic extremism than this sanctimony
of liberal censorship: both, in fact, want to suppress any criticism of
Islam, as well as any proud defense of the Western Enlightenment or
Judeo-Christian culture.</p></li><li><p>Twitter, one of the vehicles of this new intolerance, even formed
a "Trust and Safety Council." It brings to mind Saudi Arabia's "Council
for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice."</p></li><li><p>Under this political correctness, the only "win-win" is for political Islam.</p></li></ul>
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<div class="m_-3140419503718551689m_310860282668060423m_3122587298407064240gmail-itemprop_articlebody">
<p>It might look like <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21699909-curbs-free-speech-are-growing-tighter-it-time-speak-out-under-attack" target="_blank">a golden age for free speech</a>:
more than a billion tweets, Facebook posts and blogs every day. But
beneath this surface, freedom of expression is dramatically retreating.</p>
<p>Students at the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/cityuniversity" target="_blank">City University of London</a>, home to one of Britain's most respected schools of journalism, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/nov/18/city-university-students-vote-for-campus-ban-sun-daily-mail-express" target="_blank"> voted to ban</a> three newspapers from its campus: <i>The Sun</i>, <i>Daily Mail</i> and <i>Express</i>.
Their "crime", according to the approved motion, is to have published
stories against migrants, "Islamophobic" articles, and "scapegoating the
working classes that they so proudly claim to represent." City
University, supposedly a place dedicated to openness and questioning,
became the first Western educational institution to vote for censorship,
and ban "right wing newspapers."</p>
<p>The filmmaker David Cronenberg called this self-censorship, after the massacre at <i>Charlie Hebdo</i>: "<a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/05/03/gaiman-bechdel-among-new-table-hosts-at-pen-gala-replacing-writers-protesting.html" target="_blank">a weird, serpentine political correctness</a>."
It is one of the most lethal ideological poisons of the 21st century.
It is not only closed-minded and ridiculous, it makes us blind to the
radical Islam that is undermining our mental and cultural defenses.</p>
<p>The countless attacks by Muslim extremists testify that the
multicultural world to which we have been led is a fiction. Political
correctness simply encourages the Islamists to raise the stakes to win
the war they are advancing. The resulting tension has been fed by the
Western elites with their sense of guilt for "colonialism" in the Third
World.</p>
<p>"<a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2981584/MICE-threatening-Sylvania-Artist-mocks-terror-group-jihadists-cuddly-animals.html" target="_blank">ISIS Threaten Sylvania</a>"
-- an art exhibition featuring cute little stuffed animals picnicking
on a lawn, and unaware of other cute little stuffed animal terrorists
carrying assault rifles on a knoll just behind them -- is the work of
the artist known as Mimsy (she hides her identity). The protagonists of
this series of light box tableaux are a family of stuffed animal dolls
that inhabits an enchanted valley. Gunmen, dressed like the Islamic
State henchmen, strike the innocent inhabitants of the valley, at school
and on the beach, at a picnic or in a gay pride parade. It looks like
an updated version of <i>Maus</i> by Art Spiegelman, a graphic novel depicting Nazi cats and Jewish mice during the Holocaust.</p>
<p>Those wishing to see this artistic panel <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11449584/ISIS-Are-you-brave-enough-to-laugh-at-Isil-You-should-be.html" target="_blank">at the Mall Galleries</a>,
in London, will now have to console themselves with the work of Jamie
McCartney, "The Great Wall Vagina," nine meters of female genitalia,
less important and less provocative.</p>
<p>The brave work of Mimsy, after the British police defined it "<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/art-show-organisers-remove-work-satirising-isis-after-policing-costs-soar-a6668411.html" target="_blank">inflammatory</a>,"
has been eliminated from the program of this London cultural event. Its
organizers informed the gallery owners that if they wanted to put it on
display, they would have to shell out £36,000 ($46,000) to "secure the
venue" for the six days of the exhibition.</p>
<table style="margin-bottom:5px;max-width:600px" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" align="center">
<tbody><tr>
<td style="max-width:600px;border-width:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:black"><img src="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/pics/2101.jpg" width="600" height="375" border="0"><p style="font-size:82%;margin:4px 6px">The
brave work of the artist Mimsy, satirizing the brutality of ISIS, was
removed from London's Mall Galleries after the British police defined it
"inflammatory." (Image source: Mimsy)</p></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p>Under this politically correct dictatorship, Western culture has
established two principles. First, freedom of speech can be restricted
any time someone claims that an opinion is an "insult." Second, there is
a vicious double standard: minorities, especially Muslims, can freely
say whatever they want against Jews and Christians.</p>
<p>And so it came to pass that the most famous Spanish football team, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-2853930/Real-Madrid-remove-Christian-cross-official-crest-UAE-sponsorship-deal.html" target="_blank">Real Madrid</a>,
removed the cross from its crest after a commercial deal with Gulf
emirate of Abu Dhabi. The Christian symbol was quickly ditched to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/11/28/spains-real-madrid-drops-cross-from-logo-to-appease-gulf-sponsors/" target="_blank">please</a> the Islamic Gulf sponsors.</p>
<p>Perhaps soon the West will be soon asked to change the flag of the
European Union -- twelve yellow stars on a blue background -- because it
contains a Christian message in code. Arsène Heitz, who designed it in
1955, was inspired by the Christian iconography of the Virgin Mary with a
crown and twelve stars on her head: what a heartless "Western Christian
supremacist" message!</p>
<p>Political correctness is also having a huge impact on big business: <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/11/30/kellogg-citing-values-joins-growing-list-of-companies-that-pledged-to-stop-advertising-in-breitbart-news/" target="_blank">Kellogg's</a> withdrew advertising from Breitbart for being "not aligned with our values" and <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/12/lego-criticised-after-dropping-commercial-deal-with-daily-mail/" target="_blank">Lego</a> dropped advertising with <i>Daily Mail</i>, to mention just two recent cases.</p>
<p>It should not cause alarm if companies want to decide where to
advertise their products, but it is very alarming when it happens due to
"ideology." We have never read about companies abandoning a newspaper
or website because it was too liberal or "leftist." If the Arab-Islamic
regimes were follow these views, why should they not ask their companies
to stop advertising in Western newspapers that publish articles
critical of Islam, or which publish pictures of half-naked women?</p>
<p>Libraries on US campuses are now putting "trigger warnings" on works
of literature: students are advised, for example, that Ovid's sublime <i>Metamorphosis</i> "justifies" rape. <a href="http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1988/1/22/stanford-faculty-debates-teaching-of-western/" target="_blank">Stanford University</a>
even managed to exclude Dante, Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare and
other giants of Western culture from the academic curricula in 1988:
supposedly many of their masterpieces are "racist, sexist, reactionary,
repressive." This is the vocabulary of Western surrender before
totalitarian Islamic fundamentalism.</p>
<p>France has removed great figures, such as Charlemagne, Henry IV,
Louis XIV and Napoleon, from schools, to replace them, for instance,
with studying the history of Mali and other African kingdoms. At school,
children are taught that Westerners are Crusaders, colonizers and
"bad." In purportedly justifying the repudiation of France and its
Judeo-Christian culture, schools have fertilized the soil in which
Islamic extremism develops and flourishes unimpeded.</p>
<p>It is a question of priorities: no one can deny that France is under
Islamist siege. Last week, France's intelligence service discovered
another terror plot. But what is the priority of the Socialist
government? Restricting freedom of expression for pro-life "militants."
The <i>Wall Street Journal</i> called it "<a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/frances-war-on-anti-abortion-speech-1480552815" target="_blank">France's War on Anti-Abortion Speech</a>."
France already has one of the most permissive and liberal bodies of
legislation on abortion. But political correctness makes one blind and
ideological. "In four and a half years, the Socialists have reduced our
freedom of expression and attacked public freedoms," commented <a href="http://ripostelaique.com/loi-rossignol-les-socialistes-aux-abois-revent-dune-france-big-brother.html" target="_blank">Riposte Laïque</a>.</p>
<p>In the US, academia is rapidly closing its doors to any debate. At
Yale, professors and students these days are very busy with a new
cultural emergency: "<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/arts/design/yale-calhoun-college-slavery-debate-policy.html" target="_blank">renaming</a>."
They are changing the name of buildings to erase all traces of slavery
and colonialism -- a revisionism out of the Bolshevik Revolution in
Russia.</p>
<p>Everywhere in the US and in the UK, an air of hostility is spreading
against opinions and ideas that could cause even a hint of distress in
students. The result is the rise of what a writer such as Bret Easton
Ellis called "<a href="http://www.vanityfair.fr/culture/livre/articles/generation-wuss-by-bret-easton-ellis/15837" target="_blank">Generation Wuss</a>".</p>
<p>The jihadists surely grin at this Western political correctness,
since the result of this ideology will be the abolition of the Western
critical spirit and a surreal reeducation of the masses through the
annihilation of our history and a hatred of our truly liberal past.</p>
<p>Bristol University in the UK just came under fire for attempting to "no-platform" <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/student/no-platform-bristol-student-union-roger-scruton-nus-freedom-of-speech-philosopher-a7404646.html" target="_blank">Roger Scruton</a> for his views on same-gender marriage. Meanwhile, British universities are giving a platform to <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/11870429/British-universities-that-give-the-floor-to-extremist-speakers-are-named-and-shamed.html" target="_blank">radical Islamic preachers</a>.
In the politically correct universe, conservative thinkers are more
dangerous than ISIS supporters. London's former mayor, Boris Johnson,
called this dystopia "<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/nigeria/10823670/In-our-own-modest-way-were-living-in-a-Boko-Haram-world.html" target="_blank">the Boko Haram of political correctness</a>."</p>
<p>Students and faculty at the Rutgers University in New Jersey cancelled a speech by former US Secretary of State, <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2014/05/04/us/condoleeza-rice-rutgers-protests/" target="_blank">Condoleezza Rice</a>. Students and professors at Scripps College in California protested the presence of another former Secretary of State, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-scripps-madeleine-albright-20160509-story.html" target="_blank">Madeleine Albright</a>, who, according to the protesters, is a "war criminal."</p>
<p>A New York University professor, Michael Rectenwald, who attacked
political correctness and the coddling of students, was recently booted
from the classroom after his colleagues complained about his
"incivility". The liberal studies professor was forced to go on paid
leave. "It's an alarming curtailment of free expression to the point
where you can't even pretend to be something without authorities coming
down on you in the universities," <a href="http://nypost.com/2016/10/30/nyu-professor-who-opposed-pc-culture-gets-booted-from-classroom/" target="_blank">Rectenwald told</a> the <i>New York Post</i>.</p>
<p>There is no better ally of Islamic extremism than this sanctimony of
liberal censorship: both, in fact, want to suppress any criticism of
Islam, as well as any proud defense of the Western Enlightenment or
Judeo-Christian culture.</p>
<p>Censorship is happening not only in the liberal enclaves on the
coasts of the United States, but also in France. The Eagles of Death
Metal -- the American band that was performing at Paris' Bataclan
Theater when ISIS terrorists murdered 89 people there on November 13,
2015 -- were <a href="http://www.lefigaro.fr/musique/2016/05/20/03006-20160520ARTFIG00200-eagles-of-death-metal-rock-en-seine-annule-leur-concert.php" target="_blank">banned by two music festivals</a>: <i>Rock en Seine</i> and <i>Cabaret Vert</i>. The reason? Jesse Hughes, the band's frontman, gave a very <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/eagles-of-death-metal-jesse-hughes-paris-attacks-gun-control-a6876751.html" target="_blank">politically incorrect interview</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>"Did your French gun control stop a single f*cking person
from dying? I think the only thing that stopped it was some of the
bravest men that I've ever seen charging head-first into the face of
death with their firearms. I think the only way that my mind has been
changed is that maybe until nobody has guns everybody has to have them.
Because I've never seen anyone that's ever had one dead, and I want
everyone to have access to them, and I saw people die that maybe could
have lived, I don't know."</p>
</blockquote>
<p>After the jihadist massacre at Orlando's Pulse gay nightclub,
Facebook enforced the pro-Islamic injunction and banned a page of the
magazine <a href="https://jungefreiheit.de/kultur/medien/2016/facebook-sperrt-schwulenportal-nach-islamkritik/" target="_blank"><i>Gaystream</i></a>, after it had published an article critical of Islam in the wake of the bloodbath. <i>Gaystream</i>'s
director, David Berger, had heavily criticized the director of the Gay
Museum in Cologne, Birgit Bosold, who had told German media that gays
should be more frightened of white bigoted men than of Islamic
extremists.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/6527/after-orlando-attack-famous-conservative-blogger-james-barrett" target="_blank">Jim Hoft</a>,
a gay journalist who is the creator of the popular Gateway Pundit blog,
was suspended from YouTube. Twitter, one of the vehicles of this new
intolerance, suspended the account of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/07/21/what-it-takes-to-get-banned-from-twitter/" target="_blank">Milo Yiannopoulos</a>,
a prominent gay critic of Islamic fundamentalism -- but probably not
the accounts of Islamic fundamentalists who criticize gays. Twitter even
formed a "<a href="http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/02/twitters-new-safety-council-makes-a-mockery-of-free-speech/" target="_blank">Trust and Safety Council</a>."
It brings to mind Saudi Arabia's "Council for the Promotion of Virtue
and Prevention of Vice." Could it be an inspiration for the liberal
mullahs?</p>
<p>Yes, it might have looked like a golden age for free speech. But
under this dictatorship of political correctness, the only "win-win" is
for political Islam.</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for</i> Il Foglio,<i> is an Italian journalist and author.</i></p>
</blockquote>
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