I make mistakes. I have ocasionally regretted something I wrote. However I have never written anything motivated by hatred of another race or religion, yet I am too “extreme” for the mainstream media. But Melanie Phillips, darling of the Mail and the BBC, can write this kind of incitement to religious hatred:
Romney lost because, like Britain’s Conservative Party, the Republicans just don’t understand that America and the west are being consumed by a culture war. In their cowardice and moral confusion, they all attempt to appease the enemies within. And from without, the Islamic enemies of civilisation stand poised to occupy the void.
With the re-election of Obama, America now threatens to lead the west into a terrifying darkness.
Can somebody please show anything I have written which is anywhere near as ill-motivated? Or anything near as barking mad? Yet Phillips is mainstream and I am in some way understood to be “beyond the pale” of accepted opinion. How does this happen?
Islam is a religion. I know a great many extremely good Muslims. There are also some bad ones, just as there are good and bad Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists, you name it. What if I were to write:
“In their cowardice and moral confusion, they all attempt to appease the enemies within. And from without, the Jewish enemies of civilisation stand poised to occupy the void.”
Why is not everybody protected from hate speech? Unfortunately we don’t have an appropriate word as strong as “racist” to describe the kind of vile bigot Phillips is, Muslims not being a race. For Phillips to accuse Obama of conspiring with racial intolerance while promoting evil and hatred herself, is unspeakable.
Actually if Phillips is acceptable as a mainstream commentator, I am proud that I am not.
Forgive her, for she knows not what she does, Craig. Which is to unite critics of Israel around a commentary not provided by Ron Prosor. And I don’t think the guys in white coats are too far away.
“Actually if Phillips is acceptable as a mainstream commentator, I am proud that I am not.”
Amen to that.
Grocho Marx was right. Not a club I’d like to be a member of either.
Komodo
If she were just an old lady mumbling in the supermarket I would forgive her. But she gets given a massive audience by the Mail and the BBC to spread this hatred. It is serious.
She does seem to have completely lost it this time. I suppose if Mel was now axed by the BBC they would be accused of anti-semitism.
Melanie Phillips is barking mad about Obama, especially now.
I have been most disappointed, and angry about Barack until now.
His re-election without the usual help of Jewish Americans has finally gotten him out of their grip, explaining why Bibi is now saying that he is ready to go it alone when it comes to Iran. This is just big talk which could get him in the biggest trouble with Washington if he does so.
Obama’s re-election is a big setback for the military too which was counting, like the Clintons, on his being a one-term President, explaining why Hillary is now resigning.
In short, thank goodness that Hispanic Americans and remobilized African-Americans filled the void left by the departure of the Jewish ones.
I think that Obama is going to be a very different President now. Even the Chinese think so.
…It is serious.
It is. But it would be far more serious if they employed someone rational to say these things. Hell, only an antisemite would want that associated with his media outlet.
More seriously,she’s effectively a shock jock or a Glenn-Beck-alike. If she wasn’t good for ratings, she’d be dropped like a shot. And no doubt her contacts are good within the BBC – her husband does the legal stuff too.
To follow up your excellent point, I suggest submitting, anonymously, but with a contact address, a complete transcript of a lengthy passage of Mad Mel’s*, with “Jewish” (etc) substituted for “Muslim” (etc) throughout, to the Board of Jewish Deputies for consideration. Then publish their response with details of the deception.
*if you can bring yourself to touch the original
Hi Trowbridge H. Ford!
“Melanie Phillips is barking mad”. FTFY.
She’s a twit. On Radio 4’s Moral Maze about two progs ago re DRONES she was going potty ‘cos one participant dared to pose the question that DRONE KILLINGS POLICY AND OPERATIONAL DEVELOPMENTS ETC are never democatically discussed. “What’s not to like!” was the superficiality that she resorted to.
I don’t think your views are regarded as extreme, just deeply unwelcome to the establishment that would prefer not to have its dark heart exposed. Opposing the State’s complicity in torture is a mainstream view, but since you are a former ambassador with credibility and status you cannot be allowed to say it.
And Melanie Phillips is just one of those people who are paid to be bonkers.
Because human beings are apes first and thinking beings a long way second, it is much more important to most of them to conform to the consensus of the troop than to seek truth. They also have a deep, ingrained disposition to accept self-proclaimed leaders, because a troop of apes needs a strong, decisive, generally accepted leader – and those identify themselves by showing the characteristics of dominance.
Virtually all the dominant individuals in British and American culture have decided that Jews are collectively victims, and that they cannot therefore do anything bad. Israel is the Jewish state and therefore it cannot do anything bad.
Meanwhile, every troop needs enemies – apes belonging to foreign, outside troops who wish to steal territory and females, and kill males and children. Those are the ENEMY and everyone must unite against them. This decade, Muslims are the enemy of choice. “We have always been at war with Islam”.
Mind you, I have always felt that The Moral Maze is the BBC’s chief claim to fame. All things considered, it is the funniest long-running comedy show I have ever heard – beating the Goons quite comfortably. (Secombe never made quite as little sense as Phillips, for instance).
Week after week I listen to The Moral Maze, bubbling with quiet laughter as I hear the stupid, illogical things that collection of “intellectuals” say as they unsuccessfully try to reinvent the rules of debate, while exemplifying every logical fallacy in the book with superbly straight faces.
I think this is aimed at her USA readership, which is I hear big. I wonder what is behind it, getting the mindset of her readership ready for an event that maybe is about to happen ?. I think its called…Preparing the ground.
It’s infuriating that for years, this vicious harridan has been given a platform on (for example) The Moral Maze. Is there a Dave Spart type on, week after week, to provide some sort of balance? Of course not – a toxic presence like hers serves only to ratchet the BBC and the overall centre ground further and further to the right.
It was this miserable hysteric who helped that freak in Norway justify his terrorist mass murder. Take a few pages out of Mein Kampf, replace the references to “Jews” with, instead, references to “liberals” or “muslims”, and it would be hard to see what was coming from the new Reicht and which was from the original text.
Craig, not just muslims, but also jews or the so called “semites” cannot be considered to constitute a race. hence, it becomes rather difficult to classify any real or imaginary critique of muslims or jews as an incitement of racial hatred.
Youth offers no protection from stupidity. Young morons become old morons. I suspect that mel, although probably a borderline imbecile, (a qualification requirement for being “mainstream” nowdays) does it primarily for money. Whoever prints her outbursts must pay mel well for performing her extraordinary tricks, just like those entreprising prostitutes who demand and get more money for any “extras”.
Nah, Phillips is OK. She may despise Muslims (and immigrants and democrats) but what she really hates is cyclists. “I have lost count of the times I have been forced to fling myself out of the way of cyclists jumping red lights or failing to stop for pedestrians on crossings. Their anti-social and dangerous, not to say unlawful, behaviour is exceeded in awfulness only by their arrogance….”
How prescient is that? Never mind drones or potential nuclear oblivion: it’s those two-wheely tossers we need to be concerned about.
“Why is not everybody protected from hate speech?”
Absolutely agree – now do something about it when it appears among the commenters on this blog. Just because Phillips uses hate speech against Muslims it cannot be used as a justification for hate speech against Jews, Isrealis and Americans as frequently happens here.
You could take the alternative view that freedom of speech is more important – but that allows Phillips and commenters here to both continue with their “hate speech”. But I’m afraid that the two positions are not logically compatible.
Craig, you are certainly right about the seriousness of her propaganda and the collusion of the BBC. After the Israeli attack on the Mavi Marmara aid ship to Gaza on the 31st of May 2010, that murdered nine unarmed civilians, Melanie Phillips wrote in the Spectator:
“‘Peace convoy’? This was an Islamist terror ambush.
As the international community rushes to condemn Israel for the violence on board one of the ships in the Gaza flotilla, which left a reported 10 people dead and dozens injured, it is now obvious that the real purpose of this ‘armada of hate’ was not merely the further delegitimisation of Israel but something far worse.
Gaza’s markets are full of produce, thousands of tons of supplies are travelling into Gaza every week through the Israeli-controlled border crossings, and there is no starvation or humanitarian crisis. It was always obvious that the flotilla was not the humanitarian exercise it was said to be.
And now we can see that the real purpose of this invasion – backed by the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), a radical Islamic organization outlawed by Israel in 2008 for allegedly serving as a major component in Hamas’s global fund-raising machine – was to incite a violent uprising in the Middle East and across the Islamic world. As I write, reports are coming in of Arab rioting in Jerusalem.
The notion – uncritically swallowed by the lazy, ignorant and bigoted BBC and other western media – that the flotilla organisers are ‘peace activists’ is simply ludicrous.‘Peace activists’ these people most certainly are not.
And this flotilla was but the latest jihadi attack, deploying the Islamists’ signature strategy of violence and media manipulation. This was not merely a propaganda stunt, but a terrorist attack.”
The article was available online, but has since been removed. However the BBC immediately promoted it in a companion piece that supported the Israeli commandos and called the murdered activists “not peace activists but ‘peace militants’ out to damage Israel”. This BBC page:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/worldhaveyoursay/2010/06/are_israels_friends_to_blame_f.html
has the now dead link to the Spectator article promoted in the penultimate sentence. You might think that the BBC wouldn’t promote an article calling it ‘lazy, ignorant and bigoted’ in its approach to Israel, but in fact that’s part of the presentation – the extreme Zionist stance of the BBC is to be criticised as far too strongly biased the other way, so as to suggest that the reality is even more favourable to Israel than is being presented.
This anti=Muslim pro-Zionist propaganda campaign masquerading as mainstream reporting is not a conspiracy theory: it really is real, dangerous and criminally abusive. We’ll be seeing it intensify during the run-up to the destruction of Iran.
Alistair
Technicolour,
I put cyclists up on an old thread to prevent them getting in the way of the current one. You responded there, too. You obviously disagree with me in every possible way, and each separate disagreement must be conflated with all the rest in order to make me look as bad as possible, but out of courtesy to Craig, do it on the appropriate thread. Please.
I believe the term would be “islamophobia”. I used to dislike that word as a poorly formed neologism clumsily copied on “antisemitism”, but sadly it has gained much legitimacy in the last years.
Very respectfully, Craig:
Phillips is and has remained a respected member of the media establishment because she knows and abides by the standards of that particular cast. She has been raised in this cast, which gives her a recognisable background for her senior colleagues that open doors for her, but mostly an intimate knowledge what can and cannot be said without upsetting colleagues, powerful patrons and the public (not only ny not offending them, but also by conforming to their expectations). Her mastery of the form is what allows her to utter the sort of statements that you correctly denounce as extreme, without her reputation being tainted amongst the general public.
You, on the other hand, seem to have been raised to be an articulate technician for diplomatic circles, apt to be understood by literate people on complex subjects. This gives you a poor training for media guerrilla, as the interview with Joan Smith on “Newsnight” proves: you walked into what amounted to an ambush, allowed Smith to divert attention on the irrelevant question of naming somebody, and ended up being shouted down in public. In general, by insisting on one’s moral and intellectual superiority, one appears frustrated by the establishment, which is a shortcut to being labelled a crackpot.
Power today relies heavily on the aptitude to manipulate the media. Realistically, an efficient contest to the ruling class will have to use these media. It will need to fight the established discourse with its own weapons. I suppose that this is what you seen Julian Assange do when he relinquishes his long hair and leather jacket to don a suit and gradually come to terms with properly tie his tie. If anything, the monstrous nature of Phillips’ views should only reassure us on the power that we will harness then we achieve mastery of the media: if racism can be paraded openly under a thin veil of respectability, the defence of Human Rights should be easier to get across to the public.
I beg your pardon, Komodo? The issue is Melanie Phillips. I was quoting Melanie Phillips. I think it’s significant that her insane vituperation is directed at everything from cyclists to immigrants to Muslims. The root is the same.
Alastair, yes. Strangely, her rabid cyclist rant was removed too. In one way, that’s a good thing: in another, quite terrifying. I’m for free speech but not for free lies, especially on such a large platform. I too think that she should be held to account,for her malicious, fabricated justifications of power; her vicious inhumanity towards its victims.
Actually, size of platform has nothing to do with it.
Resident Dissident
Actually I have deleted quite a few racist comments – nearly all, as it happens, anti-semitic – in the last week. But I fear you are eliding “Disagreeing with Israel” and “Disagreeing with the United States” as antisemitic or anti-American.
I do not read all comments. As I said in a comment a few days ago, if a comment appears anyone believes to be racist, flag it up via the contact button at top of page and I’ll look at it for deletion or not.
In fact this is a winder problem than Phillips, of course. The Mail and others actively want their commentators to be extreme: will push them to be so, if they’re not already. It’s part of generating ‘interest’ eg winding up, and spreading fear among, their readership. Fear and frustration sell.
Your views are not extreme , they are truthful. When i read something that you have wrote , i am in no doubt that is what you really think . The media do not operate that way . The press are not independant , they are establishment . They tell us what they think we should know . Truth and independant thought do not come into it . Melanie Phillips is a nasty piece of work , and venom like this is not journalism . It’s propaganda .
I don’t see a problem with applying the term ‘racist’ to Melanie Phillips rants against Muslims.
While it is perfectly correct and rational to point out that Islam is a religion rather than a race, it is not the same interpretation of Islam that Ms Phillips holds.
Forget the fact that there are many white Muslims, particularly in the old Yugoslavia, and that the world’s most populous Muslim nation is Indonesia, these are not the Muslims she has in mind. She is talking of the Muslims that ‘look like’ Muslims in her own blinkered view.
When Islam is used as a code to refer to people of a specific region, i.e. the Middle East, Iran and Pakistan, then we shouldn’t defer to her code, but rather her intent.
Trowbridge H. Ford (9 Nov, 2012 – 2:12 pm)is wrong to claim that American Jews opposed Obama.
In fact, Obama won 70% of the Jewish vote – 4% less than in 2008, but still an overwhelming majority:
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2012/al-monitor/obama-jewish-vote.html
American Jews (like, also, British Jews) vote significantly to the left of other people/groups of similar socio-economic status.
American Jews overwhelmingly regard domestic issues as of greatest political importance to them. Israel comes very low down their list of concerns:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mj-rosenberg/american-jews-do-not-put-_b_1857035.html
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People like Sheldon Adelson, on the extreme US/Israeli right, although massive bankrollers of the Republicans (and Netanyahu), are highly unrepresentative of mainstream Jewish American opinion:
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/06/14/sheldon-adelson-willing-to-spend-100-million-to-beat-obama
Snickid 9 Nov, 2012 – 3:47 pm
“Obama won 70% of the Jewish vote”
Very interesting to know. It reinforces my belief that all the racism and nationalism stuff is largely contrived to create divisions. It’s an old game that we still fall for.
The battle isn’t christian v muslim. Nor scots v english. Etc etc.
It’s us against the ruling elites.
Phil (and others!) this is nice:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Buscando-alternativas-al-capitalismo/124452287651356#!/photo.php?fbid=355706281192621&set=a.124456744317577.24027.124452287651356&type=1&theater
@Technicolour
Sorry, can’t see it. I’ve no fecebook account.
@Phil: that is old news, but it is well worth repeating because it disproves both those whose advertise Israel as a crucial issue for Jews, and those who see Israel as the “tail that wags the dog” of the USA. In fact, Israel is more of a pet project gone wrong for a WASP demographic, much like Northern Ireland was to the UK, or Algeria was to France: it’s not that anybody from there has any real influence on you, or that you have seriously crucial interests there, but you’ve invested so much in it and you’ve grown so accustomed to it that you can’t see yourself dropping it. Until a good reason comes along, at which point those who counted on you being committed to the hilt get a nasty surprise…