The Natural Rights of Free Speech, Controlled Social Media, and Nativists vs. Islamists in the United Kingdom

As an American I think that I always assumed, as I imagine many others do as well, that since the United States of America was culturally and philosophically derived from the Classical Liberal values of the Enlightenment, and in general, born of the "Anglo-sphere", that many, if not most of our two nation's laws were shared. Obviously this assumption was based more on notion rather than an exhaustive study of English legal code, but regardless, I think that the idea of Anglo-American "same-ness" is embedded fairly deep in the consciousness of my fellow countrymen.

I have to admit that over the last couple of years, this perception has been shattered for many of us who have been keen on studying, at the very least, how cultural shifts in the US have been paralleled by similar if not identical ones around the rest of the world. The skeptic rebellion against "Gamergate", Intersectionism vs. Free speech anti-PC culture, and the mounting dichotomy between the globalists of the left and the sovreignists of the right has forced these issues to the forefront of internet lifestyle and legacy media polemic, especially since the highly contested elections of 2016.

In America this was overtly reflected, of course, mostly by the election of Donald Trump, and in Great Britain, not so much by the re-election of Theresa May, but more so by the Brexit referendum.

While Trump's style is a bone of contention, even to many of his most ardent supporters, the issues with Theresa May run a lot deeper. Unlike Trump, who for all his bravado, accomplishes his agenda piece-meal, Theresa May is perceived as a feckless mouth-piece who does not reflect what the Tory party and its voters actually want. Even in the push and pull of Brexit, May is in essence a "remainer" who only moves forward with her parties agenda because she must.


The Conservative impulse is strong in Britain, but it must be wielded by the right leader, and May is not that ideal helms-person. This phenomena of right party-wrong personality was made demonstrably clear in the last election, where May was barely able to maintain the slightest margin of a majority (with the aid of a coalition) against the her Trotskyite anti-Semitic Labor Party foil, Jeremy Corbyn, who I wouldn't trust to cat sit, let alone run a party and nation. The American equivalent of Theresa May in the 2016 election would have been if instead of Trump, that the anointed candidate was a Republican-in-name only, Neo-Con Corporatist like Lindsey Graham receiving the nomination.

In the US, there is a reason why Neo-Cons, like war-hawk John McCain, legacy scion Jeb Bush, flunky-stooge Chris Christie, and mealy-mouthed Graham ranked at the bottom of the pack, and were firmly trounced by actual Conservatives, Libertarians, and in the end, by a Socially Liberal "rabble rousing" Populist. This was of course because of the Tea Party, and the slow reformation of the Conservative movement in the US over the last decade. As the rightist spectrum widened to take on a diversity of platform, this forced the "factions" to move to acknowledging their shared policy, rather than enforcing an outdated pecking order and forging yet another coalition of "frienemies". The right in essence came together to combat the left's dominion of the media, academia, and in general, in our society at large. Due the far left's increasing radicalization, embrace of Intersectionalism, and their abandonment of our once shared Classical Liberal ideals for the greener pastures of Marxism, the mantle of these values fell firmly to the right.

But, in Great Britain, this was not so obvious.

Brexit certainly reflected the desire of a portion of the voting public to escape the micro-globalism of the European Union's circular economy, and the left predictably framed those who vied for sovereignty as "old", "nativist", and of course, "racist" - as if British citizens would no longer be able to call their friends in France, or visit Ibiza for summer vacations if Brexit came to pass.

Regardless, the predictable tropes of the identitarian left rang out as they accused everyone but themselves of racism, an ironic phenomena as they focus almost exclusively on the subject of race, class, and gender warfare, like the well-meaning, and for the most part unknowing, Marxists they have become.

This media backlash was highlighted a few months prior in Luton, when after years of internet activism, the press decided it was now time to turn their guns on the "Britain First" movement, and the bile soon followed.

For those of you who don't remember, or don't know, Britain First is a Christian and nativist group that intentionally baits England's Muslim community by marching through their neighborhoods. Conversely, the Muslims of Luton are very adversarial and abusive to the group, claiming in response that "England is theirs", and regurgitating almost ISIS-like Caliphate rhetoric. All in all an exercise in tension building and so, well, un-English.

For me, this situation vexes me in that the group, or at least their leader, Jayda Fransen, was brought up on hate speech charges - a not so minor offense in England, suitable of substantial jail time. Now, I may not like the adversarial nature of the group, and I might be suspect of their racism, or religious zealotry, but to make cast their protest as illegal is just too authoritarian for me. But this is the case with May's Britain, as humorous YouTube videos, what I would call "light trolling", and even just expressing an opinion that someone else does not agree with, has brought police into many a home.

Oh yes, didn't I mention? The police are not required to have a warrant to do that in England - they can just waltz right in. Oh, and they also don't have what we something else we have in America, a Constitution that guarantees our right as citizens to free speech. Who'd have thunk it?

Discourse has been historically open in Great Britain due to tradition, and one's right to express one's opinion has always been insured by the sensibility of "fairness" that is part and parcel of "British-ness". But as I said, Marxists trade their natural born traditions and natural rights for what they feel is a better code, that of an unrealistic future utopia, that has of yet has had sketchy results at best, and has led many a nation in Totalitarian Communism and caused the deaths of over 100 million persons in the twentieth century. 

But back to Fransen and her little group. To draw another parallel, I find the equation of Britain First's marches quite similar to an intentionally immodestly dressed woman walking through a Chasidic neighborhood in the US or Israel and having stones thrown at her. As a staunch secularist, I believe religious extremists have no right to impose their way of life, be it guided by Sharia or Halacha, on communities who do not share their religion or culture. However, on the other hand, while I believe that the woman has the right to dress any way she pleases, I guess I also feel that she should have known better than to "push it in their face".

In my opinion, religious minorities who settle in other nations must adjust to some extent to the dominant culture. They are free to practice their faiths and to speak their languages, etc., but national secular law must be viewed as transcendent of their personal religious code. In this the majority or Christians, Hindus and Jews have accepted this Post-Napoleonic paradigm, though I must add that a great number of Muslims, worldwide, have not reached that cultural and philosophic level in their development yet.

If a certain percentage of the Muslims in England continue to envision their dominance in Britain as a means to coalesce it into "Pakistan North", they will eventually be faced with much harder push back than a handful of Christian-nativist activists carrying  a few placards through "their" enclaves. Perhaps it will not be a "V for Vendetta" future, but if Britain continues to turn a blind eye to literally some 30,000 known ISIS devotees and "grooming gangs" who live within their borders, I'm sure that the British people from the ground up will not fail to oblige nationalist expectations in the future. If the largest surveillance state in the world is unwilling to take action, except for censoring internet opinion of its native born citizens.

In the aftermath of the group's attention in England, President Trump, for some reason felt the need to re-tweet the video, which of course, triggered the anti-Breitbart / anti-Bannonite media, and ushered renewed cries of "the sky is falling" Trrump-race-apocalypse. I for one was not surprised by Theresa Mays placation of the media and moderate Tories by condemning Trump's twittering, but then again, she is a feckless mess of a PM.

Obviously, as is said in every case involving any Muslim, I agree - "It's not all Muslims". However, I must point out that historically, when Muslims achieve a certain population level within a dominant society, including lands that are now Muslim dominant, they start to push their agenda in a very overt way. Islam, as a machine, was designed as a community conforming vehicle that only truly understands the inevitable outcome of its own numerical domination. Because of this factor, there is always the danger of a Muslim society coalescing into a theocracy.

Even though Judaism and Islam share many facets of belief, practice and cultural sentiment, there is a good reason why Israel is an intentionally secular state. Jews understand all too well the danger of letting "the beards" run the show. The religious impulse dragged them into several wars with Rome that led to a massive decrease in their population. The same goes for Italy. In the middle ages no one thought there was anything odd about a Pope leading military campaigns. Now pretty much any Catholic would find that notion literally insane.

Objectively, I must point out that Muslims are only 1300 or so years into their development and, if you parallel that with where Judaism or Christianity were at that same point, both were massively violent.

Islam, in my opinion, presently requires a "reformation" of a sorts, but that shift must spring from within their community, not from without. Until this occurs the radical "jihadist" element will continue to be problematic. It took the Romans beating down on the Jews for half a millennia, and about the same amount of time with Christians killing one another in Europe till they both said enough is enough.

As stated, Islam and Judaism possess many culture and legalistic similarities, and if you look at the Roman period, the distinction between what defined a Jew as politically nationalist was tethered to local family bonds and the faith. In many cases this was extreme and even eschatological, such as in the Bar Kokba War, and Jesus' movement. Christians generally envision JC as the prince of peace, but in a larger cultural context, and I'm sure to Romans at the time, little difference between he and a member of ISIS would have been discerned. After all, Jesus' second in command, Judas, was a leading "Sicari" or "Iscariot", who were political assassins that targeted Judean "collaborators" with Roman rule.

Around the time of the events in the gospels his group had just succeeding in murdering the High Priest who ruled in conjunction with Herod and Pilate.

So, what I'm saying is that Muslims in general possess the same inward, romanticized view of their "activists" that Jews and Christians possessed in the past and which pretty much does not match how non-Muslims view them.

Over the course of being diminished to a minority through war and dipersal, Jewish halacha (religious law) came to state explicitly that national secular laws takes precedence over Jewish religious law. Jews in one country can expect to be in an army and fight and kill other Jews who are citizens of the enemy nation. Christians also grasp this paradigm. But I expect that though Islam does state compliance, the more extreme a Muslim is in practice, the more they would have a problem with this notion, as their concept of community vis-a-vis separation of church and state is extremely limited. At best the Islamic world has only embraced toning down their both their sectarian violence by way of pumping up military nationalism, as in Egypt and Turkey's case, or Ba'thist Socialism, as under Saddam Hussein and Assad Sr. And Jr. in Iraq and Syria.

To the left, someone like Jayda Fransen, SHOULD be imprisoned, and "white" people in England should be no longer free to propound their opinions. Yet, they turn a blind eye to  Islamists who spout hatred toward Christianity, because in their Marxist identitarian hierarchy, and cultural imagination, Muslims rank very high, and they must be afforded "special allowances".   

Sadly, from the truly indoctrinated leftist perspective, Muslims in Luton should be free to desecrate church statues of the Virgin Mary, harass native English girls for their western dress, or worse, but it's absolutely horrible when one British pro-Christian woman gets in their face about it! Imprisoning Fransen for her activism, which I imagine is drawn from her sense of the impending doom that her culture is dying does not seem like the fair-play the for which the English are reputed. Is not free speech for people of all religions? I firmly believe that Fransen's group should not be sacrificed on the alter of political correctness in the number one surveillance state and controlled internet outside of China and North Korea, especially when both sides are equally belligerent to one another.

Unlike in Britain, according to the US Constitution I am free to say, for example, that I think Mormonism is at best a religion based on a 19th century sci-fi fantasy book, and unless I attempt to blow up a Mormon church, then who the hell cares what I say? By the same litmus of May's internet censorship initiative, then such statements would be a jail-able offense.

If the English just bend over for the Islamo-fascists and Britain "takes it with a stiff upper lip" then I truly think that they are not fully grasping the socio-cultural dynamics and realities of middle-eastern and Asian populations. Step one should be that the Koran should be required reading, well, everywhere.

My personal historical specialty is in the ancient near east and medieval Spain. I have family members who hail from Egypt and Iraq, and obviously, Israel. I have Christian friends from Iraq who families lived under harsh Muslim oppression, and I have Muslim friends from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. I have written award-winning scripts that feature Muslim subject matter and have I been lauded for my deep understanding of Muslim culture. So, once again, while I dislike the conflict between the "factions", there must be parity in how both sides are treated in the media and in regard to free speech.

Of course this is not really about Islam, Christianity or Socialism, per say, it's really about extremists. Muslim extremists, Christian extremists, and Marxist extremists. However, at present, a Christian extremist won't bake a gay wedding cake, a Marxist extremist concocts street brawls with assumed "nazis", and a Muslim extremist blows up British children at Ariana Grande concerts, or throws gays off of roofs. Not quite the equivalent we're looking for.

This sort of problematic Christian-Muslim cultural interaction is by no means solely an English problem. It is an European problem. French women are now being chased out of Muslim owned cafes in Paris if they are not accompanied by a man, just like back at home. Problem is they are not at home, these immigrants chose to come to France, a country where women are free to go where they please.

Let's not even get started on Sweden.

After the Manchester bombing, provocative singer, Morrissey, simply stated that perhaps its time for Britain to review its immigration admittance policy. No shock that the left ate their own and turned on him on a dime. Always considered a firm leftist and anti-Tory, he was, no surprise, accused racism by even raising the questionable policy of admitting immigrants who might be ISIS operatives. Sorry Morrissey.

But this all flows from the font of Marxist deconstructionism of classical liberal values of the enlightenment. It is entirely propagandist, anti-American, anti-free speech, and for me, is very painful to watch or read. Marxists trade exclusively in Class, Race and Gender Warfare. However, the disconnect occurs because they do not function in a world of Religious Warfare. Marxism is an exclusivist ideology and thus it is structurally at loggerheads with Islam, another exclusivist ideology. Marxists think that they can convince Islamists that they possess shared goals, and that Islam and Marxism can function together, but Marxism can not or will not compete with other ideologies and attempts to destroy all religion, since their very existence threatens their ideology. Ironically, Islam proposes the same. Make the state subservient to the ideology of Islam.

So take care United Kingdom, you'll have to suffer Theresa May and the European Union a tad bit longer, but I expect that the unassailable Jacob Rees-Mogg will soon step up and straighten out Brexit, the economy, and infuse some core "British-ness" back into the cultural milieu and public discourse of our brothers across the pond.

Till next time.