For some left-wing men, the misogyny of the Islamic State is part of the appeal

gerontius

It’s always fun watching people being poked with a sharp stick, but that aside, I think Julie Burchill is just telling it as it is – pretty much.
Anyway, I’m glad I’m not a young man, given the company I would have to keep.

David Palmer

Do you know any young men? Maybe at 31 I’m moving out of that category but I, in my broad travels, have never heard any ‘left-wing men’ even start to apologise for any of the actions of Isis, or any other religious fundamentalist group. Where is any of this coming from? Any credible source? What examples are cited here? Galloway? Galloway is an incendiary joke to anyone on any side of the political spectrum. I’m a left-wing man, I socialize with left-wing men and I can only interpret this article as ‘right-wing’ propaganda.
- Fergus Pickering
  
  But who cares what you think? You’re a lefty and therefore a liar.Or perhaps you just didn’t notice, eh Jean-Jacques
  - Kenny Fraser
    
    thererfore you must be a rabid rightist pekinese.
    - Fergus Pickering
      
      That’s me
    - Kenny Fraser
      
      just keep your dis-temper in check and tuck into your bob martin’s, now go lay in your kennel,good boy!
    - Fergus Pickering
      
      I think you mean lie. I have no idea what Bob Martin’s is, being a cat man myself.
    - Kenny Fraser
      
      aha! so we have something in common,i myself have a great liking of felines having 2,a ragdoll male and a bengal female.
    - Fergus Pickering
      
      That’s nice.
    - Kenny Fraser
      
      chalk and cheese in character.and great interaction
- gerontius
  
  I work at a University thanks, so I meet more young men than you do.
  
  “have never heard any ‘left-wing men’ even start to apologise for any of
  the actions of Isis, or any other religious fundamentalist group.”
  
  They ain’t got time to apologise bro – they’re too busy doing it.
  - Kenny Fraser
    
    while you presumably are too busy practising the “hand jive”.
    - Airey Belvoir
      
      I do hope you’re not knocking masturbation, Kenny. As Woody Allen says: “It’s having sex with someone I love.”
  - you_kid
    
    Bro??? What next dawg? I will ringfence your assets hard™,
    you betcha!
    - gerontius
      
      “I will ringfence your assets hard”
      
      Sounds like your bursting through your leather knickers again.
- Overleaf
  
  I’m a left-wing man, I socialize with left-wing men and I can only interpret this article as ‘right-wing’ propaganda.
  
  Propaganda? Look up the definition. So inept of a term.
  
  “right-wing”? Typical ‘regressive’ Left one-dimensional thinking.
  - Kenny Fraser
    
    left-wing? typical regressional rightist knee -jerk reactionism.
- Overleaf
  
  Well, the ‘regressive’ Left worships Hamas and Hezbollah, which are just a shade better than IS. They all subscribe to Sharia, misogyny, racism, antisemitism, and fascism. So how can you say that the postcolonial Left doesn’t favor IS? Except for slavery, what does IS do that Hamas does not?
- disqus_KdiRmsUO4U
  
  Ms Birchill is confused about something .
  Possibly the faiure of the left wing in general to recognise what a dangerous philosophy Islam is ?
  
  Lots of men of all political persuasions prefer their women prone some of the time.
  Some women even say gasp horror that they like being prone.
  Some women even say they like being dressed head to toe in black.
  
  It seems to me there is plenty to criticise trendy lefties for without ‘making things up’
  
  What’s to be done with the large number of men who like to be subservient to women and maybe adopt the position of our canine friends and at that moment be passive in a feminine way ?
  Don’t shout at me…it happens.
  - Richsaint
    
    …what?
    - disqus_KdiRmsUO4U
      
      My post makes complete sense.
      
      Its about ‘lefties’ underestimating the dangers of Islam (explicity stated)
      and
      The spectrum of prefered sexual activity being so wide, even amongst trendy lefties, as to make Burchill’s POV ridiculous.
      
      gerrit ?
- altsegel
  
  Burchill is quite right – read the leftward press and watch question time – it is all there
- Overleaf
  
  Lol, just see how John Rees, the Marxist socialist, went on stage with CAGE Begg, and declared that Jihadi John is right in sawing heads off, because JJ was insulted by MI5 when they asked him why he wanted to go to Somalia. Apologia for decapitating by the Left.
Kenny Fraser

its always fun watching people being poked with a sharp stick is it? well, i wouldnt mind poking ian duncan smith with a sharp stick,or george osborne,but in the interests of civilised decency i must refrain from inflicting cruelty upon dumb stupid creatures.
- gerontius
  
  It’s a matter of personal taste I suppose. I don’t care about Duncan Smith or Osborne and my current choice would be Thornberry and Miliband.
  The real difference between you and me though, is that I really would poke them, and poke them very hard. You see Frank, I’m quite relaxed about inflicting pain when necessary, particularly on latte sippers.
  - disqus_KdiRmsUO4U
    
    I like to listen to Ian duncan smith’s voice.
    He is trying to re balance a totally out of control welfare system.
    - Kenny Fraser
      
      perhaps you should try listening to more factual fantazising like the 1930’s media outpourings of josef goebbells.
    - disqus_KdiRmsUO4U
      
      Das ist etwas, ich bin sicher, Sie noch nie getan haben .
      
      Warum ?
      Weil Sie nicht Deutsh sprechen konnen
      
      .Sie konnen, wie einen extremsten ‘leftie twerp’ sprechen.
    - Kenny Fraser
      
      heymin ya muckle gret neep,awa an bile yer heed mon,ye rabid right- wing daschund.
    - disqus_KdiRmsUO4U
      
      hehehehe
      up yer keelt yer trendy wendy thistle ‘ed.
    - Kenny Fraser
      
      nicht oft, Sie haben Recht (mit Ausnahme politischer natürlich), aber Sie sind WIEDER FALSCH! .aber das ist nicht mehr als würde ich von einer Stechschritt goon erwarten, zweifellos möchten Sie binden, die mit dir nicht einverstanden mit Pianodraht , oder senden Sie sie “durch den Schornstein” wie deine rechte Helden.
    - disqus_KdiRmsUO4U
      
      You appear to be quite irrational : even demented
      
      First you see fewer facts in Ian Duncan Smith’s speeches than those of Goeballs. No not Ed Balls …Goeballs.
      
      Then your last post , in German, is I would say a libel.
      It clearly reveals an unstable mind.
      
      adding : stating that you are a ‘leftie twerp’ is probably the most accurate assessment ever made on the Spectator forum.
      Possibly you are a UAF thug too.
      Who knows ?
    - Kenny Fraser
      
      YOU posted in german,either because its your native language,or you are trying to be a smartarse,therefore i responded in german,your irrational comment illustrates the fact that it is YOU who is the deluded one old boy. too much listening to the lunatic ravings of your “hero” herr hitler perhaps?
    - disqus_KdiRmsUO4U
      
      Listen :WHY you posted in German is totally irrelevant
      It is what YOU SAID in German that is the issue.
      
      You posted a LIBEL
      You appear to be too stupid to grasp that.
      
      If our legal system were cheaper/simpler to use i would seriously consider taking action against you.
      I may consider it anyway.
      It all depends on the costs involved.
      I take it you are aware of the current disquiet being expressed about extremist/abusive posts being made on the net ?
      
      i have a copy of your post on my PC so it is too late for you to try and delete it from this website.
      i would like a moderator on this site to view what you posted.
    - CHARLES KACPERUK
      
      WAS???
    - Hagen vanTronje
      
      “”perhaps you should try listening to more factual fantazising like the 1930’s media outpourings of josef goebbells
      
      ‘Her Doktor Goebbels’, to the likes of you !
  - Kenny Fraser
    
    who is frank? surely thats not my name! oops sorry,i wont call your shirley if you dont call me frank. lol!
    - gerontius
      
      who is frank?
      Gawd knows.
  - Lamia
    
    [reply in wrong place]
- Rintintin
  
  Ah…you’re displaying your wonderful sense of empathy again…..(guffaw!)..
  - Kenny Fraser
    
    get your master to take you out for walkies,then you can squat and get rid of the crap your so full of on some wasteground.,and maybe cock your leg against a convenient lampost
- Lamia
  
  “Must. Change. The. Subject. From. Mass-murdering. Slaving. Raping. Terrorists. To. Ian. Duncan. Smith…”
  
  Contemptible. You’ve posted repeatedly on this thread and every time avoided the subject of the article.

evad666

I had noticed the illiberal left supporters of Islamism were strangely quiet on this.

SiMoebus

“Illiberal left?” Whatever, that is. People of different political strips understand that people who are Muslim vary in customs and practice. Just like any other group they can’t be placed in one box. When we attempt to do it with women it is call misogyny.

Damaris Tighe

Spot on Julie. I’m convinced that many leftists have rabid, knee-jerk reactions to anything a centre right person might say, however mild, because they harbour repressed far right feelings themselves & so must prove – as much to themselves as to others – how politically correct they ‘really’ are.

anotherjoeblogs

I lived in Islington in the 80s and we had to use purple bin liners to put our rubbish in because putting rubbish in black bin liners was racist. I mean what kind of sick mind looks at a black bin liner full of rubbish and makes a link to race ?? Of course asking that question to ‘ the enforcers ‘ would cause them to burst into a spasm and outbursts that it was I who was racist and some kind of white supremacist.
- Damaris Tighe
  
  Exactly.
- pointlesswasteoftime
  
  When I lived in USA, it was frowned upon to ask if someone wanted coffee “white or black”…. it was “with or without cream”. IKt was bloody silly.
  - Richard Baranov
    
    No its was not silly. What is silly is that you would think an expression localized to Britain should be identical in the U.S. The British expression is simply not used and any frowning would be because an American hasn’t any idea of what you are referring to. Your attitude is called ‘parochialism’. It’s a form of ignorance.
    By the same token I could complain about your ‘silly’ use of ‘pavement’ for sidewalk. I mean really, can’t the English get that right?
    - red2black
      
      One thing the English always get right is the position of the Union Jack above those of any or all of the colonies. (tee hee)
    - Richard Baranov
      
      Well that exempts America, doesn’t it? Since we are practically a colony of it.
    - red2black
      
      It does sometimes seem like a parental battle for custody between Uncle Sam and Europa.
    - Richard Baranov
      
      There is an expression: Americans are the English left to their own devices.” Because there was little government interference until recently in peoples lives. When you look around you in America you realize that these achievements are mostly because of Britain’s contribution to the make up and creation of America. The U.S.A. is what the English can do if left unfettered, and, contrary to what people like to think, the American and English are as close in thought and deed as brothers of the same parents. It is, honestly, the shear ignorance about America on the part of English people that gets me, and the hostility. It is not a hostility shared by Americans toward the English, they rather prefer us to anyone else, even the Canadians. And, if we have to be a colony I would much rather the Americans who share our ideas, and, I have to say, take them far more seriously than we do, than be a colony of Europe. Europeans have little in common with us in terms of values or an understanding of Democracy or freedom of the individual, and , in the long run, I think Europe means us ill.
    - red2black
      
      No criticism intended. I’ve only ever spoken at length to one American living in England – a guy from Ohio who was nonplussed by the hostility you mention.
    - Tilly
      
      I think America forgets that this small ancient
      country was here first whilst she was undiscovered rubble.And maybe some countries
      in the New World are too big for their boots.
      Also, Language. Americans speak English with
      a colonial accent, there is no such language as
      ‘American’ apart from that I quite like some
      Americans.
    - Richard Baranov
      
      Kindly read what I wrote below. You obviously have no idea of America or Americans other than your caricature which doesn’t correspond to reality at all.
      
      As for the American accent it is derived from Southern English and, in fact, it may surprise you to know that some American will actually speak with what would appear to you to be an English accent. Also, until very recently, historically speaking the English regarded American English as superior, look it up. So your ideas of America and your ideas of being superior because English are rather misplaced.
      
      We, the English, have become weak and effete compared to Americans. To hold ourselves up as superior is just plain embarrassing. I mean that literally. Try explaining to a bewildered American about what has happened to us. They find it distressing and have sympathy, it would be nice if we reciprocated in that sympathy instead of acting like small minded sh&ts.
    - Catherine Waterman
      
      “some American will actually speak with what would appear to you to be an English accent.”
      
      My own family roots are Irish, County Cork. My mother’s accent, when she first came to London in the early 1930s, was often mistaken for American.
      
      As you know, the Irish flocked to America to escape the hardships of their homeland, especially during the potato famine. Even though I can’t hear much American in a County Cork accent, I’ve always thought that certain Northern Irish accents sound rather American.
      
      Mind you, I don’t think I’ve ever heard an American accent which sounds English to my ears. Which part of the States to you mean? For some reason I can hear Lloyd Grossman talking in my mind’s ear. He sounds like an American attempting to imitate a posh English accent! Apparently, it’s not an affected accent. I can’t remember where he was born, but his accent certainly stands out from the crowd…but we’ve digressed from the topic of this thread!
    - Catherine Waterman
      
      “some American will actually speak with what would appear to you to be an English accent.”
      
      My own family roots are Irish, County Cork. My mother’s accent, when she first came to London in the early 1930s, was often mistaken for American.
      
      As you know, the Irish flocked to America to escape the hardships of their homeland, especially during the potato famine. Even though I can’t hear much American in a County Cork accent, I’ve always thought that certain Northern Irish accents sound rather American.
      
      Mind you, I don’t think I’ve ever heard an American accent which sounds English to my ears. Which part of the States to you mean? For some reason I can hear Lloyd Grossman talking in my mind’s ear. He sounds like an American attempting to imitate a posh English accent! Apparently, it’s not an affected accent. I can’t remember where he was born, but his accent certainly stands out from the crowd…but we’ve digressed from the topic of this thread!
    - Richard Baranov
      
      I used to know a very charming old gentleman who had a distinct English accent, it sounded rather like a local English accent from the South. Eventfully, I asked, where he was from in England because his accent puzzled me. He told me he had never been out of the U.S.A. His accent was from outside Salem, Massachusetts. Which is, as you know, one of the oldest English colonies in America.
      Grossmans accent is not an affectation its quite real.
      
      I do agree with you, one does tend to think that Irish had something to do with the American accent. Interestingly, perhaps, the thing that sounds most Irish, the American rolled ‘r’ is originally from the west country, Somerset and around there, but, in England, you no longer hear it. I understand that pronunciation of ‘R’ is now unique to America and, if you aren’t born into it its almost impossible to get it right. In 40 years I was always pegged as English because the ‘R’ sound never materialized. I do however pronounce my ‘T’s’ as a sort of ‘D’.
    - red2black
      
      “Well are ya gonna pull those pistols or whistle ‘Dixie’?”
      “You gotta ask yourself a question… Do you feel lucky?”
      “Dyin’ ain’t no way to make a livin’…”
      Great stuff.
    - Richard Baranov
      
      Thank you, so you perhaps realize why it T’s me off. It is incredibly tiresome this false sense of superiority on the part of the English. It is, just as is Tilly’s rejoinder, an incredibly poor view of America born out of an ignorance of American history. And, since the Americans who she depicts as playing cowboys and Indians, were, to a large extent first generation Englishmen with English accents, despite the movies, she is really denigrating the English. She along with others, should think about that. We are in fact in the context of America, ignoring our own history as a people who created marvellous things throughout the world. And, as a result, we should look on America as an achievement that we, the English, should be proud of, not denigrate.
    - Tom M
      
      Apoligies for the instrusion I was enjoying all of that.
      However,
      “….It is incredibly tiresome this false sense of superiority on the part of the English…..”
      I can assure you this trait is not restricted to the English. I live in France and if you need a lesson in superiority come here.
      As an aside pronouncing a “T” like a “D” is a Scottish affectation for posh speaking. Think Scodland. Listen to the up and coming Scottish wanabees. As a Scot it irritates the life out of me.
      I used to work a lot with Americans and Germans. I had great respect for the work ethic and engineering expertise of both. I always considered the Germans were like the Americans but without their humour.
    - Richard Baranov
      
      Is that why Fraser Nelson of this mag. always sounds as if he has a slight cold? It is an odd sounding accent I must say, almost as if he can’t make his mind up about speaking English as an Englishman. And, if Fraser reads this. No insult intended Fraser, its simply how your accent sounds to me.
      As for the French, I believe you. I go often but to see a Chilean friend, an exile from the days of Pinochet, a marine biologist who on having done a survey of the fishing grounds was to join the fishes for giving the wrong but truthful answer – over fished – what an appalling man that was! I digress, but anyway, I have almost no interaction with the French when I go because she lives out in the countryside near Rochelle. But everyone complains about them, including her,
    - Michele Keighley
      
      “I digress, but anyway” – you’ve been digressing for quite some time. Now what is your opinion of the blasted article? Which is, if I am not much mistaken, why most of us actually came onto this site, not to read some side tracked self opinionated guff about the superiority of the Americans.
    - Tom M
      
      Small world. I live in the countryside near La Rochelle.
    - Fergus Pickering
      
      My sense of superiority is not in any way false. I thank God every day that I was born English. Good God, I might have been French.O)r a goose-stepping Kraut.
    - jjjj
      
      Not sure about ‘The USA is what the English people can do if left unfettered’ but space is too short to elaborate. One difference: The sheer geographical difference i.e. size. And you are not telling us that you want the mass immigration to resemble what the US went through, are you? This is linked to geography too.
    - Richard Baranov
      
      I didn’t say anything about immigration that I’m aware of. But as far as immigration into Britain is concerned, as a short hand answer, I vote UKIP.
      But, sorry, I’m not sure what you are thinking when you say ‘The shear geographical difference’ Could you elaborate please?
    - jjjj
      
      I’m saying that a major factor in the US’s success was mass immigration in the previous 2 centuries. We cannot emulate this.
      
      I actually wrote ‘sheer’ not ‘shear’ but in any case, I wrote that the size the the US, a continent, also played a part in its success.
    - Jean de Valette
      
      I think you’ll find that Britain is now more a colony of Qatar than of the United States.
    - Richard Baranov
      
      So, unfortunately, true.
    - Tilly
      
      Absolutely correct.Those little colonies especially big loud America were playing cowboys and indians and good knows what else. Whilst we were already more then civilised.
      The planet is overcrowded maybe some countries should have been left undiscovered,
      their hardly grateful 🙂
    - red2black
      
      You’ve come very close to spoiling a bit of harmless fun.
    - Tilly
      
      Its my devilishly dark humour, always close to
      the edge.
    - Fergus Pickering
      
      Their what?
    - pointlesswasteoftime
      
      It was silly because when I asked why I got the disapproving looks for asking “black or white”, people explained to me that it had racist connotations. My reply was that I got that if you asked the same question about someone’s partner/employee/friend, but I didn’t see how it applied to coffee. You don’t have to be quite so defensive.
    - Richard Baranov
      
      I do have to be defensive when you are distorting a simple matter of fact. That the request for milk in one’s coffee is asked by using a different expression in England than in the U.S. it’s simply a matter of linguistic use in two different countries.
      
      And, I find your defence that it had something to do with race highly dubious. You may want to pull that one over on people who have not lived in America but you can’t pull it on someone who has spent most of there life there. 99.9% of Americans would know exactly what you meant.
    - pointlesswasteoftime
      
      What is it with you that you cannot accept one person reporting their experience? Just because it shows a silly aspect of some Americans’ approach? If you wan to call me a liar, just say so, but I ain’t. And you can’t have it both ways: “99.9% of Americans would know exactly what you meant.” vs “The British expression is simply not used and any frowning would be because an American hasn’t any idea of what you are referring to.” That, sweetie, is a form of incoherence.
    - Richard Baranov
      
      It is nothing of the sort, I’m simply pointing out that is a more likely explanation than the one you are trying to peddle which is highly dubious in the extreme. And, what you say in no way alters the fact that your attitude is parochial.
    - Christian
      
      How dare they be parochial! Hang the bastard! Why, it’s not as if most people take their expressions and ways with them is it? You intolerant fucking clown
    - Tilly
      
      You just wait untill the resident mouthy self-obsessed yankee turns up.Most of the world from Europe to China–and the Middle East hate
      America and she wonders why.
      The person you are speaking to shows why, utter arrogance. Oh listen to me I’m Americano.
    - Richard Baranov
      
      The thing is I’m English, so your protest is entirely misplaced.
    - Tilly
      
      I wasn’t speaking of you when I said resident self- obsessed
      yankee, someone else. At least your interesting.
    - Richard Baranov
      
      Thank you, I think! ‘Interesting’ can have several connotations. Including, and I rather like the expression: “May you live in interesting times.”
    - Linda Miller
      
      You interest me, strangely.
    - gerontius
      
      Why don’t you name this person?
    - Guest
      
      Because I am not malicious, bonkers, evil and everything else said of me sinse I ARRIVED HERE ONLY 1 MONTH AGO. I’ve been treated badly by a few. I don’t name people like that but
      have the right to be annoyed and they know who
      they are. So get back into your cage, I am only
      half your size and age.
    - Wiggi
      
      Richard here you go again, Baranov is possibly Russian you say you have lived all your life in the USA and now your English! Did you not gather anything and adopt them on your journey? Speech, action , thinking and ideas?
    - Richard Baranov
      
      Your question is ambiguous. What in heavens name are you asking? My name is by adoption to suit the person I married who wanted to keep her name going. Simple as that. And I do not say that I lived all my life in the U.S.A.. Pay attention to what you read.
    - Richard Baranov
      
      By the way, as a matter of curiosity, who is the Yankee, I take it he is from New England?
    - Richard Baranov
      
      Thank you for demonstrating my point.
    - Christian
      
      You’ve demonstrated what a pretentious arrogant snob you are
    - Richard Baranov
      
      On the contrary. All I expect from people is that they write the truth. This started by my challenging a lie. If you think that is pretentious or arrogant then you need to learn what those words actually mean. I know ‘pointless’ is lying and several others on this thread know it to be so also, that is malicious.
    - pointlesswasteoftime
      
      I lived in USA for three years, developed close relationships with people I met there who regularly come to stay and I’m anti-American?
      
      Just because I can see aspects of American society that are silly or incomprehensible and because I loathe aspects of its politics does not make me anti-American any more than my personal dislike of my own British government or aspects of my compatriots’ behaviour or attitudesmakes me anti-British.
      
      What I am is anti-stupid…. but that is, of course, a subjective description, isn’t it?
    - Richard Baranov
      
      Simply say that since it is the case that you lived there, you have every right to criticize. So I wouldn’t be so out of order that I would criticize your experiences, they would be valid for you, obviously. I may not agree but that is another thing. Experience counts and, that is the point, is it not? The other stuff, the constant carping about spelling, speaking, and blah, blah , blah, is simply ignorance and, I think, malicious. It also has real consequences as I point out above and Red points out with his friend from Ohio. Polluting discourse with ignorance, I think you will agree, is hardly commendable.
    - pointlesswasteoftime
      
      Yes, I agree, ignorance should be challenged.
      
      And I’m glad that you accept that my position in this case is not based on ignorance, but personal experience.
    - edithgrove
      
      well, unless you want to appear quaint there is no reason to ask for milk in this way, not after the first few days anyway. Did you also ask for fags or rubbers and wonder why you got funny looks? .
    - pointlesswasteoftime
      
      Yes, I am really that stupid that I did not change my speech to reflect local customs. I am talking about the first few times I used the phrase before I got used to asking “with or without cream”. I would never ask for rubbers because I would make it clear I want an eraser or a condom and fag wouldn’t come into it because I’m culturally aware enough to know what fag means in America – and I don’t smoke anyway. Your making a specious point, trying to be clever and failing.
    - balance_and_reason
      
      try being posh
    - colchar
      
      In all fairness, Americans often bring this stuff on themselves. In this case you didn’t, and you are entirely correct about the coffee thing, but the fact remains that many Americans spoil it for the rest of them.
    - Rocksy
      
      I can’t remember being asked how I want my coffee. I simply ask for coffee and I’m served cream or milk and sugar so that I can fix it myself. I’ve lived on both sides of the Atlantic.
      As for your irritation about anti Americanism…I agree. There is a petty jealousy at work here. I’ve witnessed it frequently and it’s always from left leaning twits.
    - colchar
      
      I noticed him say 99.9% would know what you meant and assumed it was a typo, that he had meant to say they wouldn’t know what you meant. If you said you wanted your coffee white here in Canada the server would look at you as if you were an idiot because that expression simply is NOT used over here. Even my very Scottish parents do not use it.
    - pointlesswasteoftime
      
      I am sorry, but I respond to what is written, not what I think what might have been intended to have been written.
    - Fergus Pickering
      
      And they couldn’t work it out? Are they thick or something?
    - Kenny Fraser
      
      just try going up to an american and as if they know where you can get some fags cheap! lol! the look of surprised horror on their faces is hilarious.
    - global city
      
      he wasn’t saying that they didn’t understand him, he was relating how some idiots say it is racist.
    - Richard Baranov
      
      Well no they don’t, not in America. To ask for black or white coffee is a perfectly standard request. In fact it is the regular way one would ask for the drink regardless of the persons color who happens to be serving you.
    - colchar
      
      As a Canuck, I agree with you. The claims being made are ridiculous.
    - Richard Baranov
      
      Quite so. In a restaurant you are asked, if ordering coffee: “Would you like cream with that?” Answer: “No thanks I take it black.” Diners do not drop their cutlery, conversation does not cease in shocked silence because a racist remark has been made. No one notices because to ask for your coffee, black or white, has no racist connotations at all.
    - Michele Keighley
      
      All of which is really, really important – especially as it avoids you having to consider the actual article.
    - Richard Baranov
      
      No, read the article. But evidently you think its OK for people to slag off other people out of complete ignorance. To my mind that is not proper by any decent persons criteria. It is a different issue and, besides, I wasn’t responding to the article. I was responding to a lie that along with other malicious talk ends up in innocent people being hurt. Perhaps you think that’s fine, I don’t.
    - Richard Baranov
      
      The article is a puff piece. I read it prior to posting and had nothing to say on it. Did you actually learn anything from it?
      For that sort of stuff I read the middle eastern papers and more useful sources by people who really have some idea of what is going on there.
    - Wiggi
      
      Oh dear Richard, You haven’t been around much have you.
      Not everything revolves around the USA, love it as I do! Thank God there is differences in the culture speech and the way we see things! Anyone who has such a narrow outlook shows what you accused someone earlier…Ignorance!
    - Richard Baranov
      
      You really are quite an ignorant person, aren’t you. I was talking about the gratuitous lies and casual slanders against people with American accents in Britain. Perhaps if you were to go abroad and be attacked simply because you are speaking English English. you would perhaps realize that such behaviour is unacceptable . It doesn’t happen occasionally, you know, it happens often. Further if you shift yourself you can read my bio on discus. I have done plenty, thank you, far more than most and certainly have a greater awareness of he big ide world than you evidently do.
    - Fergus Pickering
      
      Nothing is simply a matter of linguistic use. What would yousay about nigger brown sweaters.
    - colchar
      
      Baloney, I am calling BS on that. You can try to claim that but I live in North America and black coffee is ALWAYS referred to as black. As for the white part of that, see my lengthier reply above.
    - pointlesswasteoftime
      
      Again, if you want to call me a liar. Do so. But I ain’t. Again.
      
      I may need to say no more than I was living in Northern California at the time when political correctness (I had not even heard of the term) was taking its baby steps.
      
      Canada is different to Northern California.
    - ExiledOnMainStreet
      
      What sort of weirdos were you associating with in America? I’m an American, I say “black coffee” all the time, and never once have I been called on it.
    - Grace Ironwood
      
      American Blacks that I talk to have largely retired the expression African American in favour of Blacks or Black Americans. Keep up ! 🙂
      
      I think Carmichael said women’s position was under men, not “prone”. But good article.
      
      Hostility is unsurprising given the absurd authoritarianism of much of today’s official feminism.
      
      Feminism has rather lost its way – policing sentences and silly shirts, free pass to genital mutiliation and extremist subordination.
    - Richard Baranov
      
      Actually, where I lived, Berkeley, California, mostly. Blacks referred to themselves and each other with a word beginning with N, I can’t say it because the Spectator website would go into meltdown, the queen would die, and my computer would explode in faux outrage
    - Fergus Pickering
      
      Nope, Grace. Prone was what the black bastard said.
    - Wiggi
      
      We were calling pavements that before the USA was born!
      parochialism is also the name Britain put in the Dictionary that came about during our vast Empire, well after the Boston Tea Party.
    - Richard Baranov
      
      Sorry, but you need to read a history of the English language, it will reveal to you just how ignorant you are on the evolution of the language. You will find that many so called Americanisms are British English that were retained in America and lost in England. ‘Fall’ for autumn is just one example. As for ‘sidewalk’, it is an improvement on British English as are several American expressions because they clarify what is ambiguous in British English. Pavement is just one example. One doesn’t just walk on the pavement, to do so one could just as well walk in the middle of the street, that is still pavement. Sidewalk is more precise. Same goes for ‘desert, sweet, and, candy’. Which define three different things that are all lumped under ‘sweet’ in British English. To pretend that British English is superior is to simply betray an ignorance of the evolution of the language. There is no superiority to be had in British English or American English, for that matter the other varieties of English are equally valid. It is plain stupidity based on an ignorance of the English language and its evolution that makes people think that one variety of English is superior overall.
    - Wiggi
      
      Do you make it up as you go along? You are answering questions that I never asked or made comment on! I am amazed at your total self analysis of the subject that you appear to know little of. I never ever insinuated that English was superior, ever and cannot even see how you got there!
      It seems you enjoy making enemies where they do not exist.
      Reading some of your stuff! And it is Stuff! Everyone doesn’t seem to warm to you! The trouble I think many Americans are so insular. Mainly because they live in a different World than Europe. I must point out at this stage I do not think Europe is any better either! On my visits to the US I find I like the people immensely, They are polite and caring, though I do not think I met anyone there as bigoted as you appear to be. You are not an authority and you must realise people have their own views on many things.
    - Richard Baranov
      
      Excuse me! I do believe it was you who was being abuse if in the first place. And you are still trotting out stereotypes in this reply, pretty pathetic. What is more important is that you are not addressing my original point. Gratuitous attacks brought about by a venomous attitude to Americans on the part of certain sections of British society.
      I was not in England when I read about how appalling English behaviour was toward the American Ambassador on Question Time, right after 9/11. The man was, apparently almost reduced to tears. It is this virulent anti-Americanism that I was protesting because it started out with someone posting a lie to which I responded. Further you should note that at least three other people who have proper experience of America, agree with my points. Perhaps, what is a problem here, is your refusal to see that on this issue, the casual, drip, drip of anti-Americanism causes harm. That is my central point, while you quibble. A typically English thing to do when you have no decent defence against my central point.
    - Richard Baranov
      
      A P.S. about what I’m talking about: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4881474.stm If you think that amusing…
    - Wiggi
      
      I watch the ‘Points of view” It has grown from a truly good debatable show int one of complete dross! I did see the one in question but I cannot for the life of me remember the US Ambassador being brought to tears of anything said by the panel or the public but we in the UK are allowed Free speech, yes even in public! Sometimes it is offensive! I think the whole of Britain could not believe what had happened and to why, things are still going from bad to bad.
      I visited the site in New York and saw all the cards and photo’s as a matter of respect said a prayer.
      The British people have been involved in almost every conflict together in the World with the US with the exception of Vietnam. The British debt created by the 2nd WW was funded by the US and we have long since paid that off! How you can come up with such absolute nonsense in your views on Britain I fail to understand. The Tea Party is over and ended many years ago! It seem the UK is not the only Country in the World that has bigots pointing fingers, the US has them too! To earn respect you have to give it!
      I have heard enough from you and this conversation is over!
    - pointlesswasteoftime
      
      It was not a lie, you idiot. How many more times do I have to tell you? I WAS THERE. IT WAS SAID TO ME. Why do you keep making that accusation, which earlier in this thread you backtracked on? You have already accepted upthread it was my experience but now you’re going back to that cr4p again. It’s this apparent enthusiasm to disbelieve others that shows Americans in a bad light.
    - Stanley Broadbent
      
      Hey Richard, take a step back. Isn’t ‘Parochial’ the middle name of most Americans? Is it not the case that less than 49% have ever left the US. Don’t more than 30% believe Europe is a country? I could go on and concentrate a lot more on the US, but I might be considered a little parochial in my thinking.
    - Richard Baranov
      
      There is no reason for most Americans to leave America, it is a ridiculous point. It take as long to fly from Heathrow to New York as it does From San Francisco to New York. It is a continent as well as being a country and the diversity is as great as it is in Europe, contrary to what most Europeans think it is far from being a monoculture.
      
      With the 30%. That is derived from a confusion because Americans are constantly being told that the EEC is a sort of united states. Americans who suffer from that confusion are quite aware of countries in Europe but because of the EEC have it muddled mainly due to that agenda being pushed in the U.S.
      This is what the ‘Economist’ has to say on the issue “.. the European Union is not clearly referenced as an economic and political and social organization of “independent” self-governing nations, many with longer histories of self-government than the U.S.A. ” Why the EEC agenda is being pushed in the U.S. I don’t know, but it certainly confuses people. In general Americans are no more better or worst informed than Europeans, But the ‘dumb American’ depiction salves the wounds of Europe, no longer top dog. On the whole I think you will find the average New Yorker or San Franciscan informed as well, if not better, than the average Englishman. But anyone can play that game of who is more of a dimwit. Look at some of the remarks about the world by English people if you want to be embarrassed. Very disingenuous to cherry pick.
    - Fergus Pickering
      
      You mean they wouldn’t know what a black coffee was? Ae you being serious?
  - global city
    
    you miss the point, it is a sinister imposition….to make you talk as they demand…which will one day turn into control of the way you think.
    - pointlesswasteoftime
      
      Don’t worry, I reverted as soon as I got home…. You know the saying “When in Rome…” I know a lot of people don’t believe that, but if you’re living somewhere for three years, adopting the local idioms makes communication and socialising a lot easier.
- ADW
  
  Purple being the colour associated with Lesbianism, I trust you will be punished as you deserve for that act of homophobia to which you have just pleaded guilty.
  - red2black
    
    Purple associated with Lesbianism? Are UKIP aware of this? (tee hee) And what about Yellow?
    - Adrian Morgan
      
      Something to do with “golden showers”? (runs and hides)
    - red2black
      
      ‘Taking the piss’ in more ways than one? (ho ho)
  - Richard Baranov
    
    To be fair, UKIP is, I think, the only party that has had a transgendered MEP. (Nikki Sinclaire), am I correct on that? Although she does look like the back end of a bus!
    
    What is this transgendered thing anyway. It sounds like an odd airline!
- post_x_it
  
  “I lived in Islington in the 80s”… sorry mate… you’re tainted, soiled even…
  - anotherjoeblogs
    
    Na, kept away from the mental contamination – lived in a bubble, or more precisely a purple bin liner.
- jjjj
  
  I can well believe you. What about the ‘Golden Shred’ and the nursery rhyme storms in a teacup?
  - anotherjoeblogs
    
    Yeah the collective noun for a group of lefties must be a baa baa of rainbow sheep.
- ogunsiron
  
  Thanks for reminding us that the “social justice warrior” infestation that we’re experiencing right now (in north-america at least) is really nothing new.
Catherine Waterman

I agree. It also works the other way around – if a rightist (is there such a word?!) hears an opinion from someone they regard as ‘leftist’ they will stop listening, even when there is some agreement over certain points. There’s always a blind spot if we try to label our beliefs. A truly open-minded person may not even exist.
Kenny Fraser

oh dear! save us all from self appointed sedentary psychologists who dobtles if they have any certificates or diplomas ,have bought them from the university of basutoland..lol!
- Damaris Tighe
  
  Oh dear. How wrong can you be. I have a master’s degree in psychoanalytic studies from Univ of London (to be exact from Univ Coll London which I believe is near the top of the world univ list). I’m also a qualified therapist.
  - Kenny Fraser
    
    did you buy that off e-bay? or some other online site? i would have presumed you would be a qualified animal trapper,as you seem to possess the required qualities for a master baiter. lol!

Scradje

Excellent piece Julie. Is the alliance between the hard left and the islamo-fascists something that happened by accident or was there at some point a tactical meeting of minds? Equally bizarre is the alliance between the British far right and elements of the far left to extol the virtues of Putin’s thug rule. The ‘useful idiots’ used to be exclusively of the left. Not any more.

Tim Hall

Brilliant, entertaining and not light-years from the truth.

venyanamore

WHAT FANTASTIC WRITING

Noa

One part of the long march, the one through the doctrine of the Nicene creed, a fundamental pillar of Christianity, nears it’s end. And the Church of England, at the behest of the Downing St gerbil, ‘get’s with the programme’.

So the question now arises, whither (or perhaps wither?) next for the socialist working doyennes of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Fresh from their successes in putting “Toilet Seats Down!” in the closets of every Bishops Palace, and the contradictory but ideologically consistent “Toilet Seats UP!” in every Bakery, what challenges await the now?
May I suggest that the next campaign for this courageous scourge of the bigoted should be to tackle a real and growing bastion of xenophobia, racial and sexual hatred?
Let them go into the mosques, demanding celebration of diversity and he appointment of women imams, the cessation of all cliterodectomies, (or the castration of the male faithful, and the full application of homosexual , trans and cis gender rights forthwith. Non compliance to be followed by the immediate closure of any offending mosque.
It is well past the time that we use this ‘mechanism of rights’ devised by Blair and implemented by Cameron to ruthlessly stamp out the pre-medieval ignorance, bigotry and racism which is currently permitted to flourish in these places, spreading a misery and intolerance imported from the worst helloes of the uncivilised world.
- you_kid
  
  Wait a minute, Noa … every weekend down in the nation’s nightclubs with the kids, there are no toilet seats. Fully consentual activity goes on in the rest rooms of those clubs not fit for gentlemen. Or perhaps there is no longer any such thing as a gentlemen and we will just have to come to accept that fact.
  - Noa
    
    Missing the point, as usual.
    - you_kid
      
      No no no, I got your point and then I expanded on it.
    - goatmince
      
      Isn’t it curious that no one, again, is interested in the obvious solution to the issue?
- Kenny Fraser
  
  aimless literal perambulation,the last hiding place of the “baffle em wiv bullshit” rightist.(or at least attempt to,and if you cant dont worry you can drone on like a wasp in a coke can till they fall asleep from boredom)
  - Noa
    
    So you support the rape, enslavement and prostitution of children in your own country and the middle east. That makes you an appeaser or a quisling. Which are you?
    - Kenny Fraser
      
      who the hell do you think YOU are to even attempt to lecture me on morality,if you support rightist thinking with the”strong trample the weak” philosophy and a history of systematic erosion and destruction of workers protection,educational interference ,and monetarist orientated decimation of social care,THOSE are the issues in modern society which concern me,and those are the issues which rightist political thinking regardes as either unimportant or a drain on them accumulating even more wealth. than their already substantial wealth.
    - sfin
      
      I don’t doubt your commitment to the laudable aims you mention, but, I think the point Noa was making – and it’s a question that still baffles me – is:
      
      How do you square the left’s support of Islam, with the obvious circle of it’s rampant misogyny?
      
      I think Ms Burchill has made a pretty good fist of answering that question.
    - Noa
      
      There’s no need to tell us again.
      Twisting on the skewer of your own immoral obscenity, you’ve already shown us what you are; providing deeply unpleasant insights into a profoundly disturbed, illogical and perverse personality.
      So, the question is still, which are you? An appeaser or a supporter?
    - ColonelNeville
      
      So you’re stoned most of the time, have unresolved parental issues, can’t think rationally or honestly, are a chronic mob-mentality mediocrity in all things and don’t read. Awesome leftism, dude!
    - shleslebear
      
      The fact that you list ‘THOSE’ issues but choose to ignore the issues within the article demonstrates the author’s points exactly. As a left-leaning lady, I find this very sad but, alas, a little predictable.
  - Kalooni
    
    Says the bloke who totally fails to engage with anything Noa wrote.
    - Kenny Fraser
      
      says the bloke who totally fails to engage in any empathetic union with humanity.
    - Kalooni
      
      .?
    - cityca
      
      Yeah, right. The anthem of hypocritical leftists for decades. Humanity? You wouldn’t know it if it bit you on the bum.
    - Kenny Fraser
      
      more likely to get on the a*se by rabid rightists,who are always reminiscent of frenzied pekineses.
    - ColonelNeville
      
      My God, could you be anymore emotionally babbling? Nope. Like all leftists, you project your own narcissistic inferiority complex and who you are yourself, fluffy. Such mediocrity as yours, is always attracted to the easy conformist slogans of mob mentality leftism. If you are so allegedly brilliant, post your reading list and your alleged superior achievements online and off. I’ve never heard of you.
    - Rintintin
      
      You blather on about empathy and union with humanity yet you’re clearly full of rage at humanity.
    - Kenny Fraser
      
      the slavering gibbering neo-cons and neo-fascists infesting the right wing like an incurable cancer can hardly be described as “humanity” their personal ideaology precludes them,as it is more akin to the law of the jungle beast.
    - ColonelNeville
      
      Apart from your posturing hubristic platitudes and projection of leftist logical fallacy, in what concrete actual ways have you contributed to the world? Do you employ anyone or provide and goods and services or guidance that they want and need? What is the total cash amount of your charitable donations so far? What’s stopping YOU from starting a business? How do you support yourself? What do you do? Who are you?
      
      What serious studies have you done of history, economics, human nature, innovation and liberty?
    - ChannelSixtyNine69
      
      You can’t engage with islam in anyway except with bombs. They are the only things muslims understand.
  - ColonelNeville
    
    You are an excellent indoctrinated since birth, incoherent, incurious, unread and conformist leftist logical fallacy nitwit. Awesome, dude!
UncleTits

Well, if you’re into the feminist-fantasy genre and believe that lefty men are resentful that the women in their lives won’t get back in the kitchen, and that their silences about “Islamism” are proof of their ideological transgressions against feminist orthodoxy.

Probably nothing to do with the game of identity ‘victim trumps’, in which feminists are key players, and which induces in lefties a form of cognitive-dissonance-induced stasis. Sure, and feminists are at the forefront of taking on Islam and are never seen poking an empty wasps nest!

Nope, just like the feminists who they share their beds with, they are cowards and hypocrites who should bow their self-righteous head in shame. At all times.

JohnCrichton89

To each their own, I would argue that the Left have so much time for the idea because it wipes a country clean of any national identity.
The Persian empire, the Egyptian empire , Byzantium and so on. These places that are now complete right offs as countries with nothing but Islam for the occupants to draw from, were at one point in history pushing the boundaries of technological advancement and pluralism. Rich in history and culture with a strong past to be proud of and build from. Islam reduced them to what you see now.

There was talk, not to long ago, of people in Egypt wanting to take down/destroy the Pyramids and Sphinxes for being un-Islamic………… the gradual erosion of history continues.

Shorne

It’s not just the Left though there is evidence that there are elements in the Foreign Office which justify it’s old nickname ‘The Camel Corps.’

red2black

Some journalists seem keen to bury their decidedly ‘leftie’ pasts deep, as well.
- Shorne
  
  “Not to be a socialist at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head.”
  French Premier Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929):
  - red2black
    
    As much as it’s bad form to enquire of or mention a lady’s age, Ms Burchill is in her fifties.

Samson

When I was a leftist I thought that the state should own the post office and the rail industry, I don’t remember being a misogynist or a fan of death cult slave markets.

gerontius

Weren’t much of a leftist were you?
- red2black
  
  Perhaps Samson represents what the majority of ‘leftists’, ‘liberals’ or whatever you choose to call them, in the UK at least, stand for; a compromise between private and public interests, rather than a conflict between them.
  - gerontius
    
    I was being a tad jocular.
    I mean post office and railways – is that it?
    - red2black
      
      There’s no reason a serious comment shouldn’t follow a light-hearted one.
    - gerontius
      
      Accepted
Kit

Did they throw you out or reprogramme you?

Catherine Waterman

I agree with you Julie. Earlier this year I heard that Anne Marie Waters had joined UKIP. She’s not the type of person you would normally associate with UKippers. She’s certainly a woman of integrity, a classical feminist, a way of thinking which has long since deserted socialism – and indeed, has deserted politics of all colours.

gerontius

SiMoebus
“Illiberal left?” Whatever, that is. People of different political
strips understand that people who are Muslim vary in customs and
practice. Just like any other group they can’t be placed in one box.
When we attempt to do it with women it is call misogyny.

When I posted the following response to SiMoebus it was removed by The Spectator. Can anyone tell me why?

“Illiberal left?” Whatever, that is. “M**lim vary in customs andpractice. Just like any other group they can’t be placed in one box.”
Well they can be placed in one box can’t they: They all believe that the K**an is the word of God.
“When we attempt to do it with women it is call misogyny.”
Category error I think.
“Illiberal left?” Whatever, that is.”
What you are perhaps? If, that is, you are not a m**lim, in
which case the terms liberal and left have no meaning for you anyway

Catherine Waterman

Forgive me, but I’ve tried reading your post a few times, but still can’t work out what you mean. This isn’t a criticism (at least not yet!), it’s a straightforward request for clarification. At first I thought you were saying that it’s acceptable to categorise women as being all the same, but not acceptable to put all Muslims in the same box. That doesn’t makes sense, so obviously I’ve missed your point.
- gerontius
  
  I stated, for the purposes of the argument that all muslims are muslims, ie they share certain characteristics. He replied that I could not make that statement because by similar reasoning all women are women, and equating all women with all other women would be inherently misogynistic.
  I was trying in my follow up to point out that he was misusing the term misogynistic, which belongs to a different category of idea to a statement of equivalence. Calling you, for example, a woman and stating that you share characteristcs with other women wouldn’t imply that I hate you any more than it would imply that I love you.

laurence

The tags for this article, with the exception of Israel, constitute a list of the most loathsome people and thought modes currently extant.

One other thing, Julie, when you mention ‘boys called Barnaby fetishising the most woman-hating type of rap music in the pop press’ are you perhaps referring to the Speccie’s very own Digby Poncington-Smythe?

edithgrove

when she’s good she’s brilliant

GraveDave

And when she’s stupid she’s very stupid.
- ablanche
  
  Stupid? I think not. Probably what you meant to say was that even when you don’t agree with her she’s still usually very funny; but stupid she simply isn’t. What a brilliant spot on slagging off it is though.
  - GraveDave
    
    Actually, you can be stupid – even when you’re supposedly ultra intelligent.
    - Linda Miller
      
      Looks like disingenuousness, sarcasm, envy and spite to me. Did Russell Brand reject her advances? Throw in some sour grapes.
    - Brian V Hunt
      
      Russell Who? What is he still around?!
    - Linda Miller
      
      Around and Revolving
    - Doug Kursk
      
      Revolving? Perhaps he is being spit roasted by a few of those Islamic Misogynists you so misunderstand..
    - Black__Mamba
      
      It’s a pun. He’s a revolutionary, you see.
      
      I would have gone with “alive and revolting” myself.
    - Linda Miller
      
      Idiot! You have me confused with someone else. BTW Brand has just published a book entitled “Revolution”. Death to our masters and to misogynists of all persuasions!
    - Kenny Fraser
      
      the trouble with revolving is it can give you a funny turn.
    - Kenny Fraser
      
      jack russell? or are you barking up the wrong tree?
    - Black__Mamba
      
      You read that whole piece and all you got out of it was “Russell Brand”?
      
      Well done.
    - Rintintin
      
      Looks like she has some very good points which seemed to have bounced off your skull.
    - TNT
      
      You seem to have appointed yourself the vacuous junkie’s protector today. Did he try some of his ‘Game’ moves on you and leave you breathily impressed? He should have jumped straight to the choking – he might have spared us all your presence.
    - Mark Spark
      
      Obama. A man clearly educated beyond his own intelligence.
    - Dave Clark
      
      Especially if you are a ‘she’ !!
- Dr. Heath
  
  Julie has been doing well in the entertainment business for more than a generation. How often do you reckon she’s been stupid in the last thirty years? I can’t recall examples that would back up your bald assertion.
  
  I’m guessing Julie’s someone you dislike and would like even more people to dislike along with you. Such is often the case with people in the entertainment business.
- Kennybhoy
  
  She is often wrong. Rarely stupid. Distaff Nick Cohen.
Kennybhoy

Indeed! 🙂
spiritof78

Vague, unsubstantiated, a mish mash of hypothesis and guesswork
- Overleaf
  
  The ‘regressive’ Left certainly appreciates the cultural authenticity of IS. IS has its own culture and we should not impose our dastardly Enlightenment values on such noble people who are being robbed of their oil – no matter that they extract oil for $3.00 a barrel and sell it for $80.00 – it is still robbing by the West.
  - spiritof78
    
    Unsubstantiated and vague. Who is the left? What did it say? When?
    - Kenny Fraser
      
      its typical reactionary braying from those donkeys who dream of themselves as a new world elite and any who do not agree with their featherweight intellectualism are in their clouded vision ,either misguided or “lefties” and decried as such amid much frenzied yapping from their pet poodles in rightist media.
    - Overleaf
      
      So buying oil at $80 for a profit of $77 a barrel to Arab countries, is robbing these countries. And I have to agree with you on that? Boy are you economically illiterate? So much for Left ‘heavy-weight’ intellectualism (wtf that may be).
    - Kenny Fraser
      
      do come the high moral tone old boy,the rightist governments of both the u.s.a. and the u.k. have been robbing other countries blind for CENTURIES, long before any leftist governments,in fact they are renowned for their conniving and embezzling ways. corruption is an inherent disease within their ranks.
    - Overleaf
      
      Historically speaking, it was always the case that a powerful country would impose their way and will on less powerful countries, regions or peoples. If you think that this is something new, then you need to get a minimum familiarity with history. So when Paedo Mohammad and Omar ruled the the Middle East, they raped, destroyed, massacred, and robbed countless peoples, and regions.
      
      Things have been different for a long time now. I don’t see western countries robbing or ruling other countries or regions, in particular not after the demise of communism. So relax, smell the coffee, and update your fossilized Lefty mind with facts not groupthink lies.
    - Kenny Fraser
      
      as i said LONG BEFORE any “leftie” governments,which only proves my view that rightist thinking is an evolutionary regression and its adherents are on a backward evolutionary slide,presumably they will reach their culmination with neo-fascist “apes” sitting up in trees picking fleas off each other as a social interaction.
    - Overleaf
      
      Well you are wrong. It is the Left that is regressing with their attacks on the Enlightenment, with their attacks on universal human rights, and with going to bed with Islamists and Islamic fascists. Left antisemitism is now a major issue. In the past, the Left was in bed with Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. The Nezi party was a leftist party before the coup called the German Socialist Workers Party.
      
      On the other hand liberals and conservatives believe in human rights and liberal Enlightenment values, democracy and pluralism, equality, and intolerance to fascism, but tolerance to free speech.
      
      The way it is going, it will be the Left that will unite with the ultra-right fascists, shut down free speech which is already the case in campuses, and try to foment a red-black revolution. Already the Left is working with Islamic hate preachers and support fascist dictators like Assad, Putin, etc.
    - Kenny Fraser
      
      yeah! sure thats why your tory pigs seek to undermine peoples basic working rights through targetted austerity measures designed to adversely affect the less well off,while giving huge tax handouts to anybody “earning?” over £150,000 per annum,and why u.s.a. rightists always kow-tow to immensely wealthy corporations while keep the majority of their people living on the bread line in trailer parks, i would suggest you get your cranium surgically removed from your rectal area,and cease the inane and fictional drivel old boy.
    - Thor fenris
      
      Nonsense. They are not ‘renowned’ at all. Youa re simply being a boring anglophobic twat

sarah_13

She’s a great read is Burchill and so right about Penny and Kahn.

Fergus Pickering

I never knew Penny was Jewish. You live and learn.
- Hagen vanTronje
  
  A noted practitioner of Strapadicktome and jewish to boot ?
  That sort are Leftoids more often than not !
Vincent Christie

Wonder what she has to say about the latest revelations about the British establishment child abuse and possible child killings reported by ex police
officers?
- Lamia
  
  I expect she’s disgusted by it. Why wouldn’t she be?
  
  This isn’t a case of which sex-abusing ‘side’ do you support – at least not for most of us.
  - SeanieRyan
    
    Why would you expect that?
    
    If Julie can be considered “outrageous” in defending it, then she’ll go for that.
    
    Do you honestly think there is a coherent political belief behind this.
    
    No, it is attention seeking.
    - Lamia
      
      There doesn’t need to be a ‘coherent political belief’ behind pointing out a wrong.
      
      But in any case, whatever her faults, Burchill is at least consistent in standing up for progressive liberal principles which parts of the left have a happy of sidelining or jettisoning whenever militant Islam is involved.
      
      No, it is attention seeking.
      
      No, you would just rather she didn’t draw attention to this. It’s embarrassing for parts of the left, and so it should be.
- Overleaf
  
  Wow, yeah, British establishment (do you mean the leftist elites?) are resorting to child abuse. What does that mean? It means that it is just OK to groom 15 year old girls and pimp them to customers, if the perpetrators are Muslims. Simply ingenious.

jesseventura2

Good on yer Julie but the cottagers and doggers will always shout you down.

William_Brown

As always Julie, bloody marvellous.

AJH1968

Brilliant!

balance_and_reason

Yes, nice hypocrisy alert….always a well practiced art on the left…but what about a little apology for all those socialist rants you made as a child Julie….some of us had to listen, even inadvertently, to that crap.

GraveDave

Yes, she did well out of all that preachy lefty, ‘mulitculticrap’, she used to write for the Guardian, didn’t she. She doesn’t like the Irish much either.
Would she have dared hate the blacks so openly – I wonder?
I think I much prefer Tony Parsons.
red2black

Ms Burchill was at The Guardian from 1998 to 2003, having been born in 1959. Consequently she was in her late thirties to early forties at the time.
- balance_and_reason
  
  age is not the issue…we are talking about mental maturity; some take longer.
  - red2black
    
    Not to be confused with going from one extreme to the other.
  - GraveDave
    
    Doesn’t discount the damage she helped to perpetuate.

Des Demona

HUHHHHHHH??????
A completely un-evidenced dog whistle rant.

” But when Amnesty International first claimed in September that Isis were enslaving and abusing ‘hundreds, if not thousands’ of Yazidi women and children, it only took the group a few weeks to admit to the practice in their English language magazine, Dabiq, and breezily post videos of themselves doing just that.
Yet there are still a considerable number of people on the left making excuses for them — mostly at the Guardian,”

Oh really? I must have missed the apologists making excuses for head chopping and slavery in the Guardian. Care to point them out?

” many men believe that once you’ve ticked the Brotherhood of Man box on your spiritual census, this gives you the right to be as big a bastard as you like towards women. ”

Again, oh really? And your evidence is?

Time of the month perhaps? Or just looking for advertising hits?

Sean L

No the opposite of a dog whistle – her language, meaning and intent are as clear as you like.
Catherine Waterman

I replied to you earlier, but the post was grabbed by the moderator for some reason. Possibly because it included a link to a newspaper article. Perhaps the Speccie sees the other periodical as ‘competition’.

Any way, I can’t remember exactly what I wrote previously so will paraphrase, but without the link.

Consciousness raising starts here!

Although I don’t have time to go through each of your points, I trust that others will.

For starters, only a few weeks ago there was yet another example of politically correct insanity. The National Union of Students in the UK voted against a motion to condemn Isis. Why? Because the motion offended Black Students Officer Malia Bouattia, who said: “We recognise that condemnation of ISIS appears to have become a justification for war and blatant Islamaphobia. ”

Similarly, the new brand of feminists have been hoodwinked by Islamists into believing that the burqa is liberating for women! Wearing a black shroud with a letterbox gap for the eyes means that men are more likely to respect the opinions of such ‘modestly’ dressed women. They will be able to control their basic animal urges, if they have only a pair of eyes to stare at – and a pair of gloved hands to glimpse instead of 10 naked digits.

What on earth has happened to the mental faculties of University students!
- Des Demona
  
  I’d be more worried if students weren’t making idiots of themselves, and as for a certain brand of feminists are concerned the least said the better. 🙂
  - Catherine Waterman
    
    In my day students were into peaceful sit-ins to protest about genuine human rights abuses.
    
    Protesters would sit en mass to block buildings or certain streets until they were evicted by the police. Whenever the police became violent towards the passive protesters, this would attract enormous sympathy from the public. In the USA, the non-violent sit-ins were instrumental in gaining support for the Civil Rights Movement and its struggle to end legally sanctioned racial segregation.
    
    On the contrary, the students I mentioned in my earlier post are actually anti-freedom. They are supporting Islamism by refusing to condemn Isis. Islamism, amongst many other backward beliefs, encompasses the so-called freedom for women to cover themselves from head to toe in order not to arouse the passions of men.
    
    Such obsessions, including the accusation of ‘Islamaphobia’ if anyone should dare criticise Islamic ideology, should not be allowed to stifle free speech in the UK. Nor should it be allowed to dilute democracy and secularism. Religion is best kept within the mosque, well away from the political arena. Islam combined with politics is Islamism – a dangerous ideology.
    - GraveDave
      
      In my day students were into peaceful sit-ins to protest about genuine human rights abuses.
      
      Protesters would sit en mass to block buildings or certain streets until they were evicted by the police.
      
      Lol, talk about rose coloured specs. It’s never been like that.
    - Catherine Waterman
      
      Look into the history of the American Civil Rights Movement and you will find that sit-in protests were indeed very helpful to the outcome. Obviously nothing is perfect and I’m not that daft to look through rose tinted specs. Rather, I’m saying that the Left has lost its way. We have a great deal to be concerned about now that students are siding with Islamists and theocracy.
      
      Tell me why this is not a threat to democracy?

Sean L

Nothing like a proper truth hit – if you can have a good laugh with it, that’s priceless! There’s only one Julie Burchill. . .

kittydeer

The woman is speaking absolute sense. I have long believed that many people obsessed with racism in the guise of poor suffering blacks at the hands of the evil white man and feminism along the lines of poor women kept in their place by big bogeymen are really just people who have a need to hide their real agenda behind the disguise of compassion. The longer and longer slavery and the antics of the Pankhursts are regurgitated the longer and longer it will be before truly equality emerges. Such people I suspect are merely nostalgic for how things used to be. No wonder they bend over backwards for islam.

Bumble Bee

The feminist issue is exactly the same when it comes to ‘slaughtering poor innocent children’.

children killed accidentally in retaliatory attacks by the west, and muslims and their leftie cheerleaders go insane, but 12 year olds gang raped, drugged, disfigured with acid, buried alive, used as tunnel digging slaves, mine clearers, etc = crickets and hay balls

they are hypocrites and do not care about women and/or children – the only thing they care about is giving more power and impunity to psychopathic killer machines

I wish we could take muslims and their defenders and ship them off to a landfill of their choice

David

Julie Burchill, long may you run!

RedPill Army

It makes no sense to hold Christians to a separate standard than Muslims. No sense at all! The Left lacks coherence in their beliefs, other than they simply hate whoever currently is the majority and has power in their government. That’s not a rational political position!

Nele Schindler

Julie the Best!

Gerschwin

ISIS appeals to left wing men because left wing men are forbidden ever getting laid by their embrace of feminism et al – with ISIS it’s cocks out do what you want.

The Dybbuk

I haven’t previously read much Julie Burchill. Having read this I’ll not be reading any more.

jjjj

But you can’t comment if you don’t read! Surely you like commenting?
William_Brown

Why? You should embrace engagement with ideas that don’t mirror yours. Otherwise you’ll just reinforce your own beliefs in spite of any possible contrary evidence, Ideas, or speculation. You know, like those who only ever read the Mail, or those who only ever read the Guardian.
WFC

Because?

tomgreaves

Brilliant. Just one somewhat baffling reference to the lefty male’s resentment of the march of feminism being repressed, and as such giving rise to a sexual, alas Freudian dynamic and flavour. I think not. If there is any room for Freud here it would be their dark attraction to Thanatos, the God of destruction, doom and death that ISIS worships. Sexuality in Freudian theory links with life and creation, and lefties love to repress the passions and roll us up in political correct barbed wire. Great article though.

Steve B

Article of the year, without question. When Ms Burchill is good she is utterly GREAT.

global city

For a fat bird, you can’t half write!
(joke)

anotherjoeblogs

To steal an idea from Abigail’s Party – she doesn’t write like a fat bird.
( joke, great article )

Colin

F@cking brilliant! Love it. More, much more, please.

Alison Lavinia Houston

Good article, I hope the fight back against “the gutless, western, lefties” has begun but I don’t hold out much hope. The brain washing has been going on for so long. That report in the early 1990’s about the Muslim groomers and rapists in Birmingham was suppressed, so almost a quarter of a century of left wing brain washing needs to be reversed. It’s time for a Libertarian uprising.

Tox66

The blind eye was payment for votes and they can’t risk losing more of those.

Jules Wright

Brilliant piece. Waggle this is front of every leftie you know. Then watch them squirm on the hook of their own mental inadequacy.

Bill_der_Berg

Julie Burchill once regarded Kim Philby as a hero ; perhaps she still does. I never understood why. What was there to admire about him?

greggf

“…I think a lot of the reason that some left-wing men seem to have so much time for Islamism is to do not with race but sex — specifically,with suppressed feelings of resentment towards the march of feminism….”

Well maybe Julie, but whatever it is it works because feminism is so evidently cowed by Islamism.

The Patriot

‘paint-chart politics: choose the side with the darkest skin on
principle, no matter how their belief systems actually treat people;
thus democratic Israel, which gives full civil rights to women and gays,
is worse than the countries which surround it, which don’t but are
darker. In Darfur, of course, the left were thrown a curveball when it
turned out that the Arab Muslims were terrorising the black Christians.
Um, Islam good, Christianity bad but hang on, Christians darker here!
DOES NOT COMPUTE!’

Brilliant!…. Absolutely brilliant and right on the money…

Overleaf

The Left was and is silent about Darfur, Kurds, Syrian secular opposition, etc. Cognitive dissonance make them withdraw further into their shell and echo chamber.

jjjj

Your best article yet, Julie. The bile is entirely justified and you’ve said what so many of us think but can’t articulate like you can. Assange (friend of antisemite ‘Israel’ Shamir aka Jorgen somethingorother), Galloway, Brand – reactionaries the lot of them.

GraveDave

Have you actually ever read anything by Israel Shamir?
And how can an Israeli be anti himself?
- jjjj
  
  Funny you should ask that Dave, I used to read his original website before he took it off. The one with his photo where he’s wearing sunglasses on what appears to be a background of Jaffa. So, yes, I’ve read his stuff.
  And he’s a fake Israeli, like his fake name.
  
  Have you read him, Dave, ?
  - Damaris Tighe
    
    I’ve read him. He’s a bit of a mystery isn’t he? What do you know?
    - jjjj
      
      The first time I came across him was years ago when he had the site I mention above. Mind you, it’s possible he still has the site but I don’t even want to Google it because I have no inclination to read him. His pieces were attacks on Judaism and Israel from a theological standpoint and full of cod philosophy. He’s not stupid and he knows how to write, I’ll grant him that. The next I heard of him was when he was involved in passing information on dissidents to the leader of Belarus and then in connection with Assange.
      
      That’s about it.
    - jjjj
      
      Funny, I responded but the post didn’t appear. At any rate he had a website years ago that probably hardly anyone read in which he posted attacks on Judaism with very flowery language with references to theology etc. Attacks on Israel were common too. Something struck me as very odd about this guy, living in Jaffa…Anyway, I then came across him when it was reported that he was involved in leaking names of dissidents to the President of Belarus.
    - Damaris Tighe
      
      Thanks, I did in fact get your first reply so maybe for some reason it was moderated after it was posted. Happening a lot at the moment.

Cincinnatus

the Guardian, the house magazine of ‘the silly led by the sinister’

An apt description.

Rocksy

One of the pleasures of my life has been watching the Loony Left chase its own tail.

mark mooroolbark

Do you think the lefty women get their rocks off watching hundreds of men have their heads hacked off or being crucified? I have a hunch this may well be the reason they support the Islamic extremists.

Why do you focus on women being sold into slavery and totally ignore the butchery of thousands of men? I hate the latte lefties as much as anyone can but your misandry is showing. Perhaps a focus on the inhumane treatment of PEOPLE by these extremists would be a less bigoted approach to this issue.

Bill_der_Berg

Ms Burchill may not be being completely honest about The Guardian’s attitude to IS. A few seconds’ googling turned up a Graun description of IS as a ” terrifying organisation that beheads hostages and massacres its opponents”.

She is a former hard-line communist who may not have shed all her old habits.

Cymrugel

By Jove, I do believe she’s got it!

Treebrain

” I’ve come to the conclusion that certain strange types are so sympathetic to Islamism not despite the way it treats women — but, at least partly, because of it.”

Remove the word Islamism and replace it with Judaism and you will go a long way toward understanding the attitudes of ultra-Orthodox Judaism/Haredi toward women. You know, the group that recently posted a sign in Hackney stating that women should only walk on one side of a street lest they come into contact with men and defile them. Yes, the same group who insist that women sit in the back of the bus in Jerusalem and beat, spit upon and insult any women who fails to do so.

Two sides of the same coin Julie!

Damaris Tighe

I agree, but luckily the haredim aren’t seeking to conquer the world.
- thomasaikenhead
  
  Yes, just southern Lebanon, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and Shebaa Farms!

Lydia Robinson

As a former “leftie” – now a UKIP voter – I can thoroughly understand what Julie is saying so articulately. The spectacle of the “unholy Alliance” as David Horowitz describes it (an author also formerly of the left) between Islamists, feminists and leftists, is truly nauseating. It makes me feel physically sick. The Guardian reflects the sick obsession with Islamists and its daily outpourings of revolting trash.

Tabatha Caplan

Spot on.

crosscop

Sometimes Julie’s absolutely spot on. This is one of them. I first noticed her way back when she wrote an article supporting the Russians who were fighting against the Muslim nutters in Afghanistan. Everybody else had the exact opposite view but she was right.

Michael H Kenyon

Brilliant. She can be great when she tries.

The Great Cornholio

I think she overexaggerates the support for ISIS amongst the “Left”, whatever that means anymore. As a former Chomskyite anarchist I might be able to provide insight into the mindset of those who apologise for them.

Whilst there are no doubt vile misogynists amongst their numbers, as there are in all groups in society, the reasons that they hold their views are as follows:

1 White guilt.

2 They believe that because they are championing the poor and downtrodden they have almost an untouchable, religious moral superiority and are unable to think critically about the positions they hold.

3 They get a thrill out of kicking an empty hornets’ nest. They know they can protest against a western government and call US President X a war criminal etc. with impunity yet still believe they are taking a heroic, radical stand against an oppressive system. To stand up to radical Islam is to risk your life. None of these “Lefties” would know what to do if they came across a live nest.

4 Most of all, at least for my former self, they live in a very closed system. They read articles, books, watch documentaries which reinforce their pre-existing beliefs. When talking to those who don’t share their views they tend to dominate conversations so people will avoid particular topics.

As you can image these factors re-enforce one another and can lead to a minor divorce from reality whereby you see all world events as concocted as some sort of free market capitalist agenda. This is the kind of mindset that is needed to apologise for ISIS. It is a voluntary low grade pseudo-cult.

Damaris Tighe

Great analysis. Thanks.
- Guest
  
  saf
Overleaf

Well put and thanks. #2 makes them as (secular) religious as the most extreme puritans and Islamics. No wonder they have found an affinity for religion as the “sigh of the masses”.
Overleaf

Isn’t it ironic that the first group to be put against the wall in Islamic revolutionary Iran were the leftwing guerrillas and communist party, and then followed by the Islamic Marxists. They still haven’t learnt their lesson and in many ways the Iranian left still supports Islamic fascism as being progressive and anti-imperialistic.

The degree of mindless extremism by some environmentalists in relations to their sanctimonious environment or mother nature is no less than what you see in a religious fundamentalist. Same can be said about a large part of anti-capitalists, communists, etc.

The secular, unfirm, apostate Muslims (such as myself) have certainly been betrayed by the left and their public intellectuals. They are thrown under the bus at every opportunity. But some of the blame has to go to Muslims themselves, in particular western Muslims, who due to their mostly misplaced sense of inferiority, fiercely defend Islam, as a method of psychological identity and ego-boosting self-defense. Instead they should be spearheading the reformation of Islam. But it is these very western Muslims who have abandoned Islamic reformists as either Uncle Toms or murtads – those who choose to fight god and induce fitna. Islam is a very closed, robust and self-supporting system. It is extremely hard to crack its shell. Walk up to any liberally educated Muslim, and try to get them to admit that Mohammad is not infallible, and Koran has errors in it — and you will get that blank stare. Then of course there is that element of eternal fear implanted in early childhood that any doubt about Mohammad or Islam will be a one-way ticket to hell.

MrSonicAdvance

Great work! You certainly seem to have found your mojo again, Julie.

Dr. Heath

Is it not the same in Nigeria? In societies where, in theory, young men are supposed to be employable, educated and on the path to earning a respectable income before they have the remotest chance of having sex, the narrative – apologies for the pseud lingo – is unexpectedly subverted by recent theological advances.

A few assault rifles and some 20mm AA cannons on the back of pick-up trucks and they’re in business! As serial rapists, serial murderers and slave-owners. Wowee! Can you BELIEVE these guys’ luck? It seems that all that good Muslim lads really needed were some encouraging words from Allah the Merciful via his self-appointed spokesblokes.

Jon Gulbrandsen

Yes, the political left do share common ground with islam, which I suppose is why 83 % of norwegian muslims vote left. Their common ground is hatred, mainly for the USA, Israel, the church and of course western values in general. The irony is that leftists just as easily can become targets of islam, because of their affinity for feminism and atheism, which have no place in islam.

Iain Cook

A bizarre (to an outsider) aspect of
Leftist thought processes is the league table of relative victimhood, whereby,
in the event of a conflict of victim priorities, one class of victim will
triumph over another.
Top Tier. First Place self-evidently goes
to Islam, the Manchester United of victims. Islam and its believers can do no
wrong for the Left (the reasons behind this are for another day). There is no
act, policy, belief, cultural trope or atrocity committed under Islam’s name
that will ever be criticised by the Left. Any Islamic consequence that
contradicts any so-called Leftist cannon is automatically accepted and
incorporated, from misogyny (vide the
sisterhood wearing burkas in solidarity) to homophobia (vide “Gays for Palestine”) to segregation of men and women (now
active in most Western University campuses) to punishment of the rape victim,
nothing will draw criticism from feminist groups, human rights activists, gay
rights groups, or any other.
Second Tier Victims. Here I include “people
of colour” (but not Asians, who don’t classify as victims), cultural minorities
(in the west) or majorities (non-western countries) and gays. Membership of one
of these will automatically confer Favoured Status and Immediate Hysterical
Action if real or imagined slight is detected, UNLESS it conflicts with Islam.
Hence, if you are a black woman who criticises Islam (you know who I mean),
don’t expect to be supported by the sisterhood; in fact, prepare to be
vilified.
Lower Tier Victims. Sorry girls, women are
near the bottom of the pile. You can be beaten, raped, sold off, uneducated,
mistreated and generally enslaved for life ANYWHERE in the world that’s not
white. But rest assured, if somebody wolf whistles you, the full weight of
leftist ire will descend upon the perpetrators (unless they are members of any
of the Upper Tiers – vide the recent
brawl about men wolf whistling a stunt women walking through the mean streets,
which started off as a pro-study defence of women’s rights to be allowed to
walk where they chose but quickly morphed into a racist firestorm against the
study when it was realised that most of the whistlers were black).
Bottom of the Ladder. Working class and
Jews. Sorry lads and mensches, almost impossible to get a favourable hearing
down here. In fact, the left despises the working class (what massive irony – 100
million dead in their name and their so-called liberators have held them in
contempt for decades) and loathe Jews (Israel stopped being a victim after 1967
and so wast cast from the tent), so look elsewhere for support.
To return to Rotherham, the outcome is clear and was ever predestined. The perpetrators belonged to the Top
Tier and could not be interfered with, acted against officially or otherwise “outed”.
Victims were women or girls and so from a much lower status. Even worse, they
were predominantly working class white women or girls, and so almost without
value. Leftist psychology, which valued the collective ideological construct
Multicultural Harmony and Anti-racism Policy over and above the rights and care
of individual victims (even if they numbered in the thousands), allowed this
atrocity to happen.

Jack Tubb

Too bloody true……..Why doesn’t the rest of the world understand this?

John Dawson

You nailed it Julie. Of the super-hypocritical “gutless western lefty” apologists, the most ultra-super-hypocritical are the women’s liberationists who morphed from burning bras as being symbols of male domination, to backing burkas as being symbols of a women’s choice.

Viking.

I would add that the Left are attracted to Islam because of their desire for absolute power over other peoples lives, including deciding who is to live and who does not deserve to live.

Coleridge1

This is Julie at her best sterling stuff.

jesseventura2

Cameron thinks Pakistan,Yemen,Somalia,Sudan etc are members of the EU?

richi71

How would this explain the largely right wing conspiracy to cover up institutional child abuse in this country?

Both left and right are at it. Blaming one wing without the other is just condoning it.

cartimandua

Jihadis don’t want female slaves in the next life. They want them in this life. IS are a complete wet dream for them.

cartimandua

An Iraqi human rights group reported that potential recruits had to hand over their Mother or sister to be raped to “prove loyalty”.

strider

“The western left has been a busted flush for so long..”
Just like western ‘feminists’…in their £50 (child slave-made) ‘This is what a feminist looks like’ T-shirts.

cartimandua

Soo you rather enjoy ISIS gang raping women and little girls to death then.
Because all that matters to you is some T shirt.
- Niko Belic
  
  No, it’s just that when you’re a feminist you should not be endorsing any form of exploitation (but apparently it’s OK to exploit wage slaves even though some of them may not be women).
  
  And same for the above: if ISIS gang raping and trafficking women is unacceptable (which it is of course), then so should be the practices of sexual tourism and importing Asian brides which are common among white, Western males. All women should be protected from such practices regardless of their background.
  
  Yet Burchill is making a selective case for the protection of a very specific group of women (white, Christian) while ignoring the plight of all other women who have been trafficked or purchased as brides (and you’ll easily find out that the main ‘consumers’ of such services are not the dark-skinned males which she seems to hate with a passion).
  - balance_and_reason
    
    Is it illegal for middle aged white women to take the package tour to the various Mediterranean spots for a little pecuniary sausage balancing with the local laddery?

winkle

they all bum boys as they like gay sex

Rintintin

Ha!…never thought the day would come when I’d give Burchill the thumbs up!

Albert Brenner

Simply marvelous!

owl

The two fundamentals of the largely violent sub species – sex and war – eventually legitimised by monotheism – which is useful whether religious or not – providing the central ideology of ‘the other’ who can be abused at will.

Mitzi

Wipe them all from the face of the earth

John Bindon

Which writers support ISIS ? I’ ve seen a film of Galloway expressing precisely the opposite argument. I don’t much care for Galloway – or Russell Brand – before someone inevitably jumps in and calls me a “leftie”, it’s just that I have not read one single word in any publication word by any white person supporting ISIS, and I’d be interested to see exactly who is taking such a disgusting line.

Bumble Bee

Oh shut it!

Whenever israelis defend their own country and people, these cockroaches you mention can not foam at their mouths fast enough! SUddenly they are everywhere, twitter, newspapers, television, smearing, bashing, and spitting jew hatred.

But Muslims slaughtering Muslims at the speed of light, Palestinians being killed in Syria, women and children buried alive, tens of thousands beheaded, tens of thousands of young girls raped and/or sold into sex slavery, etc, none of the cockroaches are anywhere to be seen.
Not to mention girls disfigured with acid, Muslims gassing and eating other muslims, muslims turning their own countries into landfills and then coming to ours and doing the same here – crickets and hay balls.

You are all filthy traitors and cowards, you have had your say, and our country is a toilet, just like muslim countries. Now it’s our turn to speak and to clean up, so take your kebab and go sit in a corner while the grown ups clean up your dirt.

You fantasy that stinking lefties condemn ISIS or any other islamist terrorist organisation for that matter, and tell it to equally useful idiots, who have IQ’s of plankton, is offensive to anybody who knows how to read.
- John Bindon
  
  Blimey, that was angry ! I trust you are responding to Burchill and not to my little question ?
  - John Bindon
    
    This is now getting hilariously surreal. You seem to be so twisted in
    bile that you are incapable of reading the mere four lines I wrote. Let
    me try again :
    
    1. Burchill claimed that left-wing writers in this
    country are supporting ISIS. I asked her to please tell me who they are
    because I haven’t read any articles by anyone that would support this
    proposition.
    
    2. I also said – and you will maybe be pleased to hear this :
    
    ”
    I’d be interested to see exactly who is taking such a disgusting line.”
    i.e I think that supporting ISIS is disgusting. So, mate, Im on your
    side ” I don’t like ISIS either !
    - silent_pilot
      
      The word ‘writer’ doesn’t appear in her article at all; so I’m not sure where you got that from?
    - John Bindon
      
      I got it from this sentence :
      
      “Yet there are still a considerable number of people on the left making excuses for them — mostly at the Guardian, the house magazine of ‘the silly led by the sinister’, as the sainted Christopher Hitchens called the Not In My Name marchers.”
      
      Surely that suggests there are some Guardian writers who support/ make excuses from ISIS. And, anyway, if it ISN’T writers then how does she know that those on the left feel like this ?
      
      Again, I detest and loathe ISIS with a passion. I just want to know who she thinks it is – by name – who doesn’t .
    - silent_pilot
      
      I think that she is referring as much to the act of omission as much any article per se. How many critical articles are there, in the Guardian, about subjects such as: grooming gangs, ISIS’ sexual slavery, Assange, Harriet Harman’s PIE affilialiation etc.? By not writing these articles, does that not imply tacit approval? In which case it is a criticism of the editorial policy at the Guardian; rather than a particular writer.
      
      Or at least, that’s how I was seeing it.
    - John Bindon
      
      But she gave – to me anyway – a much stronger impression that support for ISIS from left-wing men is explicit and not implicit. All I am saying is, if this is true, then who are these people ? Or, and you may be right, of course, if all she is doing is merely criticising Guardian editorial policy, well, we’ve read that story quite a few times in The Spectator already.
      
      Until Ms.Burchill replies herself, maybe we will never be clear about exactly what she meant.
    - cartimandua
      
      Its explicit when they decide women may not post about abuses towards women and children (because it might not be PC to do so).
    - cartimandua
      
      Well going by personal experience on the Graun any brown man is worth more than any woman at all.
      Post as a feminist and they ban you.

Wiggi

Nothing now surprises me at just how low this faith can drop! They preach one man as the voice of God and then listen only to their so called Priest who talk butchery, killing rape, and take out any form of respect to Gods creatures!
In England today in our own capital, their schools are being praised by the very parents of their children born in innocence and educate them in hate and the disrespect or Woman all under the name of Allah. According to this religion Gods never has a say!

Chris Whitaker

Excellent Julie, been reading your stuff in the music press for decades, this is the best article I can remember in all that time, bang-on.

Doesntplaywellwithothers

Wow, great article.

ErikKC

Yeah, I remember well the marches in London during the last Israeli-Lebanese war. Hardcore, left-wing, dykes carrying signs with “WE ARE ALL HEZBULLAH NOW!” on them.

Go figure.

balance_and_reason

Hezbull-ah dykes ?
- ErikKC
  
  Ironical.

Joanne Constable

Ha, like the men on the right were supportive of feminism. Don’t worry Julie, the tories hate women too.

cartimandua

Ye they do but quite often they are more upfront about it.

Niko Belic

“Watching the recent footage of Islamic State gang members haggling over
the price of captured Christian women in a makeshift slave market — one
of them wants a 15-year-old with green eyes, another wants to exchange a
girl for a gun —”

So that bothers you, but not the white blokes seeking sexual relations with exotic Asian women and willing to use violence or to pay for it. Nor the males from Sweden or Germany who travel to Thailand to buy themselves a “bride” like you would go to your local grocer to purchase a few slices of bacon. Most of the sex trade in Europe is about women from other parts of the world (Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, South America) catering to the vices of white, European men (regardless of their political orientation).

But then I guess it’s not as serious as when them darkies haggle over the prices of Christian women. Sexual crimes are only worthy of outrage when committed by people with a certain profile and when white/Christian women are the victims.

Poor me who’d been thinking all along that women needed to be protected from such predation regardless of their religion, skin colour or ethnic background.

cartimandua

Traffickers are mostly not British. Slavers and traffickers are Arab African and Eastern European. The gangs running enslaved prostitutes in Holland are Albanian.

myles strong

blow it out of your prosterior jules

Wiggi

Richard you referred to having lived most of your life there! That is how I saw it written!
One word of correctness, Male lines are used in carrying forward a family name! This is the accepted form throughout the Western World. I can list most of mine back to 1067! If at some later date you are looked a family tree it would be difficult to identify you using your wife name! It can be done in legal ways and is then well documented.
It is not the norm but what is today? We have destroyed heritage and history in having or giving away what we have accepted for hundreds of years!

Jack Scott

Left wing!…what a load of B + LL + + Ks! Islamic State is based on right wing politics! (Nazism), where no one has any human rights!…least of all women!

zoid

but the lefties love it……they just want to be allowed to tote an ak and treat whoever doesn’t agree with them to a meal of hot lead…..isis suits their control freak fantasies.

RAFIQ AHMED

isis has nothing to do with islam, isis stands for isreali secret inteligence services, baghdadi is a mossad agent , watch you tube HUA ASHKENAZI

Guest

F*** of Musloid and keep killing each other!
Damaris Tighe

FO
Bumble Bee

Pi$$ off, terrorist!
Guest

wow, a Muslim blaming Jews for Muslims slaughtering Muslims

how original
WFC

I look forward to the well-attended London march, no doubt being organised by British Muslims, to protest against ISIS. Complete with “Not in our Name” and “Behead those who insult Islam by supporting Isis” banners.

Will it be before Christmas?
cartimandua

That’s why Somalis just killed all non Muslims on a bus in Kenya is it?
- RAFIQ AHMED
  
  islam lived with all religions side by side for hundreds of years without any problems, its only when the saudis alligned with the freemasons and zionist that we suddenly see this harsh interpretation of islamic law, i urge everyone study the prophet mohammads life and find out how many people were actually exucuted for crimes and how many were actually stoned and you will see that there werent that many, islam spread peacefully throughout the world in the first 600 to 700 years its only when the ottamans came to power that they started using brutal force to convert people, which was wrong in any true muslims view!!
Chris Oliver

Rafiq, does that make you dislike ISIS? If so I’m happy to encourage you to believe something I think is manifestly untrue.
- RAFIQ AHMED
  
  i dont like ISIS!! i just feel sorry for all these young muslims who have been fooled into believing that hes the true caliph, islam also taught me that there will be lots of fakes before the arrival of the true caliph and it also mentions thats that these fakes will be names after cities or places, ie( baghdadi, kuwaiti)

Jimmyroamer

I am left wing, male, western and white yet seemingly I don’t find my views reflected in the above article. Perhaps we should approach it from the other side of the fence. Parties such as UKIP and the more right wing conservatives probably see ISIS as an organisation which has thrown off the shackles of political correctness choosing to attack and slander anyone and everyone who does not share their view of the “traditional ways”. The fact that ISIS also believes that women should be shackled to the kitchen sink also aligns with these misogynistic right wingers. Of course UKIP would argue that the open immigration policy of ISIS is contrary to good old “Little Englander” policy bu wait, if we look at the points system used by ISIS 1 point for wanting to kill people, 1 for being a misogynist, 1 for being fanatical in ones hatred of anything that does not share you views, etc. then of course you only get those immigrants who will integrate in to your society on your terms, exactly the same as UKIP.

It is possible to go on with these comparisons and to slander everyone on the right of John Major with similar views/perspectives in the same way that Julie Burchill has tried to do to the left. Of course reality is far far different. The vast majority of left wingers despise people who oppress people who have an alternative view, see war as a failure of diplomacy and understand that the majority of the problems in the Middle East are the result of Western interference in the political systems that existed there including the democracies of Iraq and Iran in the ’50s. As for Israel a country that was originally founded on left wing principles by people on the left of politics, how many homes has it demolished of settlers who have killed Palestinians? What about the houses of those who killed the Israeli Arab boy in retaliatin for the death of three Jewish boys? And the harder and less tolerant approach to peace that has flowed from the shift of Israeli poltics to the right?

Israel was granted the right of self determination despite the war crimes it committed in destroying the Muslim villages prior to and as a result of the establishment of their state and in my view rightly so. However it is interesting that they refuse to grant the right of self determination to those who live in the left bank where the State continues to annex land.

Ms Burchill is a prime representation of the issue I have with right wingers, she espouses simple answers to very complex questions and issues and condemns and ridicules those who try to educate on those complexities.

Bumble Bee

the musloid terrorist apologist internet taqiyya mobs have moved froth DT to here I see

Aiden

Actually, in the Guardian today there is an article about a huge Tory right-wing paedophile ring and the attempted cover up by the security forces, in this very country. Shocker.

zoid

did it mention the labour council’s collusion in rotherham at all?
cartimandua

They still wont let feminists post. Taliban supporters kept objecting to me until the Graun banned … me.

zoid

jules, you’re often completely bonkers and inconsistent…..but you’re a national bloody treasure.

strange that the working class are the ones who least trust the left (except in the regions where they’ve been endlessly brainwashed into hating tories and southerners)…we know that they only want to control us and keep us poor.

i could never understand how you hung out with all of the tarquins and cressidas at the guardian.

and, even though it’s not a direct compliment, you managed to get me to stop reading the nme in my teen years by being so contrarian….thanks for that……crispy ambulance ffs!

Joey Feliney

Total bS, mysogony and sexisim and homophobia are right wing principles left is rights for women and positive liberal attitudes to sexaulity.

The artical has things backwards.

EricHobsbawmtwit

It used to be. It isn’t today.
- Joey Feliney
  
  Not really left is still left its just rightwing have a left wing t shirt on and say they are left.
  
  its like when a rich ce;ebrity pays for a £200 prada T shirt, is helicoptered in to the VIP area in Gladstonebury with their personal butler and £100,000 luxury winne bago,, and chaufer driven chelse tractor to drve accross the nub then says they are a hippie like in the 60s
  
  or somoen who casnnot even swim wears and o neail jumper, says diude and thinks they are a cool dude surfer
cartimandua

Er no both the Telegraph and the Graun ban feminists.
- Joey Feliney
  
  who or what is a Graun ban?

John

Round them all up and exterminate them in Dachau!

Louise

Excellent, someone has finally put in print what I have thought and said for many years, that the appeal of Islam is that it empowers men,even the lowest of the low has absoloute power and ownership over their woman.Its no surprise that muslim converts are usually the disenfranchised, black males normally with a violent criminal record. Were it anyone else being victimised the west would have dealt with it years ago but instead the men in power can justify their misogyny as multi culturalism, in the same way that the so called liberals hide their anti Semitism through support of Hamas and Palestine.

RWJ

Where did this left wing garbage come from. The so called right wing press will use the most bizarre comparisons. See the Tory party female head count and come back and try again Burchill you dumb a–.

Ovida Yosef

Most of what Ms Burchel is saying in this article,has an element of truth about it,until the sentence on the democrasy of Israel,there it is true only for Israeli Jews,even ‘Israeli’ Arabs and Christians live in a divided,restricted society,yes they can vote,but non-Jewish members of the Knesset have limited voting rights with the Knesset,non-Jewish identity cards are colour coded,and effect the way the police deal with them,Israel is not the democratic utopia that it and its supporters would have us believe

Bumble Bee

if only those naughty Israelis, were as tolerant, open minded, inclusive and democratic as those peaceful Muslims…

DrWatt

Enjoyed every word of that – superb.

RWJ

You are easily amused – pathetic.

arewejusthacks

The Yazidis aren’t Christian. They’re Yazidis. It’s the name of their religion. Ethnically, they are Kurdish, more or less. That’s why they live in Kurdistan. The ignorance starts from there.

Daisy Chain

A truly screwed up argument. Is an example of The Spectator?

Sean Wayman

What disgusting partisan trash posing as an article. I am sure that the Left has done more for women’s rights than the Right, with its macho chesting thumping. This article is one of the most specious arguments out there. This journalist understands what Left-wing men really believe based on “telepathy”. Pitiful.

cartimandua

Thing is the Left pretend to support women and then chuck them right under the first bus.
- RWJ
  
  Well…..the one above for a start. The right hate women……its the public schoolboy all male school love affairs they had.
  - cartimandua
    
    I don’t honestly think there is much between them. The right want to “stop the slappers having abortions”, and the left want to overlook the abuse of women if their abusers are not white.
    One lot wants actual control. the other lot just choose not to see abuse.
    Whats funny is all sorts of people saying why don’t feminists
    sort out abuse to ethnic minority women.”
    Well in those groups women are less important than goats and white women less important than that.
    So handing off a battle to “feminists” just isn’t going to work now is it?
    A really useful feminist is the male Muslim Chief prosecutor somewhere oop north.
    They might listen to him.
    - RWJ
      
      We left wing people tend to be non religious as religion is the kiss of death to female freedoms.
    - Overleaf
      
      So why do you worship Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic radicalism?
    - RWJ
      
      Its the Pope who wants slappers to fill his churches with starving kids….mainly little boys. The right and the left don’t profit from slappers breeding.

Hedwig Litllehand

Look at George Galloway! He gets all the respect a man needs from Muslim women only.

Richard Comaish

That’s not left-wing (tending towards freedom of the masses), it’s right-wing

Leftyliesrefuted

Oh Julie, Julie – I think I love you!

RWJ

I love you Julie…..A Hitler.
- Leftyliesrefuted
  
  Ah, “FASSSHHHHIST! WAAAACIST!” Nice example of Goodwin’s Law – thanks ;).
- Chris Oliver
  
  Lovely little bit of blood libel here:
  
  ‘If a Mohammedan is searching for one’s clitoris, it’s probably not in order to give a girl some fun, but rather in order to chop it off.’ – J. Burchill.

Mila Shennsey

“About 12 years ago I profiled Burchill for the Independent on Sunday. I wrote then that she presented the bizarre spectacle of an intelligent woman who had spent her entire adult life making herself more stupid; this process has now reached its inevitable conclusion, and she has become to all intents and purposes moronic.”
Will Self

Rich

Western liberal apologists and politicians have as much to be blamed in the defence of ISIS, in the same way the fundamentalist and conservatives do. Once the aforementioned groups come to terms with the facts of this situation, we can then deal with it. This is a Sunni Shia war which has attracted thousands from failed “multicultural” countries, such as the UK and France being two good examples, where the far right is shamefully again on the march.

1: In all manmade delusions such as Islam, cherry picking verses in holy books is extant; on one hand you are ordered to kill all non believers and take joy in victory, or take slaves of those you defeat. Then on the other you are told that there is no compulsion in religion and its private!

These double and contradicting standards have repressed, enslaved
and persecuted millions of people from all religions in all times, this has to
stop. (if the koran did not have such passages, one could not cherry pick)

2: Pretending that ISIS is a disillusioned minority, and is ruining it for the rest of the Islamic world is laughable. Perhaps they are, but until islam and muslisms come to terms that there are horrendous passages in its teaching (I take into account the Judaic-christian old testament being far worst that the koran) and can put this aside, allowing positive debate and cultural understandings and stops acting like a
repressed minority. Only then will islam be able to move forward in a positive
way. As Buddha once said, “Change comes from within”

Being a cultural muslim, christian or jew is fine, especially if you keep your beliefs and faith private, but this is just not that case, it steps into all aspects of public and private life, this must stop if we are to develop as a culture.

RWJ

Linking the left wing to extremism. What a sad pathetic twist to this whole middle east mess carried out and created by the western right. This article is pathetic in the extreme. 9/11 was the start of a orchestrated programme from the day it was faked and created. The people who would have nipped these Islamic nutter’s in the bud were removed by the west……even the induction of the eastern block into the EEC to destabilise the former USSR is clear. We in Europe have to live with the economic immigrant problem of this plan, while the American sit on their fat backsides with no financial or security issues. Sad silly totally biased piece of childlike journalism.

RWJ

Journalistic version of a thick right wing brainwashed bimbo.

Overleaf

Lol – she is a certified left winger and Guardianista writer.

Simonm

Even though I find Julie Burchill a terrible bore, I must give her the credit she’s due. She’s gotten away with writing exactly the same column week-in, week-out for nearly 40 years. Quite an achievement really; it’s just a shame it’s such puerile garbage…

Meir Cohen

WOMEN are the problem: “Serial rapists and killers on Death Row are never short of female attention, regrettably.” Ask yourselves HOW the thugs you read about that beat and murder their female partners (1 or 2 stories a week nowadays) have them in the first place. What about the 24yo in Romania that dies of AIDS and had DOZENS of female partners (they fought each other at his funeral), 8 of them have the disease and 40 others are being tested. Feminists always blame men, try looking in the mirror for the REAL source of the problems afflicting humanity. If women kept their paws off brutal, violent, thuggish, criminal, diseased, mentally unstable males……they would be bred out of the Human gene pool!!!

William Legg

Firstly, Assange has been found guilty of nothing!
Do we consider witch burning progressive these days?
Did you know that there is a strong link between one of assange accusers and the cia?
The swedish goverment originally found no case to answer on the alleged assaults…in fact it was only at the request of the usa, that the newly appointed governor looked at the case again…oddly enough, this was after all those embarrassing documents were leaked!
Secondly left wing politics is all about sticking together for the good of all…these groups have more in common with right wing politics! …not that i trust any politician on the planet…but that is just a big fat lie!
I thought journalists were supposed to report facts and not gossip and rumour?
Who knew!

RWJ

So its settled….Julie Burchill is a load of crap.

70sgirly

‘But there are women involved, who choose to become Islamists? How do you explain that?’ Industrial scale brainwashing, reinforced 5 times a day, can indoctrinate anyone and there’s always Stockholm Syndrome. I’ve used the Manson analogy before, against the PoS Choudray, it usually gets my post deleted.

David Palmer

This is the most offended I’ve ever been, by anything written down, ever. The level of contradictory nonsense written here is simply absurd. Long-story-short, a ‘left-wing man’ is not a left-wing man, if he’s a misognist.

vladtepesblog

Reading this article was like a cold glass of watermelon juice on a hot day. At last, someone gave a well deserved spanking to the left who traffic in sanctimony while wallowing in hypocrisy.

Iridium Halo

The West watched while Rwanda burnt then wrung its hands and sobbed afterwards. We went in and took over Iraq when we had no right to and now when all tradition and convention demands we go in and destroy ISIS to the last pimple-faced 14 year old boy, we do very little. Typical. Of course if we did go in the Leftists would scream blue murder and demand any ISIS filth we captured be treated like kittens. And so very few feminists screaming at how ISIS are treating women. Too far away.

Free Rwanda

Its funny how imperialism uses right-wing sexist propaganda to seek attention

Philippa Martyr

I think you’ve nailed it, Ms Burchill. It helps to answer a lot of nagging questions. What’s worse is that the beta-males’ loud-mouthed female sidekicks are absolutely livid when a pair of boobs appeared printed on a man’s shirt, but FGM can continue unquestioned in their own country.

tahir

Julie wrote “In Darfur, of course, the left were thrown a curveball when it turned out that the Arab Muslims were terrorising the black Christians”.

In fact all parties to Darfur conflict are (MUSLIMS”.

Coleridge1

You really must stop lying Tahir. The Muslim Arabs slaughtered at least 400,000 Black, women and children because they were non-muslim Christians or animists
- tahir
  
  Darfur was one of the oldest Islamic kingdoms in Africa which was conquered by the British in 1916. There are no Christians in Darfur except for the few UN and Western NGOs employees. Definitely there are no animist. Your point applies to Southern Sudan, NOT Darfur. This information is easily accessible in sources, why don’t you check it?

David Stanley

Islam should join the lists of banned terrorists groups, or we could be in a bus and killed just because we are not Muslim. I would like to know just why our Labs,Cons,libs MPs are letting these murdering thugs into the UK?

Gary Fearon

Nonsense article. The left has been the driving force behind equality for women for a hundred years. Now we are supposed to believe the same people want women treated as slaves. Get real…write the truth…don’t try to bend people’s views to suit your anti-left leanings.

Julibarn

A rather alternative take on the matter, I agree, still: In Norway, where I come from, an ultra-feminist and leftwinger showed up on screen a couple of years ago to defend the use of niqab – claiming that niqab was liberating. What do you make of that?
- Gary Fearon
  
  I suppose people make their own decisions on individual issues. I am a lefty so to speak, yet I support Israel as they are not the aggressor, rather they (over?) react to aggression. How anyone can describe the niqab as liberating is beyond belief…many of these women are forced to wear these, or at least pressured. My point is that women’s rights and equality in general have been pushed forward by the left for a century – anyone supporting slavery of women is by definition not on the left.
  - Chris Oliver
    
    Most people are a combination of left and right wing. Roger Scruton says we’re all right-wing (in the sense of intolerant of dissent) about the things we know. Many would say you’ve put the cart before the horse when you say Israel reacts to aggression: What came first was Zionists deliberately colonised Palestine while it was under foreign rule and while Palestinians had no control over immigration policy. What came next is that instead of arguing for a well-regulated Palestinian national police force to curb inter-communal violence, the Jews formed a separate homeland against to objections of their fellow Palestinians. I think the gender pay gap persists virtually everywhere in the world because the Left isn’t fully committed to gender equality, indeed predominantly male labour unions have often been fierce opponents of women in the paid labour force. Likewise, supposedly left-wing unions have often been fiercely hostile to refugees.
- Chris Oliver
  
  This YouTube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgw6y3cH7tA) shows a woman walking around New York for a few hours with normal casual clothes on, getting regular cat calls and comments including “I lick pussy”.
  
  Of course it’s a well-known fact that if you call out “I lick pussy” a percentage of women will say “Fabulous! My boyfriend thinks it’s disgusting. Can I dump him and shag you?” Maybe the pussy fan was a Muslim (though if he was, presumably he’d want to cut the clitoris out then lick the wound, eh Julie?)
  
  The second bit of the video shows the same woman walking around New York wearing a hijab. Result? No cat calls, no abuse, no deranged attempts at seducing her.
  
  If I were a woman I’d probably go with the head covering. Just like an orthodox Jew.
  - Julibarn
    
    Is that what our grannies and our mothers fought for – women hiding under or behind veils? It would certainly be the least feminist thing to do.
    - Chris Oliver
      
      I agree. It’s surrender. It’s surrender or submission when orthodox Jews and Christians do it. Depresses the hell out of me that on the one hand we have surrender and on the other we have raunch culture, ultra-high heels, ultra-short skirts. Depresses me even more that anyone commissions Burchill to write anything when she writes truly loathsome things such as: ‘If a Mohammedan is searching for one’s clitoris, it’s probably not in order to give a girl some fun, but rather in order to chop it off.’
      
      Yes, yes, Julie. Jews kidnap and kill Christian babies and more than half the Muslim male population practise female genital mutilation.
      
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel
  - mrs 1234
    
    White men used to call out all kinds of abuse to black men in South Africa and in the Southern States of America. Would that have been your answer for them? Cover yourself! What a prize prat.
    - Chris Oliver
      
      Sometimes it would be my answer, you prize dill. In your alternative universe I guess you think it’s either prudent or morally obligatory to take a principled stand against street muggers by wearing a Rolex and counting bundles of cash as you walk down dark alleys frequented only by hoodlums. Now, several people here have raised the issue of IS beheadings and immolations and have contrasted this supposedly characteristic Islamic behaviour with the more decent behaviour of non-Muslims. Maybe they haven’t heard of necklacing in South Africa or of Winnie Mandela saying ‘with our boxes of matches and our necklaces we will liberate this country’? Maybe they’re unaware that the Japanese behaved with particular brutality towards PoWs and captive populations in World War II and yet are an outstandingly law-abiding and non-violent culture today? Maybe they’re unaware of the bombings of Dresden, Frankfurt and Hamburg and Tokyo? Left/Right labels lack precision and we shouldn’t use them unless we can use them consistently.
    - Overleaf
      
      You seem to suffer from the lefty fault of thinking that left = good and right = bad and it is all a spectrum. Wrong.
      
      The extreme left approaches the extreme right in politics and many other aspects of social organization. For example the extreme right is in favor of socialism and the state ownership of the means of production. Isn’t that what the left wants? Famously, the Nazi party was a leftist party before 1935 and Nazi stands for “The German Socialist Workers Party”.
      
      Fact is that the continuum is not linear but circular with the two ends approaching one another. What we can say with precision about the left and the right are that they are both illiberal and favor totalitarianism (fascism – communism – dictatorship). Orwell: “In each leftist is a totalitarian struggling to come out.”
    - Chris Oliver
      
      National socialism was a form of non-universalistic collectivism that included all social classes within a particular ethno-religio-political group. It didn’t attempt to dispossess the rich of that group. It defined its enemies – Jews, gypsies, communists, etc, – and ruthlessly dispossessed them and wiped them out. That’s quite different to communism’s universalistic agenda in which enemies were decided on class lines, according to their beliefs about private property.
      
      It will come as news to my friends that I’ve been broadly defined as a lefty. Why not approach political and economic management in the way a doctor approaches a gastric ulcer? Is it left-wing or right-wing to believe gastric ulcers are lifestyle-related, the result of ulcer-prone personalities being exposed to too much workplace stress? Is it right-wing to believe H pylori might play a part and the appropriate treatment might therefore be antibiotics rather than milky drinks and bed-rest?
    - Overleaf
      
      I agree with you that the Left-Right divide is somewhat meaningless and very muddling. So you don’t have to preach to me. But what seems to escapes you is that their is a real economic divide between socialism and capitalism. And also a political divide between totalitarianism and liberalism. The closest you have come to something of a political philosophy in our discussion is your collectivism vs individualism dichotomy – which makes a lot of sense, and we can call it philosophical.
      
      You seem to be a libertarian with strong leftist tendency, when you defend socialism (code word anti “classism”) and you apologize for Islam. This is a new phenomena of a group of very confused middle class guilt-ridden westerners educated in a financially secure leftwing tradition who are starting to realize that socialism is a rubbish dream, so hence they become libertarians (and not liberals) or they gravitate towards religion, without shedding their socialist baggage.
      
      I really can’t fathom why a libertarian would put Julie Burchill down. The only reason I can think of is that she is Jewish and pro-Israel. But you are a case in point. Libertarian were originally very rightwing (Ayn Rand). Lyndon LaRouche co-mingles leftism with libertarianism and we got the worst of two worlds!
      
      You are also too class conscious which expresses your insecurities. I am one of the 1%-ers, but I can assure you that if I belonged to your class, I would not feel so bitter about classism. Maybe you should stop watching too many celebrities TV shows and stop reading on the lives of the rich and famous? I can tell you it is not all love and honey up here and we also have some deep problems as humans. Not that I rather be middle class. But it is not what you think that we wake up and go to bed thinking how we are going to exploit the next woman, Mexican, black, or poor. Most of us have contributed to society in huge economics ways and thus have been rewarded.
    - Chris Oliver
      
      I called myself a liberal, not a libertarian, for a reason. I’m not a libertarian. Libertarianism correctly defined is a sink-or-swim ideology that would do away with the welfare state, and that’s not me. I am quite prepared to argue in favour of gay marriage and the (much) kinder treatment of paedophiles. I can quite happily build a utilitarian case against prosecuting people like my friend Jeremy for downloading significant amounts of child porn, and that will alarm some so-called ‘progressives’. I certainly don’t think people should be prosecuted for bestiality but being extremely liberal is not the same as being libertarian.
      
      You come up with a lot of false binaries. There isn’t a real divide between socialism and capitalism and in every society I know (though I haven’t been to North Korea) they coexist to a greater or lesser extent. I’m a solidly pro-small business small-businessperson, having owned six bookshops. From being strongly at the anti-tax end of the spectrum, The Spirit Level has shifted my thinking on the degree of redistribution that may be required to make society more as I would like it to be. One of the most interesting points the authors make is that more egalitarian societies may actually be more inventive: they compare the patents per head in Finland with patents per head in the USA, for instance.
      
      I don’t apologise for Islam and your comments about Karen Armstrong are ignorant. No, I don’t believe in supernaturalist mumbo-jumbo. People often graft religion onto their underlying politically or psychologically inspired beliefs to endow those politically or psychologically based beliefs with greater meaning. Vast numbers of Muslims have far less in common with ISIS ideologues than you or the Archbishop of Canterbury might have with Rick Santorum and Pat Robertson.
  - Overleaf
    
    So the problem is the woman, and she should wear a chador while in NYC? And you complaining that Julie says the Left supports Islamic misogyny? You are a good example of that. And then you had to bring in that Jew, don’t ya? Yeah Jews are also misogynists because their women wear the veil. You just had to stick that on them, didn’t you.
    
    And what a stupid racist video. Every one hitting on the woman is black. And then when she wears a hijab, everyone is watching her and following her movements. So it made no practical difference. It has to do with the unusual way she carries herself which clearly says, I am not from this neighborhood and I don’ like being here, no matter what she is wearing.
    - Chris Oliver
      
      No, to make myself very clear, the problem is entirely with the harassing men and male culture needs to change. We don’t just wear seat-belts or crash helmets because WE are planning in driving badly. Soldiers and police don’t wear body armour in anticipation that THEIR reasonable behaviour will prompt a violent reaction.
      I don’t have enough information to conclude that the video is racist, or classist for that matter. Did it edit out non-black, higher SES harassers? Did its makers walk through predominantly black, low SES areas when a random walk down Wall Street would have yielded the same result? Having spent a lot of time in India, where harassment of white, relatively wealthy people is constant, I think there’s a heap of difference between people following you silently with their eyes and people calling after you, requiring a verbal response.
Chris Oliver

Left/Right divisions really don’t work. Is the union movement left-wing or right-wing? The union movement often opposed the inclusion of women in the paid workforce because of the deflationary effect that had on wages.

Malcolm Herbert

I don’t often agree with Julie burchill – but on this occasion . . .

Andygpuk

Is this serious? A whole article accusing the left of supporting Isis that fails to provide a single piece of evidence to back up any one of her assertions. If this was an essay written by an eight year old history student it would get an F. The only predjudices on display are those of a washed up hack writer who has long since ceased to matter.

cartimandua

Multiculti is mainly introduced and supported by the Left (for votes). It throws women of all ethnicities under a bus.

Rich

Western liberal apologists and politicians have as much to be blamed in the defence of ISIS, in the same way the fundamentalist and conservatives do. Once the aforementioned groups come to terms with the facts of this situation, we can then deal with it. This is a Sunni Shia war which has attracted thousands from failed “multicultural” countries, such as the UK and France being two good examples, where the far right is again on the march.

1: In all manmade delusions such as Islam; cherry picking verses in holy books is extant; where on one hand you are ordered to kill all non believers and take joy in victory, or take slaves of those you defeat. Then on the other you are told that there is no compulsion in religion and its private! These double and contradicting standards have repressed, enslaved and persecuted millions of people from all religions in all times, this has to stop. (if the koran did not have such passages, one could not cherry pick)

2: Pretending that ISIS is a disillusioned minority, and is ruining it for the rest of the Islamic world is laughable. Perhaps they are, but until islam and muslisms come to terms that there are horrendous passages in its teaching (I take into account the Judaic-christian old testament being far worst that the koran) and can put this aside, allowing positive debate and cultural understandings and stops acting like a
repressed minority. Only then will islam be able to move forward in a positive
way. As Buddha once said, “Change comes from within”

Being a cultural muslim, christian or jew is fine, especially if you keep your beliefs and faith private, but this is just not that case, it steps into all aspects of public and private life, this must stop if we are to develop as a culture.

myles strong

why can’t she see that all these patriarch religions are of the far right

Nathan

If dark is better I guess that means white is the worst. Or so we are told by the non-racist left.

john

YOU DO TALK A LOAD OF CRAP YOU OBEUSLY NO NOTHING ABOUT LEFT WING POLOTICKS

Kenny Fraser

utter diahorea! more lunatic fring rabis rightist excrement.

swnic

She’s spot on. I think ‘left wing’ = middle class twat and ‘right wing’ = middle class twat.
Two different sides of the same political posing pouch.
I stopped voting Labour in 2010, after a life voting for them.
I would jump on any bandwagon that looks to upset the middle class elite in Westminster – good luck UKIP, our current hope.

wilfredson

Her remarks about the Left always supporting the darker-skinned side are actually spot on, in spite of the idea being, theoretically, ridiculous. Put slightly differently, it’s always the side more unlike Whites/Westerners who are favoured by the ‘liberal’/Left: Jews preferred to Europeans, but Arabs preferred to Jews, and Black Africans preferred to Arabs and, of course, Christianity (viewed, perhaps wrongly, as a White religion) at the bottom, with all the rest above.
The Labour Party regularly demonstrates this antipathy, from an immigration policy we now know was deliberately designed to swamp the White Working Class; and how often do we hear of petty sneers from top Labourites at traditions like the Roast Beef of Old England (gleefully said to be being replaced by Tikka Massala as the national dish), to the latest contempt aimed at an English house for flying English flags.

ogunsiron

Hi all,
I’m from across the pond.
From what I know of Laurie Penny, her number one enemy, her great satan is the white cishet male. If she is siding with Isis or fundamentalist muslims, it’s because she perceives them as possible allies in the great war against the white cisgender hetero male. Some of those leftists are willing to lie in bed with anything and anyone in order to be in the anti-white-cishet-male coalition. It’s not so much a question of endorsing Isis or extremist islam.

desb63 .

Well said Julie.

HappyNewYear

brilliant – the best article I have read in a long while. No punches pulled and straight at the jugular ……. I could quickly become a fan

eddie333

Astonishing how the so called politically correct white left wing are willing to forgive human rights atrocities against women and homosexuals….just as long as they are being committed by dark skinned people….and in the name of Islam ??

What a funny bunch they are….

gelert

It’s the dual standards of the left. Some French writer called it La Trahison des Clercs.

bandalasta

Thanks, Julie, for writing this. The disgustingness of some humans never ceases to disgust me. Though I wish they would all go away.

Jackthesmilingblack

“It was not until the Equal Franchise Act of 1928 that women over 21 were able to vote and women finally achieved the same voting rights as men.”
Those that live in greenhouses shouldn’t get stoned.

mrs 1234

Equivocation such as yours is wholly puerile and unhelpful to countless women. The fact is that the Equal Franchise Act of 1928 happened. Our culture did respond to demand and change and so it evolved. Although it required great bravery, at that time it was not a capital offence to criticise the status quo. Unfortunately there is little sign of that happening in many Islamic countries where even apostasy is a capital offence. When you are not allowed to disagree, demonstrate or even discuss then there is little hope for evolution and change. You should be grateful you grew up in a country that allowed dissent and satire.
- Jackthesmilingblack
  
  Welcome to the debate Mrs. Rip Van Winkle.
  “You should be grateful you grew up in a country that allowed dissent and satire.”
  
  That’s a Brit for you, making assumptions (usually negative) about someone you know nothing about.
  Jack, Japan Alps
  - George Smiley
    
    You grew up in Japan, that I do know.
  - Overleaf
    
    Well doh, Japan is also a democratic country. So you did grow up in a democratic country and you are taking that for granted. Problem with you leftwingers is that you prefer a totalitarian country, and you hate the west because you have no idea how valuable our freedom and democracy is. Why don’t you move to Venezuela – you will win, and we will win.
Overleaf

Lol – so Islamic misogyny supported by the Left is all honky dory and benign because a 100 years ago women didn’t have same voting rights as men in a western country? Whataboutary alert.

Chris Oliver

Hitchens should be much reviled not much sainted for thinking all the Not In My Name opponents of the Iraq War were silly or all their leaders were sinister. But trust Burchill not to see that.

It’s not as if the post-Saddam rulers of Iraq (including the US and Britain) have managed to keep the state together and maintain the degree of peace and stability Saddam managed to maintain with such little loss of life.

Get this, if your ambassador, April Glaspie, tells a Middle Eastern leader the US takes no position on your conflict with an Arab neighbour, the Middle Eastern leader might see it as a green card to go ahead and invade. If you then shoot the crap out of his army including when it’s in retreat from the country it’s invaded with what seems like your consent, they’re going to feel double-crossed and wonder about your basic humanity. If you then impose years of sanctions and launch attacks like Operation Desert Fox, which the sainted Hitchens rightly reported as a cynical exercise by Clinton to divert attention from his Lewinsky shenanigans, they’re going to start to hate you. If you then react to the 9/11 attacks by invading the Middle Eastern country on the false pretext that it possesses deliverable chemical and biological weapons that are somehow scarier than your own weapons of mass destruction AND that by possessing them the Middle Eastern leader poses a significant imminent threat to your own security, they’re going to be beyond furious.

And if an imbecilic columnist writes that when Muslim men are looking for their partner’s clitoris it’s more likely to mutilate it than to pleasure it, some Muslim men are going to start wondering whether ISIL, their enemy’s enemy, is their friend.

cartimandua

Saddam killed 2 million people and when sanctions were lifted (which Russia was pushing) he would have had nukes in a few months.
He would have bought one or more from disaffected Russians or Russian Mafia.
In 2001 Putin told Bush the vast Soviet legacy was insecure and Zawahiri
said if you had the money you could buy a nuke from a Russian.
- Chris Oliver
  
  How about you give a source for that 2 million figure and the “nukes in a few months” idea. I wonder if the well-funded Islamic State has nukes. What do you reckon?
  
  I think Iraq Body Count had it right when it said that according to Amnesty International Saddam was killing mere scores of his citizens in the two years before the Iraq War (a kill rate we vastly exceeded while bringing less security). I think IBC has it right in this link below. I think countless Iraqis would be alive if we hadn’t invaded. I think you can only get remotely near the 2 million figure by blaming every single death in the Iran-Iraq war on Saddam, as if Iran played no part in the war and as if the US, UK and others thought fighting revolutionary Iran was beyond the pale. But you have to do more than that. You also have to blame him for every death in the battle against Kurdish separatists who expressed loyalty to Iran. And you also have to blame him every death that happened as a consequence of the sanctions we imposed after the invasion of Kuwait April Glaspie gave the nod to. And you have to blame every death in the Gulf war on him, including every death in the Highway 80 turkey shoot on him.
  
  Let’s instead blame all those deaths on Sykes-Picot and the creation of unworkable states in the Middle East. Or let’s blame the Americans for overthrowing Mossadegh. Or let’s blame those behind the creation of Israel as a solution to European antisemitism.
  
  https://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/beyond/casualties-of-support/
  - eddie333
    
    If you are defending Saddam for his “low” death count then I guess you have no problem whatsoever with Netanyahu and how Israel handled the last Gaza conflict?
    I wonder how Saddam would have tackled 20,000 rockets being fired onto a civilian population?
    
    “Or let’s blame those behind the creation of Israel as a solution to European antisemitism.”
    
    Antisemitism is not something that will ever be solved. However at least in Israel jews now have somewhere to go to escape it.
    Isn’t that a good thing?
    - Chris Oliver
      
      You’re almost right. I don’t THINK I have a problem with how Israel handled the last Gaza conflict. It’s realpolitik. If the Arab neighbours make it unappealing for Jews to settle in Israel, they won’t. If the Arab neighbours make it politically and economically costly for the US to bankroll Israel, they’ll reduce that support. If the Arab nations were as hellbent on the destruction of Israel as some people believe, I don’t think Israel would be the second nation on Earth to use nuclear weapons in a battle and I don’t take it for read that the Arab nations will never have the manpower and firepower to claw back a large amount of Palestine.
      
      Anitsemitism is just a severe and enduring form of racism, like European anti-Islamism, or Hutu anti-Tutsiism, or Turkish anti-Armenianism, or Sinhalese anti-Tamilism, or Cambodian anti-Vietnameseism, or Japanese anti-Koreanism, or Chinese anti-Japanese-ism. You want inhumanity? Try the rape of Nanking. Not a Muslim in sight.
      
      Yes, it might be good for Jews to have a place to bolt to. Might also be good if the Jains had a nation state they could call their own, and the Tamils, and the paedophiles, and the homosexuals and the transsexuals, and the women, and everyone else who’s ever been persecuted and wants the right of self-determination. The issue here is that the creation of Israel trampled on the self-determination rights of other Palestinians who wanted their country to remain a unitary state and who wanted to be able to keep their ancestral homes.
    - eddie333
      
      “Yes, it might be good for Jews to have a place to bolt to.”
      
      Completely agree….they certainly could have used it in the 1930’s and early 1940’s in Europe.
      And thank goodness it was there to take in 800.000 arab jewish refugees in 1948 after the arab nations tried to destroy Israel but failed and so decided to ethnically cleanse themselves of their entire jewish populations….
      
      As for homosexuals and women – they are now only institutionally persecuted in muslim countries – but that’s a “cultural” thing so that’s okay don’t you know….
    - Chris Oliver
      
      Yes, it would have been great for Jews to have had a place to bolt to in 1930s and 1940s Europe. Britain perhaps? It’s true that Herzl never suggested making Britain the homeland, “an outpost of civilisation against barbarism”, but wouldn’t the world be a happier and safer place for Jews if Wales was the homeland? Civilisation alongside civilisation? Maybe creating a self-governing homeland in Kent for Northern Irish Protestants would provoke no backlash at all, being as England is Protestant too. But I imagine it might. And Northern Irish Protestants are culturally closer to the English than European Jews are to Palestinian Jews or Jews from Arab lands, let alone to Muslims.
    - Chris Oliver
      
      And now I’ve found this. Is Mugabe, quote directly below,
      Muslim?
      
      “If we accept homosexuality as a right as is being argued by the association of sodomists and sexual perverts,” he told the assembled crowd. “What moral fibre shall our society ever have to deny organised drug addicts, or even those given to bestiality, the rights they might claim.”
      
      Those comments are getting a bit of an echo in Africa, with one Rev. Michael Esakan Okwi saying that not even “cockroaches” who are in the “lower animal kingdom” engaged in homosexual relations – ‘cockroaches’ is how tutsis were labelled before the Rwandan genocide of 1994.
      
      The Independent had a fine report both on African discrimination against homosexuals and those who are fighting for their rights and against imprisonment, rape and execution. I like the idea that homosexuality is Un-African (just as it is Un-American, Un-Chinese, Un-Islamic, Un-anywhereish). It makes one wonder what other Un-African things one could come up with and when these are going to be legislated against – Mercedes, BMWs, LandCruisers, Kalashnikovs, rolexes – oh dear, it’s back to How to Write about Africa.
      
      More anti-gay fare reported from the Box Turtle Bulletin. I love the idea that the Nazis was a big, gay movement as reported by US Evangelist, Scott Lively (Come on Scott, what’s your real name) in his book, The Pink Nazi.
      
      “The Nazi Party was entirely controlled by militaristic male homosexuals throughout its short history,” he writes in his book, which is available online for free, and would be made available to conference attendees. He also adds that “There is no question that homosexuality figures prominently in the history of the Holocaust,” saying that German gays were eager to target Jews for extinction because of Judaism’s traditional prohibition against homosexuality.
    - Chris Oliver
      
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_by_country_or_territory
      
      Burundi, 91.5% Christian. Homosexuality punishable by three years’ imprisonment.
      
      Eritrea, 62.9% Christian. Three years’ imprisonment.
      
      Ethiopia, 62.8% Christian. Ten years’ imprisonment.
      
      Kenya, 84.8% Christian. Fourteen years’ imprisonment.
    - eddie333
      
      Iran – 99% muslim.
      Homosexuality punishable by public hanging….
      
      Maybe they should move to Israel – no problems with being openly gay there….
      
      Or Wales maybe ??
    - Chris Oliver
      
      No question about it. Iran is a bad place to be if you’re gay. I’m sure you’re honest enough to concede this post of yours was factually incorrect:
      
      As for homosexuals and women – they are now only institutionally persecuted in muslim countries
    - eddie333
      
      Of course….
      
      I should have said….”As for homosexuals and women – they are now MOSTLY institutionally persecuted in muslim countries”
      
      But the fact that they are also being persecuted in 3rd world Christian countries too does not make it okay….
    - Chris Oliver
      
      Yes indeed. You could even go further and say persecuted and persecuted more severely in a higher proportion of Muslim than secular or Christian countries. We’d have to look through the tables I guess. In case that gives people a distorted view of Islam you might want to note how openly affectionate men can be to one another in Indonesia. The Quran and the Bible deal with homosexuality similarly and I’m not sure what Jewish scripture says, but given Christ’s rejection of Jews’ harsh conception of God and the fact that he was put to death for blasphemy I imagine it’s not nice. The issue then might be about why Muslims are, on average, less likely than Christians and Jews to believe the god shared by all three religions sometimes gets things wrong. Worth noting always that some Jews and Christians take their scriptures very literally: Observant Jews walked out of my bookshop in disgust on three memorable occasions because I stocked books on dinosaurs, and American evangelists regularly issue tirades against gays.
    - eddie333
      
      There has been a jewish presence in the country now known as Israel for 3500 yrs….which kind of explains the reason for not choosing Wales?
      
      Unless Moses was really given the 10 commandments on Mount Snowden?
    - Chris Oliver
      
      There’s been a Sinhalese and Tamil presence in Sri Lanka for much more than 3500 years. The two communities haven’t always got on and the Tamil struggle for a separate homeland (Eelam) has been resisted. Should we blame the Sinhalese for, like the Palestinians, refusing to accept a two-state solution? Should we blame the Tamils for forming the LTTE just as the Jews formed the Lehi? If Sri Lankan Tamils are persecuted and forced to flee, as the Jews of Europe were, should the world expect India to allow the creation of a Tamil homeland in Tamil Nadu? If India refuses to allow it, can the new Tamil homeland and rely on UN support? What of the rights of non-Tamils in Tamil Nadu who might not want to be swamped by uncontrolled waves of Tamil migration from Fiji, Malaysia, America, Australia and Britain? Are Indians who refuse calls for Tamil autonomy to be treated as racist barbarians? If India tries to recapture Tamil Nadu from the separatist Tamils, can the separatist Tamils claim Kerala and the southern bit of Andhra Pradesh as a buffer zone?
    - eddie333
      
      What right does any country have to exist?
      
      America? Australia?
      
      Do they have the right to exist given their histories?
      
      Israel exists (for now anyway) and has done since 1948….
      
      You may not like it – but that’s the way it is.
      
      Palestine could have existed since 1948 – but they turned down the opportunity of statehood and self determination and instead chose to wage war against Israel – something they are still doing now.
      
      As things stand there has never been a state of Palestine – and there possibly never will.
    - Chris Oliver
      
      People have to live somewhere and they all want some guarantee of security. The issue in 1948 was that a Jewish minority in Palestine, its numbers swelled by people who were as alien and almost as hostile as Germans might have been to Brits in 1948, wanted to split off part of the country to make its own ethnically homogeneous territory. Whites make up 50.6 per cent of Leicester’s population. If the non-whites wanted to make the city an autonomous non-white city state within Britain, with its own laws, schools, police force and all the rest of it, that would not be allowed. The fact that there had been inter-communal conflict would count for nothing; it would simply be an argument for street cameras and a review of policing. My comments here have been about the need to recognise the legitimacy of Palestinian resistance to the break-up of a state they wanted to remain unitary. Perhaps Palestinians ought to be invited to review the decisions of 1948 and settle now for a two-state solution maybe with the borders set as per the 1947 UN partition plan.
      
      Yes, the colonisation of Australia and America was problematic. But I don’t know of any columnist or his/her followers who thinks the black wars in Australia or the native American wars in the US were illegitimate forms of resistance. I don’t know any columnist who would write anything Burchill-esque like “If an Aborigine is searching for one’s clitoris, it’s probably not in order to give a girl some fun, but rather in order to chop it off”.
    - objectivefactsmatter
      
      “The issue in 1948 was that a Jewish minority in Palestine, its numbers swelled by people who were as alien and almost as hostile as Germans might have been to Brits in 1948, wanted to split off part of the country to make its own ethnically homogeneous territory.”
      
      1948, eh? And when did this “hostility” start?
    - gelert
      
      Anti-Islamism is no more racist than being anti-Christianity or anti-Judaism – they are all religions.
      
      Anti-Semitism is racist because it refers to a race of people.
    - Chris Oliver
      
      If you get warm fuzzy feelings from seeing Jewish and Greek Orthodox women with shawls over their heads, or Catholic nuns in habits, or Buddhist nuns with shaved heads and saffron robes but can’t tolerate the sight of a woman wearing a hijab, it’s maybe not because your extensive reading of the Quran tells you Islamic holy texts are worse than Jewish, Christian and Buddhist texts.
    - gelert
      
      Nothing wrong with the hijab; it’s the niqab and burka that are offensive to most people, including many Muslims. Maybe you should check the difference.
      
      Anyway, that’s not relevant to the point I was making about anti-Islamism not being racist.
      
      You seem to have a treasure trove of cut-and-paste replies to other posters.
    - Chris Oliver
      
      Quite so, niqabs and burkas are offensive to many people, and with good reason. No reason to call anyone who has those objections broadly anti-Muslim or racist. I can’t say I’ve ever seen a Hasidic man being driven by a woman and of course I can find that offensive without being accused of broadly anti-Judaism or racist. Hijabs are a different kettle of fish, which is why I mentioned them. The litmus test of whether someone’s being racist rather than rationally in favour of women’s rights is surely whether they find the hijab offensive but nun’s habits and the head-coverings associated with many other religions inoffensive. You maybe still think it’s prejudice merely aimed at a religion whereas I think it’s prejudice aimed at a cultural/racial marker – something akin to hating people who eat matzos and gefilte.
      
      No cutting and pasting here but I’m sorry if you find it annoying that I sometimes quote Burchill (cut/paste) or some very ISIL-like snippet from the Stern Gang archive.

StephanieJCW

“Livingstone is a man not averse to the idea of a man having several wives, one feels, having had five children by three women. ”

Really is beneath you. He was not in a polygamous relationship. Relationships do end. Are you as vitriolic about women who have children for multiple men?

cartimandua

Yes why not.
gelert

Wasn’t Ken involved in an assault on a woman ?

Guest

I find all the hysterical comments by the mouth foaming Muslims here and their useful idiot defenders, hilarious!

Especially to the defenders of the worst humanity is witnessing every single day: you have had your say long enough. Thanks to your ilk, our country is a mass raped toilet now, where a british soldier can be beheaded in his own capital, just for being a soldier.

If you had any decency at all, you would shut the F up already, you have been wrong about everything – we don’t care, it’s OUR turn now, and we will clean up the piles of excrement you have created. Ungrateful lot, just like their pets: I wish we could deport all of them together to a landfill of their choice.

Chris Oliver

Bumble Bee has disappeared, but let me reply: I think anyone acquainted with European history would know Europeans have behaved with equal and greater depravity. I’m not excusing IS depravity; I’m just challenging the notion that Muslim culture is always more depraved than Christian culture.
I seem to remember Northern Irish Christians slaughtering British soldiers in the capital and elsewhere. I seem to remember the British Christian navy sinking the Belgrano, an ageing battle cruiser belonging to an Argentine Christian dictatorship.

You want peace? Don’t leave colonised countries with deliberately unworkable borders, designed to make states fissiparous and fragile and unable to exert their will on western oil consumers. You want peace? Don’t overthrow nationalist, socialist leaders like Mossadegh who want to capitalise appropriately on their country’s principal resource. You want peace? Don’t invade Iraq when you feel pain because a misguided bunch of idiots from Saudi and Egypt fly planes into tall buildings – a crime not entirely dissimilar in type (though vastly more “successful” in outcome) to the Canary Wharf or Baltic Exchange bombings.

eddie333

“I seem to remember the British Christian navy sinking the Belgrano, an ageing battle cruiser belonging to an Argentine Christian dictatorship.”

I never knew the Belgrano was sunk in the name of Jesus….
- Robertus Maximus
  
  Well put – always nice to see truth used against a laughably skewed argument. Still, it no doubt gets him plenty of Brownie points at the Guardian and with its similarly automaton readership.
  - Chris Oliver
    
    Your previous post seems to have disappeared. Maybe you thought better of it. This is my response to it:
    
    Their beheadings seem to render the victims unconscious in about seven seconds. The US executes its victims and it takes up to 47 minutes. Of course both acts are obscene, and the IS act is more obscene because of the innocence of the victims.
    
    Of course Muslims have slaughtered, killed and oppressed people. Was there anything in my post that led you to suppose I didn’t know that? Is it enough to point out that World War 2 was kicked off by Christians and Shintoists? Is it enough to point out that a Christian nation dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan, and at least one of them was unnecessary?
    
    Let’s not pretend England, a Christian nation in 1939, had much in common with Nazi Germany, a Christian nation in 1939. Let’s also not pretend the world’s most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia, has much in common with Islamic State.
    
    Your ilk have turned Britain, which I’ve left, into a vulgar, uncivilised place full of EDL and Britain First supporters, a place that at its worst incubates people like Stephen Lawrence’s killers and Julie blood libel Burchill.
- Chris Oliver
  
  God save our gracious queen, and all that. I think there are pretty obvious nationalistic and economic and political sub-currents in Islamic State ideology and actions. It’s not all about rival conceptions of God.
  - eddie333
    
    What the nazis did was not done in the name of Christianity.
    The atomic bomb was not dropped in the name of Christianity.
    600,000 German civilians killed by allied bombing – this was not done in the name of Christianity
    
    etc…etc…etc….
    
    There is no moral equivalency here….as much as you would like there to be….
    
    If you want to talk about atrocities carried out in the name of Christianity then by all means talk about the Crusades or the Spanish Inquisition….
    
    In other words….ancient history….
    - Chris Oliver
      
      I think it would be a good idea if you and I were to behave a bit less like adversaries, because I don’t think we are adversaries. Let’s discuss this co-operatively, like civilised people.
      
      The Nazis killed Jews in part because they were “the Christ killers”. Some of the most zealous persecutors of Jews were orthodox Polish and French Catholics, just as decades later some Catholic clergymen were complicit in the sloughier of Rwandan Tutsi. Of course the Pius XI, made a pact not to criticise Nazi Germany in exchange for the safety of Catholic clergy and churches. The crew of the Enola Gay said prayers to their Christian god before dropping the bomb, and their president possibly said “And may God continue to bless America!” just as George W Bush said that 60 years later under a Mission Accomplished banner.
      
      Where in London is the Bomber Harris memorial statue? St Clement Danes, isn’t it?
    - eddie333
      
      I didn’t think I was being in any way uncivilised – I apologise if you think I was….
      
      However….I think it is disingenuous of you to draw any sort of parallel between Islamic State atrocities that are taking place today and conflicts involving western countries that have taken place in the name of freedom – not religion.
    - Chris Oliver
      
      The Iraq War strikes me as a thoroughly ignoble cause. If Colin Powell had thought it more noble he might, perhaps, have told the truth at the UN in February 2003. Instead, he told the assembly it was 100 per cent certain that this building was a currently active biological weapons factory. Funny we found nothing of the sort when we invaded. We wouldn’t have had trouble persuading the French, Russians and many other nations to support a noble cause, but fools that they were they maybe didn’t believe Ann Clwyd’s story in The Times about Saddam feeding his enemies through shredding machines.
    - gelert
      
      Christians persecuted Jews because they were Christ killers.
      
      Hitler wanted to destroy the Jewish people because he saw them as untermensch ( like Slavs) and the cause of all the problems in the world. It had nothing to do with religion.
Bumble Bee

thank you for illustrating the useful idiocy I was talking about earlier, as if poor innocent muslims have never slaughtered killed and oppressed anybody. How do you think Islam conquered 58 countries, with rainbows and butterflies? Muslims slaughter each other and anybody else without a single westerner around, they turn their own countries into dust, without any outside help, and they have no problem burying women and children alive, beheading one another, gassing and eating their own etc, how is the west to blame for that? Nobody kills as many muslims as other muslims, every single day, and the braindead like yourself have the audacity to blame outsiders.
btw, it’s not 1379 anymore, CHristianiy has evolved and civilised themselves, it is Islam that is still shooting polio vaccinators in 2014 and marrying off 8 year olds.

your ilk has had their say: you have turned our country into a mass raped toilet, now it’s our turn to clean it up, so shut up, and if you don’t like it, go settle in one of those tolerant peaceful muslim countries, where there is no racism. Heathrow is west.

And maybe this sentence “You want peace?” should be applied the other way around, since Islam is currently the only religion on earth that can not live in peace with sikhs, buddhists, hindus, jews, christians and even other muslims, the only religion that can not live in peace in our countries, or in their own amongst themselves.

You should also tell the ‘you want peace’ bit to Hamas, while you’re at it!
Robertus Maximus

You seem to have replied to me by mistake as Discus has sent me one where you say a comment by me has disappeared and that perhaps I had thought better of it!!! I think you must be hallucinating as my comment, plus a reply to eddie333 are there, clear for all to see. Perhaps the clarity and cogency of Julie Burchill’s article has “dazed” you somewhat!
- Chris Oliver
  
  Thanks. Maybe I should have done a screen shot to show you. Burchill’s articles are clear, but not remotely clever.
  - Chris Oliver
    
    For some reason when I look for the post by clicking on my name and seeing the full sequence of my comments and people’s replies, it comes up as “Pending”.
gelert

The Arabs have been killing one another for centuries, nothing to do with the West. They are still engaged in the slave trade in Africa – not surprising when they treat their own women as slaves.
Augustus

You can’t compare Europe’s religious wars of the past with the Islamic revolutionary violence of today. The wars between Protestants and Catholics were conflicts fought within the same Christian family, only certain dogmas were in dispute. Islam is a political religion that aspires to dominate the world, while Christianity long ago gave up the violent pursuit of world domination. The Christian religion doesn’t wield political power anywhere on Earth. What we have in the West is religious freedom: freedom to believe or not to believe, and the freedom to change one’s belief. We also uphold the principle of separation of religion and state. These are all principles worth fighting for today, not a set of religious dogmas proclaimed by a church.
- Chris Oliver
  
  Malaysians and Indonesians have that same religious freedom. Until it happens, it’s still politically unacceptable for the US president to be a non-believer or a Muslim or a Jew, and JFK’s Catholicism didn’t go unnoticed. Christianity and Islam are both monotheistic, proselytising, chauvinistic religions. They are Microsoft and Apple battling it out for market share. Church and state were fairly indivisible in Ireland until very recently. We might be in a position to feel superior and to judge Islam from the moral high ground, but some of us Christian nations only got there in terms of gay rights, women’s rights and execution methods a matter of decades ago (a blink in the span of human history) and we got there so not by having a superior scriptural base but by becoming more secular.
  - Augustus
    
    I agree with you that “we got there not by having a superior scriptural base”, although I would also say that the Enlightenment was really the turning point leading to the present. But the fact remains, while IS et al want a war based on religion, what we want, and must not lose, is a free society with human rights, the rule of law and democracy.
    - Chris Oliver
      
      Hear hear. We’re more likely to get a secular response to Western chauvinist aggression (Iraq for instance) if we make it as intolerable for anyone to publish Burchill accusing the majority of Muslim men of personally practising female genital mutilation as it is to publish a similarly misleading anti-Jewish comments.
    - Chris Oliver
      
      I’m saying the scriptural bases of the three Abrahamic religions are very similar. Secularised bits of the world go to war based on secular objectives – spreading democracy, defeating fascism, preventing another domino falling to the communist bloc. Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot also forced people to convert or die but we don’t focus on the fact that these extreme aberrations sprang out of Judaeo-Christian or Buddhist culture. Religious or (quasi-religious) ideological zealotry is a dangerous thing but human beings seem to find it hard to dispassionately gather evidence and then act on it. The Spectator is the house journal of ideological zealotry. On Burchill’s page you’ll read how Muslim men are mostly genital mutilators. On Cohen’s page you’ll read how the Iraq War was fully justified and shame on the faux left who opposed it. On Delingpole’s page you’ll read how climate scientists and the opponents of homeopathy have a ruinous left-wing agenda and talk nothing but bullshit. Rod Liddle, Deborah Ross and Lucy Vickery’s competition are the only regular features its unembarrassing to read.
      
      Yes, let’s keep the rule of law and apply it to people like Blair and Bush who knowingly lied (by hiding the doubts expressed by the intelligence community, the human rights community, and military strategists) to elicit our support for an invasion we would otherwise not have supported. Let’s make it as risky for our Western and civilised side to launch bombing campaigns as it is for their side to.

Robertus Maximus

This is a superb, straight-talking description (which means, by definition, a scathing attack) of the Guardian-reading twisted inadequates who have blighted this country, and by extension, its policy towards others, for decades. Well done, Julie, it was a joy to read.

Chris Oliver

Quite a few people here seem not to know that an article titled “Terror” in the Lehi underground newspaper He Khazit (The Front ) argued as follows:

“Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat. We are very far from having any moral qualms as far as our national war goes. We have before us the command of the Torah, whose morality surpasses that of any other body of laws in the world: “Ye shall blot them out to the last man.” But first and foremost, terrorism is for us a part of the political battle being conducted under the present circumstances, and it has a great part to play: speaking in a clear voice to the whole world, as well as to our wretched brethren outside this land, it proclaims our war against the occupier. We are particularly far from this sort of hesitation in regard to an enemy whose moral perversion is admitted by all.”

—

“Ye shall blot them out to the last man.” That’s the sort of thing Islamic State and Hamas would say, isn’t it?

My point is simple: wars are won by killing and destroying capacity or terrorising people into submission without having to kill and destroy. I think it’s likely that IS’s videos of beheading will cost them the war because they’ve prompted a much greater international response than aerial bombing might have.

But their strategists might be hoping the reverse is true: that the videos spread fear and weaken the resolve of their enemies to resist and defeat them.

Hard Little Machine

Arrogant angry half insane radical feminist Naomi Wolf has been a huge fan and booster for the Taliban and more recently, Boko Haram, for years. It’s not so much that they rape and subjugate women it’s that they want to kill all of us. Which to the Naomi’s of the world is the pre eminent fact and driver. Soon enough you’ll see the far left begin to wonder aloud if quite possibly the wrong side lost WW2.

gelert

When the leftist loons and the “Palestinians” were demonstrating in London a few months ago, there were posters being carried that said, “Hitler was right”. Of course, spineless Plod did nothing.

Martha van der Pol

Just need to watch C4 news – don’t know about ‘young’ men but cert. old + middle aged men seem fascinated by jihadis on the left, and are apologists for a woman’s ‘right’ to wear the veil and the ‘right’ of Palestinians to ‘fight back’ against ‘oppressors’ in Israel (and any Jew around the world thus becomes fair game too of course to these Lefties). Burchill is spot on here of course – the beardy Left is wish fulfilling that they could stop being tofu munchers wearing ‘This is what a feminist looks like’ t-shirts, get hold of a gun and pistol whip some ‘hos. I particularly love the idea of ‘Christians darker here DOES NOT COMPUTE’ – how true and funny. Of course people think this way on the Left – how could they support Palestinian attacks on Israel as ‘understandable’ yet cry out when Israel finally snaps and retaliates for constant rocket fire and suicide bombings on its own soil? How could these people not instead take the Palestinian leadership to task for squandering aid money on guns and rockets rather than looking after their own people in what is after all their own territory? Israel has to suffer terrorism almost daily and is expected to do nothing or worse, take responsibility. Palestinians are expected to have no culpability and are seen as simply unable to control violent attacks on their neighbour – how ridiculous is the Left today.

gelert

Jon Snow, Jeremy Bowen, Orla Guerin, and the rest of the loony leftists, shape the views of many people in this country towards Israel by virtue of the fact that they have a near monopoly on broadcasting output. Yet the anti-Semites have the gall to accuse Jews of controlling the media.
- Lydia Robinson
  
  I’ve just seen an exchange between Galloway and an Israeli Minister where George suggests that the internecine wars between Muslims is the fault of, er, Israel. I expect the power cuts we might get this winter will also be blamed on Israel.
  - gelert
    
    What else can you expect from Israelis ?
    
    The mail was late this morning. The postman said it was all the fault of the Israelis 😉

Augustus

Lefty, or not, a kafir’s blood is halal and may always be shed. The reason jihadists commit all those cruel attacks on Christians in Africa and underdeveloped nations is because a direct religious war with the secular West is impossible. So they hope to unleash a religious war in the third world as a first stage to global war between Christians and Jews on the one hand, and all Muslims on the other. A religious confrontation with the West is, however, undoubtedly their ultimate goal, because their religious ideology seeks the domination of political Islam over the whole world.

Chris Oliver

Abu Hamza may have told his followers that taking the blood and money of a kafir was halal but I don’t know ANY Muslim country that would routinely not prosecute someone guilty of killing or stealing from a foreigner. Do you? How about you, Sean L?
- mrs 1234
  
  Many have wandered from the topic but this article is about the treatment of women in Islamic countries and how it appears that many on the Left seem to find it wholly acceptable. I wonder if they saw the film Wadjda made by Haifaa al-Mansour, Saudi’s first female filmaker? If not I recommend it. When filming outside scenes she had to do it from inside a van so strong was the threatening reaction from a male mob.
  Clearly, looking at these comments, anything Burchill writes is condemned by many because of her support for Israel but that does not make a lie of the fact that life for countless women in Islamic countries is a tale of brutal oppression at the hands of their male lords.. When sexual apartheid seems so acceptable by so many – a mere cultural issue – I sometimes wonder if had Ian Smith lived now and had been fervently anti-Israel would certain sections have tolerated racial apartheid. Thankfully, it is inconceivable but why are we not hearing the same reaction against a certain brand of Islam that is gaining hegemony everywhere?
  Many commentators here are screaming for facts but how many facts do we need? For me it is enough that a man can marry several times but a woman once, that a woman raped needs 4 male witnesses to the fact, that women cannot drive, that they cannot go out without a male from their family escorting them etc etc.
  I find this collective denial so disappointing, and it is the reason that drove me from being able to identify with the so-called Left. My own parents were working class with, as was the way then, conservative values. They were made to change, to think and to feel guilty. My dad would have had a lot in common with some of these Muslim males when it came to views of a woman’s place but he was absolutely forced to change them. Rightly so. It is rather galling that I see leftwing critics of people like my dad lining up to defend what must be the most patriarchal,monolithically conservative culture that exists on the planet today.
  - Chris Oliver
    
    Hear hear to your comment that life for countless women in Islamic countries is brutally oppressive. I don’t think there’s ‘collective denial’ of that fact, with just plucky you standing up for truth and moral principle.
    Many men support gender pay gaps, explicitly or tacitly, in our own society. Perversely, many women do as well. It seems true of every society that women who are short(er), slim, mildly dependent, and (in culturally defined terms) pretty are more desirable to men as sexual partners, while men who are tall(er) and economically or politically powerful are more desirable to women as sexual partners. Maybe evolutionary biology leads us towards misogynistic regimes?
    - Overleaf
      
      What about those feminists who say we should not criticize the Islamic system and its treatment of women because all is not perfect here on the home front. I swear they are all leftists.
      
      “Maybe evolutionary biology leads us towards misogynistic regimes?” – now that would be an odd thing for a leftist to say. After all, the reason there is any difference between the sexes is because of the male’s desire to dominate and be microaggressive towards women and make them feel unsafe and exploitable. For the lefty, there is absolutely no neurological difference between a man’s brain and a woman’s, and if there is one it is because the woman was trained by patriarchal society to submit to the man. I am sure when you bring up “biology” that is in jest and it is sarcasm.
    - Chris Oliver
      
      You want Left and Right to denote all sorts of things those labels don’t denote. I think the Left tends towards collectivism and the Right tends towards individualism. Extending the definitions of Left and Right to cover attitudes to tofu or astrology is something some people want to do, but I don’t. There are liberals and authoritarians on both sides. I am sure there are plenty of government-employed neuroscientists who favour collectivism and yet can find biological as well as culturally determined differences between male and female brains. I don’t know where Simon Baron-Cohen is on the political spectrum.
    - Overleaf
      
      But there is a marked tendency of both the left and the activist right to be totalitarian and anti-democratic. That is socialism. Collectivism is another manifestation of socialism. The far right wants state capitalism which is essentially socialism.
- Overleaf
  
  Mohammad’s job was to routinely attack non-Muslim tribes and take away their women for sexual slavery. Yeah, I guess this is not as bad as killing the women. After all doesn’t the Left believe that Mohammad was perfect?
  - Chris Oliver
    
    Who, on the Left, did you have in mind?
    - Overleaf
      
      The people who said “I am not Charlie Hebdo”, or who said “I am Charlie Hebdo, but do not criticize Mohammad and they had it coming” — and these people turn out to be invariably form the Left. Not to hard to find leftist blogs who said the above – you can Google that term.
    - Chris Oliver
      
      So the people who blog on leftist blogs (The New Statesman, The Guardian, etc.) are all leftists, and the people who blog on rightist blogs (The Spectator, The Daily Telegraph, etc.) are all rightists? I spotted a number of conservative Christians and Jews saying “I am not Charlie Hebdo”. I think saying “I am Charlie Hebdo, but do not criticise Mohammad and they had it coming” is a fairly reasonable position to adopt if it goes along with a condemnation of those appalling acts of violence.
      
      Right now I’m reading Chapter 13 (‘Global Jihad’) of Karen Armstrong’s Fields of Blood: Religion and the history of violence. It’s a reminder of how infinitely superior cleverly, subtly written, well researched books are to cynical polemics from the pens of Burchill, Cohen, Hitchens and their ilk.
    - Overleaf
      
      You need to statistically analyze that. Few if any conservative blogs say “do not ciriticize Mohammad” unless they are Christian religious people who dont like criticism of religion period. So you are wrong. 90% of blogs who said “do not criticize Mohammad” are leftwing activist blogs, and I dont mean media.
      
      Karen Armstrong is a cunt because she believes there is this piece of crap somewhere in the sky and we have to “transcend” to that and other whatnot cheap garbage. And that rubs on you too. Because as a leftwinger with fascist rightwing tendencies, you should know that Karen Armstrong is a mouthpiece of the reactionary and the counter-enlightenment. But of course nowadays most of left has become counter-enlightenment and reactionary, lacking sophistication and coherency.
      
      “Well researched book”? OK what is her evidence for a god? Now tell me. Don’t evade.
      
      You are just another reactionary leftist, and not an atheist.

ohforheavensake

There isn’t anything here which you’d actually call evidence, is there?

Mr Grumpy

Anything about Ken Livingstone you’d care to dispute, then?
mrs 1234

You didn’t see the film of ISIS selling Yazidi women?
Overleaf

You mean when the left backs Sharia law for Muslims, that is not evidence? The Left fights anyone who criticizes Islam and Sharia like Hirsi Ali does. She was disinvited from Brandeis. I would call that support for Islamic misogyny.

arpit dubey

One of the most empty and misguided article that i came across in recent times, The writers starts with a preconceived notion and in every word very immaturely tries to prove it,The linking of points are good but only to end up falling in proving a notions which says “if they are bad we will be devils”. The point is what does Rightist or Anglicans or Pseudo Liberals done to illuminate the West Asia or Arabic world till date, with millions killed, millions orphaned, disabled and destitute primarily due to interventions of west for there insatiable hunger for energy and “Strategic Location ” even at the cost of millions of innocent lives have not helped the cause and worsened the wound to a cancer.At some point we have to understand that,the free liberal thought could only start in Islamic world when they dont always are on gun point of western thoughts and consumerism. Unfortunately there were once a great western world which stood for freedom,humanity ,secularism, liberty but for sometime now the rest of the world (Yes there is world apart from So called Western world) is silently watching it loosing its greatness and falling to depths unimaginable in modern times. Where has the constructive criticism or creative disagreement disappeared from the modern day narrative of globalization. Left ,right or centre we still are humans and the way forward is illuminations with hand holding not thorough judgement and demonetization.

Mr Grumpy

“In Darfur, of course, the left were thrown a curveball when it turned out that the Arab Muslims were terrorising the black Christians.”

Not quite, that was South Sudan. In Darfur Arab Muslims were terrorising black Muslims. The fact that Sudan got a considerable amount of stick over Darfur from liberals who had spent years ignoring South Sudan might perhaps add an extra layer to JB’s thesis.

CharleyFarleyFive

Magnificent.

Nathan

Ah, Julie Burchill, the self-confessed ‘Philo-Semite’ who loves all Jews. Except the sizable number who have ever criticized Israel. Oh yeah, and Ariel Sharon, who apparently isn’t hard enough on the Palestinians for her liking.

This is the same woman who described all Irish people as ‘vile’ and berated a liberal rabbi for sticking up for she called ‘pig Islam’. Hardly seems like the ideal candidate to lecture the left on whether or not they’ve failed to uphold liberal values.

Guest

F off Ahmed

If only those pesky Israelis were as tolerant as those peaceful Muslims.
At least when Jews disagree, they don’t behead each other, like the peace loving muslims.
- Nathan
  
  No you’re quite right. Bombing the hell out of densely populated civilian areas is a lot more ‘peaceful’ than beheading people.
  - Julie Raven
    
    Go and fuck your cousin, *Nathan*
Julie Raven

Go and behead a butterfly, *Nathan*! I’m sure they’ve offended you, like kites and chess.

mary o brien

When did Fatty become a stand up comedian?

Julie Raven

When your dad let me bum her, Mary. But to be fair, you could be *get away* with being confused.

Litterial

Julie Burchill’s take-away: “And with Isis so frank about its own foulness, I’ve come to the conclusion that certain strange types are so sympathetic to Islamism not despite the way it treats women — but, at least partly, because of it.”

There is not a single word in the rest of the column–aside from a five-decade-old reference to Stokely Carmichael–that actually supports Ms. Burchill’s preposterous thesis.

Kris Mole

Oi Burchill, your undoubted talents would surely have secured you a top job in Goebbels’ propaganda team back in the day. You’d have to tone down your vocal admiration of the Jewish people a bit, but your style and ability to push on through with such an article without being stopped by an overwhelming sense of embarrassment would fit. You’re a natural.

Julie Raven

I bet you haven’t had unpaid sex in six months. Blow job on birthdays, if you pay for it.

Kris Mole

What Julie Burchill REALLY thinks of the Jews https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkduG0SaCpQ

Guest

F*** off!

chump23

This article would be much better if there was some actual evidence of the Grauniad sucking up to ISIS. ken Livingstone in 2004? Pfft.
I’d love it if there was an example – any grist to the mill etc – but this is mere vulgar abuse, as the lawyers say.

kevinshaun

Are you suggesting a world war on sexism or Islam or lefty’s or..?

K BB

Hmmm – bit thin and underargued.

Anthorny

A brilliant article that is in all ways correct.

Jolyon Lovell

I feel truly represented by this article which has succeeded in revealing all us male left wingers as the irrational, testosterone driven, perverted, women hating monsters that all of us, without exception, are.

Nemesis

roll over and die you unfuckable ugly,fat cunt http://www.orthodox-jews.com/orthodox-jewish-women.html#axzz3IOxcL5ie

Julie Raven

See above, poor clown who never gets any.

Nemesis

your cunt is fat and smell and sweaty and no man will ever come anywhere near it

Julie Raven

Gosh, and there was me thinking I’d been married for 20 years! And before that 10 years. And before that 5. And indeed, believing I’ve never gone a week without sex since I was 17. Go and F**K YOUR GRANDPA, Nemesis! PS I’m aware you ARE your own Grandpa, as your clan desires, so that means GO AND F**K YOURSELF. PPS THE JEWS ARE HAVING SEX ALL THE TIME – another reason to hate them, tosser!

disqus_8Lf1qd5BOd

oh Julie I love you and have done since I was 17 (35years) – nobody does polemic, invective and the unpalatable truth quite like you xxx

MC73

Cool, I get to be the 500th commenter! Thumbs up JB x

Carl Bracken

The whole premise of this article is based on a fantasy. What evidence does she have that the left supports ISIS? This sounds like a pro-Israeli commentator who is fed up with the left pointing out Israel’s barbarism. The only way this criticism will stop is when Israel’s behaviour changes.
She tells us:
“[The left] choose the side with the darkest skin on principle, no matter how their belief systems actually treat people; thus democratic Israel, which gives full civil rights to women and gays, is worse than the countries which surround it, which don’t but are darker”

This is unbelievable. Everyone I know who has a problem with Israel does so because of the hundreds of children their bombs rip apart each year, not because they are whiter than Palestinians. Israel’s treatment of gays is commendable, but not enough to wash the blood of it’s hands.

mrs 1234

This article is not about Israel – your response to it is very telling.
Overleaf

Maybe if the Islamists did not fire rockets targeting Israeli children, form their own schoolyards, then Palestinian children would not be in the crossfire? Just sayin. But it is true that Leftists support ISIS. Didn’t Amnesty International support Jihadi John the chief beheader for ISIS? Check AI and Cage Prisoners.
Julie Raven

SEE BELOW! Bell-end.

SeanieRyan

Oh Julie, you so outrageous.

Attention seeking can pay off if you do it methodically.

As a libertarian and a firm opponent of Islamism I should be agreeing with you but I think your such a charlatan that I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Julie Raven

See above, Seat-Sniffer!

Billy Janes

womans trying to sell a book give her some slack

Julie Raven

Na, too rich and too old and too happy – genuinely believe what I write. Poor you, that no one wants you!

ColonelNeville

Hey , that’s some empirically excellent, witty and fun yet terrifying piece of writing. It’s Mark Steyn worthy. The left are easy to understand if not stomach: they are narcissism-driven, mob-mentality phony children who project everything that they are themselves. And in their incurious, unread and incompetent bundled leftist logical fallacy sodden ‘Kindergarten of Eden’, they INVARIABLY and MUST, side with evil.
Evan Sayet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGBkJT2L55k

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/inside-every-liberal-is-a-totalitarian-screaming-to-get-out-2/

http://www.scifiwright.com/2014/01/the-restless-heart-of-darkness-part-one/

http://www.citizenwarrior.com/2009/05/terrifying-brilliance-of-islam.html

Overleaf

Beautiful article. The hypocritical slimey leftwingers are now throwing a temper tantrum.

Marni Chris Segal

If you are implying some men like this treatment of women because of the feminist movement – that is where BDSM comes in – NOT torture and rape and sodomizing young children. Children and young women have nothing to do with politics or the reasons for adults behaving badly or criminally. To say it’s understood how some might like the idea of raping women – well, they are sick if they feel there is justification in that. If they want to experience that behavior, I suggest Dom/Sub relationship or Master/slave…not Islam!

RedCoat

Lots of rapes and paedophilia taking place within the protestant Unionists ranks also, but shhhh we don’t want to talk about that do we (the joys of media hypocrisy)

Overleaf

Any source? I guess not – you would say its one big conspiracy by the internet. All I can say to such rumours is whataboutary and tu quoque.
- Julie Raven
  
  Redcoat is the bastard child of Gerry Adams and Asghar’s lost shoe. I WANT HIS LIFE!

Mark Gamon

‘After years of being yelled at by female comrades whenever they inquired about the likelihood of a hot beverage being imminent, imagine how excited they must get watching big bad men in balaclavas selling ‘slave girls’ in a sweltering marketplace.’ I tried to imagine this but all I could see was a swarm of meaningless words masquerading as informed rhetoric. Silly is the operative word here.

David Warwicker

I am writing an essay about this. I’d be grateful for thoughts anyone?

Socialism today is about adolescent in/out group theory. In the same vein as rockers attacked Mods, the socialist group attacks Conservativism. Logic is 100% irrelevant. It is hate of the out-group that drives the socialist. This is why the hate language readily rolls off their tongues (racist/bigot, Nazi, scab etc).

To understand where the socialist hate comes from, look to projection theory. When young, to fit into your family/society there are emotions that you mustn’t have. These emotions don’t go away, the individual just denies they exist. The result is that they see their suppressed emotion in just about everything and everyone. For the socialist, they suppress hate, bigotry and envy. If you look at their behaviour, this is exactly what they exhibit. Also, if you look at their language, it is exactly what they accuse everyone else of.

There is an additional issue where they operate upon feelings over values. The feelings tend to be outwardly noble but in reality underpinned by the factors above.

A look at socialist values shows them up as pretty awful. For example, tube driver strike action is wholly selfish but defended by socialist. Socialist are damn selfish. I’d say this happened because socialist ditched protestant values when they became atheists. This is in contrast to your ordinary British man in the street that is atheist, BUT retains protestant values and work ethic.

In summary. There is zero point reasoning with a socialist, that is to miss the point.

peter cross

The Swedes have had enough of their extreme left pro-Islamist government. They are fed-up and angry. They are now asking the public to gather for a protest on September 15 to demand their insipid and impotent islamo-arse kissing PM to resign.

With things getting out of hand around the world and Muslims attacking the west it’s time we to stood up and got counted.

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/ban-the-quran-and-outlaw-the-islamic-religion/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=create_petition

Daniel565

Hm…maybe. But what about all the female leftists?

ChannelSixtyNine69

The “Soft Left”, makes me want to vomit.

Blue Hour

Great article. Ben Affleck is a perfect example of this.

Ciaran Goggins

Utter rubbish. Burchill needs to look to Kincora (UFF/UVF/MI5) rather than PIRA who knee capped nonces. She refers to Toure as “Carmichael” does she still call Muhammed Ali “Cassius Clay”? Also she has the quote awry it is “strictly horizontal, baby”. Finally, why do lefties like Islam? Well, the best analogy is the playground bully (plod). The Umma are the only ones facing up to them. Sala’am.

Maggie Bailey

You are partly right Ciaran Goggins. Yes, lefties like Islam in part because they share their hatred of America. It’s all related to this fashionable white liberal self-loathing ( a form of inverted egotism, as it gives them a feelling of moral superiority). I think Burchill is right- it’s the desire to dominate which is sanctified by Islam which appeals to a lot of Western men. I think she is spot-on – great article.
- Ciaran Goggins
  
  I am very white and very liberal, I do not loathe myself. As for Burchill it is (yet another) futile attempt by her to “become Jewish” a sort of shtetl Rachel Dolezal.
  - FroggyBiscuit
    
    No as an internet troll and online abuser of rape victims, you leave the loathing to others.
    - LordPasswhite
      
      Several comments posted at 5 am. Same IP address as P.C James A Haslam’s Dad. How queer.
    - FroggyBiscuit
      
      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2913029/Ched-Evans-s-true-friend-worked-closely-campaign-try-clear-repeatedly-abused-rape-victim-posted-link-website-NAMED-her.html
    - LordPasswhite
      
      Daily Mail also had an article on P.C James A Haslam’s Dad. Killed a pedestrian drunk driving, fined at Horseferry Magistrates. Call 01366-377658 for details or ask why 11 Lynn Rd, Southery, PE38 0HU did not sell.
    - FroggyBiscuit
      
      More rubbish from Ciaran Goggins , Peter Jukes has you made. A sad apologist for rapists and nonces. How is your best friend, the convicted paedophile Neil Redrup?
    - FroggyBiscuit
      
      Sorry, wrong again. Why do you pretend you can read I.P addresses on a public site. Is it because you are a complete idiot?
    - FroggyBiscuit
      
      Tell us Ciaran Goggins, why are you posting here as both Ciaran Goggins and Lord Passwhite? Another of your wird fantasies?
bcsapper

Wait a minute. I get a couple of things from your post here. One, “strictly horizontal, baby” is okay, and the problem is with the misquote, and two, the egregious, disgusting, barbaric excesses of primitive religious extremism are okay because you keep getting parking tickets.

Different strokes, I guess.
- Ciaran Goggins
  
  Islam is not primitive, Burchill is. I have not owned a car in years. Perhaps I am subconsciously phallocentrically oppressing you?
  - bcsapper
    
    Not all of Islam is primitive. Just the primitive stuff is. Just the stuff that makes the news, and all the rest of the barbaric primitive stuff that happens when we’re not looking. But certainly not all of Islam.
    Not sure what you’re on about with the cars and the oppressing and stuff, but it doesn’t change the primitive parts of Islam.
  - FroggyBiscuit
    
    Car ownership is not really viable on benefits.
    - LordPasswhite
      
      Shall we ask Derek Haslam? Google to find out how the Metropolitan Police paid to have a known perjurer derail trials. Huge civil case coming.
    - FroggyBiscuit
      
      Another of your fantasies Goggins.
FroggyBiscuit

How are the knees these days?
Tzanchan77

How does your “Umma” gang raping young girls stand up to the “playground bully” Pray tell?
- Ciaran Goggins
  
  It stands up well. Did you see “Cops, criminals, corruption” on BBC Panorama?
Canary Dwarf

How are the knees these days?
Dodge E Malseed Jnr

You do come out with some utter nonsense when you stop taking your medication Ciaran. Fnrr Fnrr

The Don Mgtow

complete bullshit. what about the left wing WOMEN and FEMINISTS? they are so in support of muslims its not funny.

Atypically Astute Australasian

I wouldn’t be surprised. Submissive women are all the rage.

For some left-wing men, the misogyny of the Islamic State is part of the appeal

The way they treat women is not the catch – it’s the unspoken main attraction

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For some left-wing men, the misogyny of the Islamic State is part of the appeal

The way they treat women is not the catch – it’s the unspoken main attraction

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