Tag Archive for: Iceland

Mark Steyn on the poisoning of Robert Spencer

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“The social-justice crowd are moving toward the same point as the Charlie Hebdo killers, and for the same reason: They’re too stupid to argue.”

Yes.

Here is an excellent take on what happened to me in Iceland and its larger implications.

Mark Steyn

“The Poisoning of Robert Spencer,” by Mark Steyn, May 18, 2017:

For years now I’ve said that anti-free-speech leftists and the men who slaughtered the staff of Charlie Hebdo, shot up Lars Vilks’ event in Copenhagen, etc, are merely different points on the same continuum: They’re both in the shut-up business: both groups find it quicker and easier and more satisfying to silence you than to debate you.

There were those who found the comparison offensive – to whom I would on good-humored days grant that the two points on the same continuum were nevertheless some distance apart.

Well, they got considerably closer in Reykjavik last week.

Robert Spencer, the author of several bestselling books on Islam, a brave crusader against the dopier multiculti illusions and the proprietor of the indispensable Jihad Watch, gave a speech at the Grand Hotel, went to unwind at dinner afterwards, and was poisoned by a social-justice warrior. Here’s Robert’s account of what happened…

That’s quite a sophisticated operation – a two-man team, the first a fake fan, the second a post-kiss-of-death gloater.

Before the banking crash of ’08, Iceland was flush, and celebs like Elton John were flown in for gala bashes. But it’s all quietened down a bit since then, so the Spencer event was a big deal. He drew an audience of 500 – which in a town of 125,000 and a nation of 300,000 is pretty impressive. There was lots of coverage of his visit – none of which actually quoted him or excerpted his speech or interviewed those who were interested in hearing what he had to say. Instead the media preferred to cover the few dozen protestors of his trip. In all the column inches devoted to Robert Spencer, no journalist thought to seek a comment from Robert Spencer. There are two sides to every story – except this guy’s story: he doesn’t deserve a side.

This kind of dehumanization sends a message – and the man who poisoned Robert got it loud and clear:

Those who paint the targets, and those who shoot at them, think they’re doing something great. Not only does the Left fill those whom it brainwashes with hate, but it does so while portraying its enemies as the hatemongers, such that violent Leftists such as the young man who drugged me feel righteous as they victimize and brutalize for the crime of disagreement.

I have no doubt whatsoever that whoever poisoned me in Iceland went away feeling happy over what he had done. If he told anyone what he did, I’m sure he was hailed as a hero. I’m also aware that many who read this will crow and exult in knowing that someone who hates my opposition to jihad terror and Sharia oppression made me seriously ill. This is how degenerate and evil the Left has become.

I don’t know how I’d stand up to a cocktail of Ritalin and Ecstasy. I do know there’s at least one person in my modest entourage it would kill. And I have no doubt that had the fellow in the restaurant switched on the radio the following morning and heard that Robert Spencer had died in hospital overnight he would have celebrated.

Like the guns at Singapore, the social-justice mob’s fingers are pointing in the wrong direction: They accuse their opponents endlessly of “otherization”; yet they are the ones who so deny the humanity of “the other” that it seems cool and heroic to attempt to kill a chap who gave a speech you object to – even though you never heard the speech, and, even if you had, are incapable of articulating what exactly in it you take issue with.

Douglas Murray and I noted after the tenth anniversary of the Mohammed cartoons how strangely controversial the post-event dinner has become. In Copenhagen, the restaurant panicked at the sight of the PET – the Danish security-service agents – and canceled our booking. As Douglas wrote:

Ten years ago, you could publish depictions of Mohammed in a Danish newspaper. Ten years later, it is hard for anyone who has been connected with such an act to find a restaurant in Copenhagen that will serve them dinner.

For those in Robert Spencer’s line of work, these events are undeniably stressful. There are security precautions, of course, but you never know, from the Vilks event in Copenhagen to Robert’s in Garland, Texas, whether some jihadist will succeed in breaking through. There’s a sense of relief when you exit the stage and it’s all gone off without incident. You’re looking forward to a drink and a bite to eat in convivial company. And you’re on your post-performance high, so you’re generally bonhomous when people approach professing to be fans and seeking a selfie or an autograph. And there’s three or four and they’re all around you, and you put your drink down on the table – as Douglas and I did again and again in the bar we wound up in late that night. And the fans move on, and you pick up your glass without a thought…

Robert Spencer will never do that again.

The social-justice crowd are moving toward the same point as the Charlie Hebdo killers, and for the same reason: They’re too stupid to argue. For the Islamic imperialists, debate is a largely alien concept. For the left, it’s simply too much effort. As I said here many years ago, the great appeal of multiculturalism is that it absolves you from having to know anything about other cultures: If they’re all equally valid, what’s the point? Slap on the CO-EXIST bumper sticker and off you tootle. No need to worry whether the “C” might have a bit of a problem with some of the other letters, and that indeed, if not for the “C”, you wouldn’t need a bumper-sticker admonition to CO-EXIST in the first place. But, after two generations of social engineering, of the substitution of attitudes for education, it would require too much effort to equip yourself to argue against the difficult questions a man such as Robert Spencer raises. It’s literally easier to kill him.

Not yet in the blood-lusting exultant scimitar-raising style of the decapitators of French priests. But just through whatever you’ve got in your stash that might ensure he’ll be flying out of Reykjavik by the handles. So for the moment there is still a continuum. But it’s narrowing, and will narrow still.

Get well soon, Robert.

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Iceland’s Meltdown

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The city council of Reykjavik, Iceland, has fallen under the spell of a small, but toxic, Muslim population. Because of the customary Islamic narrative against Israel, the capital’s outgoing councilwoman, Bjork Vilhelmsdottir, declared a boycott against all Israeli products, citing oppression of Palestinians and the “wall”; she is also planning a mission to “help Palestinians.” Further, Iceland’s interior minister, Ogmundur Jonasson, led an anti-Israel protest complete with “blood-soaked” Israeli flags and accusations that Israel is committing a holocaust against the Palestinian people. Contrary to the Islamic narrative, Jews are the indigenous people of Israel, Gaza and Judea/Samaria (West Bank), and the constant target of Palestinian aggression, requiring the wall, one of innumerable similar barriers in the world, including Europe, that save nations from their barbarian neighbors.

The administration appears severely uninformed of Palestinian aggression and their refusal to make peace with the Jewish state.  Although Iceland’s Foreign Ministry clarified that the boycott decision “doesn’t match the foreign policy of Iceland,” this small uprising could portend further discrimination as Islam gains a stronger foothold on the island nation – and Icelandic history should have served as warning that Islam is no friend of democracy.

Iceland’s first encounter with Muslims began with two raids in 1627, The Turkish Abduction – one led by a Dutch Muslim and his Barbary pirates from Morocco and Algeria, the other by the Barbary corsairs from Algiers and Sale’. The Muslims captured and sold into slavery an estimated 400 to 900 prisoners, and plundered livestock and silver (and a nearby English sailing vessel). Barely assisted by Dano-Norwegian naval patrols and having no standing army, Icelanders remained unarmed and vulnerable to Barbary corsair attacks, kidnappings and murders.

Muslims were also skilled in overland conquest. Through 1400 years of Islam, the marauders have kidnapped people for military or administrative power, for converts, wives, concubines and personal slaves as well as to replenish their relentless slave trade. They have tortured and slaughtered 900 million across continents. Nurtured in hate and usurpation, the hordes bring with them animosity, incendiary riots, property destruction, hate crimes and death to Europe – Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, England, etc. Muslims have turned Sweden’s third largest city, Malmo, into a twilight of social chaos and increasing violence, earning it the title “Rape Capital of the World”  and Germany’s Munich into “Europe’s Biggest Brothel.” The explosive Islamo-fascism has caused the majority of Jewish citizens to flee.

When Palestinian Arabs realized that their many war tactics – centuries of deadly pogroms, terror tunnels (18 tons of concrete , cost of $3 million and the death of 160 child laborers), an estimated 20,000 rockets and mortar fired on Israeli civilians since 9/11 – could not conquer the Jewish state, they opted for war against Israel’s economy and culture by convincing a gullible world that it is Palestinian Arabs who are the victims, the David against the Goliath of Israel.  Their boycott-divestment-sanctions (BDS) campaign is designed to defame Israel as an apartheid state, reduce her support, and enlist corporations, churches, associations, and academia in the international community to deny Israel’s right to self-defense and her very existence.

And it is now that Iceland has awakened. But it was not to speak out against Islam’s perpetual war against Iceland’s democratic ally; not to rally against the devastation in neighboring Sweden, with its Muslim youths rioting and burning hundreds of cars and buildings in 200 ghettos, raping countless women, and murder; not to condemn Muslims’ igniting or pelting emergency vehicles with rocks or the epidemic increase in rapes and calls for beheadings and a Muslim state in Norway; not to denounce the murder of Jews in France, the ruinous riots in southern Italy, or increase in terror worldwide.  Rather, Iceland was stirred awake by the lie of Palestinian victimhood and, as a result, seeks to isolate Israel and inflict upon her financial damage.

What these Scandinavians fail to realize is that they, too, are at the beginning of a growing Islamic population and the chaos that is certain to follow. They fail to recognize the use of propaganda to unite the citizens in a common cause. And if Icelanders will not protest to save others, they will be unable to save themselves from the Islamic menace that festers in every multicultural paradise. Nei, they spoke out to condemn Israel, the only Jewish country in the Middle East and herself a victim of Islam.

The process has begun and Icelanders will now get their first mosque, with “foreign donors” funding its construction, and naïve taxpayers providing Reykjavik’s prime landmark location, selected and approved by Mayor Jon Gnarr, a self-described anarchist. The mosque, although far too large for the current Muslim community, will be built to accommodate the projected thousands, complete with minarets and a muezzin whose voice will be heard through the land five times a day. The Islamic community is a mere 1% of the city’s 120,000, but growing exponentially due to immigration and conversion. More than 11,000 Icelanders have offered to share their homes with the incoming new immigrants, welfare recipients, rioters, rapists, and jihadists. At 5%, they will exert influence inconsistent with their numbers, become more aggressive and push for Sharia Law. At 10% they will become more lawless and violent, and 20% will bring rioting, murder, jihad militias, and destruction of non-Muslim houses of worship. Beyond 40%, Icelanders can expect massacres and attacks, and at 50%, genocide, persecution of infidels and apostates, and Sharia will triumph.

To paraphrase Sir Winston S. Churchill, “You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war.” As Iceland may slowly slip from a constitutional republic to lawlessness and totalitarianism, we ask the government of Iceland to enact legislation, such as has been done by the United States of America, to oppose politically motivated actions that penalize or otherwise limit commercial relations specifically with Israel, such as boycotts, divestments or sanctions, and to recognize that such actions against Israel are anti-Semitic aggression against the Jewish State.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of Muslim praying in a mosque in Iceland. Photo by Eggert Jóhannesson from the Iceland Monitor.