Leftist, Disgusted By Intellectual Defenders of the Charlie Hebdo Murderers, Wonder If He Can Remain on the Left

Pretty trenchant commentary from a leftist.

Trigger warning: He doesn't like you very much, and will note that in passing, but he is accurate in galling out the "grotesque" hypocrisies, inconsistencies, and most of all stupidities of the pro-Islamist left.

The Literary Indulgence of Murder

by Nick Cohen

....

The temptation here is to drag up the old line that some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals can believe them. But the authors who broke with PEN are not just stupid but mendacious.

They repeated the lie that Charlie Hebdo was a cowardly publication, which "hit down" on poor and excluded immigrants.

...

The lie is on two levels. I'll deal with the racism charge first.

It is the worst of crimes on the intellectual left. When confronted with extreme and murderous theocratic reactionaries, they would rather not face, the most moronic – to borrow the [Maoist "Little Red Book's] insult – among them explain terror away in the only language they understand. Racism must have made the killer do it. It's the only explanation that makes sense. Why Charlie Hebdo even showed pregnant Boko Haram sex slaves shouting, "Don't touch our welfare!" That's it. That's why they died.

This particular cover was cited by many uneducted-pretending-to-be-eduated fools as proof of Charlie Hebdo's racism.

Yet the left -- which is not terribly smart -- constantly shows itself to be the worst sort of bluffers, pikers, and loudmouthed know-nothings.

In fact, the cover in question was a shot at some on what is called "the right" in French theorizing that people seeking asylum due to Boko Haram's predations were dishonest, and were really only seeking entree into French welfare system.

Thus, the cover -- of two Boko Haram child brides saying "Don't touch our welfare benefits!" -- was intended to be an ironic ridiculization of such claims.

The idea was, "Do you really believe that the kidnapped child-brides of Boko Haram would only be interested in fleeing to France to cash welfare checks, dummy?"

This was pretty obvious -- certainly these lefty idiots had at least heard that Charlie Hebdo was a leftwing magazine, so they should have had some curiosity about this cover and some suspicions that their uncultured brains might not be hip to what the cartoon was actually about -- and they were furthermore told all this repeatedly, by people who actually know about, like for example French leftwingers who explained the cover to their stupid leftwing cousins across the Channel and over the ocean.

But it was still easier for the know-nothings to continue to know nothing -- that is, ignorance served their ideological predisposition much better than enlightenment -- so they dismissed the explanations and clung to the stupid, moronic, uneducated, know-nothing ideological zealot interpretation they saw on stupid, moronic, uneducated know-nothing SJW zealot blogs.

And these people will accuse others of know-nothingism, and of being "Science Haters."

Cohen notes that various people tried to inform the British and American Social Justice Warriors of these basic facts, including a French leftwinger named Olivier Tonneau -- but the British and American left just didn't care 'bout no facts or fancy foreign-language readin'.

Tonneau did not realise that many will never allow themselves to understand, because their little world would fall apart if they made the effort.

Let me dispense with their bullshit about biting your tongues out of respect for marginalised and excluded. If this were true, left intellectuals and media would watch what they said about the working class supporters of the Tea Party, French NF and Ukip. If the followers of Marine le Pen had gunned down the staff of Charlie Hebdo,

I have asked this myself -- if Garry Trudeau claims a satirist cannot "punch down," what is this Champagne Socialist doing mocking anyone except his Martha Island compatriots?

Carey et al would have blamed the murders on the Hebdo‘s “arrogant” attacks on the ideology of ordinary French men and women [sic -- he means this in the form of a rhetorical question, would they have blamed... Why this is stated as positive sentence, I don't know.]

They do not and would not because they oppose racial prejudice. (Or at least some racial prejudice. Not one mentioned that the gang that killed the Hebdo staff were authentic racist killers, as they proved when they went on to slaughter Parisian Jews in a supermarket for no other reason than that they were Jewish.) But they cannot oppose religious prejudice – and in their failure they live a lie far greater and more grotesque than their lies about the dead of Charlie Hebdo.

Prose, Carey, the London Review of Books and so many others agree with Islamists first demand that the world should have a de facto blasphemy law enforced at gunpoint. Break it and you have only yourself to blame if the assassins you provoked kill you.

Eh, good piece.

I really want to stress here that their claims do not proceed merely from a dispute over philosophy (or, really, theology), but from a complete failure to understand the basic facts of the situation -- and that no matter how many times these know-nothings have the facts explained to them, they will not deal with them, because know-nothings are very stupid people who make the world a simpler and stupider place than it really is because it's all they can understand.

Here, stupidity is the gateway drug to cruelty, as usual.

posted by Ace at 05:44 PM

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