The Suicidal Hashtags of the West

twitter_2094423bOn Monday, Australian police stormed the Lindt Chocolate Cafe in Sydney, where an Islamist terrorist named Man Haron Monis had taken dozens of hostages and held them for 17 hours. Three people were killed, including Monis, and several others were wounded. Monis, an Iranian immigrant, had a long criminal record, including 40 charges for indecent and sexual assault, as well as an outstanding charge for accessory to murder in the killing of his ex-wife. Before his death, Monis requested an ISIS flag, and forced hostages to hold up the so-called Shahada flag, which proclaims in Arabic, “There Is No God But Allah, and Muhammad Is His Messenger.”

In response to this Islamist terror attack on a civilian hub in the center of their city, Australians all over the country took action: They tweeted with the hashtag #illridewithyou. This hashtag came from the mind of one Rachel Jacobs, who witnessed a Muslim woman removing her hijab on the local train after the news of the hostage situation broke. Jacobs tweeted, “I ran after her at the train station. I said ‘put it back on. I’ll walk with u’. She started to cry and hugged me for about a minute — then walked off alone.” Soon, the hashtag had been launched, and quickly trended globally.

Australia’s race discrimination commissioner, Tim Soutphommasane, added, “Let’s not allow fear, hatred and division to triumph.”

Yes, Australia has a race commissioner, but nobody who thinks it’s a bad idea to let Islamist fanatics immigrate, or to keep those same Islamist fanatics in jail after they’re charged in the stabbing of their ex-wives.

Priorities!

Never mind that nobody had said a word to the woman in the hijab — pre-emptive anti-Islamophobia was the first response to an Islamist taking Western hostages in a Western capital.

Across the globe, in the United States, two dueling hashtags debated the relative guilt of American law enforcement. After New York City man Eric Garner resisted arrest, and then died thanks to his pre-existing health conditions after being taken down by police, the hashtag #ICantBreathe went viral.

That hashtag fought for prominence with one dedicated to Michael Brown, the 18-year-old black man who was shot to death after attempting to take a gun from a police officer and charging the police officer: #HandsUpDontShoot. Never mind that the first hashtag was taken wildly out of context — Garner was not choked to death — and that the second was completely fictitious — autopsy showed Brown did not have his hands up when he was shot.

These hashtags aren’t just the work of lazy activists with nothing better to do. They’re signifiers of a suicidal west that believes it bears bloodguilt. No real allegations of Islamophobia or racism are necessary — those can be assumed. We immediately go into preliminary disassociation mode, attempting to demonstrate to our friends and neighbors that while our civilization may be Islamophobic and racist, we are not. After all, we even tweeted using the day’s popular hashtag!

Here’s the problem: Islamists don’t care about hashtags when they can take hostages and earn the sympathetic hashtags of others. Those who resist law enforcement or attack police officers outright are happy to do so when they become causes celebre, no matter what they do wrong.

The West has its evils. There are instances of racism and Islamophobia. Nobody with a brain would deny that. But to slander the West with a sort of communal guilt for an Original Sin, even as the West is under fire from those who would seek to destroy its civilizational foundations, is nothing less than barbaric.

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.

Subscribe to Frontpage’s TV show, The Glazov Gang, and LIKE it on Facebook.

  • http://ironburka.blogspot.com/ Mullah Lodabullah

    The backlashophobia is spreading, along with other stuff …

    Scarves will fly in solidarity for Auckland Muslim community

    http://community.scoop.co.nz/2014/12/scarves-will-fly-in-solidarity-for-auckland-muslim-community/

    • Michael Garfinkel

      Rachel Jacobs should be, and may very well become the Australian poster child for womanly cowardice and sanctimony.

      It’s quite true that there’s a lot of this contemptible nonsense going around, but I don’t think it will survive a schoolhouse massacre such as we’ve just seen in Pakistan, or we saw in Beslan, Russia.

      Make no mistake – worse, much worse is coming, and the extent of the danger will be unmasked, Rachel Jacobs and her ilk not withstanding.

      • http://ironburka.blogspot.com/ Mullah Lodabullah

        When the scarves (and whatever else) start flying, #illcatchthenexttrainthanks.

        Illridewithyou Auckland

        https://www.facebook.com/pages/Illridewithyou-Auckland/843138665751172

      • Tim Hains

        The funny thing is that we don’t even know if the hijab story even happened. Rachel might have made it up. Isn’t it funny that Rachel just happened to be right there at the moment that some random Muslim woman took off her hijab right as the news broke. That she can’t tell us anything about her new aquaintance because after a moment of hugging and crying the woman “walked off alone.” The recipient of the kindness hasn’t come forward to confirm it. Apparently nobody else in the whole train station saw it. Hmmmmm

        • Michael Garfinkel

          As in the recent University of Virginia “rape” case, the story doesn’t have to be “true.”

          All that matters is that it supports a narrative that points to a “Greater Truth.”

          That “Greater Truth,” is a moral inversion we have come to know so well: the non-Muslim victims, for whom there is little or no evidence they are inclined to abuse Muslims, are insulted, while the Muslim community, from which the murderers spring, is the recipient of loyal sympathy.

  • DowntotheBone

    ‘Australia’s race discrimination commissioner, Tim Soutphommasane, added, “Let’s not allow fear, hatred and division to triumph.” ‘

    By making that statement, Tim, you just did let them triumph.

    Idiot….

  • laura r

    the hashtag people are not affected by violence. they are having a good time, they go about their lives. why should they change if there are no ramifications?

  • Euro2000

    I believe there was excessive force used on the man selling single cigarettes. Probably someone down the road robbing a bank – but they police got the little guy selling cigarettes. There is something to say about police showing a little more restraint.

    This all has nothing – to do with terrorism — and seems similar to the old argument that Obama-care and Islamic terror/ or problems with Islam are somehow connected.

    The cop who held the man around his neck – even as he repeated several times – I can’t breathe – was out of order. Sorry!!

    :: ::

    Agreed – Illridewithyou# is a nonsense – the reality is that we all ride together. To do so we have rules of the road – that largely depend on trust. When Muslims kill people – in a civilian setting — this is not a robbery – give me your wallet – cancel all your bank cards situation — they are taking people’s lives – in a largely random fashion – and that means that there will be people that look on them as a potential threat. Because a level of trust has been broken. It is a survival instinct. Something that normally – unless we are crossing the street – should not come into play in a city.

    With Islam there is a double fear – there is fear of Islam/aspects – and there is fear of saying that you are afraid – or that you have concerns.

    What is real – a guy says I’m not afraid and goes over to Syria – next thing he is in a beheading video. Muslim societies are used to a level of chaos that – western societies – aren’t used to dealing with. In Islamic societies you could be killed for violating Islamic laws – and to complain might mean that you will be next.

    The Islamic world is not free. And the Islamic mindset and all its anxieties are being imported. What used to be a joke – “the only thing I can say is Islam means peace” – is now a reality – you had better not say anything else.

  • Snipers Path

    Good article how utopic (progressive) thinking can never work in human (animal, still) world. There are bad guys and we must stay vigilant. To bury the truth is to die with a lie.

  • solinkaa

    A muslim woman removing her scarf in public is very unlikely. A lot of these women are supremely confident, with a very healthy sense of entitlement. I think this incident is made up, and, like many such things coming from the left, an example of projecting Western Christian uncertainty on to an entirely different ideology.

  • uleaveuswithnoalternative

    The biggest threat to the US, and all Western democracies, is its own people.
    We have been dumb downed, our attentions have been deliberately redirected to meaningless trivialities, our history is being revised, our children know nothing of our past, and so we are imploding.
    This quote is attributed to Abraham Lincoln, “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

    On a frightening note, I was commenting on the Australian terrorist attack on Yahoo, when suddenly I was locked out of my account. To make a long story short, Yahoo PERMANENTLY took away my email account for what they said was a TOS (term of service) violation. I said nothing inappropriate or obscene, only quotes from the Quran.
    My email account of 8 years, is now gone and I have lost everything that was in that account, including all of my contacts and addresses and emails from my mother who is now deceased.
    Yahoo refuses to answer any questions except to say that they have the right to do this to anyone who “violates” their contract.

  • Lee

    I’m a Ben Shapiro fan. But I have to respectfully disagree with one point here. We must move on from thinking “These hashtags aren’t just the work of lazy activists…They’re signifiers of a suicidal west that believes it
    bears bloodguilt.”

    No, “bloodguilt” is merely a manipulative tool used by lefto-fascists. I’m a leftist, and I’ve mixed with leftists all my adult life and I know the private conversations behind the public posturing. I only came to accept the *innate* bloodthirsty savagery and psychopathology of so many who claim to be “leftists” after hearing the talk post-9/11. (Of course Orwell and others got there many decades before me, but I was ignorant of this.)

    We must respond to people who side with Islamofascists as if they *really share their murderous values*. Because I know them, and hard as it was for me to accept, they really do. To let them off the hook and pretend they just care too much, means we don’t respond to them as forcefully and harshly as we need to, nor *shame them* as they need to be shamed.

    In Sydney these scum were publicly promoting Islam and siding with Islamists *while the hostages were still waiting to be shot*. In other words, wherever non-Muslims are being murdered, you’ll find psychopaths ignoring the victims, and siding with Islamofascism because it satisfies their bloodlust and their aim to destroy civilized life.

  • herb benty

    Remember one thing, these EU-style lefties that infest America with muslim immigration, also vilified, trampled on and ridiculed our wonderful Judeo-Christian Faith. The Left’s Orwellian “PC” gave us the Boston Bomber, Fort Hood etc. and now has turned it’s Newspeak police on Patriots that object to America being turned into Baghdad. Mass leftist illegal Hispanic immigrants fill the role Muslims played in European countries for the leftist’s there. All according to plan, for which Obama received a NP.

  • http://JudeoChristianAmerica.org Alexander Gofen

    The West does have its evils such as overwhelming spread of sodomy, promiscuity, undeserved welfare – as a consequence of loss of the Judeo-Christian foundations. However to assume even a smallest instances of racism and “islamophobia” – you must be crazy, Mr. Shapiro! You shoot yourself in your own foot in this article about “hashtags of the West”…

    1) Racism is a prejudice or under-treatment based on race or ethnicity, and nothing else. However the contemporary West is characterized by grotesque OVER TREATMENT of trouble making racial minorities, by bending beck before them more and more, ridiculed by a Soviet (!) poet already in 1958 http://JudeoChristianAmerica.org/UflandAboutBlacksIn1958.htm

    2) As to the so called “islamophobia”, not only is “islamophobia” GOOD, but also hating islam in general is GOOD and necessary: No less necessary than hate of any mortal enemies of our nation, and our Judeo-Christian national identity http://JudeoChristianAmerica.org/imminent.htm

    By ending your otherwise good article in such a way, you only revealed your inconsistency and yes, shoot yourself into the foot, as I said.

    • nightspore

      As BareNakedIslam puts it, it’s not Islamophobia if they’re really trying to kill you.

  • nightspore

    I can’t think of any other nation or empire in history that decided at the peak of its power that it was unworthy …

    This really is something new: enlightment –> Nietzsche’s Last Men or some such formulation

  • Ace

    Black racism is still out there. I agree.

  • Bellerophons_Revenge

    “Garner was not choked to death…”

    No, but the video revealed a choke hold (left wrist against adam’s apple and right hand holding left hand applying sufficient force to bring down the illicit cigarette salesman). This move would be illegal in high school wrestling.

    If you or I had used such a hold in restraining a trespasser who was backing away from us while waving off our attempts to grab him (as Garner was) we would be facing charges of reckless manslaughter if the restrainee died even if there were contributory causes like a weak heart. A sympathetic jury might reasonably fail to convict, but we definitely would have been indicted. Police using excessive force are rarely indicted due to the legal principle of “qualified immunity”.

    Hashtags aside, we have a case of man who died because he sold illegal cigarettes. This fact should not be forgotten in the ensuing irrationality.