Andrew Bostom EDL Melanie Phillips Pamela Geller Robert Spencer

ANDREW BOSTOM: MELANIE PHILLIPS NEEDS TO JETTISON HER MORALLY OBTUSE AVERSION TO THE EDL……..

 

Playing by the rules handed down by the politically correct ruling elite, is a mugs game.

I’ve run into similar types from Britain heaping verbal abuse upon the EDL, they offer scant little in the way evidence to back up their claims that the English Defense League are racists and thugs. Most point to earlier participants (who have been subsequently booted from their ranks) as proof of their propensity for violence.

What this really boils down to is, the rejection of ”lowering” of oneself to support, let alone to mingle, with activists struggling to save their communities from Islamization, who are not apt to choose the correct fork at a proper dinner setting.

NOTE: I appreciate Melanie’s fight against Islamization and her pro-Israel support, but the cutting off at the knees of other members in the same fight, is based on falsehoods and therefore, wrong.

melanie phillips

Morally Obtuse Melanie Phillips, Redux: “A Turban for a Durban?,” Re-Visited

June 28th, 2013 by Andrew Bostom | 

Blogs by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer have brought to my attention Melanie Phillips’ “commentary” on the UK Home Office rulings banning both of the courageous US writers and activists from attending a planned Woolwich commemoration ceremony by the English Defense League (EDL) for drummer, Lee Rigby brutally slain in an act of jihad butchery.

Ms. Phillips rejects “the approach taken by either Geller or Spencer,” to what she terms, “the problem of Islamic extremism” because they dare to associate with a group, the EDL, and mysterious “others,” Phillips further insists, “which at best do not deal with the thuggish elements in their ranks and at worst are truly racist or xenophobic.”

Never mind that Phillips provides not one iota of proof for her allegations against  the EDL (she simply regurgitates agitprop calumnies), let alone the unnamed “others.” What I found striking—indeed, as my Yogi, Yogi Berra, might put it, “déjà vu all over again”—is that the morally obtuse Ms. Phillips has apparently learned and remembered nothing from her dangerously uninformed, preferential support of so-called “Muslim reformer” Ed Husain, in reality, a traditionalist Islamic Jew-hating bigot, over the intellectually honest and intrepid Somali Muslim freethinker Ayaan Hiris Ali, circa November, 2007.

Sadly apropos, almost 6-years later, here is what I wrote about Ms. Phillips’ distressingly ignorant “conclusions” following a November, 2007 debate she witnessed between Mr. Husain and Ms. Ali:

Friday, November 23, 2007 A Turban for a Durban?

Melanie Phillips attended what she termed a “riveting” debate between the much ballyhooed former Hizbut Tahrir enthusiast Ed Husain and the Somali secularist and former Dutch Parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Two years ago I discussed at some length Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s lucid argumentation and moral and physical courage. She remains the same noble, eloquent, and committed person.

More here.

2 Responses

  1. With regards to Islam and the criticism of it, Melanie Phillips has always been very shortsighted. In fact, I consider her to be very much a one-woman “revolutionary moralist force” taking pride in dispersing as many of her own lofty musings while being totally oblivious to the surrounding reality. When you’re an armchair philosopher, it becomes easier to distance yourself from others that way in order to keep your personalized “moral high ground” intact. I suppose such an attitude is quite typical of former-Lefties-turned-into-morally-self-righteous neoconservatives. A leopard never really loses its spots. This reeks of subliminal Leftism ingrained in her attitude.

    Criticizing Phillips’ attitude, Robert Spencer has remarked:

    “I am reminded of a time when I was in London, several years ago, and witnessed an uncomfortable scene in which a prominent English writer dressed down some EDL members with a cold fury. His accent was posh, theirs were not, and as he upbraided them it became increasingly clear that he was outraged at their insolence — that these lower class lads would dare to approach him and speak with him as if he were an equal. The impression I got then has been reinforced many times since then: that the foes of jihad in Britain often oppose the EDL for the unspoken reason that it is made up of people from a lower social class, and people of lower social classes simply do not lead acceptable movements.”

    An assessment that would be correct in my book, and should be totally alien to the average American.

    Basically, there are 2 underlying core issues:

    1) populism has become a derogatory term redefined by elitist politicians and media figures to distinguish themselves from what they consider as yokels, i.e. the general public. (and not just in the UK, but all over the place.)

    2) In the UK the problem gets exacerbated by the explicit class distinctions that are still rife there in daily use (working class, middle class, upper class and a whole array of gradations in between these categories), contrary to much of “continental” Europe.

  2. Melanie Phillips is quite simply the sort who likes to hear herself sermonize on tv programs like BBC’s Newsnight or Question Time, where the holier than thou and the high and mighty come to have a civilized debate with the sole intent of demonstrating their own perceived eloquence, so they can beat themselves on the chest later for having been there.

    She seems to think she can reinvent her own persona by showing up, but most of the time she’s actually unable to infuse any debate with new insights. She can read the media for sure to come up with stuff on Iran I’ve heard about a million times before and has turned into general knowledge by now, but that’s about it ! “Steer myself out of trouble, just rehash what we already know and I’m an intellectual” could be her motto.

    She’s useless. Better read stuff from Daniel Greenfield, who’s politically incorrect but always to the point.

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