GAY REFUGEES, ISLAM AND THE WEST, AND THE CLASH OF CIVILISATIONS

Despite attempting and failing at doing a tv-tie this week, my debate with American neo-conservative Mike Cernovich was fascinating for various reasons. Firstly, whilst he supports the idea of an IQ Test for immigrants to the West (anything lower than 115 just isn’t cricket), he purports to speak for gay Muslims. The ones I know don’t want the time of day from him. Beyond that, it’s clear Mike doesn’t genuinely support the cause of LGBTQI groups — it’s just a cause for him to try and further his political policies against Muslims and immigrants.
Poor Mike, whilst looking at IQ should be more self-aware. He seems blithely unaware that the perception of lower intelligence is associated with broader, more rounded faces with eyes closer to each other and a shorter nose. Careful what you ask for, Mike.
WATCH OUR TV DEBATE HERE
Mike, like so many of his peers on the far right, is a firm believer in the clash of civilisation narrative. It is one predicated on the belief that the traditional white and Christian enlightened West is coming into loggerheads (and potentially risks being overrun) by barbaric brown-skinned hordes; Muslim; immigrant; backward and uneducated. It is an ancient tried-and-tested formula to whip up hysteria against incoming minority groups and to rally “natives” around a supra-nationalism. It used to work. Pretty damn effectively. Especially when directed towards poor, austerity-ridden communities, surrounded by a failing infrastructure, overburdened by personal and national debt, being peddled misinformation by governments and the media.
Key proponents of this clash of civilisation narrative include the likes of Donald Trump; Michael Gove; Marine Le Pen; Geert Wilders; Ayaan Hirsi Ali and hubby Niall Ferguson; Tommy Robinson; Douglas Murray; Tom Holland; Katie Hopkins; Prison Planet; UKIP; Pegida; EDL; Britain First; ISIS; Al Qaeda; Al Shabab. Many more besides. It is one which is specifically designed to lead to division and ethnic cleansing. It leads to the separation of communities, families and peoples. It demonises the Edward Said “other”. Whilst the front-facing narrative is about enforced muscular integration, it is ultimately about destruction, power and control.
This is precisely what Cernovich and the far right want right now — a return to a supreme, white and Christian West. Others and the “Untermensch” are to be returned to County of Origin. “Illegals”. Super sexualised. Criminal. A threat. Let’s call it out for what it is: racist bullsh*t. Populations and civilisations have forever ebbed and flowed. Whilst Muslims were the heirs to Hellenism decriminalising homosexuality, they were a prevailing global superpower for a thousand years leading to the Renaissance and Industrial Revolution. The sociopathic response from the West was to cut its umbilical chord and deny the contribution of Muslims and Islam to the core fabric of European ideas — freedom, liberty, democracy and secularism. It has been a bizarre exercise in denial and rewriting of history. It has been an active dissemination of disinformation to misguide the masses. Isaac Newton rather than the giant upon whose shoulders he stood, Al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham. Copernicus, not Ibn al-Shatir, Mu’ayyad al-Din al-’Urdi or Nasir al-Din al-Tusi. The list is endless.
The Western narrative that on day one a civilisation exists, and at the next dawn is the fall of Rome, is palpably absurd. Look around you. Societal evolution whilst occasionally punctuated, is surprisingly slow. It is precisely this slow-cooker model that they would like to turn into something more pressurised. After all, it worked so well for their aims in the 1930s.
Whilst there is no real clash of civilisations, what we certainly find ourselves standing at is a civilisational crossroads. We can choose the path that leads to division, or one that leads to unity. What we cannot do, is have one group of people forcing it’s values on to another, to dictate how they might live. Each unto themselves and let there be no compulsion in conscience and belief. A rejection of Voltaire and Lockean ideals is not freedom, it is oppression. An ideological free market, functioning properly, should lead to tolerance, plurality, integration and contribution — not assimilation and division.
The rhetoric of the far right shifts and evolves but be under no illusion about their ultimate goal. We know a tree by its fruits.