Martin Sellner, the Austrian leader of Generation Identity, was banned from entering Britain where he was to deliver a speech against the Islamization of Europe at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, London.

Martin Sellner

A speech of his was, however, delivered at Speakers’ Corner – by heroic Tommy Robinson yesterday (Sunday March 18, 2018).

Tommy Robinson

Here’s the speech in full, via Breitbart:

Dear Friends, dear Britons, dear lovers of free speech

I assume you all are lovers of free speech because you have come to Speakers’  Corner.

You might not understand all the fuss happening today around this speech. Honestly, I don’t understand it either.

My name is Martin Sellner. I am an Austrian patriot, and at the moment, I’m sitting in a detention cell in Colnbrook Bypass [immigration removal centre] near Heathrow. My smartphone was taken and my girlfriend Brittany [Pettibone] was separated from me. I currently don’t know where she is. We will be deported on Sunday.

Five minutes ago, they unlocked our cells and my fellow inmates are gathering in the prison wing. They are mostly illegals and eastern European criminals.

What brought me into this situation? What was my crime?

My crime was that I wanted to be here with you, to speak at Speakers’ Corner.

But let’s start with the beginning. I was invited by UKIP to present my movement at an event last Autumn. I represent Generation Identity — a patriotic European youth movement that is raising awareness about mass immigration and Islamization.

Far-left people call us right-wing, people who want to shut free speech down call us “fascist”, and folks who hate their own culture call us “racist”.

In reality, we are just a group of young patriots fed up with the system, the mainstream press and lying politicians. We use peaceful activism to make our voices heard, and contrary to our friends on the radical left, who are probably swarming you right now, we never wear masks.

From Paris to Rome, from Vienna to London, we fight peacefully but without compromise for our freedom, our homelands, and our identity.

This is what I wanted to speak about in Autumn. But the conference was cancelled due to threats from the radical left. The venue would not take the risk. So they rescheduled it for March, this time keeping the venue secret — but again the terror of the left prevailed, and the venue dropped out. But this time I did not want to let them win! It was about principles! (Also, our flights were already booked.)

My last refuge was Speakers’ Corner. I remembered my mother telling me about that special place when I was a child. It seemed almost magical to me. A place where everyone, without exception, could just stand on a box and start to speak to those who wanted to listen. I have always loved this tradition of Speakers’ Corner, which seemed very British to me.

But I came only to see that this tradition — the tradition of freedom of speech in the United Kingdom — is dead.

Your Country is blocking you from challenging ideas from the outside. This is a disgrace to our democracy!

I should be speaking in a neat, warm conference room right now, and you should be sitting in comfortable chairs. Instead, I’m in my cell and you are on the street in a standoff with the enemies of freedom of speech.

And this is very telling! Today there is a war going on for our freedom of speech. This war is being fought on the streets, by you!

Every man and woman showing her face today, standing shoulder to shoulder, is standing up against a new totalitarianism that has been growing for far too long. You can be proud of yourself. You might not even agree with me on every point — you are simply giving a statement that I should have the right to speak my mind freely.

I would love to be among you now. They prevented me from it. They locked up the speaker, but I know that the speech will find a way through the iron bars. It will find a way to you and you are going to hear what your government so desperately wants to protect you from.

Those words which they consider more harmful to you then rape gangs or terrorists who are let into your country again and again.

I’m going to tell you something nobody has told you before. It’s the biggest, most obvious secret of our media our politicians and our powerholders: People of Britain, you are being replaced.

There has always been immigration in your history. People coming in, assimilating. But what’s happening today is different: You are being replaced by massive Muslim immigration.

You see it everywhere: in London, in Manchester, but also already in the little countryside towns. A big replacement is going on.

And let me tell you: your politicians have no plan, no vision and no idea how to deal with the problems that come along. Problems like you have seen in Telford, Rotherham, and on Westminster Bridge.

All across Europe, there is a shadow hanging over our heads. The French are whispering about it in the Metro, the Germans murmuring about it when they feel unwatched, Italians look left and right, and if nobody is listening they tell you: “I don’t feel at home anymore in my street. We are becoming foreigners in our own country.”

And again and again I hear: “We are not allowed to talk about it.”

And that’s the bizarre drama of the “strange death of Europe”. We are being replaced, conquered by radical Islam, and we are not allowed to talk about it!

Dear Britons, defenders of free speech. Out of my cell in Colnbrook, I want to ask you something. Be honest and raise your hands.

Who among you has ever been in the following situation: You grab a beer after work, or you are visiting your girlfriend’s parents for the first time, or you meet other children’s parents at school — and suddenly the conversation moves to politics: radical Islam, immigration.

Who of you in this very moment was faced with the decision between speaking his mind and facing problems, or complying and staying silent?

Raise your hands and be honest.

I will not be able to see the results, but every single hand is too much. This amount of fear should not exist in a society. Speech that has social costs and severe consequences is no longer free. It has a price — and our Government and the Antifa are working everyday to raise that price.

No freedom of speech means no democracy. In front of our very eyes this country is becoming a tyranny, shutting all debates about immigration down, until demographics solves the issue by replacement.

People of the UK. I might be in a cell right now, but you all are in a cell. It’s the prison of fear and silence your government and the PC tyranny has locked you in since the days of your childhood.

I ask you, I command you, break free!

Patriots of the UK: come out of the closet. Make your dissent visible by visible acts of resistance that inspire others. I know for certain that millions in the UK think like me. Those millions should be on the street now.

We need a coming out of the silent majority, or Britain is lost. We need a free, open and honest debate about immigration, Islam and demographics, so we can sort these problems out together.

And I know that the force is still in you. With your Brexit vote you stunned the world! The will and the life of the British nation is not broken.

Initially, I asked if freedom of speech is dead in the UK. You, every one of you who came today, is a living sign that the tradition of the UK is not dead! You are the lively tradition of your nation, saving its face before history.

People of the UK — remember who you are! Remember your glorious past, you are sons and daughters of knights, kings, explorers, philosophers and artists. Who is the sovereign in this country? Who is the sovereign in this country?

Is it big money?

The mainstream media?

The politicians?

It’s you — the people. You, the silent and invisible majority who said NO during Brexit. You can say NO again — no to Islamization, no to mass immigration, and no to the great replacement.

And YES to your identity — yes to your security, yes to your heritage and the future for your children.

And all this is impossible without freedom of speech.

I know, if these words will find their way to the UK and even to Speakers’ Corner, it will be a victory for our cause.

If they did, and if you are hearing them now, I tell you: go further on that winning streak. Don’t be afraid because we have an ally that is unbeatable: Truth.

The battle, our battle for freedom of speech, has just begun, and Speakers’ Corner will become a symbolic place in that struggle.

When you go home know I want you to bring the spirit of Speakers’ Corner with you. Every single person who raised his hand because he could relate to this moment of fear, when he did not dare to speak his mind.

Promise me: Next time I will overcome my inner fear. Next time I will speak up!

The terrifying central message of the speech is that the rulers of Britain are replacing the population. 

But Tommy Robinson could hardly be heard over the Muslim and pro-Muslim clamor of opposition to anything he might be saying.

Those who wanted to hear the speech, those who did hear it, were perhaps most encouraged by the fact of its being delivered at all, and by one of the few citizens of the United Kingdom who still will dare to speak aloud in public such forbidden words as “no to Islamization, no to mass immigration, and no to the great replacement“.

Most Britons would probably rather think of themselves as the sons and daughters of valiant yeomen and a free peasantry than of “knights, kings, philosophers and artists”. Knights, kings,  philosophers and artists are more honored in Austria than in Britain. Explorers, okay. Britons’ glorious past includes the vastest empire in history – which they are now expected, by their rulers, the importers of Muslim masses, to be ashamed of.

We strongly recommend Tommy Robinson’s book, Enemy of the State, in which he tells how he was wrongfully arrested, imprisoned for months alone in punishment cells, beaten up so badly that his face became unrecognizable, and then promised that all the pain and persecution would “go away” if he would become a secret agent of the state. He refused.

Robert Spencer, the famous American expert on the history and ideology of Islam, comments:

Last week, Tommy Robinson tried to speak at Speakers’ Corner but was stopped by police. Today [Sunday], he spoke there amid rioting by Muslims determined to silence him. Police, not surprisingly, did little to stop the rioters, focusing more on the Britons who were there to defend the freedom of speech. Robinson read the speech that Martin Sellner, the Austrian free speech activist, had intended to deliver about threats to the freedom of speech, but was banned from entering the country. Britain has recently banned Sellner, Brittany Pettibone, Lauren Southern, and Lutz Bachmann, all for the crime of opposing jihad terror and Sharia oppression, and of course has previously banned Pamela Geller and me for the same offense.

This petty authoritarianism is the act of a society in its death throes. The May government is bowing to the new masters of Britain, who support Sharia blasphemy restrictions, and handing them the leadership of the country. Theresa May will go down in British history, if there are any free Britons in future generations, as … a traitor and betrayer of her nation. 

“If there are any free Britons in future generations” sounds ominous, but the way it looks right now, there will be no such people.

The West has learnt the word “dhimmi“ since Islam started to succeed (in the 1970s) with its old plan to overwhelm and rule it. A dhimmi is a non-Muslim living under Muslim rule; one who has opted to pay protection money to the overlords in exchange for being allowed to live; one who has submitted to Islam without converting to it.

Which is to say – submitted to an inferior culture, law, and ideology.

But the word could be used more widely. It could usefully be applied to the many weak intellectuals, academics, postmodernists, deconstructionists, feminists … to all who have submitted to the inferior culture, values, ideology of the Left.

They are easy to spot. Their speech is a chant. They chant mantras of the Left.

ReBecca Roloff

Here is an example, so pure it could be used as a perfect model by all “politically correct” dhimmis. It was written by ReBecca [sic] Roloff,  president of St. Catherine University, a Catholic school in St. Paul, Minnesota, to explain why an annual leadership conference was cancelled for 2018. The organizers had suddenly realized that the invited speakers – leaders in industry and commerce – were almost all white people. The Left does not approve of people being hired, appointed to leadership positions, or invited to speak at universities, because of their their merit and achievement. The Left wants people to get jobs and honors on a quota system, to be hired and appointed for – above all else – their color and race. No whites allowed – or as few as may be absolutely necessary, and those few guaranteed to be deeply ashamed of themselves for being white. Ditto if they are male, because “gender” matters next after race. Third, they should not be patriots, Christians, Israelis/Jews, and decidedly not conservatives of any race or “gender”. Fourth, they should not be middle-class  – or even persons of [proven] “ability”! 

In a time where sexism and racism, in their individual and institutional forms, are recognized and called out, those of us in positions of power and privilege – be it through whiteness, maleness, middle-class position, heterosexual-normativity, ability, or Christianity – must slow down, reflect, and listen to those who have been subject to systematic silencing, exploitation, marginalization, and exclusion.

Leftists do not look out of the same window as conservatives. Theirs opens on to a different landscape. They see different causes for political action and judge them according to a different set of values. Their discourse is conducted in different words, a vocabulary out of their own slim political lexicon. The most important word is “diversity“, which means the hiring, appointing, inviting, and listening to only non-white, non-male, non-“heteronormative”, non-middle-class persons who are all of the same political opinion. They see a mirage of President Trump “colluding” with Vladimir Putin.

They do not see what we conservatives see through our window: the need to strengthen the economy by lowering taxes and lifting regulations; to stem the flow of illegal immigrants into the US; to deport illegal aliens who are dangerous criminals; to heal the government agencies that were infected with Clintonitis under the Obama administration. They do not see the Islamic invasion of Europe, the constant threat of terrorism there and in the US by Muslims affiliated with al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban, Iran, Qatar …. They are not concerned about Iran becoming a nuclear power, or North Korea dropping a nuke on Guam. They do not discuss the war in the Middle East. They refuse to notice the outcome of socialist policies imposed in Venezuela where people are now starving.

They attack the Constitution. They want to change the First Amendment so they can stop the expression of all ideas they don’t want to hear. They want to change the Second Amendment so they can stop citizens owning guns.

Institutions could be labeled dhimmis too. Most of the top universities are earning it.

Here’s James Delingpole commenting on Oxford University’s decision that from now on 40% of recommended authors on philosophy reading lists must be women. (How the heck did it arrive at that number?)

How many feminists does it take to ruin a philosophy course?

Oxford University will be letting you know shortly, once it has got the results of its latest politically correct academic experiment.

From now on, Oxford’s philosophy faculty has decreed, 40 percent of the recommended authors on its departmental reading lists must be female.

Also, academic staff have been asked to use philosophers’ first names rather than their initials when compiling reading lists, to make it clearer to undergraduates which ones are female.

This is great news for Barbara Socrates, Mandy Aristotle, Seraphina Wittgenstein, Nancy Descartes, Fifi Trixibelle Locke, Suzi Nietzsche, Bobbi Confucius, Ermintrude Plato, and Petronella Hume, to name but a few of the awesome female philosophical intellects who have been cruelly neglected by history because sexism, misogyny, and the oppressive phallocentric hegemony. …

How then is this new gender quota going to improve standards on the philosophy course at Oxford – formerly (till it became irredeemably SJW converged) one of the world’s better universities?

Short answer: it won’t.

As with artists, composers, writers, musicians, and pretty much every creative or intellectual endeavour you can name, so it is with philosophers: the vast majority of the really great ones were men and the vast majority – for obvious reasons which need not detain us here – always will be men, regardless of how many female contenders get overpromoted thanks to the current fad for enforced gender justice.

So by encouraging students to break down their reading lists according to this ridiculous, politically correct 60:40 gender quota, all the philosophy faculty is doing is promoting dross at the expense of bullion.

Graduates of the philosophy course at Oxford will no longer plausibly be able to claim that they have been properly grounded in the canon because, inevitably, there will be gaps in their knowledge created by the time they’ve wasted on Germaine Greer when they could have been reading someone proper.

This is where Oxford is going unfortunately. And also where Cambridge is going, where Harvard, Yale, and Stanford are going, where most of our great seats of learning are going, in fact. …

The twin curses of postmodernism and cultural Marxism have so corrupted academe that even the best universities now prize social justice more highly than intellectual excellence – and aren’t even embarrassed to boast about it. They actually think that gender quotas are a sign of progress.

But do they actually think?

Yesterday, lured by a picture of Stephen Hawking, I read an article by Randy DeSoto, recording Franklin Graham’s regret that Hawking was an atheist.

I went to the comments. Some share the regret; some insist that the late great physicist is now – despite his atheism – with God. A few are by irritated atheists.

I succumbed to the temptation of writing something in the empty slot that had my thumbnail beside it. I asked: “What did God make matter out of?”

A design engineer, Matthew Winter, answered that as matter can neither be destroyed nor created, God must have given up some of his own energy to “create” matter. Not an entirely nonsensical notion. Matter is a form of energy.

He apparently understood God to be eternal and primal energy plus will. I wondered if he saw this theology of his as deism. I asked him if that was the same god who begat himself upon a virgin and answered personal prayers. I have not yet had a reply.

Some Christians, some believers in the gods of many religions, try hard to reconcile their faith with science. They often misquote Einstein to back up their arguments – as is done in the article on Hawking.

They fail, of course. Faith is not Reason. Science does not support the idea of divine creators, or of anything outside nature.

I continue to be amazed that adult, sane, educated, intelligent people can believe in the supernatural.

Jillian Becker    March 16, 2018

The great Katie Hopkins speaks truth to two dullards – and a largely dullard audience:

The mainstream media in the US are not reporting the news from South Africa – that all white-owned land is to be expropriated by the government without compensation. (See our posts, A calamity in South Africa, March 11, 2018, and White refugees from the dark continent, March 12, 2018.) )

US governments had a lot to do with the rise of the communist ANC [African National Congress] government in South Africa. Now that the effects of what many Western governments wrought in their zeal to replace the oppressive white apartheid regime (which had actually much reformed itself before it was deposed), most of them have lost interest.

A South African writer, critic and journalist (we have not had permission to give his name) informs us:

Yes, this whole “expropriation without compensation” issue has taken most people by surprise. [President] Ramaphosa was thought to be “business-friendly” but somehow the vast power and financial resources that fell into their laps in 1994 have made them very arrogant and wedded to their classical Marxist precepts.

The whole “land theft” myth which is based on nothing except speculation and facile stereotypes about SA history, has now become so rigidly established that one may hardly question it. That fuels the righteous outrage of blacks who want to “make the farmers pay”, also as scapegoats for what they perceive as “white supremacy”.

It is difficult to say how the farmers are going to react. Many are hoping that it is “just talk” and nothing will happen. But they are mistaken. The lunatic fringe of blacks, such as Malema’s EFF [Economic Freedom Fighters party] and another outfit called BLF (Black First Land First) are extremely radical and anti-white. They don’t want the whites in the country anymore and openly say so. The ANC is scared of losing votes to the left and will therefore co-opt their policies or prejudices.

In the north of the country, I suspect the farmers will put up a fight. Further south probably not. There could well be some kind of conflict. The thing is that the Afrikaners do not have other passports and a back door as all the other European colonists in Africa had. So what are they to do?

The other unknown are the foreign Africans in South Africa. In the event of a conflict they might rise up against the ANC too, as they have been badly treated by local blacks.

The ANC has already spent about R300 billion on their so-called “land reform” which was wasted on corruption, bureaucracy and turning productive farms into wastelands. So the prognosis of creating a new black-run agriculture is not good and it will probably end as in Zimbabwe with food shortages and a drag on the economy. We export quite a lot of fruit and other produce, including wine, which would knock the balance of payments and destroy many jobs.

So we are in for “interesting times”, as they say!

Ultimately “white guilt” is to blame. People are just so scared of speaking out because then they are vilified as “racists”. If you ask me, the ANC won the propaganda war too well in the late eighties, with the help of Sweden, Canada and all the other Western countries, and now they believe they are gods, impervious to human reason or self-doubt.

Someone quoted Adam Smith the other day where he said something about the excesses of virtue that are worse than those of vice, as one’s conscience limits vice, but not virtue.

In this time of crisis, rational virtue – always opposed to incontinent virtue – is being practiced by the Australian government with an offer of asylum to the white refugees. Australians expect the South Aricans to be the sort of settlers who will integrate well; have the same values, culture, and standards; contribute amply to the good of the country, and not be a burden on it.

From Breitbart:

Australia is ready to consider issuing special visas to mainly white, Afrikaans-speaking South African farmers due to the “horrific circumstances” of land seizures, violence and murder they face.

Peter Dutton, Australia’s home affairs minister, told the Sydney Daily Telegraph on Wednesday his department was examining a range of methods to smooth their path to Australia on humanitarian or other visa programs. As Breitbart News has reported, South Africans are increasingly worried that the government’s plans to expropriate land from white farmers without compensation could destroy the economy and the country’s fragile democracy.

Not just could, but surely will.

South Africa’s new president Cyril Ramaphosa has vowed to pursue the same course as Zimbabwe’s former leader Robert Mugabe in expropriating farmland from white farmers without compensation. President Ramaphosa, who replaced Jacob Zuma after years of corruption scandals finally forced the 75-year-old from office, was cheered in the South African parliament as he pledged to “accelerate our land distribution program … to redress a grave historical injustice and make more land available to our people for cultivation.”

Such is the level of violence in South Africa that thousands of white, Afrikaans-speaking farmers have taken to the streets to protest and plead for help.

Last year the October 30th #BlackMonday protests were organized after civil rights group AfriForum released figures claiming the murder rate for South African farmers was 156 per 100,000 — putting it well above the already high national average and making farming arguably the most dangerous occupation in the world outside a war zone.

At the same time, the number of slain farmers, farm workers, and family members — most of them white — [in 2017] had hit 71, surpassing the estimated death toll for 2016.

Now Australia stands ready to offer help.

“If you look at the footage and read the stories, you hear the accounts, it’s a horrific circumstance they face,” Mr. Dutton told the Telegraph.

The home affairs minister noted Australia has refugee, humanitarian and other visa programs which have the “potential to help some of these people”. He said he had asked his department to look at the options “because from what I have seen they do need help from a civilized country like ours”.

“The people we’re talking about want to work hard, they want to contribute to a country like Australia,” Mr. Dutton continued. “We want people who want to come here, abide by our laws, integrate into our society, work hard, not lead a life on welfare. And I think these people deserve special attention and we’re certainly applying that special attention now.”

Mr. Dutton suggested options included the in-country persecution visa category, and to bring them to Australia on humanitarian visas via referrals from others in Australia.

Theodore Dalrymple, whose many excellent books commenting illuminatingly on our times includes Our Culture, What’s Left Of It, gives this account of how fascist-communist “anti-fascist” Antifa fell violently upon a quiet literary event in the English town of Lewes.

We quote much but not all of it from New English Review. Go here to read the whole thing:

I was to be the penultimate speaker, followed by a controversial conservative journalist, Katie Hopkins, who was to talk about her own recently published memoir, Rude.

The event ended in violence.

The festival organizer … had informed me in advance that there might be trouble from demonstrators who would want to prevent Hopkins from speaking. …

To say that she is unafraid of controversy or criticism is to understate the case. They are her stock-in-trade. …  [A]n outspoken, not to say militant, mocker of current political pieties, she is herself the object of the most severe objurgation, with no allowances made. In debate, she is uncompromising and fearless. …

She appears genuinely not to mind when attacked on television or in print or on social media: she accepts with good grace the fact that, if you express opinions in public, you must expect criticism and detraction, fair or otherwise, though she always returns blow for blow. She laughs at insults. …

Her main mode of defense is always attack …

She has been a severe critic of the Islamization of Britain. She speaks the truth about it. And that is not permitted in Britain now.

So Hopkins is widely regarded as a purveyor of hate speech — utterance that is to be answered by prohibition, rather than by argument. The category of hate speech is disturbingly expandable and depends on the propensity of groups of people to take offense or feel threatened (where it pays to be offended, people will take offense). Certain groups, but not others, are accorded legal or social protection from unpleasant name-calling, as if they were endangered species. …

Considerable efforts were made to bar Hopkins from speaking at the event. When I arrived in Lewes, posters in many windows proclaimed that Lewes wanted no hate speech. A town councillor had argued that the invitation to Hopkins should be withdrawn. The council had the right to ask for this because it owned and ran the venue, a deconsecrated church; and the councillor argued that the demonstration against Hopkins would be so violent that her appearance would constitute a threat to health, safety, and public order. On legal advice, however, that this argument was blatantly political, the council, with not a single Conservative member despite the town’s evident prosperity, voted overwhelmingly for the invitation to stand.

It turned out that the councillor who had argued for the withdrawal of the invitation was sympathetic to the demonstration against Hopkins, so that in essence his argument had been almost a threat: if you do not do as I say, like-minded people will react violently, and since you have been warned, such violence will be your fault. Do as I say, or else: the new democratic principle.

I gave my talk without interruption from the gathering crowd outside, but during the question-and-answer that followed, as Hopkins’s time to speak grew nearer, I heard some banging on the windows, at which fists and angry faces also appeared. Then there was some chanting, but not so loud as to make me inaudible. The trouble really began after I had finished speaking, in the short break before Hopkins was to start. The councillor’s self-fulfilling prophecy was about to come true.

A crowd of perhaps 120 had by now gathered outside the hall. Initially, only two policemen were present. One was pelted with so many eggs that he looked as if someone were planning to make him into an omelet. Eyewitnesses attested that some of the demonstrators handed eggs to children to throw at the police, presumably because the children would be too young to be arrested for assault. At any rate, it is significant that some adults were so determined to prevent Hopkins from speaking that they thought it reasonable and appropriate to bring children to a potentially violent occasion — an occasion, in fact, at which they themselves were prepared to employ violence. This is surely a demonstration of the ability of ideology to induce practical moral blindness.

Some of the demonstrators were masked. They tried to prevent those who had bought a ticket for the event from entering the building. One of those ticket holders subsequently wrote and published an account of what happened when she [and her companion] attempted to gain entrance:

There was a very large and noisy demonstration in the grounds and spilling onto the road, and we were immediately taunted as we made our way to the lynch gate [sic: a Freudian slip, if ever there was one, from lych-gate], despite no one knowing who we were. A militia of masked young men dressed in black tried to prevent us from entering the grounds. At first I thought they were working with the police, controlling the flow to protect attendees from the scuffles ahead, because a couple of policemen were observing at close quarters. One militiaman asked me why I was there. I said to hear Katie. He immediately swore at me, called me a fascist, bounced against me, manhandled me and tried to push me over. I was wearing stilettos and he easily pushed me into a bush, which thankfully cushioned my fall. I said: I have every right to be here. I looked towards a policeman for support, but he turned away, having seen everything. Anthony, who was now a few yards away, came to my side, and we stayed very close from then on as we determinedly made our way through to the church doors. Anthony is visibly Asian/ethnic and was not attacked as I was. Our keeping very close afforded me some protection as the crowd was chanting that it was pro refugees, unlike fascist Hopkins. 

We came to a stop about six feet from the church’s main doors, which were solidly closed. A line of five thugs, a man on a large mobility scooter, and a woman had blocked our path. I tried to reason with the woman, who looked out of place and even a little scared herself, being so petite. She said that people with vile views should not be allowed to speak. I said I thought we fought two world wars to protect free speech. I mentioned that my grandmother’s brother ended up in a concentration camp because he was a French citizen who stood up against the Nazis’ bullying. She maintained the mantra that evil people should not be allowed to spread their filth. There was no reasoning, and I didn’t want to provoke anyone, as we were trapped, and there were calls for Katie’s blood; so, I kept quiet. 

Suddenly, the crowd behind surged, and it looked like we might be in serious danger as eggs were thrown, a placard headed our way, and more militants appeared. Just then a journalist from More Radio appeared at my side. He was immediately denounced as a fascist by one of the thugs, but he brought out a mike and began to interview the most vociferous one, a particularly on-edge individual who looked a cigarette paper away from hurting someone. The ghastly young thug said it was necessary to stop this speech because if it was allowed we would soon become like Nazi Germany and worse.

It was well after the start time by now, and the journalist phoned a colleague and confirmed to us that the event [of Katie’s speech] had been cancelled.

News got around. The protestors chanted their victory. Some cried something like “When she comes out, we’ll get her.” We could hear others asking what to do when Katie appeared. …  The church door opened briefly and protestors surged forward. It was quickly shut. A policeman, who looked terrified, came to the front and spoke into his walkie-talkie, but soon disappeared into the graveyard. We knew we had to get out, as the crowd wanted blood.

We followed the radio journalist, who conducted a tortuous route to safety through the muddy graveyard. Later, on the pavement, when I suggested to him these folks were Momentum [a militant left-wing organization affiliated with the Labour Party], he said he believed they were from Antifa [a militant, ostensibly antifascist, movement that believes in political homeopathy, namely, that the employment of fascist methods will drive out fascism]. He said that most of the protestors were not people from Lewes (where he lived).

While all this was going on, my wife and I, who had intended to leave to catch our train before Hopkins spoke, were trapped inside the hall, having been advised by the egg-covered policeman to wait. The banging and the chanting were now incessant. There were about 40 of us inside to 120 outside. One lady I spoke to was terrified and in tears because she had been separated from her husband by the mob and did not know where he was. One man described how one of the demonstrators said to him that he would let him pass and enter the hall, as if he had the authority in his gift to permit or prohibit. Another lady wished that she had never come. A German lady said that she had come to live in England in 1968 precisely to avoid this kind of thing, which had then seemed so common in Germany. Where had the tolerance and good humor she had known in those days gone?

Some of the demonstrators managed to break into the church using a crowbar. Bouncers provided by a security company (after another such company had pulled out, fearing more serious violence than it could handle) rushed after the intruders. One bouncer suffered a serious injury to his arm, requiring an operation.

Hopkins was smuggled out of the building, the police having advised her, before she was able to speak, that they could not guarantee her safety if she stayed. She tweeted that she had left the building and asked the demonstrators to disperse peacefully. When police reinforcements arrived, somewhat tardily, the people in the hall were escorted under cover of darkness out through a back entrance and through the ancient graveyard. This was no doubt advisable, but, in effect, it turned the law-abiding rather than the lawbreakers into fugitives.

The police made no arrests, despite having been assaulted themselves and witnessed others being assaulted, despite the fact that a building was illegally broken into, despite the fact that 40 people had been falsely imprisoned, despite the fact that threatening language (of a degree likely to make any reasonably firm-minded person afraid for his safety) had been used repeatedly. They failed to protect citizens who were going about their lawful business. To say that they were useless would be an exaggeration: goodness knows what would have happened had they not been there. But they did not carry out their duty with alacrity, and the social media — videos, sound recordings, photographs — that helped to call the mob into being in the first place are now being used to hold the police to account for their passivity in enforcing the law.

The question arising from the episode is how far it was isolated … and how much was it a harbinger of things to come? Certainly, it gave me another lesson in how fragile public order is and how quickly it can break down. …  The Hopkins incident also demonstrates how weak is the attachment to freedom of speech and thought, especially among people so convinced of their own rectitude that they feel entitled — indeed, duty-bound — to silence others. …

As there, so here in America. And all over the West.

Theodore Dalrymple thinks that what happened in Lewes might be one of the early battles of a second Civil War in England, since violence begets violence.

One of the problems of this, apart from its sheer moral and intellectual idiocy, is that it will eventually call forth equal and opposite violence. Thus, the Lewes Speakers Festival would be an episode in the forthcoming English Civil War, the second of that name.

Civil war all over the West?

It is not impossible. It is not even unlikely.

Following on from yesterday’s post immediately below –

Newsweek reports:

More than 12,000 people have signed a petition asking President Donald Trump to let white people in South Africa emigrate to the U.S. amid a vote by the country’s parliament favoring a motion that could see South Africa’s constitution amended to allow for land to be stripped from owners without any compensation.

The motion … has once again stoked fears among the country’s white farmers of a violent and disastrous land redistribution akin to that which crippled Zimbabwe in the 2000s.

The online petition calls on Trump to “take the steps necessary to initiate an emergency immigration plan allowing white Boers to come to the United States.” Boer is the term used to describe South Africans of Dutch, German or Huguenot descent, who are also commonly referred to as Afrikaners.

The petition suggests that Trump should stop admitting refugees from Somalia and the Middle East, claiming they “cannot be properly vetted”,  and allow white South Africans into the country instead.

Other sources add: “White South Africans can be easily vetted and also possess skills that make them compatible with our [Western] culture and civilization.”

A similar petition, calling on European Union President Jean-Claude Juncker, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Theresa May to allow white South Africans into EU countries, has gained nearly 17,000 signatures.

If those 17,000 who seek asylum in Europe or Britain are granted it, their doom at the hands of Third World barbarians will only be postponed.

According to another source (change.org):

The white South African population currently faces ethnic cleansing and persecutions at the hands of the ANC government, the EFF [Economic Freedom Fighters, the revolutionary political party led by Julius Malema who has threatened the genocide of white South Africans], and various individual anti-white aggressors. Over 4000 white farmers have been brutally murdered, [with the attacks] often including torture and rape and mutilation. Many white South Africans today live in poverty and squalor as a consequence of the ANC government’s Black Economic Empowerment policy which shuts whites out of the labour pool.

That is what the liberals of the Western world – who all but worshipped Nelson Mandela the Communist terrorist leader – have brought about.

The communist government of South Africa seems now to be following the Zimbabwe model. If so, the resulting economic ruin of the country will have repercussions throughout the world. South Africa is mineral-rich. It is one of the world’s biggest producers and exporters of gold. Stock-markets everywhere – including the US – will be hit. Anyone who is concerned about the state of the US economy will be wise to watch what is happening in South Africa.

(Hat-tip for the first information about the petition to our valued commenter, liz)

When Zimbabwe was Rhodesia, it was a land of plenty. All citizens, black and white, benefited from the skill and labor of whites and blacks on the white-owned farms. (Note: the country had no apartheid laws.) Then, with the dynamic aid of socialist Britain, it fell under the dictatorship of communist Robert Mugabe. He sent gangs of “veterans” – ie. murderers – to seize farms owned by whites. The farmers, their families, their black servants were slaughtered. Often they were tortured first. For the fun of it. And the land became unproductive.

Now, South Africa …

Our Facebook summary of a Daily Mail article tells the story:

White South African farmers will have their land confiscated after a landslide vote in parliament. The motion was brought by the murderous radical Julius Malema, but the policy was also a key factor in the new president Cyril Ramaphosa’s platform after he took over from Jacob Zuma in February. It passed by 241 votes to 83. In 2016, Malema told his supporters he was “not calling for the slaughter of white people – at least for now”. Freedom Front Plus party leader Pieter Groenewald said the decision to strip white farmers of their land would cause “unforeseen consequences that is not in the interest of South Africa”. The deputy chief executive of the civil rights group Afriforum said the motion was a violation of agreements made at the end of apartheid.

A few facts:

Many of the white farmer families have owned their farms for hundreds of years. In many cases it is all they have. Now it is to be taken from them without compensation.

They did not “steal” it from any of the Bantu tribes, who came overland from the north and encountered white settlers arriving by sea at about the same time. The only native people of South Africa were the Khoikhoi (or Bushmen). The Bantu were not farmers but herdsmen.

Large areas of the land already redistributed by the ANC government to black owners – 2.8 million hectares [1 hectare = just under 2 and a half acres], for which the government paid R20.5bn – are today under-utilized or fallow.

Ilana Mercer – South African born libertarian – writes at Townhall, pointing out that this legalized crime of expropriation has long been foreseeable:

Up until, or on the day, a predictable calamity unfolds in South Africa, you still find Western media insisting that,

* No, there’s no racial component to the butchering of thousands of white rural folks in ways that would make Shaka Zulu proud.
* No, the mutilated, tortured bodies of Boer and British men, women and children aren’t evidence of racial hatred, but a mere artifact of good old crime. No hate crimes. No crimes against humanity. Move along. Let the carnage play on.

And the latest:

To listen to leftist, counterfactual, ahistoric pabulum served up by most in media, a decision by South Africa’s Parliament to smooth the way for an expropriation without compensation of private property came out of … nowhere.

It just so happened — pure fluke! — that the permanently entrenched, racialist parties in parliament used their thumping majorities to vote for legalizing state theft from a politically powerless minority. Didn’t see that coming!

And still they beat on breast: How did the mythical land of Nelson Mandela turn into Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness?

How did that country’s vaunted constitution yield to “the horror, the horror” of land theft?

Easily, even seamlessly — as I’ve been warning since the 2011 publication of  Into the cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa, which provided the analytical edifice for what’s unfolding. …

One of Cyril Ramaphosa’s presidential campaign promises was to finally get down to the business of the people: stealing private property. Since replacing Jacob Zuma as president, Ramaphosa has openly endeavored to speed up the transfer of land from white to black owners after his inauguration two weeks ago. Yet, this inherently aggressive, coercive act was studiously finessed by the news cartel. Before Ramaphosa, Zuma too had “called on parliament to change South Africa’s Constitution to allow the expropriation of white-owned land without compensation”. 

Unlike so many celebrity journos involved, both men know that said constitution is no bulwark against state expropriation. Or against any “public” or private violence, for that matter. As a protector of individual rights to life, liberty and property, the thing is worse than useless — a wordy and worthless document.

Take Section 12 of this progressive constitution. It enshrines the “Freedom and Security of the Person”. Isn’t it comforting to know that in a country where almost everyone knows someone who has been raped, robbed, hijacked, murdered, or all of the above, the individual has a right to live free of all those forms of violence?

Here’s the rub: Nowhere does the South African Constitution state whether its beneficiaries may defend their most precious of rights. Recounted in Into The Cannibal’s Pot is example after example of innocent victims of crime punished and prosecuted by those who swore to uphold the constitution. These victims are punished for merely and minimally defending their so-called constitutionally enshrined rights.

The African National Congress (ANC) has always, not suddenly, disregarded the importance of private property, public order and the remedial value of punitive justice. …

The ANC under its leader Nelson Mandela was, and the ANC remains, essentially a communist party. It made concessions to capitalism because its leaders were persuaded that the economic consequences for the country if it did not would be catastrophic. Now, it seems, such a catastrophe looks less forbidding to them.

As for equality before the law: The South African Bill of Rights is contemptuous of it. It enshrines group rights and allows for compensatory and distributive “justice”.

In other words, it is all for “social justice” which is not just at all.

The state’s confiscatory powers may be used to redress “past injustices”. “To promote the achievement of equality; legislative and other measures designed to protect or advance persons, or categories of persons, disadvantaged by unfair discrimination may be taken.”

The Constitution already allows a good deal of mischief in the name of the “greater good”, land expropriation included. Thus the Expropriation Bill of 2008: It’s the precursor to the current land expropriation process. Where, pray tell, was the news cartel when it was floated as an impetus for land nationalization?

With the 2008 Bill, the dominant ruling party had empowered itself — and “any organ of state, at any level of government” — to take ownership and possession of property “simply by giving notice to the expropriated owner”. The state would make the “final” determination of the compensation due, subject only to a limited form of court review. Both movable and immovable property has always been up for grabs — “livestock and farming implements, residential homes, business premises and equipment, patents, and shares”. The 2008 Bill was temporarily shelved before the 2009 elections, but not forgotten. It led naturally to talk about nationalization.

In March 2010, a plan was tabled in Parliament for turning “all productive land into a national asset leased to farmers”.  Such sentiments are hardly new. True to a promise made in Mandela’s 1955 communistic Freedom Charter, the ANC has already nationalized the “mineral wealth beneath the soil” and the water rights. …

The result of nationalizing water rights: the Cape peninsula, one of the most fertile regions of the entire planet, full of vineyards, famous fruit farms, nature reserves where a vast variety of wild flora has flourished, is now afflicted with drought. The City of Cape Town itself is running out of drinking water!

Israeli experts, who can turn a desert into a garden, offered to come and solve the water problem, but the ANC-led authorities refused because they hate the Jews. Because “Palestine”. (See the Reuters report here.)

Note: More Jews were imprisoned and died for the cause of black liberation in South Africa than any other “white demographic”.

All along had the entrenchment of a property clause in the South African Constitution angered judicial activists, who conflate the protection of private property with the entrenchment of white privilege. Their fears were overblown. Back then, I wagered that nationalization would necessitate but a minor tweak to the Constitution, since the latter already allows all the mischief mentioned. …

Since the dawn of “freedom” in South Africa, commercial farmers, mostly white, have been terrorized and threatened with land claims. As if this were not bad enough, they can now expect nationalization.

In case Zimbabwe is a distant memory, the nationalization of South Africa’s farms will increase unemployment in the agricultural sector, and with it, rural poverty. That will guarantee mass migration to the cities, with all the attendant problems which this exodus poses. Also, it will undermine South Africa’s ability to meet its food needs and deter investment in the country.

There will also be much blood spilt. Famine and Death will stalk the land. As many an example of communist rule attests.

But Communists never have to say “sorry”.

Hell has frozen over, and a flight of pigs unprecedented in number is crossing and recrossing the skies over America. CNN – that polluted source of fake news, plain lies (so shameless they could be called “hillaries”), and simmering insurrection against President Trump’s government – has actually declared the truth that President Donald Trump could justly be called a “great president”.  

Thursday on CNN’s Outfront, host Erin Burnett acknowledged in the wake of the announcement President Donald Trump would meet with North Korea dictator Kim Jong Un that if Trump were to defuse the North Korea nuclear situation, he would go down as a “great president”.

Her actual words:

Just an extraordinary evening and, of course, opening the door to the big question — if President Trump could truly solve this problem, that would be going down as a great president. There is no way around that. That is the reality here.

We have esteemed him as a great president for some time now. In the post we link to, we quote an article at American Thinker by Karin McQuillan, in which she writes:

Thanks to his fearless and clear-sighted character, we finally have a president who will not allow North Korea or Iran to have nuclear weapons.  Those of us who see that this is vital for national security are deeply grateful … 

It remains to be seen if North Korea can be “denuclearized”. North Korea has made many promises and broken them all.

If anyone can make it happen, President Trump can.

This post is intended to be read along with the post immediately below, The case for free trade.

“Our Steel and Aluminum industries (and many others) have been decimated by decades of unfair trade and bad policy with countries from around the world. We must not let our country, companies and workers be taken advantage of any longer. We want free, fair and SMART TRADE!” – President Trump

According to Forbes:

While the exact amount of tariffs has not been confirmed, the President has indicated that he favors tariffs of 25% on steel imports and 10% on imported aluminum. Similarly, the specifically affected countries were not called out, but it’s likely the President might exempt some of our closest trading partners.

The imposition of tariffs would, according to the President, level the playing field between the United States and countries like China.

Now we quote Seton Motley, president of Less Government, a DC-based organization “dedicated to reducing the power of government and protecting the First Amendment from governmental assault”. (And so also, it would seem, a libertarian.) He is a leading authority on technology and telecom policy, and a policy adviser to The Heartland Institute.

He makes a case for President Trump’s tariffs not because he is for protection in principle – he says he is not – but because other countries practice it to the detriment of the United States.

He writes at Townhall:

President Donald Trump wants to fix the nightmare mess that is DC’s crony globalist fake “free trade” – and conservatives all across the nation are up in arms.

A lot of really great conservative thinkers are very, very angry with Trump’s tariff threat.

(Please note: They at this point remain threats – not tariffs. Read“The Art of the Deal. Very often you threaten, but never enact – the threat is enough to better the deal.)

And as much as I like and respect so very many of these conservative thinkers – they are all very, very wrong.

A lot of what you get from them is a lot of talking points … “Tariffs are taxes!” “Protectionism is bad!” “Free trade is good!”

The very obvious secret is I agree with all of these points.

The other very obvious secret is none of them apply to what DC pretends is “free trade”. 

Globalist big business robber barons have spent the last half-century-plus lobbying DC for more and more one-sided, America-last trade deals in which America removes all of our government impediments – tariffs, domestic subsidies, import caps, etc. – to our world’s-largest now-$18-trillion-per-year economy. This thereby allows the unfettered flow of goods and services from all round the world.

We have done absolutely nothing about the very many government impediments – tariffs, domestic subsidies, import caps, etc. – that just about every other nation imposes upon us, severely limiting the flow of our goods and services into their relatively paltry markets.

This has been one long, ongoing trade war declared and engaged in by every nation on the planet – except the U.S., and one incessantly long run of titanically stupid trade policy. …

These terrible deals have been a key component in our nation’s loss of millions and millions of jobs. And the loss of who should be key allies in the fight for less government domestically.

Rather than fight for less government domestically – thereby making it more tenable to remain in the States – the globalist big business robber barons flipped the script.

They got DC to emplace ever more America-last trade deals – and then moved their businesses to the countries from which they had just negotiated unfettered access to our economy, costing us millions of gigs and escaping all of our stupid domestic government – and all of the government impediments the other countries emplace upon U.S. exports.

Now their new host nations’ continued protectionism benefits them. Heck, their new host nations often subsidize their companies.

Meanwhile, America’s small businesses – which can’t move overseas – have to stay here and get pummeled by ever-expanding domestic government and the relocated-globalist-big-business-robber-baron subsidized-and-protectionism-protected goods and services – being brought in unfettered to compete against them.

These small domestic businesses very often cannot endure the relentless pummelings – and succumb and go under. Thereby costing us millions of additional gigs. …

All of this has for decades been DC’s definition of “free trade”.  It has absolutely nothing to do with actual free trade, free markets, or freedom of any sort.

And this is what conservatives all across the country are in the midst of defending. …

Ok: You don’t like Trump’s proposed tariffs – I get it.

But at least Trump knows there is a HUGE problem that needs to be addressed (and has known it for decades).

So until someone amongst the many contesting conservatives acknowledges there actually is a HUGE problem – I’ll be siding with the guy who knows there is, and is looking to address it.

We invite the opinions of our readers on whether President Trump is justified in imposing – or at least threatening to impose – tariffs on steel and aluminum.