It’s the ideology, stupid

What do Nigel Farage, gender-critical feminism, masculinity, generalised 
homophobia and GB News have in common? All have been blamed in the past 
week or so for the pair of terror attacks in Berlin and Paris which left 
one dead and dozens wounded. Labour MPs (including the cabinet minister 
Chris Bryant), left-wing commentators and journalists have rushed to 
point the finger at a variety of bizarre targets.

It must be hard being an Islamist. Imagine, you’ve gone to a great deal 
of planning and effort to commit an atrocity and make clear to the world 
that your motivations for doing so are your murderous religio-political 
creed. Then, just as the malaikah are introducing you to the 72 virgins, 
you notice that Chris Bryant has posted on social media, attributing 
your actions to all-purpose, gender non-specific ‘hatred’. You are, 
then, according to Bryant and co, the same as a Christian who holds to 
the Church’s historic view of marriage. You are the same as someone who 
doesn’t believe a woman can have a penis. You are the same as a person 
who mocked Stella Creasy online for not knowing the difference between a 
parrot and a parakeet. Were Bryant not one of the most obnoxiously 
pompous people in Westminster, you would almost respect him for this 
level of trolling.

Politicians’ responses to Islamist terror attacks will probably make a 
fascinating PhD topic in future years. There is a set narrative that 
follows any of these incidents: the first priority is to decry any sense 
that the literal murder of innocent civilians could be used to divide 
communities. Now I don’t know about you, but I would suggest that the 
truly divisive act is that of stabbing a random stranger in a public 
place with the intent of striking fear into the West. Apparently not.

The tactic of blaming generic ‘hate’, rather than a specific ideology, 
is followed by an immediate condemnation of anyone who does otherwise. 
We are now in the deranged world where to take a murderer at his word is 
considered a worse act of ‘stirring up hatred’ – or at least one more 
worthy of comment – than the committing of the murder in the first 
place. So it has proved this time. The organisers of Berlin Pride said 
the attack must not be used ‘for political ends’. ‘People are trying to 
divide our society and set some people against others,’ they said in a 
statement. At a vigil, a singer even went so far as to say she hoped the 
attacker was ‘white’ and ‘Christian’. Soon afterwards, the suspect was 
identified as a radical Islamist of Lebanese extraction named Abdul 
Ballout. Germany, which has, shall we say, a track record when it comes 
to the wholesale embrace of dangerous ideologies, is not even an 
outlier. The Labour MP Kate Osborne linked the Berlin Pride attack to 
the rise of Reform UK and GB News. Both, she said, were part of an 
‘escalation of hate’ across Europe, which was a ‘catalyst for real-world 
physical violence’. In Paris, officials warned against ‘jumping to 
conclusions’ following a stabbing spree in which the suspect was heard 
by witnesses to shout: ‘Allah has commanded me to do this.’ Ah.

There are evident double-standards here: the same people have no trouble 
identifying the far-right immediately should they commit any acts of 
violence. Yet across Europe, progressives in positions of power and 
influence go through an identical rigmarole every time an Islamist 
attack occurs. Only one, regime-approved, lesson is ever allowed to be 
taken from such tragedies. Everything else is ‘division’.

The progressives who excuse or equivocate over attacks on the most 
vulnerable – women, children, gays, Jews – are especially perverse given 
that these are the same people who talk so endlessly about justice and 
equality. At its most noble, the left seeks to protect and speak up for 
the innocent, the powerless, the forgotten. However, the left performs 
gymnastic-style apologetics for Islamism. It denies what it is and what 
it routinely tells us that it seeks to be – that is, a threat to the 
basic freedoms and values that make up the dignity of the West. 
Critically, it refuses to admit that Islamism is a threat unlike any 
other, lest the light of reality break into the myth of diversity. All 
this gives succour to violent men and imperils the innocent. It makes 
those at the edge of a fraying society vulnerable. Is it any wonder that 
gays in Germany are now more likely to vote for the AfD than any other 
party? Is it any wonder that some of the most important actions against 
the rape gangs in Britain have been led by women?

Deep down, I suspect progressives know that they are imperilling their 
traditional voting coalitions. Their responses often reflect this. There 
is a particularly invidious form of weasel words which play minority 
rights against each other (something, ironically, which those in power 
routinely accuse the right of doing). Sadiq Khan reacted to the Berlin 
attack by saying that it showed ‘why Pride matters’. Actually, it shows 
why we need stronger immigration controls and a more intense and 
targeted deradicalisation strategy for young Muslim males.


Khan knows that, most gay people know that, anyone with half a brain 
knows that. So the reasons for putting out such a statement are 
necessarily political rather than providing a practical solution. Khan’s 
inference is obviously that all gay people should get behind the 
state-approved line that what’s needed is more public displays of 
diversity, not any action against the specific ideology which commits 
these crimes again and again.

It will keep happening, and progressive leaders will keep minimising the 
threat by labelling it ‘hate’. But hate isn’t generic. Hate is horribly 
targeted. These attacks don’t happen because of an impossible-to-define 
misanthropy, they happen because their perpetrators believe we should 
live in a caliphate and it is their duty to bring this about using 
violence. It’s important to keep pointing that out, even if our leaders 
refuse to do so.

Madeline Grant