Navigating the Culture Wars: Douglas Murray, Ayaan Hirsi Ali

[Belle]

Fabulous people; great discussion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOlEs7rGAs0

[barney]

The story of the grooming gangs in Britain is one of the worst examples of racism I have encountered - ie, that they were completely left to carry out their depredations though authorities knew about it because the authorities feared being accused of racism if they acted. It was truly despicable cowardice that deliberately left Pakistani Muslim rape-gangs untouched and abandoned these under-aged girls. So it is the authorities that I say are racist. Oh, and the Pakistanis in the gangs, with their open contempt for white girls.

The problem beyond that is when all Pakistanis or Muslims are tarred with the same brush, which is utterly wrong as well. And many figures on the right tend to do that.

In Australia, as it happens, most Pakistani migrants are educated middle class, whereas in Britain that is not the case.

[Belle]

You are accusing conservatives of stereotyping!!!???. That's a massive but typical Leftist projection and yet another 'totalizing theory' - the schtick of the Left. Clue: being educated middle class is NO guarantee of female safety and/or rights. In the cloistered world of "The Age" it might be but, as most of us know, repression and domestic violence runs through ALL the classes and not horizontally through one. I've met middle class educated muslims who wouldn't let their wives shake hands with my husband. This happened while we were living in Europe; he was an engineer and his sons were high-ranking professionals living in the USA. This might be ideologically unpalatable for you, but I think you just need to get out more. Doctors who've treated me here in Australia and who are muslim - totally respectable and talented - talk about their mothers, but there is no doubt most of them are house-bound and there to foster the talents of their sons.

Do you realize there's always a undercurrent of snobbery and condescension in many of your comments?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been on this case for years; obviously she knows a lot about what she's talking about, having written books on the subject and herself a victim of FGM. She's interested in the working classes because, like me, she knows that middle class feminists are not at all concerned about this demographic - only their own power and upward mobility. Feminists long ago lost interest in what is happening to subjugated immigrant women the world over - or even working class women. (It takes a person like Mark Latham to express an interest in that demographic - women and men.) But Ayaan is like me; she loathes hypocrisy. (And husband Prof. Niall Ferguson agrees!!)

(Last night you saw the entrails of feminism on display if you were watching the French Open Tennis final. The boys played for 4 hours and 11 minutes while the girls - for exactly the same prize money - played for less than half that time. Throughout the whole contest. This is the totemic issue of the zeitgeist for middle class, white feminists: having succeeded there the road is open and clear. It's nothing but blatant discrimination and in our family we refer to womens' tennis as "Toy Tennis". The boys are too polite and intimidated to do or say anything about this.)

[Wallingford]

Jeez, Belle!

Ain'tcha got any more good music posts?

[barney]

Do you know what, Belle? I thought you'd be happy to have some support with my post. But you are such an embittered, poisoned culture warrior that you not only can't tolerate disagreement from someone you perceive on the opposite side, you can't tolerate agreement either. You remind me your idolised PM who, when he was opposition immigration spokesman, finally conceded that there was absolutely nothing the Government could do that he would praise, even if it adopted every element of his own policy. He wouldn't win power while supporting the other side. That's your life, too, constant expressions of cultural loathing while claiming it's the other side that hates, combined with smug self-congratulation. Being the combination of Aristotle and Wittgenstein that you seem to believe you are, I don't imagine you have many friends because few could match your intellectual achievements and avoid being boring - as you say in the other thread you started yesterday. But it's conceivable they find you boring in return; they probably don't enjoy being patronised either.

[maestrob]

The oxygen level remains rather low up there.

Could that lead to philosophical and other counter-factual mental confusions and misunderstandings?