Of all the platitudes trotted out after an Islamist attack, the maddest has to be: \u201cDon\u2019t politicize this tragedy.\u201d The bodies of our fellow citizens are barely cold before we\u2019re being pre-emptively told off for \u201cexploiting\u201d their deaths for \u201cpolitical ends.\u201d But it\u2019s already political. When a religious hysteric takes up arms against innocents, that\u2019s a political attack.<\/p>\n
\u2018Don\u2019t be divisive\u2019 is a demand for self-censorship masquerading as a plea for social peace<\/p>\n
The \u201cno politics\u201d rule was swiftly enforced following the atrocity at Berlin Pride. The minute it was announced that the suspect was an ISIS fanboy known for mingling with other Islamists, the cry went out: \u201cDon\u2019t politicize this. Don\u2019t let it divide us.\u201d Listen, you might not want to be divided against Islamo-nutters who hate homosexuals, women, Jews, Western civilization and fun, but I do.<\/p>\n
The organizers of Berlin Pride were among the first to rap the knuckles of us \u201cpoliticizers.\u201d \u201cWe don\u2019t want this deed to be instrumentalized for political ends,\u201d said a spokesman. \u201cPeople are trying to divide our society and set some people against others,\u201d he said. And Berlin Pride \u201cwill not allow this.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
These are pathological levels of cognitive dissonance. Not to mention moral arrogance \u2013 who is Berlin Pride to tell the rest of us what we are \u201callowed\u201d to think and say following acts of Islamist slaughter? It\u2019s not public anger over the Islamist scourge that threatens to \u201cdivide our society\u201d \u2013\u00a0it\u2019s the Islamist scourge.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Officialdom\u2019s instinct in the wake of Islamist atrocities is always to tame public opinion. To dampen down the \u201cdivisive\u201d rhetoric of right-wingers and plebs who\u2019ve read a few too many angry tabloid editorials. It\u2019s the \u201cDon\u2019t look back in anger\u201d pathology. The sole role of us untrustworthy little people is to lay a flower, shed a tear and then shut the hell up.<\/p>\n
It feels as though our moral overlords fear\u00a0us\u00a0more than van-ramming, knife-wielding Islamists. Of course they condemn the atrocity, though, strikingly, they\u2019ll only call it \u201cextremist\u201d rather than \u201cIslamist.\u201d Well, we wouldn\u2019t want to stir up the \u201cIslamophobic\u201d urgings of the oiks. With eye-swiveling speed, that becomes their key focus: not crushing the Islamist pox but policing the anti-Islamist fury of the public.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
We all know what they mean when they say, \u201cdon\u2019t politicize this tragedy.\u201d They mean don\u2019t raise any awkward questions about the catastrophic failures of integration. Or about Europe\u2019s broken borders, over which thousands of men with regressive beliefs pour\u00a0every week. Or about the existential incompatibility of certain strains of Islam in societies where Jews enjoy equality, women are free and homosexuality<\/a> is not a crime.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t be divisive\u201d is a demand for self-censorship masquerading as a plea for social peace. It is the slippery demonization of people\u2019s entirely legitimize concerns about Islamic radicalism, and the fact that a not insignificant number of young Muslims sympathize with it.<\/p>\n And ironically, it\u2019s divisive. It seeks to divide the \u201cgood\u201d people who have madly made their peace with the Islamist menace from us \u201cbad\u201d people who feel pure, cold rage when our fellow citizens are massacred by homophobic, misogynistic, anti-Semitic brutes.\u00a0<\/p>\n Everyone with eyes in their head can see that it is only Islamist attacks that are followed by stiff diktats against \u201cpoliticization.\u201d When it\u2019s a far-right attack, \u201cpoliticization\u201d is not only permitted, it is actively encouraged.\u00a0<\/p>\n We all know that had the homophobic atrocity in Berlin been carried out by a white far-right skinhead, there would not have been one utterance about the dangers of \u201cexploitation.\u201d On the contrary, the left would be on the streets, social media would be awash with fury about fascism, and the Berlin Pride people would have been raging rather than coy.\u00a0<\/p>\n