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Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”
Sign up to attend Michael’s talk in Los Angeles on Thursday, November 20: HERE.
Today marks the tenth anniversary of a coordinated series of terrorist attacks committed by nine ISIS operatives who, beginning shortly after nine o’clock in the evening, took a total of 137 lives and wounded 416 people in Paris and the nearby suburb of Saint–Denis.
The scheme was ambitious. One group of three gunmen, moving quickly through a neighborhood of restaurants and cafés, mowed down thirteen people on the streets of the tenth arrondissement and inside a Cambodian eatery called La Petit Cambodge, then took five lives on the rue de la Fontaine-au-Roi in the eleventh arrondissement before murdering twenty-one people outside La Belle Équipe, a bar on the rue de Charonne. One of the three gunman, wearing a suicide vest, was then driven to the Comptoir Voltaire café on the boulevard Voltaire, where he sat down, placed an order, and then exploded his vest, injuring fifteen people.
At around the same time, in Saint-Denis, three suicide bombers arrived at the Stade de France, a sports stadium where President Hollande was attending a soccer match between France and Germany. The men intended to gain access to the stadium, but the first of them to try was stopped at security. All three ended up setting off their suicide vests outside the stadium, taking only one life aside from their own.
The third group of three terrorists were more successful. Outside the Bataclan theater on the boulevard Voltaire, they dispatched three people with their Kaloshnikovs before entering the theater, where an American band called Eagles of Death Metal was performing before an audience of approximately 1500. The ISIS members then proceeded to commit a massacre that lasted for two and a half hours. From the Guardian:
…different witnesses described the clear ripple effect of the crowd – “like a gust of wind through wheat” – as people were mown down by gunfire and rows of people dropped to the ground….Witnesses described how their faces were splattered in blood as people beside them were shot in the head and fell. The shooting continued for 10 minutes before the men reloaded and began shooting again, aiming at the head and thorax with professionalism. “It was carnage,” said Marc Coupris, 57, a legal worker. “It looked like a battlefield. There was blood everywhere, there were bodies everywhere.”…
The firing was relentless and indiscriminate….The gunmen fired up into the balconies and dead bodies fell over and down on to the stalls below.….There was lots of screaming, lots of panic, lots of blood. People threw themselves to the ground but then they then just started firing at random at the people on the ground….”
And that was just the beginning. The gunmen laughed as they shot people in the back. They kicked bodies lying on the floor to make sure they were dead. One of the men stood by an emergency exit and picked off victims as they ran towards it. After one gunman exploded his suicide vest, the other two took about a hundred hostages, some of whom they employed as human shields after the police finally arrived; when one of these gunmen, too, detonated his vest, it instantly killed both him and the third gunman. The total number of people murdered at the Bataclan that evening was ninety.
At all of the sites of terrorism that evening, needless to say, there were shouts of “Allahu akbar!”
Fast forward to last Sunday night in Norway. Twenty-two minutes into the evening news at seven o’clock, state-owned NRK-TV – sandwiched between typically mendacious stories about how the Republicans are responsible for the government shutdown in the U.S. and about the incomparable suffering of the innocent inhabitants of Gaza — began a segment commemorating the tenth anniversary of that evening in Paris and environs. I was surprised to see the government channel, which is always at pains to whitewash Islam, even bringing up the memory of Bataclan. But it was soon clear why NRK was doing so.
The segment focused on two survivors of the massacre at Bataclan. One of them, a young man named Thomas, was shot in the hand. Every November 13 he gets together with other survivors of Bataclan. Being a survivor of the atrocity, he says, makes him feel as if he lives in a parallel world. But he doesn’t blame Islam. “Yes, it was carried out by Islamic terrorists,” he says. “But there are extremists who are Catholics and Jesuits. In almost all groups there are some who are more extreme than others.”
Yes, let’s not forget the obscene amount of death and destruction that has been wrought in Europe by Jesuit terrorists.
The other Bataclan survivor was a woman named Gaëlle Messager. Shot in the head and arm, she lost a huge chunk of the left side of her face, including much of her jaw. Surgeons have since reconstructed her face using tissue from her leg. She has undergone no fewer than fifty-six operations and is scheduled to have several more. In fact she will have to keep getting surgery for the rest of her life.
But what does she do when she’s not under the knife? She visits a jihadist in prison.
Yes, that’s right. She talks regularly to a jihadist. She does it partly “as therapy for herself” and partly “to understand how a Muslim extremist thinks.” To be sure, the man whom she visits was not one of the perpetrators of the Bataclan massacre – they’re not available for conversation these days, having blown themselves to bits – but is indeed a believing Muslim and convicted terrorist who is convinced that “a holy war in France is necessary.”
The NRK segment didn’t tell us exactly what the man did to land in prison. But Gaëlle tells us that when she first explained to him why her face looks the way it does, “he was touched.” She had expected, she says, “to meet someone who was totally inhuman. But the meeting had a strong impact on both him and me….He has children and a wife, he has a family.” And she experienced a revelation: “I realized that a jihadist is like everybody else.”
It’s been ten years since Bataclan. And neither of these victims has learned a thing. But why single them out? On November 4, twenty-four years after 9/11, the voters of New York City elected a Muslim mayor who, only days earlier, had praised a terrorist sympathizer as “one of the nation’s foremost Muslim leaders.” In the same way, the London bombings of July 7, 2005, didn’t keep Londoners from electing Sadiq Khan – sorry, Sir Sadiq Khan – and the Westminster Bridge and London Bridge attacks in 2017 didn’t keep him from being re-elected. Twice.
To my mind, it all goes back to George W. Bush. After 9/11, he made a point of defending Islam. He called it a religion of peace. Playing theologian, he said that the Al-Qaeda members who had taken down the World Trade Center had misinterpreted their religion. Everything that has happened since then has flowed from that colossal act of failed leadership by a president who thought he could turn Afghanistan and Iraq into Jeffersonian democracies – but who seemed incognizant of the existential danger that mass Muslim immigration into America represented to our democracy.
If only 9/11 had been the prelude to a comprehensive effort to educate Americans about the reality of Islam, the history of the West during the last quarter century might have been very different. Instead, millions of people in the West have been trained to think of Muslims not as villains but as victims, and to close their minds to any evidence to the contrary. A generation of young Americans and Europeans, born after the Twin Towers fell, have spent their lives being fed messages like the one that Good Morning, Britain host Adil Ray – sorry, Adil Ray, OBE – posted on November 5: “Some say Mamdani may implement Sharia Law. He might. The heart of Sharia is social justice, welfare, fairness, charity and cohesion.”
Yes, some Westerners, young and old, have seen the truth about Islam. But many if not most have been cowed into silence, aware that nothing can destroy their lives more quickly than gaining a reputation as that worst of all things, an Islamophobe. A few heroic politicians like Geert Wilders – who tell the truth and promise to act on it – enjoy considerable voter support, but not enough to give them the power to save their countries from disaster. In any case, those heroes are constantly up against the insidious power of legacy media like NRK – and the BBC, CBC, CNN, the U.S. broadcast networks, and so on – which strive every day to paint Islam as virtuous and its critics as bigots. It’s thanks to those media that the West, after innumerable acts of jihad that have taken an appalling number of innocent lives – and that should have awakened everybody a long time ago – has now reached a point at which a victim of Islamic terrorism can say with a straight face that “a jihadist is like everybody else.” Should we laugh or cry? Should we keep shouting the truth into what can seem like an unanswering void, or shut up and try to enjoy what time we have left before the agents of Allah take power?
“But the meeting had a strong impact on both him and me….He has children and a wife, he has a family.” And she experienced a revelation: “I realized that a jihadist is like everybody else.”
While this may seem a little endearing and just the thoughts of someone who can’t get out of their own way or is naturally gentle and saintly forgiving towards others, If Gaelle was in some public setting and she saw a person with a MAGA hat or someone white or worse a white Christian I guarantee you that she would be an absolutely vicious and an absurdly bigoted animal towards them, unable to consider them human or anything other than monsters. They expose themselves really quickly and it’s important to have no sympathy for these scumbags or think of them in the context they present as their face.
Yes! Thank you for pointing that out.
Anyone who can ’empathize’ with murderers and terrorists
cannot empathize with their victims.
And that includes the Left.
They live in a delusion.
They need to be deprogrammed. To be ‘red-pilled’
to prevent them from promoting more violence.
Spiritual delusion, deception, and demon possession
” Should we keep shouting the truth or shut up and enjoy what time we have left?” Are we all becoming
immune to what’s going on in the world? We just celebrated Veterans Day and Mr. Bawer should not
even suggest such a thing!!! This is our Country and must!!! be defended, if not on the front lines then in
our thoughts and words here at home!!!
I have one question for now . . .
How many islamists were in the country prior to 9/11, and how many islamists were imported after 9/11.
Bruce is right.
Bush’s tepid “islam is the religion-of-peace” is the equivalent of FDR saying “The Japanese bushido code is an honorable traight!”
Demokkkrats, Establisment RINOs,
and apparently – Bataclan survivors in Norway
all agree
People who want to stop Islam from murdering, raping, and destroying human beings
… must have their communities flooded with Muslim supremacists, racists, and bigots
… and risk being murdered, raped, or destroyed.
Here in America after a Mass Shooting by some Maniac and they(Liberal Democrats)want to Ban Guns instead of locking up the Maniacs and throwing away the key
Unless the mass shooter is trans, in which case they suppress the Manifesto written by the terrorist, or Muslim, in which case they avoid releasing the name of the terrorist (Muhammad, Barack Hussein, Jihad) and say “no motive has been found”.
Correct.
These fools in “public service” positions of gov’t reliably default to seeing-no-islam motive.
Example worth repeating:
When Notre Dame was gutted by fire they assured us that it had zero connection with islam.
They didn’t bother themselves to inform the public that a hijab adorned bitch had parked a car bomb in front the day before. (As the bomb failed to detonate, the religion-of-peace went with Plan B.)
In the battle between Reality and Multicultural Delusions, Reality always wins. Ten years ago, Islamic terrorists brought a whole lot of Reality to France, leaving a pile of corpses in their wake.
Yet, despite actually being shot by Reality, those two victims refuse to give up their Multicultural Delusions,
It is suicide, plain and simple.
Reality only wins if people know about the past. In Aldgate, London, where the islamic cowards blew up underground trains and buses, there is, according to Goolag Maps a monument to the victims. I was there a couple of weeks ago and tried to find it, but couldn’t.
Yes, this absurd whitewash of Islam began days after 9-11 when that moron Bush went to the Islamic center in Washington, DC and declared “Islam is peace”.
Talk about spraying perfume on a turd and hoping to convince the masses its a rose!
I knew then the west had already lost.
And for good measure, Bush payed homage to a mosque and took his shoes off, and invited imams to the White House to assure them that his fight wasn’t with islam.
Even worse, he left Norman Mineta (a Clinton holdover) in place as Transportation Secretary.
The fool zealously made sure muslims received no extra scrutiny, and threatened airlines if they did.
(The “six flying imams” cashed in on a sweet payday for stagging an in-your-face dry run on U.S. Airways as a result.)
George W. Bush, Republican, religious, Christian, conservative.
So of course, the Christian fool thinks that religion is a good and wonderful thing. Ignorant of the FACT that Christianity was the DIRECT cause of the almost one-thousand years of the Christian Dark and Middle Ages. Ignorant of the fact that Christianity was the direct cause of the Thirty Years’ War.
ALL religions when practiced seriously, devoutly, and comprehensively lead NOT to freedom and liberty but to a brutal THEOCRACY!
“Is religion more dangerous than socialism?
“I believe that the medievals understood much better than the moderns on what basis to build a totalitarian society that would last and not collapse in less than a century. They did it and the people in the rising religious movement today know that full well. They’re the ones who have millions, upon millions, upon millions, of followers and a real insight into the fact that economics is not the crucial factor, but philosophy and culture are…. Religion has been the root of [totalitarianism] from the beginning, it has ruled in disguised forms, and still is, and now the disguise had to be stripped off… What socialism is doing is really helping religion, the bigger the statism, the more people grow accustomed to government rule over everything, the more people are ready for religionists to take over the lead from the more secular side… The socialists are building the basis for totalitarianism but only the religionists are going to cash in on it and take over.” – Leonard Peikoff
Bush has never been a Christian. He finds it useful to present himself as one. Just like he has always been a liberal.
Ah! He’s not an authentic Christian; lol, sure. Authentic socialism has never been tried, which is why it’s never worked; we need to double down.
Oh no! Not that 40 year old Lenny Piehole vid again that we have seen a thousand times.
Ya know T, most political comedians like you, who think they are some sort of authority on everything, usually refine and tweak their lounge acts every year to stay fresh. Obviously you do not which is why you are as stale as dried doggy crap on a NYC sidewalk.
Please, no more recycled Rand vids, Piehole vids and recycled articles from your nostalgia drawer.
I know it will be tough because most of your Objectivist heroes are dead or near death.
Interesting to know that even Richard Dawkins expressed his wanting to see Christmas hang around.
He acknowledges that more Christians means more stability; more salivating muslims always results in child grooming, threats, riots, shootings, arson, etc (hence, muslims have so much in common with the left.)
Christianity is the easy, go-to target from weak fools, because they know we don’t blow them up, or flash into violent mobs.
Tell that to two thousand years worth of Jews.
Unlike Muslims, Christians are not commanded to “slay the unbelievers”. Evildoers might pose as Christians or even believe themselves Christians, but sheep’s clothing does not make one a sheep.
The article was about Jihadists, not about Christianity (which has not done anything like Bataclan theater in my lifetime).
The reason an article about Islam and jihads became a discussion of Christianity, socialism, etc are the same: people resort to discussing what’s familiar and close at hand, rapidly forgetting the original subject.
Dude there is no reason to lie.
But yeah freakn Bhuddists and Christian missionaries. 100% of the evil and oppression that has ever happened in the world or something. I lied it’s more like 200%. And especially that hump Martin Luther and hammering his demands on things alone probably killed a billion. Interesting articles on Martin here in Frontpage. I’m quite sure you’ll come up with the OCD already arrived at answers even after reading them THX.
Religion may by orangier than Trump. You forgot the one thing that may support your argument.
Hate much, Christophobe?
Don’t get discouraged. The more threatened and frightened
you are, the more isolated you feel – the more hopeless it all
seems. And Islam and the Globalists who prop it up will do
that to people.
Let’s face it. These two forces are out to subdue and tyrannize
the world. And doing a bang-up job. It was also exactly ten
years ago that Angela Merkel allowed a column of young Muslim
men as far as the eye could see unimpeded into Germany. And
look at the result after ten years. Europe is practically Islamized
resulting in horror for the populace. If any citizen objects to it
in the UK, they are persecuted and prosecuted by the globalist
authorities – while Muslim atrocities are blandly dealt with or
ignored. Biden tried to destroy America with a wide open border
but was stopped by Trump, at least for now. Still the Globalists of
the left – backed by all that Muslim oil money – have positioned a
Muslim as mayor of America’s most powerful city.
So the fight to crush America and Europe and Israel continues
and discouragement is easily felt. All I know is if I was ever forced
to submit to Islam, it might look like I am – but my freedom-loving
heart never would. And I’d take it from there. So f*ck Islam and the
Globalists who prop it up.
Bruce Bawer–As always, a spot-on truth teller.
Same can be said of what did we learn after 9/11. Nothing. The US is following the same path France and the UK did. Look at NYC and its Islamo-Marxist mayor, look at the other elections across the country (42) where Muslims were elected to state government positions, look at Houston, Texas which just allowed completion of a 155,000 square foot “Muslim Center,” and don’t forget the 400 acre Muslim “city-state” under consideration outside of Austin, Muslims have footholds in small towns and cities across the country as well but these are not covered in the news. If Americans are concerned, it’s not “Islamophobia,” it’s suicide prevention concerns.
They will not take over on my watch. I am an American.
Excellent article. Thank you for commemorating this seminal atrocity that alerted world islam that the West would not fight back after islamic mass slaughter but would just hug teddy bears and sing “Imagine”.
One of the greatest outrages related to the Bataclan happened a year later: “Singer Sting has sparked controversy by singing a song entitled ‘Inshallah’ at the first concert in the newly renovated Bataclan Theatre, Paris, a year after 90 people were killed there by [ISIS] affiliates. [Sting] described the word, meaning ‘God willing’ in Arabic, as ‘magnificent’.” Too bad Stink wasn’t performing there the night of the attack.
“Should we laugh or cry… keep shouting the truth… or shut up and try to enjoy what time we have left before the agents of Allah take power?”
The answer is all of the above. There’s no right or wrong reaction. We can’t fight our own people’s death wish. They want to die and there’s nothing we can do to stop them. Just salvage anything we can of our own lives and accept that young people will assimilate to survive like they’ve always done throughout history when being conquered. Civilizational suicide. Did anyone sane ever imagine it would come to this?
If more a Republican shutdown why did most Democrats vote against ending it?
The US is lagging behind where Europe is I Muslim invasion but will catch up in attacks eventually.
The population of deluded, useful idiots is growing like a cancer.
It’s a miracle that France isn’t speaking German…